The Otter Nerd

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[stormcallart]

Beach day and date night 💙❤️

[theotternerd]

A Theory Regarding “The Shape of Water”

If you haven’t seen The Shape of Water and do not want spoilers, I highly suggest you do not continue reading this as it does have some pretty heavy spoilers.

You have been warned.

We’re going to discuss the Amphibian Man and what he might be. Now, this discussion will use clear statements from the film along with some supporting evidence, but I will state that this is all just a guess.

I believe that the Amphibian Man is a Deep One.

So, here are the facts from the movie:

The Amphibian Man was worshiped as a god in South America, Mr. Strickland saying that the natives gave it offerings.

Dr. Hoffstetler says that the Amphibian Man needs to be in 7% salinated water. This sort of salt water, also called “brine,” is found in salt lakes, in the crust, and in brine pools at the bottom of the ocean, though brine does refer to water anywhere between 3.5% and 26% salinated water (source).

The Amphibian Man has clear supernatural or mystical powers that mankind has no comprehension as to how they work.

The reason I think the Amphibian Man is a Deep One is because he fits several of the descriptions from H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Over Innsmouth.” The Amphibian Man could be described as a fish person, which is what the Deep Ones are described to be in the story. The Deep Ones live deep in the ocean, which could explain the need for such a high saline concentration (the average ocean water salt concentration is about 3.5%). Finally, the Deep Ones are described to have some sort of extraordinary powers, as they are worshiped and given offerings by the locals, and the Deep Ones provide good fortune to those who worship them. And there’s the healing powers he has, which he uses quite a bit, even saving someone from certain death.

Okay, so there’s my argument, and you don’t have to believe it, I just think it’s a possible explanation and I think it would be cool if that’s what was true. But only Guillermo del Toro truly knows, and I’m sure he doesn’t want to reveal his hand.

[theotternerd]

Warhammer 40,000 8th Edition Review

Before I get started on this review, I just want to put a few things in the open.

1. I started playing Warhammer 40K in 2005 at a buddy’s house. This was still the transition time of going from 3rd Edition to 4th Edition and I believe that only the Space Marines and Tyranids had gotten their Codices (yes, that is the correct pluralization of “codex”) updated at that point for the new rules.

2. I love the 40K lore. Like, a lot. It’s part of the reason why I still love the series, despite having not played it for close to six years. The lore and fluff draw me in, and I love reading all about it from not only the Index Astartes articles, the Codices, or any other article previously posted on the mid-2000s GW website, but also the novels, some of which have been written by some of the best sci-fi/fantasy authors.

3. I am not a fan of Games Workshop as a company. This is a company that over the past seven or so years has tried to do everything it can to destroy any remaining customer goodwill it had. This is a company that was vehemently anti-consumer and anti-competition (seriously, up until VERY recently you couldn’t buy GW products from third parties that had an online shopping cart system). But, I recently saw this...

The game YOU asked for (my emphasis, obviously). Maybe something at GW has changed in the last year or so, because this is a sign of things moving in a better direction.

As with any new 40K system release, I get curious. I want to love the game, but over the years the game has been an arms race to the bottom (GW’s bottom line), and I really can’t afford to buy and maintain a decent-sized army anymore. However, I do buy the box sets that usually release with each edition, and that’s what I did, but we’re not going to start with that. Nope, let’s look at the rules of this new edition first.

The core rules to the game have been simplified.

A LOT.

I’m talking about slimmed down to the point where it fits on a 5″ x 7″, front and back, four-panel pull-out. These eight pages of rules comprise of everything you need to know in order to play a game, pretty much the six phases of a turn:

Movement

Psychic

Shooting

Charge

Fight

Morale

The descriptions of each phase is easy to read, easy to understand, and there’s almost no weird lexicon that you have to decipher. This is exactly what new payers need, not twenty pages describing every phase in minute detail.

That being said, there are no distinctions anymore between any type of unit in the game, infantry or cavalry, beast or vehicle. There aren’t full pages describing what a close combat weapon does versus a power weapon, or detailed descriptions of what every single weapon keyword means. Everything is boiled down to its essential elements and I feel that this is the sort of basic rules that the game has always needed.

