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  • in Games
  • 3 min read

Why Dungeons & Dragons Matters

40 years of using your imagination.

Ethan Gilsdorf has a fantastic essay up on Boing Boing: At 40 Years Old, Dungeons & Dragons Still Matters. As the original Dungeons & Dragons turns 40 this year, I’m guessing we’ll see many great tributes to the grandaddy of all role playing games, and Mr. Gilsdorf’s essay really resonated with me.

Along the way, D&Ders like me learned about stuff. We discussed hit dice and saving throws, ballistas and halberds. We studied, without encouragement from our parents or teachers, arcane subjects such as architecture, history, languages, and statistics. I learned how to draw and map. I learned battle tactics, how to bargain, how to empathize and negotiate with those not like me—be it undead kings or jocks. And a lot of introverted, socially-inept kids found friends and fellowship. I got socialized, and I learned how to be a leader. Bored and dissatisfied with my real life, I created a more exciting one, again and again, where I got to save the day and have agency.

The tools of D&D gave me permission to imagine a better me, and a better story for myself. They gave me the courage to imagine a different future. And taught me how to change myself. Not happy with lowly Level 1 Ethan, I worked hard to level up to my better, stronger, faster level 17 version today.

This is the key to role playing and I learned similar things playing D&D in the ’80s. I introduced my two youngest children to role-playing with rpgKids a couple years ago and this year we’re transitioning to Pathfinder. I’m hopeful they will learn the same things using their imagination to role play, and it helps to unplug them from their screens as well as challenge them mentally while encouraging them physically with the athletics they are involved with. Balance is good.

D&D is still my springboard into dreaming. Me and four other guys, all in our forties, embark upon these imaginary adventures on Sunday nights. How can I give this up? I leave my computer behind and dip into an amorphous, enigmatic current of magical thinking that humans rarely swim in: something epic and unknown.

I had the chance recently to re-connect with a friend from high school whom I haven’t talked to (or anyone from that period of my life) in over 20 years. He still plays D&D regularly with other friends from high school, including the one who introduced me to D&D. I find that I’m jealous of that; both the camaraderie of friends staying connected like that and the discipline of having a weekly gaming group with the chance, as Mr. Gilsdorf says, “[to] leave my computer behind and dip into an amorphous, enigmatic current of magical thinking that humans rarely swim in…” My oldest son regularly plays Pathfinder (and Magic: The Gathering) with his group of high school buddies and I like to think I had something to do with that. I’ll continue to play with the two younger ones and I hope they learn the same things Mr. Gilsdorf and I learned from Dungeons & Dragons.

Photo by Davi Silva under a CC-BY 2.0 license.

Gearbox wins Homeworld Auction

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Photo by Johnny Wallker under a CC-NC-ND 2.0 license

I’m cleaning up some open tabs and a story of interest to me is related to the 1999 game Homeworld from Relic Entertainment.

Relic Entertainment was bought by THQ in 2004 and THQ went bankrupt this year, auctioning off a lot of old assets, Homeworld included.  Six months ago TeamPixel, a small studio, started a Kickstarter campaign to gather support to try and win the rights to Homeworld from the bankruptcy court.  TeamPixel had a goal to bring Homeworld to iOS and Android as well as creating Homeworld 3 for Mac, Windows and Linux.

Homeworld was extremely innovative for its time.  Featuring large space battles in three dimensions (and ships you lost didn’t go with you to the next mission), a great storyline and an active mod community, there was nothing else like it.

The auction and Kickstarter had some buzz – after I tweeted that I supported the Kickstarter, I was surprised how many replies I received with other people showing interest in it as well.

TeamPixel did not win the auction for the rights in bankruptcy court.  It was later revealed that Gearbox, a studio known more for first person shooters including Borderlands, Brothers in Arms, finishing Duke Nukem Forever and Counter-Strike did.

Back in August, Gearbox shared their plans for Homeworld in their developer blog, Inside the Box.  They plan to re-release Homeworld and Homeworld 2 for digital release (I’m guessing Steam) updating it to use the latest PC hardware.

