Video Game Review: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Secret of the Silver Blades by SSI

Long time readers will know of my dislike for this game, but if you are new it sucks crap.  This was the first misstep in the gold box series for me.  I think it was something I had a ton of expectation for and not liking what I got curdled into hatred over the years. 

So we are dealing with gold box AD&D games here in first edition.  This had a couple of new classes the ranger and paladin, not sure if they were in azure bonds.  The big thing about it was they expanding the map beyond the 16x16 limits they had previously used.  From there it seemed the same game as all the rest, with a bit of a level cap increase.

The storyline is the party has been magically transported to the a city in danger, to help the towns folks.  They have no equipment at first but are quickly given some gear by the town elders.  That all is pretty standard for this time of game.  It's worth noting equipment never transfers over even if the party members have been leveled through Pools, hillsfair and secrets.  From there they are asked to stop the "Evil".  I really cant remember the evil though it was something about a frozen army and possibly a lich.

The party are sent out to explore and ostensibly power up.  this is where they enter the massive area of exploration that is the game.  You can just kill and kill and sometimes hit the locations you need to travel to.  Which would seem interesting but ends up being pointless as you never need to travel once you reach the portal zone.  I did find a +6 set of leather armor in a drawer once but after that nothing really of interest.  Once you reach the portal room you have a fight of decent difficulty for control of the portals.  After this you can travel back and forth.  There is a portal to the city you started in and eventually portals start opening that lead you were you need to go.  One is to a old dwarf fortress that is taken over.  Once you clear it you find an old dwarf that will heal and raise you for free, with no chance of con reduction.  That sort of breaks the game as well as you are always near a portal and then the fortress and can just use him whenever you are in trouble.

The last fight of the game is the only one where you really have a challenge.  I tried a couple of times only to die again and again.  The third attempt I actually buffed for the first time in the game, and it was cake.  One note give the ranger the giant slaying sword they have bonuses against them and he will kill a giant a round.

Toy Review: Waterful by Tomy

From underscoopfire.com

Another one of the toys I never actually had for today.  My friend Jesus had one, the ring toss or soccer i think.  These were weird little toys I guess for the time they were cool, but really seem pretty lame now.  The were little plastic tanks that you filled with water.  When you pressed the pump button a jet of coursed through the tank driving rings or balls in some direction.

There were several of these with different themes like Ring toss, pac man and Mr. mouth.  Each had some objective to complete or on the two player versions you were trying to outscore your friend.  It would have been a cool idea but in reality it was just a kid spasmodically pushing the pump button.  There was some technique of light pump then hard pump or whatever, sound like I am getting into a strange area now.  But in reality it was just a single button aquatic video game.  It ends up making the Atari's joystick look like a state of the art device.

They were great in cars, well until the game boys was released.  This is one of those toys I just never see making a comeback.  None of the art of Spirograph, none of the making stuff like creepy crawlers and none of the fine motor control of the Sears Giant Crane.

Video Game review: CBS Dream House

This was one of the weirder games I had.  I think my dad got it more for himself and realized it was not the drafting style home decoration software he wanted.  It was more like an editor for a graphical adventure game like Kings quest or something like that.  I remember making the house and filling it with things just to see if they animated.  That was the thing, some items would animate and others would not.

I vaguely remember two things about the actual game play.  the First was it would take forever to load, I mean almost a Datasoft "Bruce Lee" long load time for this sucker.  The second was the items were not universal.  So you could not take the folding bed and place it in houses other than the San Francisco style house.  That may have been for replay as it made me go through each of the houses to see what they did.  I can only really recall three houses one begin the San Francisco style another being a big fancy east coast style house.  The third I remember as a little cottage out of a kids story book.

I am guessing they were supposed to be saved onto a black 5.25 inch floppy but this never worked for me so my creations were only around as long as the game was running.  Which was fine as I never seriously intended to work on drapes and what not.

Toy Review: Sectaurs warriors of symbian

From the good folks at fruitless pursuits

This was actually one of the toys I wanted but never got.  I was a spoiled asshole especially and got way too much crap but this was one my parents decided they didn't want me getting into a new line of toys.  That is sad that they figured out i would need heroes and villains and a vehicle and maybe a play-set or two. 

These were sort of a he-man clone with less impressive sculpting.  The theme was insect warriors where everybody had an insect familiar or pal, ala cringer.  I guess I was super enamored with the guys that rode hand puppet fly's and dragonfly's.  I also remember a little bug that spit water, i guess it was pretty entrancing for a kid.  Again like Masters of the universe it was a strange, guns and swords fantasy mash up that made very little sense.  I mean if you have a flying tarantula and a laser gun you pretty much win.  I guess it was some sort of science and magic thing.  I mean crossing an arachnid with an insect that's insane right!

Probably for the best I didn't get these.  I would have wanted the rip off castle greyskull they had going and spent all my parents cash.