The bulk of the rules section of the new rulebook is actually about how you set up different types of battles, whether it be a pick-up game, a tournament, or even a narrative campaign. They even brought back the idea of detachments from 6th/7th Edition with no emphasis on any particular detachment composition. This is a serious departure for me as I learned the force organization chart and drilled it into my head. Sure, it’s pretty much still there, but enough small changes have been made that it fits way better. Also, it allows Codices to have their own unique detachments that fit the lore of that particular force better. It’s an overall win-win in my book.

Going back to the book, 42% of the rulebook are the actual rules. This is another departure from previous editions (except for maybe 7th, but that was a three book set and one of them was just the rules) as the rules usually made up about one-third of the book. The other two-thirds were the lore and a hobby section. Also, previous editions put a small primer section before the rules, usually to help you get in the mindset, and then the lore was after the rules, with the hobby stuff in the very back. The lore section is now in the front of the book, before the rules, and consists of 58% of the book’s contents, while the hobby section was completely omitted for 8th Edition. Again, this seems like a good move on GW’s part because they have entire books you can buy about how to make terrain, paint models, etc.

With the removal of the hobby section, which was honestly just porn for wargamers, the book has been slimmed down to 288 pages, which is impressive considering the 4th Edition rulebook was also 288 pages (5th Edition was 320, 6th Edition was 440) and included hobby information.

Datasheets seem to be the thing GW is doing now, and the rulebook addresses this at the very beginning of the rules section. Datasheets were first introduced in the Apocalypse expansion, late in 4th Edition’s life cycle. Datasheets were typically used for superheavy vehicles and unique, high-power characters, like Primarchs. But sometime during the life cycle of 6th or 7th Edition, GW decided to package datasheets in all of the model boxes, which I think was a brilliant move. Want to buy some models but don’t have the Codex? No big deal, here’s how the unit works!

One of the newer aspects of these datasheets is the Power Rating. For more casual games, the power rating can generally indicate how powerful a unit is, and both players can compare overall army strength by the overall Power Ratings.

Also available right now as a bundle are the army indices, which lets you get started right away with the new edition. Each one focuses on a particular area, with the Imperium getting two books, Chaos getting one, and Xenos getting lumped together into two indices. Each one is pretty big and provides datasheets for every unit in the game at this point, except for Forge World models. The lack of Titans is upsetting, but understood.

Final Thoughts I was startled a bit by 40K’s 8th Edition. I was seriously thinking that GW was going to screw the pooch on this and just keep going on with making a new edition every 4-5 years, alienate certain players by not updating factions they play, and simply make the rules even more complicated, but...

GW did a great job listening to the fans. It really seems like they’ve decided to regain all that goodwill they lost years ago. Hell, they regained some of it when I saw The War Store newsletter saying that you could now order GW products through their website, not having to call or send an email for orders (seriously, that’s how we had to do it back in the day...up until a month or two ago).

The rules are super streamlined, which is great for teaching new players. The datasheets make starting an army incredibly easy and they are great references during play. Right now, I’m just waiting to see what the first Codex looks like, because that will be the real telling point for the life cycle of 8th Edition. But, until then, this is looking real good.

Website: https://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Warhammer-40-000 Price: $60 ($40 for eBook), $125 for the Index set or $25 for each Index ($20 for eBook), $104 for eBook bundle of Rulebook and Indices Players: 2+ All images © Games Workshop.

[theotternerd]

MST3K: The Return Review

I’m four episodes into the new season of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and I figured I’d say a few words about it, as well as give some of the background.

Last year, the Kickstarter to fund a new season of MST3K occurred and i did not participate in it. I had severe reservations as I am a huge fan of the original 10 seasons and an avid RiffTrax fan. I wondered about the names that were being brought in, such as Jonah Ray (who I have enjoyed from time to time) and Felicia Day (who I am not a fan of), and I was also worried that the new show wouldn’t understand how to formulate the jokes like the original series did.

After seeing three full episodes and half of another, I can seriously say that the new MST3K is just as good as the old episodes. The new set looks like a good upgrade from the old one, even showing off that the hallway houses all of the important rooms that you never saw on the S.O.L, like where they sleep, where they do laundry, etc.

Hell, Felicia Day and Patton Oswalt are great as the new mads, which I tweeted about earlier.

And, yes, that like is from the real Felicia Day, which could be seen as irony.

Jonah is pretty good at replicating the same sort of humor that Joel used, even bringing back the invention exchange, but I was never really a fan of that. Still, it’s short and can be funny.