The blog post is great – Brian Burleson shares his excitement in winning the auction and some of the challenges ahead in bringing Homeworld to modern technology:

When all the paperwork cleared and the source code was delivered we finally were able to unwrap what had eluded us for so long only to find that… the bike had one pedal, needed a new chain and overall was just missing parts. Granted, we knew this bike was 10-15 years old and hadn’t been touched by the original owner in quite some time, but still!

That’s when the real work started, and boy howdy, did all of those people who reached out to us at the beginning come in handy!

Over the course of a couple of months we were able to find the missing pieces and started to get the bike, erm, game, working again. (I’ll drop the bike metaphor now.)

As Martel mentioned during our panel at PAX Australia, it’s been a struggle to get all of the original tools working again. Just for comparison, the source drop we got from the purchase of the Homeworld property was 16.8 gigs. The sum of all the additional missing source we got from friends who had worked on the games originally was about 39 gigs. The two have almost zero overlap!

For example, Homeworld 2 was largely developed in a heavily customized version Maya 3. (Something we still haven’t located.) This means that if we wanted to update Homeworld 2 content for an HD version, we needed to turn to different tools.

Give the whole thing a read.  Here’s to hoping Gearbox is successful and can bring this back cross-platform as well – I’d love to play Homeworld again on my Mac!

  • in Games
  • 1 min read

Neil Gaiman introduces his first game, Wayward Manor

For the last few weeks, Neil Gaiman has tweeted links to a cryptic new website that asked you to RSVP (via email) to a website, Who Haunts Neil. Yesterday, if you had sent an RSVP, you received an email with an update to this very mysterious site, with Mr. Gaiman hosting a video introducing his latest project: Wayward Manor.

Neil, in partnership with game studio The Odd Gentlemen, is launching his first game. Wayward Manor will be a puzzle / adventure hybrid and is doing a Kickstarter-like funding campaign, where you can pre-order the game at a number of different payment tiers with different rewards. It will be released first on PC & Mac, and a tablet version is planned.

If you know anything of Neil Gaiman, he has a love and personal passion in the macabre – a word he even uses to describe the game. He’s previously talked about how he loves Charles Addams and this seems to fit right in to that kind of genre.

I had the opportunity to see Neil a few weeks ago in Bloomington, MN on his book tour for The Ocean at the End of the Lane and he remains one of my favorite authors. I’m excited to see his first foray into video games.

Watch the video below hosted by Neil and his adorable English accent introducing Wayward Manor.

[//www.youtube.com/embed/WQn-napv3zo]

  • in Games
  • 2 min read

Support Small World on Kickstarter (Especially for Table Top Day!)

[http://www.youtube.com/embed/x3m0PIWqkfQ]

This Saturday, March 30th, is Table Top Day! Geek & Sundry has organized an international day to support, enjoy and play table top games. About a year ago a friend invited a friend of ours, my eldest son and myself over to have a table top gaming night. I was blown away by number of games now available. You’ve probably heard of some of the biggest, such as Settlers of Catan, but there is a revolution going on in old school games. We don’t get together as often as we’d like, but about a month ago we scheduled it for this Friday night – coincidentally, just a day before Table Top Day, which Felicia Day talks about in the video above.

I’ve bought a number of games to play with my littler two over the last year, most notably Castle Panic and Small World. Tuesday nights are now game night with the kids, whether it’s a board game, chess or a card game. We usually try and play more games over the weekend as well. I really like that Castle Panic is a co-op game – working together takes a lot of the competitiveness (and trash talking) out, making a more enjoyable experience for everyone.

Small World also released an iPad version last year and are now working on Small World 2. The sequel is looking for funding on Kickstarter, with the hope of building a version for PC (on Steam), Android tablets, and iPad. If you’ve already purchased the iPad game, it will be a free upgrade on iPad.

[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/daysofwonder/small-world-2-the-return/widget/video.html]

One of my favorite features of Small World 2, is if the player starting the game owns any of the expansions, you get to play the expansion as well – even if you haven’t bought it.

I highly recommend Small World – if you’re looking for a new take on the classic board game, this game has it all – strategy, quick combat and turns, and infinitely replayable.