Toy Review: Offical Advanced Dungeons & Dragons action figures

These were weird in that they totally were for kids like me but I never really went nuts for them.  Dungeons and Dragons was like my Star Wars, the life changing magic was there right from the start.  Action Figures were my go to toy but still they were not the crazy hit they should have been with me. 

I had three figures and that is it. It's weird because that is about what all my other friends had too.  I had Warduke and Thomas the paladin, along with Melf the elf.  My neighbor Alex had the two wizards. Our friend Jesus had the half orc assassin and a girl cleric.  And finally our friend Ryan had a Titan that looked like a viking and something else, maybe the ogre.

One thing that was pretty obvious with these things was they sucked as toys.  These guys had no movement, sort of like the star wars figures plus a bit more swing.  But compared to the Gi Joes they were pretty weak.  We wanted some crazy sword fighting action but they only gave blandness on par with the masters of the universe.

I have seen some better updates from folks that have more skill and free time than I ever will. They look pretty cool, wish they were for sale.

Video Game Review: Rad Warrior

On of the lamer games I purchased back in the day for the commodore.  It was very cool in promise and goofy as heck in execution.  It was a redistribution of a game by Epxy. 

You had two phases to the game both were incredibly short.  The first you were a jungle warrior throwing rocks.  the second  you had moved on to wearing powered armor and were defeating some evil enslaving device. 

This would have been cool if there were more to it but it was like a ten minute wash, rinse and repeat affair.  You would get screwed on occasion as you could run out of shields in a radio active area and have to get out of the suit only to die to the radiation.  That was actually the most interesting the game got as you almost always won. 

If i remember right you had to get the shields and guns for the suit then defeat the evil which was pretty easy to do.  It sort of reminds me of Metroid in a small way, but that also shows the Commodores flaws.  Compared to side scrolling on the consoles it was a total was of time.  I do like the Iron Maiden inspired character of the logo though.

Toy review: Huffy Wrangler bike

This was my first bike as a kid. None of my friends through it was very high on the cool scale as banana seat bikes were lame by that time.   Still it was good and popped wheelies for days.  Great beginners bike as it was completely coaster breaks and allowed you to do some awesome skids. 

In looking at it now I am shocked how country and western it was, no wonder my parents got it for me.  They loved that crap.  Still in the days when every kid had a toy cap gun it seemed to make sense.

I can remember being able to make turns so low the petals would scrape on the ground that was one cool feature you could really drop it and throw it around your hip.  Though that may have been after removing some of the parts.  I remember taking off my chain guard and the mud flaps to drop weight, i think i even removed the reflectors.  Stupid i guess.

Toy Review: Gi Joe Falcon Attack Glider

Perhaps the lamest of all Gi Joe toys I begged my parents for as a child.  I don't know if it lasted an afternoon. 

This was a fully flying giant foam wing that was intended to connect to one of your joes and fly across the yard.  Or in my case kitchen only to hit one of the chairs and break off its little wing.  Then in realization that it was broken play with the wing flaps to lean aeronautics or something. 

Being a bit of a pack rat, I held onto the little clip that straps in the figure for years and years after.  I don't know what i expected, but i would find it in a draw, recognize it, then throw it back in the draw.  Never tossing it in the trash next to the draw.  Its not like i was going to cut together a replacement out of old big mac and Mc DLT boxes.

Video Game Review: Ultimate Wizard for Commodore 64

I am not sure this is the exact version of the game I had, as I remember it as Ultimate Wizard Construction Kit for the commodore 64.  While I had some 50 levels of pre created game the fun was the creator.  We had a variety of levels mocking one of our friends, because apparently as a Kid I was a fucking dick.  I feel a bit more like shit considering Karazno was later killed somewhere in the redwood estates / Holy city area.  But one social reject giving another crap seemed like the thing to do back then.

Anyway this was sort of a lode runner clone with magic thrown in.  Your little guy had a few spells he could cast to do various stuff in the level. Often these were required to advance through the level other times they were just to fight monsters and make you feel good.  There was a pretty fun bug in one of them, the spell that teleported you down.  When you died you went through a little animation of your guy falling down the screen but should you have the teleport spell it would break the animation and place you alive on a lower level.

While this was great fun game it has pretty limited graphics, as was true with most commodore games.  This , like all lode runner clones, was at its heart a platformer.  The Nintendo did this so much better that it is very hard to get past that fact and play the game now.  I mean something like any of the Mario's feel light years more advanced than this little guy.  Mario construction set would be fun though.