Baron Vaughn does a good job as Tom Servo, while Hampton Yaunt plays a good Crow T. Robot, almost like he’s trying to honor Trace Beaulieu’s original performance. Sadly, Crow and Jonah’s voices are sometimes too similar that I sometimes don’t know who is talking, but you can tell the voices after watching a few episodes as you get more familiar with them.

The only other complaint I have is that the end credits of every episode is WAY too long, each time pushing 3 minutes long, mostly listing the Kickstarter backers. It’s annoying when trying to binge the series, but you can just skip forward. Netflix needs to make the option of simply skipping forward, like almost every series on the service, when the credits begin rolling which is an easy fix.

Final Thoughts It’s good and the crew does a great job of lovingly recreating and continuing the series by doing simple things like referencing the old series and reusing old jokes while updating some of the humor for a more modern audience. If you love the old series, you’ll at least like the new episodes.

Available for streaming on Netflix.

[latining]

Tabletop Gaming has a White Male Terrorism Problem

I am a gamer. I followed the call of Cthulhu and ran in the shadows with hackers and shamans. I traversed the ancient lands of Greyhawk, Faerun, and Eberron with companions new and old. I swung from an airship and buckled swash over London for the Kerberos Club. I threw dice and flipped cards and ground men into dust playing table-top wargames.

I don’t do that anymore.

Since July of 2015 fans of the game Malifaux have been attempting to overwhelm me with death and rape threats for no other reason than I am a woman who has opinions on the game. Wyrd Miniatures is silent on this matter and hangs up whenever anyone attempts to discuss the harassment. Given that a large number of threats identify the senders by name as Wyrd staff members, I do not find this surprising.

But that’s not what this article is about.

Keep reading

[theotternerd]

Rewrite: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

I just finished watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire for the umpteenth time and realized something that could have been a really interesting mystery story. So, here’s my rewrite idea for the book and film.

So, the story goes on as written until Harry’s name comes out of the goblet, but when Dumbledore confronts Harry about the issue all of the adults act responsibly. I’m sure there’s a spell that acts like forensics, so they cast an identify spell to figure out who wrote Harry’s name on the piece of paper. SURPRISE, it was Barty Crouch Jr.!

Now that they know who did it, they have to figure out:

How is Barty Crouch Jr. still alive?

How did he escape Azkaban?

Where is he now?

What is his plan?

Having Harry out of the Tri-Wizard Tournament and him trying to dig up clues about what’s going on would be interesting, plus it would force Barty Crouch Jr. to come up with a new method for capturing Harry for Voldemort, like creating a port key out of something random and asking Harry to pick it up.

Honestly, the adults in this book act like Harry has to go through these dangerous tasks. He doesn’t. He never submitted his name, so therefor he’s not bound by the “magical contract” that supposedly exists within the goblet. I also feel like the story rewrite I pose is slightly more grounded and more interesting. Harry seems to be the most entertaining when he’s wrapped up in a mystery, and that’s what he should be doing, sleuthing!

[theotternerd]

First Impressions: StarCraft Remastered

As a huge StarCraft fan, I was wanting a remastered version of the game to get made. However, from the teaser video that I saw and some brief reading on Reddit, it’s not going to be the remaster I was hoping for.

From the video, it looks like Blizzard is simply making higher-quality sprites so you can have resolutions up to 4K, but the engine isn’t getting an overhaul so you can do cross-play with the classic version of the game. My hopes were for a version of the game in the StarCraft 2 engine so we can select more units and have beautiful 3D units, structures, and maps.

Will I buy the remaster? Probably, but once the price drops a bit. I already own the classic version and if they don’t give a discount because of that fact, then I’ll wait until it’s about $10-$15 for the whole set, original and Brood War.

[only1600kids]

*gets penalty* “that’s bullshit” *watches replay* “.. yeah okay”

[reademmaduh]

This is flawless. I can’t stop watching.

[theotternerd]

Slow Drip or Fast Burn

As I am want to do from time to time, I was perusing Reddit when I saw a post about speculations on the next Star Wars: Armada wave. Currently, there’s not a lot of talk on that actual thread, but here’s my opinions and some rebuttals to what others have posted in the thread.

We've all speculated. Clone Wars. Ships from Rogue One. Perhaps Episodes 7, 8, & 9.

When do you all think we will see the next announcement?

