Dungeons and Dragons, "Religion of Orcs"

            In the past, I have talked about Orcs in the context of Dungeons and Dragons and how underwhelming they are as a culture.  I understand why that is, their place in fantasy mythology is that of the barbaric horde which seeks to pillage, rape, destroy, and dominate.  They are all things ugly, dumb, uncultured, and held together only by strength and are always the minions of some greater and more mindful evil, your Dark Lord Sauron or Duke Igthorn and the like.

            I find this boring, and between the presence of Gnolls, Goblinoids, and numerous other evil humanoids I feel that an opportunity was lost to give some dimension to Orcs in more recent editions of Dungeons and Dragons.  It is not like it can’t be done, “Warcraft” has done a lot to flesh out their orc culture and “Warhammer 40k” has at the very least made them alien/other enough that their silly-violence makes them distinct within the setting.

 

What is the value of a bad guy who is just a bad guy?

My Change to Orcs: Maltheism

            Orcs are too often portrayed as accepting their role in the world as being the followers of Gruumsh, the orc god who got his eye poked out by the god of the elves starting the whole enmity between the two groups.  This compounds an issue I have with Dungeons and Dragons views on religion in that everyone seems to acknowledge the existence of all the gods and races other than humans have gods tied to them in particular.

            Here is my first change, Orcs are Monotheistic.  They believe in only one god, all other gods are either fictions made up to deceive people, or are powerful outsiders capable of great things that gain power via being worshiped and give out power to certain followers to prove their benevolence.  But, none of these pretenders are the one true god.  Orcs know that there is only one god and they hate that guy.

            They see God as a cruel being.  Pitting people and races against one another, creating monsters and storms to break those who would otherwise live peacefully, and touching many with madness and disease to keep them low and in pain.  God is evil, and the Orcs want to kill God.

I think "Wondermark" is the most underrated webcomic out there.

            Orcs fight and build strength, keeping their minds clear with the purpose of destruction so that when they are faced with god in the afterlife they can attack and hopefully defeat him.  Not all Orcs are warriors, and they too contribute to the effort, an entire army of souls exist waging war on God in hopes of finally ending that bastard’s hold over everyone, to create a world free of calamity and mistrust, and to build an afterlife worth going to.

            Orcs dislike temples and places of worship, seeing them at best as comfortable delusions to keep the masses from seeing the bitter reality, and at worst they see them as tools for God to sow sorrow, mistrust, and false hope.  God pretends to be different deities to send followers to war against people who are deluded by a different pretend god.  Be it Bane or Pelor all “gods” are just God, and he is making everyone hate each other.

            Cults and Temples that use religion to harm people outright, via human sacrifice or oppressive social structures and stigmas are the worst villains in the eyes of the Orcs and are to be destroyed.

 

"Yep, gonna have to take care of this infestation before it starts to spread." -Thori, Orc Warrior

Spiritual Strength

            Orcs believe in the value and power of nature and Druidic tradition permeates their day to day life.  Stone circles which they call Ley Wells draw on and concentrate the power of nature to grant them bountiful harvests and gentle storms, protecting them from a wrathful god.

            Orc clerics do exist, but they are seen as stealing power from God, taking from the malign deity the power to do harm and turning it to good ends.  Eyes of Gruumsh are not God’s chosen in orc culture, but instead are the orcs who saw a vision of God and were able to curse him before the vision passed.

            There are always those who do not follow the path, many orcs find religion outside of their home culture, and some Orc tribes see a pantheon of gods as a likely state of cosmic affairs.  There are also those who are considered the worst of heretics, “True Believers” those orcs who not only believe in God’s evil, but wish to spread it by being a tool of the dark one’s malign whims.

 

"This shit is unacceptable and needs to be dealt with." -Thori, Orc Warrior

Virtues

            Orc culture favors certain key virtues.

            Honor, that is being direct and honest with one’s actions; generally speaking, lies and deception are seen as wastes of effort, being forthright with what they want and how much they are willing to pay for it saves them time.

            Valor, which they see as akin to improving one’s self, this also applies for setting goals and having the drive to attain them; this is not limited to combat, a person who takes risk in one’s job, romances, or exploration is seen as noble.