Capsize

This rocky comfort will capsize
leaving submerged souls and tide
Battered home or swept to sea
Your choice, blame either way

That shore doesn't look right
everything inverted misleading
Salt burns out eyes and my tender

Little attempts at pleasantries
Crack against the groaning rigs
Powers up lighting the skies

Ill give in hold fast for salvation
driftwood cold and dead remain

finger bones dissolved home

assume the ribbons and sinew gone
the delicate disturbed and sea bound
washed in undercurrent watershed
with finger bones dissolved home

No cricket silence the bowing leg
this pace is for beadles rusty or black
gloaming within the earthworks
crackle upon nearly hushed breath

Here pine needles await final decay
driving at our ankles fruitless hurt
Graven upon stones another end
forget the beginning its full of ends

And there it sits hung awaiting
some close
 
 

Material and Genetic

If I come down form the dreams and ether it all makes since.  The worry and struggle all fall into place and one realizes the lies for true.  The lies are everything mingled in the community the connections and obligation.  Truth is internal and the things that pierce the internal radiating out.  The choices that say no I will not let you dictate to me where one confronts the commune.

Where is my discomfort? With your values never my own, why would I feel disconnected with those I honor.  When you tell me my thoughts mean I am the slow and unkind.  I only wished to exist and proceed with my family and not let your values be those of me and mine.  I offer help to those I found value in, why can I not continue.  My must I give to those who I do not care about?  Why must I care?

Why do your fears affect me, when I don't trouble you with mine.  You give me no aid and shun my ilk where is the golden land you speak of.  I see some where I work head down my joys broken and yours held high in hand.  Yet you call me worthless when I say no.  Give me back my wonder the cities are grim and ugly, material and genetic.

I want to break this guitar and smash this horn.  I want to burn all the books and cut myself again.  I want to destroy something meaningful so you see how I hurt.  But I don't know if that has any meaning because I don't know if I have any meaning to you. 

So I think i should drive these things to friends who could use them and maybe my actions could have some worth.  Then I could throw everything in the car and drive to locations I don't know, because this is everything that has meaning to me.  But I'm not sure how that is reflected!  I think its sunk down to the less and less and sit somewhere under the stains of the dogs spot on the wall.  Scrubbed too long and its just a place not a home.

What where are the cherry trees and the forgotten bones.  The well worked stones of our memory, the shared distant reverie.  Locked up with clasps and bows tied so long they aren't touched for fear they won't hold.  There murky water rise up your Jerusalem with golden bow, sharp the arrows!

Geosmin and Petichor of sprinklers and suburban yards

Going into the course of blood
I'm morphine glassed bed white.
keep it in, keep it in just tonight
not a sound from you little man.

Just distracted and abstract
kind but removed it cant show
nothing can make them alert
for just a few hours so few.

let it go go go somewhere
anywhere that's not you or us
not them not to be noticed
until all are fast asleep, sigh.

Then out at night we'll dig
down deep and bury it gone.
None more of the chaos just calm.
cool air and earth filling sleep.
 

I am getting stuck on a phrase

Waiting on the Earthquake is stuck in my head but its like a fucking extra pronged lego block.  Just doesn't seem to fit in which anything but I can't set it down.  I know I am read by eastern European hacking sites primarily but if you have an idea let me know.

I have vague feelings around it almost like a scale of experiences.  Very much the hills and rocks behind my house.  Vague feeling of places where it has been Ok to let time pass unspent with that.  But then there the very physical hillside with stones and grasses.  I am not sure but that seems to want to take everything over almost like a competing idea that threatens to swallow up or redirect everything. 

I am really having trouble taking off.  So I invite anyone to trade stanza's on the idea.  I will try start but not now, I need some time to let it cook into a soup.  I don't want to make any rules but my bits are mine yours are yours unless we all agree upon the whole.

Krampus for Christmas: Arbor day

Krampus hated hippies to the monster they were vile.  Even snacking on their children didn't give the beast a smile.  They were stringy and only vegetarian fed.  Cooking em gave off vapors that hurt his furry head.  Each year he avoided the annual earth day, Finding it best to go away. 

This year Krampus headed for Canada around the 24th of may, They celebrate trees in September but Krampus used the American date anyway.  His mighty claws dug up lawns several nights before, some he forgot to plant trees in he'll admit his planning was poor.  The irate canucks wondered who disturbed their happy homes.  Their dogs wondered who stole their well hit bones.  Krampus laughed in triumph glad to see their woe.  The chaos was so wonderful the monster never wanted to go.

But the great white north looked much like Christmas and Krampus worried to much time was lost.  He always worried when his fur felt a little snow.  Too much April wine the monster felt it was time to go.  Back home july was well on it's way, besides food choices were bad the beast couldn't stay.  At home children were stuff with ice cream and hot dogs.  They would delicious and fat a well larded hogs.

De Profundis: Black Waters and Sumped Shores

My Fellow Gentlemen

The heat of mid afternoon vexes me of late.  These days I am oft to traverse the dark watered byways of the mountain streams.  My hope is for relief with the cool waters origined in high reservoirs. They are a comfort to the weary heat, though company offered is course and yokel.