First off, I have a definite feeling that Fantasy Flight is going to not opt for Clone Wars or post-Episode VI ships for their fleet-based game. The reason I say this is because it will be much easier to focus on a specific era than try to mix everything together. Sure, Rogue One had ships on the Rebels’ side that are very obviously pilfered from the Clone Wars, and we might see them in a future expansion, but the Empire has clearly moved past that, with the exception of the Arquitens-class cruiser, more a use of convenience than anything else since Star Destroyers are really expensive to build.

So, yes, I expect more Star Wars Rebels and Rogue One stuff in the future, but that brings me to talking about the post-Episode VI stuff. Episode VII has nothing to bring to the table when it comes to Armada. It showed off eight new ships, four based on previously established ships (Star Destroyer, TIE Fighters [sf and fo], T-70 X-Wing) and only one of them a capital ship. Last time I checked, Armada was more about fleet combat, not dogfights. In fact, I think there’s a game specifically for that.

Also, Kylo Ren’s flag ship is way too powerful and too big to be in Armada. It’s twice the size of and has one hundred times the armament of an Imperial-class Star Destroyer, making it not even close to viable for the game.

In the thread, a couple users try to argue against the multi-wave per year release schedule that X-Wing uses, while another tries to defend it, but also says that it’s delicate because that can also cause the learning curve to become really unbalanced and cause players to burn out. So, here’s my thoughts on that:

If you look at X-Wing and the way that Wizards of the Coast release new core sets and expansions to Magic the Gathering, then you’ll see a lot of similarities. The meta changes each year based off of what was popular the last year in an attempt to shake everything up and force you to buy new stuff. With the slow drip that Armada has been doing, you have time to sink your teeth into sets, sets that can cost anywhere from $20 to $60, and understand the meta and devise strategies around the ships that you have and the ships that you’ve faced.

Yes, Armada wants you to buy new stuff, but their release schedule has been pretty on point, usually releasing something once every six-to-nine months from the last. It allows you to feel like it’s not a desperate arms race, like Magic (which I’ll talk about another time), and more like a master chess player finding developing a new strategy. Armada is very much a thinking game and it relies on a lot of forward thought. X-Wing does as well, just in a different way.

So, I guess I’m fine with the current release schedule that Fantasy Flight has come up with for Armada, and I hope they come out with some really cool stuff in the near future.

[katswenski]

Apparently someone tweeted my comic to the real life Tim Brent, whom I knew next to nothing about prior to making this comic. So we’ll see how that goes. My bet on his reaction is either confused dismay or a very slow, mildly amused head shake. My website – My Facebook page – Check me out on LINE Webtoon!

[theotternerd]

Rogue One Review

It’s been three days since I saw Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and I think I can now articulate my feelings properly about the film. So here we go, review time!

NOTE: I will not go into spoiler territory.

The film is actually pretty good. Not great or amazing, but it’s good. Garreth Edwards totally nails the feeling of the time right before Episode IV, getting the aesthetic just right. It reminds me of how the original trilogy everything is dingy and used, nothing really looks new except the Imperials. Well, everything except on the surface of a planet.

There are also some great cameos and easter eggs in the film. Incredibly important characters from Episode IV are there in some capacity, whether it be 10 seconds on-screen or whole minutes. Hell, they even do a great job of taking file footage from Episode IV and modifying it just enough to work in Rogue One.

But... there is an overabundance of CGI characters that don’t really work. One of them REALLY doesn’t work because they are pivotal to the story and on-screen a lot, and the other is passable because they are on-screen for maybe 4 to 6 seconds.

As far as the story, it’s good. A galaxy-spanning adventure that has an incredible third act. It’s also very clear where the act breaks are in this film, but that’s not a bad thing. Each one is linked perfectly together and the story flows well.

The characters are amazing as well. K-2SO, played by Alan Tudyk, stole the show, along with Baze and Chirrut. The chemistry between Baze and Chirrut, played by Jiang Wen and Donnie Yen, was spectacular. Those two deserved all the screentime they got. Cassian Andor, played by Diego Luna, was a good show of how dirty the Rebels can get, though I feel Luna could have been better utilized for a recurring character. Maybe as someone like Kyle Katarn...

Reviewer Chris Stuckmann, who I like, did have one negative statement about the voice of Saw Gerrara, played by Forrest Whitaker, that I don’t agree with. It’s clear that he has lung issues, probably from having one shot and it collapsing, which is why he has a respirator and why he talks like that. I didn’t find it distracting in the least.