Want to learn more? The very first episode of Table Top on Geek and Sundry reviewed Small World:

[http://www.youtube.com/embed/X9QtdiRJYro]

So grab a game and play some board games this Saturday, for Table Top Day!

Can arcades make a comeback?

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Having been born in the early 70’s, I am a child of the 80’s. One of the best parts of being a child of the 80’s was living through the boom (and later bust) of the arcades. Whether it was going to Godfather’s Pizza and playing a handful of arcade games or Chuck E. Cheese with dozens of games or getting dropped off at an arcade in a mall while my parents went shopping, the fun in plugging quarters in for hours can never be re-lived.

Or can it? In the last year, two arcades have popped up in the Twin Cities. Rusty Quarters, in South Minneapolis, opened last year and has an impressive list of arcade cabinets available for play at $0.50 per play.

Zap-Arcade, located in Jordan, almost an hour from the Twin Cities (but only 15-20 minutes from where I live in the suburbs) also opened last year and has a unique pricing model. You can buy a day pass for $5.00 or family pass for $15.00 and play all of the games for as long as you want to stay. They also have monthly plans available.

The kids had a blast, but they didn’t know better. Zap Arcade has two floors, with 12 cabinets one each floor. I was disappointed with the games available. They had three “A” games available – Pac-Man (a re-issue, which featured about 8 different ways to play Pac-Man or Ms. Pac-Man), Space Invaders, and Galaga (which wasn’t working). They had a few “B” titles – Double Dragon, Araknoid, X-Men, Zaxxon, and Raiden. The rest were third tier titles which few people would remember from the hey day of the 80’s. All the games were on free play, though there were times you had to grab an employee to open up the cabinet to add more credits.

The price was right – for two hours of entertainment for a family of 4, it was far cheaper than going to a movie and the kids had a blast. I was worried that Jack, who is only seven, would get frustrated, but he was happy to bounce from game to game trying different things and didn’t get frustrated.

I was happy to see the place was busy. We got there fairly early after opening, and more people and families filled the place up quickly over the course of the two hours we were there. Hopefully they will be stay busy over time giving them some revenue to buy even more cabinets. We’ll definitely be back.

If you, like me, are nostalgic for arcades, The Verge has a great look back on the rise and fall of the arcade industry.

Pathfinder MMO on Kickstarter

Slaying the Dragon

Photo by fireflythegreat under a CC-BY 2.0 license

Just before Christmas, I visited my local gaming store with the intent of buying the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set to play with the kids over the holiday break. It was time to step up from RPGKids, which I started with the kids a year or two ago. I’m a terrible Dungeon Master and lack creativity, so one of the things I was excited about in buying a set was that I’d be able to buy modules to help create the adventures for the kids.

Phantasy Hobbies was out of the D&D red box and the owner asked me if I had heard of Pathfinder, which is a continuation of the AD&D 3.5 rules after Wizards of the Coast had moved on to 4.0 rules. Pathfinder had bought the license to the 3.5 ruleset and created an ecosystem to let the 3.5 rules live on. I went home that night and read up on Pathfinder and found the Pathfinder Beginner Box, with a limited and easier to use ruleset, would work perfectly to play with the little ones. The next day I returned to my local gaming store and bought the Beginner Box. One of the best features of Pathfinder is how much content they make available via PDF, both free and paid. I was able to pick up a module that continues the first adventure in the Beginner Box, among other things.

This morning I came across on Twitter a link to the Pathfinder MMO, which is being bootstrapped on Kickstarter. Today’s the last day and they’re 90% of the way to their goal. Set to launch in about two years, the Pathfinder MMO is built on the Unity engine and will be available for both Windows and Mac. The last thing I need is another MMO in my life, but even at the $35 level which gets you the game, the addons are worth it. They’ve thrown in the PDF of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook, and the Guide to the River Kingdoms sourcebook, which is worth about $25 by itself.