I fear my sabbatical from matters arcane draws to end.  My rambling have caught the attention of unwanted eyes.  An associate of Crowley who haunts the backwaters has noted my goings and now appears on many of my jaunts.  Even travels far to the east have proven this man intent on following my comings and goings.  Upon invitation I traveled to the observatory to celebrate the installation of the grand refracting lens, again the man stalked my journey.  The serpentine trail to ascent the mountain makes countless spirals and turns in its climb.  The specter was first seen on the third snaking and again well past half of the climb.

I await a wrapping upon my door but my folly was at least well mannered; arriving as a well inscribed letter.  I am advised to find myself in the dreary sea side town of Alviso tomorrow noon.  A brackish sump land even the sea has found sense to abandon, I have no desire for this meeting whomever awaits.

Yours very truly
J.L. Reichl

De Profundis: Dreams of the Sea

My Fellow Gentlemen

Last eve lingered pleasant upon the hedgerows, I awaited a languid night from the veranda.  Of my mind, I desired change and sought only space to allow it to occur. The nagging matters or the expanding beyond were content to dissolve into a Mediterranean clime.  This retreating pleasant was salvation and mount olive my fellows

Sleep would come to me in my books as would dreams, of these I recall only shadows betwixt vaguely remembered fright.  The nagging callers haunted me and found me everywhere.  Should I cast myself upon the wind and fate they would greet me wherever I arrived.  Always established and ingratiate to the new metropoli.  I a stranger even unto myself.

The dark beast and his mentor presented to conspire round robin to vex me.  Though oft the specter was the two intermingled to a single entity of dread.  Dreams of the sea were my sole comfort, I could throw myself into the gyre of its mercy, though even the deeps held something in mind.  The waters wretched me out as bile again and again, and there on the shore my paired spirits awaited.

Yours very truly
J.l. Reichl

First Thoughts on Monty Cook's Numenera

Howdy folks

I have been reading through The Players Guide for Monty Cook's Numenera game.  I wanted to pass along a couple of thought for people considering buying it and those who may not know about it but should buy it.  I will start off by saying I am not done reading it, I have reached the part talking about "class" powers which mostly wraps up the book.

So Numenera is as close as you are going to get to Digest Publishing Groups failed AI project as you are going to get.  I have chatted with Joe Fugate through email and have a decent understanding of what AI was intending and Numenera is it.  They both used even used the Asimov quote about sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic as a design philosophy.  Magicians work out to be humans who can manipulate nano swarms existing in an area in AI, where Nano's are the wizards of Numenera.  The reason I supported the kickstarter was immediate fear this would be very similar to the game I have been working on for years.  The art work in Numenera immediately conjures elements of my own setting.

The rules for doing things in the game are light but elegant.  I am quite a fan of the idea of melee range, which is a nebulous distance where the fight is occurring.  You just can attack people in melee range, you don't worry about speed or attacks of opportunity.  Combat is fluid and moving.  It really makes maps and miniatures completely not needed.

Skills are also simple yet elegant.  You just roll a d20 verse a target number/target number step.  A target number step of 1 may require a roll of 3+ and 2 may require 6+.  The Game Master Sets the difficulty number and the players must roll it.  The player uses their skills not to add or subtract to the roll but to decrease the skill target number step.  So having a skill in jump will make that 2 step become a 1 step and drop the target number to 3+.

I have yet to get my hands on the Core Book so we will see if my impressions continue to ring true.  I have a feeling The old Dark Space setting may also be influencing the game as well.

Follow up:  I guess i should talk about the Adjective Class who Does Stuff mechanic.  This is something that comes in at the end of the book. It allows for mixing of ideas and developing your character into a thematic concept.  You have adjectives like Rugged and Mystical which allow for extra skills and stat pool points.  These can work to expand your character into new areas or specialize your skills, a rugged nano being more well rounded and a mystical nano being specialized.  These work in theory but i am not sure if there shouldn't be a few more. 

The Does Stuff mechanic needs more options.  From a crunch perspective this is very similar in that it just adds to your class.  This can be things like controls beasts or Wields two weapons, basically creating the what type of class you are.  I am going to come right out and say they need more, what they have is ok as it works to create a feel for the setting. But in looking to create the more iconic characters from my own setting, I see no way the game handles necromancy.  I guess the nearest you get is telekinesis if you are moving a corpse like a puppet.

A Bright Window

close down and shut off the light.
Go home and find a chair
where quiet melds with dark.
Be silent as shadows across walls.

Turn down the worry,low.
Let the moment steep through
until you're momentarily the same.
Still and stillness, breath gale.


Accept the nagging not quit right
And work out peace with it.
The fixing disturbs your quiet
hunting finds more that sit wrong.

Sleep should you fall to it,
even living it the moment is gone.