            Glory is when Valor pays off via talent and ability.  While it is noble to take risks, it is Glorious for those risks to find reward.  Orc paladins are often called “Glory Seekers” for their desire to attain a particular goal.

            Dominance is the final virtue, this is the ability to not only be good at what you do but to challenge others to be better.  Competition between individuals who seek to be the best and fending off challenges to one’s title is seen as a natural part of orc culture.  You cannot win one battle and rest on your laurels till passing in your sleep, you must continue to seek out battles to Dominate your profession.  Not enough to write one book or paint one mural, you must invite comparisons between your works and the works of others and continue to produce work in attempts to produce better and better products.

 

"For the Glory of the Mortal races I shall defeat the cultist chef Guy Fieri."
"Guy Fieri isn't a cultist, he is just a chef."
"Bullshit.  No one would wear their hair like that unless it was the will of their mad god."

            Too often Orc culture becomes consumed with combat.  It is hard to look at the world and see it as being controlled by a giant evil entity that seeks to make you suffer and be driven to do anything other than want to fight back.  There are orc communities that do escape such cycles of violence, those that wish to battle God with works of art that venerate the mortal will to survive and overcome, those that wish to heal the sick and infirm, or those who wish to build structures that can stand against the raging winds and crashing storms of God.

            Orcs are not just barbarians.

(I wrote all this as a sort of break from all the political stuff I have been consuming too much of.  If you would like to read some of my thoughts on current events, here are links to things on Net Neutrality, Immigration, and the events in Charlottesville.)

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            If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter (click that link to follow me), Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

Dungeons and Dragons: "Healing"

Introduction

            I have played Dungeons and Dragons for more than 15 years.  Lately, I have not had access to any other players and so I have just been kicking around ideas that normally would be in a game and instead I am just going to post them on my blog.  This is going to be a reoccurring thing as I just keep hammering out things and not all of them can be turned into elements in my “random fantasy novel ideas” folder.

            Last week I talked about the concept of a “common” language that appears in Dungeons and Dragons and how that might reflect on the game world.  The fictional country I created was actually a massive metaphor for the game of Dungeons and Dragons itself.  I am clever.

            This week I want to focus on something that is more rules based, which is going to make this pretty inaccessible to anyone who wants to read just for the “how to write fantasy” aspects…  Anyway, I want to talk about healing and game flow.

What Have I Got: Injuries

            Most of my experience playing Dungeons and Dragons (like 90%) is in 3^rd or 3.5 edition.  In 3^rd edition healing is slow, expensive, and resource intensive.  I hate it.  At low levels, games quickly get bogged down as each room of a dungeon could potentially kill the entire party.  An Orc with a great sword and a single level of warrior has an attack that is likely to hit and likely to incapacitate.  Here is some math!  (This is perhaps the boringest part of this whole thing… I regret putting it here at the front).

            The orc gets +1 for being a level one fighter type class, +3 from his strength score with is likely either 16 or 17, but could be higher if they are an elite enemy, and +1 from the weapon focus feat.  That is a +5, assuming the orc has no allies granting a flanking bonus (+2), or a slightly better weapon or spell helping (+1), or maybe they are just charging (+2).

            The orc is going to certainly hit the wizard AC11, 70% of the time, and will probably have no issue hitting the high dexterity rogue AC17, 40% of the time.  And at low levels those guys are toast.  Because the orc will deal 2d6+4 damage.  The highest health you can really expect from a wizard is 9 hit points if they decided to toss away a feat on Toughness.

            Curing the damage caused by even a single hit by this orc (and remember, there is a dungeon/camp/waaargh-party of these guys hanging around waiting to hit too), just this one guy will eat up one of these three resources.

1)     Time.  “We will barricade the room so that we can rest up for the night and recover health before continuing.”  And resting is a shit way to recover, 1 hit point for your level and 1 additional hit point for your Constitution modifier.  And that assumes you can find a place to rest.  I once had a team hold up in a secure location, only one entrance to secure, when they woke the next morning they found the door barred from the other side, the kobolds had bricked them up inside.  This method stops the game cold, and is insane in the context of the world; you are going to break camp inside the enemy stronghold?