Reviewer Brad Jones, who I also enjoy, did have a negative statement that I agree with about Felicity Jones’ performance as Jyn Erso. He thought that she was acting too stiffly and without a lot of emotion. While I do agree with that, I feel like her character is supposed to be incredibly jaded to the point where she just doesn’t care a lot about anything.

Final Thoughts I really liked the movie in spite of its flaws and highly recommend seeing it in theaters. If you don’t want to pay full-price for this, that’s fine, I saw it as a matinee on a discount day at my theater.

I’ll enjoy adding this to my collection of Blu-Rays when it comes out, but I’m hoping for the theatrical cuts of the original trilogy to be released as well. Until then, I’m going to keep watching Star Wars Rebels to get my Star Wars fix.

[theotternerd]

Recently, I read a thread on Reddit’s /r/Pathfinder_RPG about someone wanting to come up with the most “edgelord/weeaboo/cringey” character they could to annoy a friend. This actually inspired me to do something similar, but here are the rules:

Create an over-the-top character appropriate for a high seas campaign

The character is level 5

Stats will be an array: 16, 15, 14, 12, 11, 10 (based on point buy with 25 points; and one stat gets a +1 boost due to level 4)

Races, classes, archetypes, feats, backgrounds, etc., can only be taken from the Pathfinder PRD

Character concepts and personalities cannot be a ripoff of an existing character, i.e. Captain Jack Sparrow

Help cannot be asked for

Character must be created within 2 hours

If you want to join in, you can reply with what you came up with here or on Twitter.

[theotternerd]

Wild Pokemon Calls for Help

I’ve been playing Pokemon Sun fairly casually after its release, and it’s a great game. The standard story dynamic has been changed, which is good. Z-Moves are an interesting mechanic, even if I probably won’t use them. The removal of HMs is a godsend.

However, despite all my praise, there is one glaring issue that the Pokemon Company needs to balance: wild Pokemon calling for help.

As of right now, wild Pokemon can call for help as a free action, meaning they can make an attack AND call for help after. If anything, this needs to be balanced similar to how if I want to use an item or switch Pokemon in battle. Also, I don’t know the success rates for calling for help, but it seems like it is more successful at night, which is when I primarily play since I’m an adult and I have things to do during the day.

Also, as my wife has stated, it makes the game a bit unbalanced as it’s two-on-one, especially with the Totem Pokemon.

I want the Pokemon Company to really look into this issue, because this could be a big factor for the game moving forward and reaching a larger global audience, not teh hardcor3 fanz.

</rant>

[theotternerd]

Civilization VI Review

Honestly, I’ve only delved about 30 hours into the game, which is barely scratching the surface, but I’m fairly certain that I’m allowed to give my honest opinions about what I consider to be one of the best wastes of my time ever.

Okay, that might be a strong way to describe it, but it’s fairly accurate.

Sid Meier’s Civilization VI is probably one of the best game’s I’ve played all year. It exceeded expectations, especially since Civ games typically need one or two expansions to fix all the problems with the vanilla version. But that’s not the case here. Civ VI takes what we had in Civ V and turns it up to 11.

Sean Bean is the narrator for this game, which is pretty awesome by itself. He typically only reads little snippets, like the opening of each game describing your civilization and a little quote whenever you unlock a new research. My favorite is when you unlock the cultural research of Divine Right.

Speaking of cultural research, culture now acts similarly to the standard tech tree called civics. You have one big tech tree for science and one big tech tree for civics, and I don’t mind that. The civics tree also contains all of the stuff you need for your government. Governments now have specific policy slots and cards that fall into one of four categories: military, economic, diplomatic, and wildcard. The wildcard slots can actually hold any type of card, but wildcard policy cards can only go in wildcard slots.

Workers are now builders, and they are a little different, now having a limited number of uses. However, they are much cheaper and take less time to build than they used to be, which is a good way to balance it out. Plus, during the end-game of Civ V, I’d find myself wondering why I have five workers not doing anything.

Instead of having virtually infinite space in your cities, you actually have housing which is influenced by the quality of land you build on. Plus, you can build districts, which might expand your housing, on other tiles, so you have to worry about tile management a lot more. No more can you just load up on trading posts towards the end-game. Districts also have specific buildings themed to them, like holy sites having shrines and temples or encampments having barracks and stables. It’s all very fun if you love micromanagement in your strategy games.