If you’re into roleplaying, help support ’em – it’s a good cause.

rpgKids

A co-worker introduced me to rpgKids last week.  After taking a look around the website, I plunked down the $5 and bought the game and the adventure pack and it was well worth the money.

rpgKids is a basic roleplaying game meant to introduce kids ages 4-7 to the wonderful world of using their imagination to roleplay.  The 24 page PDF includes the ruleset, an overview of the characters, hand drawn tokens for both heroes and monsters, a character sheet and a printable 1″ grid for mapping your adventures.  It also comes with with one adventure for you to run through with the kids, and the Adventure Pack (if you buy the $5 version) includes 4 more adventures.  The age recommendation was perfect, as Zoe is 7 and Jack is 5.

I packed up the kids Saturday morning and we headed out to our local game store.  While you don’t need to, we picked up a bunch of used miniatures for $2 bucks each for the game.  The tokens included in the PDF would have worked fine, but I wanted to give the kids that little extra experience.  We also picked up some dice – you’ll need a couple D12 and D6 dice for the game – I made sure to get each of the kids their own.

 

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The included adventure gives you the overview of the story, a script to follow (if you choose) and 4 encounters, including maps, where you’ll run into the “monsters” as you try to save the town of Springwell.

The kids choose their class (fighter, healer, wizard or archer) and you as the parent play the role of Dungeon Master, keeping the kids on path in the story and role playing the monsters in each encounter.  The kids had a blast as I roleplayed the monsters, especially the funny voices, and added to the script to make sure they were having a good time.

Zoe got it right away – she quickly named her character as they filled out their character sheets and chose a class, while Jack didn’t really get it until we were in the middle of the story and having our first encounter with the monsters.  Alex, who is 15, came and watched – as my wife later pointed out, you could tell that he thought he was too cool to play with the little kids, but deep down, he really wanted to.

Combat is simple – roll a die for initiative, then the monsters roll against the heroes to see if there is a “hit” – 2 hits and the character or monster is knocked out.  Depending on the class, you can attack from so many tiles away, adding a level of tactics and strategy to start the kids learning.  My Dungeon Master skills are a bit rusty, but thankfully the script kept the story going and I embellished and added to the story where appropriate.

They definitely enjoyed it and were asking to play again – this will definitely be a great way to get through the long Minnesota winter.  If you have a kids, I highly recommend rpgKids and it definitely lays the groundwork to introduce D&D when they get older.  Who needs video games anyway?!

Family D&D

Wil Wheaton is blogging about something I’ve always wanted to do, which is to run a D&D campaign for his son. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5).

I even went so far as a couple of years ago in buying the 3rd edition Players Handbook, DM Guide and Monster Manual, but I never did run a campaign.

Why not?

I suck as a DM.

I’m just not creative or flexible enough that when a player throws me for a curve to react. I’ve also struggled in being descriptive enough in bringing a world to life. Wil Wheaton touches on these and more in Part 5, Lessons Learned:

The more descriptive, the better. But didn’t I just say keep it simple? Yes, but these things aren’t mutually exclusive. While I can keep the story simple, I can still work hard to make the encounters more than moving figures around and rolling dice. For example, Nolan used a power to rip his maul through a pair of minions who were adjacent to him. He hit them both, but instead of just saying that, I told him, “your maul crashes through its head, streaming blood and gore behind it as the power of your swing carries into the other one. Their bodies fall to the ground with a wet thud.”

When the rogue rolled particularly well with a ranged attack, I told him, “your dagger whistles through the air toward your target, and catches it in the throat as it lunges toward you. Its eyes widen and glaze over as it falls down, dead.”

I also added smells, sounds, and anything else I could do to make the tower they were in really feel old and decaying. It helps that I’ve read more fantasy genre fiction than I’d like to admit.

Don’t be afraid to improvise. When it looked like the final encounter, which should have delivered the greatest challenge, was going to be a cakewalk, I just looked at some stat blocks and added a few more creatures to the encounter so it would feel more climactic. I knew I had the cleric back in the cell, and if things got really, really bad, he could figure out a way to race in and save the day (as a general rule, though, I don’t recommend doing things like this too frequently, or your players will figure it out and act accordingly.)

My son is 13 now. It’s time to get off my butt and see if I can’t figure out how to be a decent DM and get a session going.