2)     Spells.  “The cleric can burn off one of their fun spells like- Hahaha…. I couldn’t even finish that sentence, Cleric spells are all boring protective wards, cook one off and use the spell for healing.”  Cleric spells are boring, and the role of the character in the party of adventurers/players is to heal (more than anything else, paradoxically they and Druids are considered the strongest classes) so this doesn’t really feel like much of a loss, but there are not a lot of spells to go around at low levels, each heal is a substantial resource lost.

3)     Items.  Scrolls, potions, and wands are all present early in the game, but they are kind of pricey.  Maybe this is supposed to be some kind of sub textual bit of commentary on how expensive healthcare is in real life?  But, why in heaven’s name does a potion that cures 1d8+1 hit points cost so much?  Imagine if healing magic existed in the real world and you could bottle a healing potion that would never expire and be in constant demand, why would this shit not be bottled like Coca-Cola?  People would be sprinkling it on their food.  And don’t give me that, “XP cost” BS, the Spice Must Flow!

 

More like, "Blood must flow!  Am I right?"  All orc comedy is about bloodshed, it is not very funny.

            I am also going to point out how worthless I think the Heal skill is as I know of it.  Skills are a not-that-fun aspect of 3^rd edition, but Heal is actually so useless that it gives new players misconceptions about what they can do with it.  At best it should be called First Aid and should be a skill for people who have no access to healing magic.

            So what do I think should be the solution?  How can you speed up healing to keep the pace of the game going but not incur expenses that will screw up the game’s economy?  Well, I said that most of my DnD experience was with 3^rd, but the rest was with 4^th edition, and for all the faults that game had, healing was a lot faster, and the game was a smoother experience for it.  Beyond that, let’s look at some video games and I can complain about “Skyrim” a whole bunch.

4^th Edition and “World of Warcraft”: Healing Surges and Sitting on Your Butt

            The idea behind healing surges was to take healing systems like those in World of Warcraft and adapt them to Dungeons and Dragons.  In WoW you regenerate health after each combat encounter.  You are sacrificing time (a few seconds) to get back to your starting point and then you can get on with slaughtering boars and kobolds.  The game flow is interrupted, but that can be sped up by eating food and drinking beverages which shorten the recovery process.  You effectively have infinite health, just not all at once.  And charging people money for small amounts of food allows them to pull some money out of the bloated WoW economy.  WoW has lots of ways to heal, but they are thoroughly restricted for game balance.

            The 4^th edition of Dungeons and Dragons took that concept and adapted for a tabletop game which lacked the luxury of having actual time happening.  4E just said that your characters could recover back to full health via short rest periods several times each day, and several abilities could recover from these short rests as well, essentially a breather after each fight to gain one’s bearings and ready yourself for the next conflict.

            There was still a limit on how many times you could do this each day as a function of class and ability scores, these still served as a slight interruption to the gameplay (but not nearly the flow destruction of 3^rd edition), and some abilities required a night’s rest to get back which when coupled with the limited amount of surges meant the players still eventually ran out of resources.

            Each of these systems means that the players only had enough for any given encounter while simultaneously having enough for many encounters.  Healing Surges have a good balance, and had they included things like potions to restore daily abilities it really would have worn the fact it was borrowing from WoW on its sleeve.  Got milk?

 

"Guy Fieri is going to be here any minute!"

“Bloodborne”: Quick and Easy

            The great thing about every video game grafting RPG element into them is how it can illustrate which mechanics work and which that don’t in a variety of ways.  “Bloodborne”, to me at least, is a hack and slash game.  If the game just gave you a small incremental increase in health, stamina, and damage each time you beat a boss you really could pack in most of the other elements of the game’s leveling up.

            I am sure there are many people who love the insanity of trying to optimize builds in the game and the “Dark Souls” series overall, and those fans of the series are calling for my head reading this, but I actually find the system too arcane to use (and I say that as someone who has power gamed the hell out of DnD, mostly because I find that system modular and accessible).  Regardless of this I like the “Bloodborne” healing system.

            Healing potions, “Blood Vials” are common with nearly every goon in the game dropping them and you can regain health by counter attacking enemies that have just hit you.  The game keeps up its pace and rewards being aggressive.

            How would that adapt to Dungeons and Dragons?  The game is punishingly difficult, has limited team work opportunities, and death is a built in mechanic.  This seems like a hard thing to lift from the game and put on to another system right?  I don’t think so.