The civilizations have also been retooled, letting you have several of the classics--Egypt, England, America, Greece, India, Japan, etc.--while also adding plenty of new, as well as the DLC, civilizations to the starting list--Sparta, Norway, Kongo, Brazil, etc. It’s a diverse group to start with and plenty of fun with all their special abilities and cvilization-specific achievements.

Still, it’s a game that I have issues with. There’s no true way of being isolationist as religious still ignore border restrictions. I also wish that you could designate ahead of time with AI players that you don’t want religion. However, there is now a way for religions to fight one another. Religious combat is kind of funny, because the animation uses lightning bolts coming from the sky to strike down their opponents. Still, I’d wish you could block them from even entering in the first place, but I guess that would make it a little too easy.

Which is where I will end off, the game is hard. I’ve played through two games and only won once. This is not a game for beginners to the Civ series, though if you feel mildly confident with with Civ V I’d say you’ll grasp the major concepts in this game. At least up until the districts start coming in. The game does have a tutorial, which I didn’t play, but would totally suggest to players who might seem a little intimidated by the game.

Final Thoughts Unlike other Civ games at launch, this is a definite choice to get now. It’s deep, engaging, and lots of fun. Modders are already adding things like teams in multiplayer mode, though Firaxis will probably add this soon. there’s already DLC planned, which I will guess most will be extra civilizations and maybe some new mechanics, but there is no “season pass.” The only season pass, in that sense, is the Digital Deluxe Edition, which comes with the soundtrack and all the DLC as it releases. Also, the preorder bonus was decent as you get the Aztec civilization, but I’m sure that will be pay DLC for $5 at some point.

Overall, yeah, it’s a solid game. I can’t wait to start playing this with friends and pissing them off with my silly-named religions, like “Vapor Action” or “The Gay Agenda.”

Website: http://store.steampowered.com/app/289070/ Price: $59.99, Digital Deluxe Edition is $79.99 Players: 1-12

[theotternerd]

“Playable” State

On a couple of downloadable services, you are allowed to start playing a game after a certain amount has been downloaded. This isn’t anything new, really, as Blizzard has been doing this for years with World of Warcraft and expanded that into a few of their other games with the labels of “playable” and “optimized.” Optimized is obviously the better route to play at as most of the assets for the game are downloaded that are necessary while loading the other ones in the background while still downloading.

Still, this idea has started to bleed over to Origin, EA’s proprietary service. The reason I know this is because I’m currently downloading Star Wars Battlefront because I apparently hate myself and because I was able to get the Ultimate Edition for under $45 with a 50% off coupon that Origin was giving people. Honestly, that’s 1/3 of the original retail price and I’m happy to have been a holdout. But back to the original part of this post...

The total download size of the game is somewhere around 43 GB, which is rough for me to download as I only can download at most 1.5 MB/s. The playable state that Origin has on the game is somewhere around 9-14 GB downloaded, which is about 1/4 of the total download size. That’s not bad, and it gives me a way to test out the graphical fidelity and tweak video settings so I can maximize framerate and performance.

However, the playable state is simply a demo. You play as Darth Vader in Echo base with a small contingent of snowtroopers, fighting wave after wave of Rebels while you move slow as hell and swing your lightsaber clumsily. It’s probably one of the worst demos I’ve seen in years, and it’s the only thing you can play while the game downloads. It’s atrocious. There’s not even an optimized state, like with WoW, you just sit there, waiting for more Rebels to spawn while the game downloads in the background.

Now, I would test this more, but Origin won’t even let me play the game right now. Origin says it’s playable, but it won’t let me play. It’s kind of sad, but it wouldn’t be as bad if my computer wouldn’t go into sleep mode while I’m still downloading the damn game, delaying the inevitable.

So, here’s my thoughts on the whole idea of the “playable” state of a game: if your services is going to have a “download in the background while you’re gaming” option make sure the game has more than one mode to play in. Sure, don’t throw me into online ranked mode, but maybe let me do some practice missions, do some quick tutorials on how to play the game and use the controls. In the case of an MMO, let me create a character and maybe see a cutscene. Keep it basic and have that playable state be somewhere near the halfway point of a download, but also have another state, like Blizzard, where the game should run smooth, but still needs to download a few more things. The small details. Nothing game breaking.

Now, get to work on that, EA.