 

It is also a single player experience (for the most part), so its mechanics might not work for large parties.

            Make healing potions super common and cheap as hell.  But also make them less effective.  Instead of 50 gold for a standard healing potion, have the healing potions cost 5 gold, and have the players find them on bad guys who will use them if they have the opportunity to (make them easier to use, a move action or maybe even a free action if the player has the Quick Draw feat).  The new drawback would be this: the potions expire.

            “Bloodborne” has death as a core part of gameplay, and since that is not going to be taken over too, and you can’t cap the number of healing vials the players in DnD will carry (there are portable holes and bags of holding for reasons, namely that players like endless piles of stuff that they never use), so the only way to get rid of an endless supply of inexpensive healing items that the players would be willing to stockpile is to make the things only good for a short time.

            Have it so they can’t be found in ancient dungeons because they would have all gone bad, much like cough syrup they just don’t work after a certain half-life, or can even become poisonous.  They are common and useful in living civilizations but they are medicine produced to be used and only stored for protracted periods of time under special circumstances (perhaps there will be a bag of refrigerated holding).

            The healing potions, Blood Vials, would be not too expensive so they can be stocked up on before a big adventure, but if they are not consumed in a short enough period of time (3-5 days) they will spoil, so you don’t have to worry about the players splurging on 100 potions all at once and destroying all tension to any individual encounter.

            And you might be saying that this system will make the Cleric’s healing ability a lot less worthwhile, and by extension all healing magic will be less meaningful.  Yes.  Yes, that is the case.  I consider that a good thing.  Maybe then the players will be willing to let the cleric cast some wards around them so they don’t need the healing as often?  And the player with the cleric character can do something other than make everyone else not dead.

“Skyrim”: An Example of What Doesn’t Work

            The economy of Skyrim is broken and unbalanced.  It is possible to have money coming out of your ears in no time and there is nothing that serves as a drain on that system.  I blame their healing system.

            Let’s see,

1)     You get fully healed from sleeping.

2)     You can just stand still in a safe location for a while and you will heal.

3)     If you want to hurry things along you can cast a healing spell you get for free at the start of the game.

4)     You heal to full when you gain a level.

5)     There are potions you can buy or make yourself from free ingredients that are everywhere.

6)     And there is a ton of food which is so ineffectual it is rendered meaningless almost instantly, but it is there and thus should be mentioned.  HEY GUYS, if cooking requires a lot of butter and salt, maybe make those things super cheap, super common, and make food somehow functionally better than the potion which has the same weight, otherwise it isn’t worth the trouble.

            You can also remove all diseases by touching a holy shrine or if you are in the middle of something just swallow a potion.  Though I found myself walking thru hours of game without noticing my diseased self because the effects are often to negligible and there is no indication of illness on your heads-up-display.  This is poor design.  But, let’s stay on Healing.

"You look rather pale."
"Shut Up."
"You'll find tonics, salves, poultices and potions on my shelves. Browse to your heart's content."

 "SHUT UP!"

            All of these things together add up to too much.  Healing could easily serve as a pressure release on the world’s economy if healing cost more money.  But healing really doesn’t cost much, or anything.  Not having to manage your health in a game like this sucks a lot of the challenge out of the game, and a lot of the use for money goes out the window too.

            Sure even somewhat useful magic items cost a fortune and in theory they could serve to take some of your money, but who buys those?  Really, who buys items in Skyrim?  I buy raw materials, but more often than not (before installing a mod that just gave all the merchants more money) the hardest part of Skyrim was finding a place to sell shit to accumulate more and more nearly-useless currency.

            Adjusting the Healing system could have solved that.  Get rid of the WoW-esc “heal by standing still” method.  You have to cast a spell, take a potion, or rest (like in 3^rd edition Dungeons and Dragons) but make the potions cheaper so that people will be more inclined to buy a bunch and use them with impunity.  Suddenly this system means food will remain useful longer, as it will provide a slight, but present, source of health on the run, all those set tables in dungeons full of Bandits will serve as hubs of quick recharging to continue on the mission.

            This video game is one of the many that does not benefit from recharging health but I think it was included because its first person perspective made it expected.  This complaint is more about fixing their busted economy than healing itself.  I keep finding myself stocked up on potions and money in the late game and that is not good.  Cause you need tension.  Hell, “Skyrim” doesn’t even put a limit on how many potions you can take in a single fight, WoW does that.

            This system would still have regenerating health (in a way), because mana still regenerates, but it would require that extra step of actually casting the spell.  This actually is an instance in which making things more like 3^rd Edition Dungeons and Dragons would benefit the game because of the minor differences in Skyrim that are harder to transplant back into the system: spells are less of a massive resource because of mana regenerating, resting is a more substantial because it is solidly a game feature, and the existence of food as another inexpensive source of healing.

It's like Scrooge McDuck's.

The Compromise: What’s Right for Your Game

            So what should you do for your game?  You can probably already tell what I would be my preferred method to slide into a game.  Either healing surges so that you have limited health per encounter but plenty of health over the course of the day, or cheap and plentiful Blood Vials that provide enough help to push forward but a supply that will eventually run out so as to require thought and management.

            The system for 3^rd edition now is excessively resource consuming and the system for Skyrim is not consuming enough.  The first leads to characters getting bogged down and being too careful because loosing health is expensive, the other leads to your pants being pulled down from the weight of unused money.

 

"You just need a place to put it, mate!"

            If you want to go with the Healing Surges method I would have it work like this, each player gets a number of healing surges equal to 5 plus their constitution modifier and each is worth ½ their full hit point total.  With feats like Endurance, Great Fortitude, and Toughness providing an additional healing surge to make those feats more attractive to the players.  Cause Endurance is pretty boring as is.  You might also give additional Surges to Barbarians and Paladins, or the ability to swap out unused Surges for additional uses of a class abilities like Rage or Healing Hands.

            If you want to go with the Blood Vials method make all healing potions cost 10% of their current price, and whenever players fight humanoid or other intelligent creatures (like giants, though they would be using stronger stuff) roll 1d6-4 (or 1d6-3 if you want to be generous) to see how many healing items they have on them.  You could also introduce a few feats that make the individual items more effective on the player than they otherwise would be, like the Fast Healer feat.

            If you want further restrictions on Blood Vials, making it so the players can only use a few during any given encounter and need a short rest (5 minute) before using more, would limit their use in each encounter to prohibit the game from dragging out as players just keep healing themselves rather than taking risks to end the fight.

            The truth of the matter is that most of this discussion is probably moot.  5^th edition is where a lot of new players are right now, and unless you like reading about game design and adapting it to your own game this will have little relevance.  But maybe, if you think your games have been a little slow consider adapting a system like this to play, maybe it will speed things up a bit.

Whatever works.

Future Dungeons and Dragons Discussion

            I am unsure how to install a poll function in this blog.  But if you have a topic you would like to see someone else talk about in the context of Dungeons and Dragons (or just in the context of writing fantasy stuff) write it in the comments.

            I think the next thing will be about Alignment.  It will probably have to be a 10,000 entry series on the subject matter that has all the depth of a teaspoon and more debate among players than ANY OTHER THING IN GAMING.

The Beg for Attention

            If you enjoyed reading about this, please say so in the comments.  If you think I am off base about “Bloodbourne” please tell me in the comments.  If you have had your own issues with healing in video games or Dungeons and Dragons, share in the comments.  If you think I contradicted myself somewhere, criticize me in the comments.  Thank you for reading.

  

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Top 20 Video Games: 20 to 11

            I have not been posting nearly enough this year and I want to steer back from that.  To that end I have found a 30-day blog challenge and will be writing out entries, hopefully I can get all thirty days without any breaks, and if I manage to do that (since August has 31 days) I will think of an additional entry to write about.  I have done a 30-day challenge before, it for movies, but that was a while back, feel free to read those too if you like.

            Today is day 30 and the topic is “Top 20 Video Games: Twenty to Eleven”.

            I initially only gave out 8 honorable mentions in addition to my top 10, because I couldn’t find 2 more games that I liked enough that I could just make a top 20 rather than a top 10.  Isn’t that a bitch?

            Well, that mostly had to do with my unwillingness to just laud the various entries in one series or from one company.  Some top lists on the internet contain 3 games in a series in three different slots.  Just lump those together, there is no reason to eat up 3 entries on what amounts to one set of games.  You are not providing greater context on your tastes and interests by emphasizing those titles so much.  Eventually I realized that I should reach much further back in my memory to games that I liked a lot as a child to grab some more… Then I started to have too many entries and started cutting things because I don’t think nostalgia is a reason to love something beyond whether I still like it now.

            I am also a bit lazy in that I tried to talk about most of these over the course of the month so that I could just link to them and save myself from having to write too much here.  And I have talked about a lot of these in the WAY BACK of “before I started writing this 30-day challenge”.  So hooray for me for making all of this slightly easier to get thru.

 

And just like yesterday I am posting to the music.

20) Sonic the Hedgehog 2

My family was not wealthy and we waited several years before getting a new game system for the kids to play with, and by the time I got a Sega Genesis the game that was packaged with it was “Sonic the Hedgehog 2”.  I still consider it to be an adequate platformer from the era and I played the hell out of it.  I generally like Sonic as a character (I grew up on two wildly different yet completely acceptable takes on the guy) and still have a sort of soft spot for the whole thing.

A lot of Sonic’s themes are nature vs technology and perhaps it is because I grew up in the era of “Captain Planet” and other such environmentally conscious kids’ entertainment that I consider Sonic to have a little more meat to it (on a foundational level) than the straight forward goofy adventures of “Super Mario Bros”.  I would also point to those factors as to why the franchise has endured even though the game series has become a laughing stock, the cartoons are garbage, and the fandom is an overflowing asylum of creepy weirdos.

Look at these pricks with their flawless character design.

19) Tales of Symphonia

I already talked at length to this game’s merits, not only having a good story with good characters, but the art and gameplay that mark it as being a cut above.

Getting real lazy, reusing images from past blogs.

18) Batman: Arkham Franchise

I have already talked about this one and I again point to how its flowing combat system, stealth elements, and the iconic characters of the Batman mythos make this one of the most well regarded franchises in video game history.

I guess I should have done a screen grab of my version of the protagonist.
Well, just picture Harley Quinn but with giant gag-boobs and dressed in wrestling gear.  Voiced by Lust.

17) Saints Row the Third

I haven’t talked about this one yet and I imagine some people will point to the final complete game in the series “Saints Row IV” (a game I enjoy) as the best of the lot but I disagree.  “IV” had the burden of tying up the series and paid homage to all the previous entries with callbacks to characters, voice actors, game mechanics, and events… all jokes and references that went right over my head because I only played 3 and 4.

“The Third” does not have the issues of putting the series to bed, so it can instead focus on introducing new characters and locations that are treated as new places (and thus I, the player don’t feel like I am late to the party).  The tone is pure madness as I fight a legion of luchadores with grenade launchers, genetically engineered giants, weebo hackers, and an invasion of space age soldiers meant to take the city back from me.  The action is fun, the music is fun, and the dialogue is all fun.  The game sets a tone of silly and strange and keeps the pace at a steady escalation right to the end.  I love it.

          

This game is all about the tunes.

            16) Zelda Ocarina of Time

            Already talked about what is probably the definitive fantasy game of the last 20 years.

 

Waaargh.  Waaargh never changes.
Wait... Wrong franchise.

15) Dawn of War: Complete

I mentioned this game in my “Disappointing Sequels” entry and I think that blog covered most of my feelings but I would also like to again point out that the mythology of the Warhammer 40K universe is just delightful in all the oddest ways.  Violent to the point of self-parody, grim to the point of farce, and so earnest in its stupidity that I can’t help but like it.

This game is so old that it still has cool classic style fantasy art in its promotional images.  Boris Vellejo style.

14) Diablo II

I tried playing “Diablo III” a little and honestly it was one of my most anticipated games for a LONG time before it came out… and I could have (and should have) written about it in my “Disappointing Sequels” entry.  (Funny thing, I was anticipating the game for so long, the blog I wrote about my anticipation is on the site I used before blogger and I can't even provide a link, because I can't find it.)

For the time it came out “Diablo II” scratched an itch I did not know I had and I still think back on it fondly.  Much like Dawn of War the earnestness of its stupid plot about gory devils, skeletons, and goblins is just too sincere to hate.  It is a dumb little RPG beat’m up which has (literally) caused a mouse of mine to stop clicking from overuse.

I would point to “Torchlight II” as another title in this genre that I loved and I actually managed to play “Torchlight II” all the way to the end.

 

I am betting some people are telling me I got out while the getting was good.  But here is the thing, the only reason I quit forever is this: I got mad at them for charging me.
At some point they set up auto renewal and kept charging me even though I did not log in for a 6 month stretch and when I realized they had changed me 90 dollars for ZERO time spent logged in I left forever.

13) World of Warcraft

The appearance of two games by the same company back to back will be a onetime thing, though I am sure there are people out there who could make a personal best games list that would have lots of Blizzard titles filling slots.  Korean players certainly.

I got into “WoW” in undergrad and played regularly (30+ hours a week) for few months, then I would take a break and go back to a patch, play for a few months, take a break, and repeated that cycle for years.  I played thru “Burning Crusade” and felt no special attachment to any iteration of the game, I actually liked the game more each time I came back because of how much more accessible it had become (I do not have time to find the region the particular breed of slimes I am hunting is in).

I do think that “WoW” has had an influence that people might be aware of but do not fully appreciate.  That right now, in the cultural zeitgeist there are 4 fantasy properties that define the genre to people, “Harry Potter”, “Game of Thrones”, “Lord of the Rings”, and “World of Warcraft” each of them being more and more fantastical or distant from the real world than the last and these things have done a lot to bring the masses to the genre.  Even though I have not played “WoW” in 8 years, the fact that it is still going and that I have met people who met their spouse thru the game shows how wide and deep its impact is and how much longevity it has.

Call me crazy but any fantasy world that has room for Dwarfs dog fighting in biplanes is just making fantasy a more interesting place.

Not a very evocative title.

 12) Alan Wake

This will be a surprise to people reading this series, because I only mentioned this title once, and even then only in passing among other titles.  But, I have actually kicked around writing a blog about this for a while and for whatever reason it just would not crystalize, here is my best attempt at making my feelings readable.

To contextualize I am a big fan of the work of Grant Morrison, a writer who very much likes to write on the idea of creations coming to life and talking to their creators.  The idea that ideas and characters can take on a life of their own and have an effect on the world is a tantalizing concept to me as an amateur writer.  I am also a fan of HP Lovecraft and the idea that there are dark and hidden monstrosities in the world that seek to destroy us or drive us into a state of mass insanity.  Coupling these two ideas of a creeping darkness bringing to life the nightmares of a writer whose inner demons we do not want getting out, all of that is a very big and cool idea.

The plot is Alan trying to save his wife from the abominable terror, it took her into some world of darkness while Alan and her were going on a respite (really it was a trip to a detoxing resort) to help him get his creative spark back.  The game’s basic mechanic is having to weaken your opponents’ protective shadows via the use of light before attacking them with lethal force, that is a good metaphor, shining a light on the problem to reveal the greater crux of a personal issue and excising it.

The game also has lots of little fun things, like short segments of a “Twilight Zone” type show that Alan wrote for, one of the few instances in which I enjoyed a “Cut Scene” (the TV cut scenes in the mini-sequel “American Nightmare” totally failed in that regard).  There are also a good number of fun supporting characters with good dialogue and roles in the story, nobody has a bad thing to say about Barry, Alan’s agent, who comes to rescue him and actively helps in fighting the shadowy terror.

I would point to “Alan Wake” in much the same way people point to “Stranger Things”.  That it borrows a great deal from other stories in the genre (Alan takes a lot of Stephen King, Lovecraft, and “Twin Peaks”) but uses those elements to make their own thing with them.  A good apple pie does not have to be “original” so long as it is delicious.  “Alan Wake” is a delicious pie.

You can also thank this game for the lazy fucked up trend of every cover being some guy walking toward the camera away from explosions.  Maybe that was to indicate he was letting his health regenerate.

11) Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

I have already talked about this game in the context of it surprising me and how it surprised me.  It is the shooter that launched the contemporary setting for the genre because it has a very real feeling story in addition to its solid game play.  It crosses certain lines, but does so in a way that feels earned and impacts the player.

            What do you think of my list?  Do you have a list you would like to link to?  Do so in the comments.  Would you like to make a guess at my top 10?  Considering you are probably reading these months after I published it, you could just click on the link to tomorrow and read it (please do) but why don’t you make a guess first?  I offer no prize for a correct guess.

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Future of Video Games

            I would like to make a prediction right now about the future of one of my favorite hobbies, Video Games.  The next gaming system, be it the Playstation 4, Xbox 720, or the Super Wii Cube Virtual Revolution, will be as different from the current disk utilizing and motion control tom-foolery as the current generation is from the Cartridge utilizing systems of years long forgotten.

            My prediction is this: Video Game consoles will stop using game disks.  No more having to go to Game Stop, Best Buy, or Wal Mart to pick up the latest title, they will all be streamed to a large hard drive found in the system utilizing the Web connection you have.  This will give you what you want more or less on demand.  The game companies will sell new hard drives, but really they won't have to.  You will have an online account which will keep track of what games you have purchased and if you ever delete a game from your hard drive for space you can just download it again at any time from the internet, you essentially will be purchasing the right to play a game at any point you wish, forever.

            What in the world makes me say such a ridiculous portent?  Many things, not the least of which being that it already exists and is insanely profitable, efficient, and well liked by gamers all over the world.

            Currently there are services that do this very thing, and you have used them recently to rub yourself off with the pleasurable thoughts of nostalgia, and to add on fresh content to a title that was of particular interest to you.

            The Playstation network allows you access to movies, news, international multiplayer, and more importantly, downloadable content that takes the form of classic games and extra levels, weapons, maps, and just pointless bullshit like clothing all without having to leave your chair to get a new game disk.  Wii has the virtual store, again a source of news, multiplayer (which is balls), and classic games.  XBLA is the best of them as they get you to pay them for the pleasure of playing "Halo" against racist fat kids in Michigan, while downloading classic games.  All of them allow you to download independent titles that showcase new game mechanics, art styles, stories, and other risky ventures that major studios wouldn't put out for fear of loosing money.

            And forget those titans of industry, lets look at Gametap, the Netflix of games, allowing you to stream titles for a monthly fee, which is fucking awesome, at least in theory, my internet connection couldn't handle it I'm sure.  And there is also Onlive, the new system which much like a cable box allows access to games on demand using their own library.  And there is the mach daddy of services, "Steam" which is produced by Valve, makers of "Left 4 Dead", "Portal", and "Half-Life"; Steam has allowed the company to become the go to in online content acquisition for the PC, and I wouldn't be surprised if Valve did the reverse of Sega and moved into Hardware production, creating a system just for the utilization of the Steam network.

            Also, World of Warcraft, and the entire MMO style of play.  Or if you are really interested in throwing out internet related content, lets look at the huge number of flash games on Newgrounds.com, or the staggering number of bullshit available in any given ap-store for tiny little touch screens.  Oh, and Farmville.

            Why in the world would these companies do this?  Abandoning a business model that is tried and true?  Simple: they are getting screwed over by the retail system, and the used game marketplace.  Currently Gamestop is of the practice of buying back games and selling them at a discount, none of that second sale money goes back to the holders of the IP's, none of the coders, none of the development teams, none of the companies who made the games see any of that money.  Gamestop is making a killing as a fucking pawn shop, and none of that money is going toward the creation of new IP's and game technology.  The worst part, Walmart and Best Buy are planning on opening up a used game market themselves, using their superior store placement and technological culture to steal away Gamestop's customers (assuming of course that Best Buy just doesn't buy out Gamestop and use them as the front for this circle jerk).

            The only way to keep money flowing to companies like Double Fine, Bioware, Valve, and Bethesda, the real producers of what we want, is to cut out the retail companies altogether.  And they should.  Retail companies produce nothing, they fence the goods produced by others with a mark up, and pay employees very little.  They are fostering a dystopian future of a Libertarian ideal gone mad.

            I personally do not buy used games.  And in general I dissuade others from buying them.  Other people tell me that a used copy is cheaper but just as good, but fail to realize that it would be cheaper still if we just bought stuff direct from the creators rather than through a middle man who currently offers less and less.  I dream of a world in which we can buy things instantly, play them, and go back to working on creating things for others to instantly buy, be it entertaining junk, food, or clothes, or anything, rather than living in a world where we are all paid tiny amounts working shitty retail jobs, and have to buy used and repacked stuff because it is the only thing we can afford.