[theotternerd]

WotC and Neverwinter

Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition has been out for two years now, and I have to say that I’ve really grown to love the system. It’s the best of both worlds: simple but has lots of depth in developing characters. However, when Wizards of the Coast was heavily hinting at what the new edition was going to be before its release in August of 2014, they talked about modularity and that campaign settings would have extra rules to make your game more like 3rd Edition, or maybe more like 4th Edition, or maybe some crazy combo of 4th and AD&D 2nd Edition. Sadly, this hasn’t happened much, but it’s due to the fact that campaign settings haven’t been released yet.

As of right now, you have to scour through old books just to run a game in Eberron, Greyhawk, Dark Sun, Planescape, or any other previous campaign setting, except one. Back in 2013, Cryptic Studios, the team behind City of Heroes/Villains, released the D&D MMO Neverwinter. Now, I’ve never played it and really don’t know what sort of business model it has or how it plays, but this game has inadvertently caused the D&D development team at Wizards to, in my opinion, focus all of their narrative efforts on this region and neglect the fans of the other campaign settings.

This neglect makes me want to send an angrily-worded letter to the developer and tell them that I am upset, or go to Reddit and ask if anyone else is angry that we aren’t getting what we were promised by Mike Mearls back in 2013 when the edition was still called “D&D Next” or that not a single campaign setting has actually been released. Now, there are a couple adventure campaign guides offering character options and all of that and one mini campaign setting guide, but guess what it’s for?

The Sword Coast, which is where Neverwinter is.

Wizards has very narrowly focused its efforts on developing one region of a vast world. And because of this, we aren’t getting variety and the adventures are set in region that not everyone is interested in (with the exception of The Curse of Strahd). I miss the world of Eberron and the imaginative kingdoms it has, along with the Warforged. I want to have adventures in Dark Sun again, with Muls and Thri-Kreen, and the lack of divine classes and abilities. Neverwinter is not a world, and especially not a place that I want to explore.

Personally, I want Wizards of the Coast to step back and look at all the possibilities and bring them to us again. I want the amount of options that players had in the heyday of AD&D 1st and 2nd Editions. Hell, I’d even settle for the options back in 4th Edition, and that should say something. Let us explore like we did years ago in interesting worlds that had secrets to unearth once again.

[theotternerd]

Rifts for Savage Worlds Review

Back in 1999, I began the journey that is finding out about roleplaying games. Sure, I had played computer games with similar themes, like Diablo I & II, but I had never played a tabletop RPG until that winter. And what was the first game I ever played? Rifts, by Palladium Books.

At the time, Rifts only had about thirteen or fourteen published world books, but the setting was interesting. A version of Earth, some three or four hundred years in the future, where magic coexists with technology in a post-apocalyptic world. So many pleasure points were being hit with just that idea.

My first ever character was a female Glitter Boy pilot, mostly to be ironic, with a Glitter Boy being a huge suit of power armor and a BFG. I thought it would be funny to have that armor open up and suddenly a woman pop out, especially since the suit specifically has a gendered term. I was on a different wavelength when I was 14, apparently.

Still, the setting was cool, but I quickly learned that the rules system Palladium made was not the greatest. It wouldn’t be until I started playing stuff like D&D 3rd Edition that I found out how painful the Palladium system was. Here, I’ll explain further:

Character creation could take about an hour or two...if you knew what you were doing.

Skills were overly complicated and had no consistency or weren’t linked to any sort of attribute, except Intelligence, because your Intelligence affected EVERY skill, even physical skills like swimming. (Note: other attributes did affect some skills, but not to the same effect that they do in, say, D&D or Pathfinder.)

Classes, or OCCs (occupation character class), were wildly unbalanced. The way they “balanced” the classes was by having each class have a separate XP progression track, similar to that of the first editions of D&D.

Also, much like early editions of D&D, races are classes called RCCs (racial character class). Want to be a Psi-Stalker who pilots a power armor? Sorry, you’ll have to multi-class that because while a psi-stalker is a mutant human with some special psychic abilities, it’s also a class. And a very narrow one at that.

Multi-classing was also widely disapproved by the creators, effectively stating that if you do switch classes, you can never go back to the original class and all of its abilities are frozen at that state forever. Your hope for ever improving skills earned by a previous class was overlapping said skills by taking a new class that offered them.

Combat was overly complicated and sluggish. Unlike all the other skills in the game which used percentile dice, combat utilized a d20 and had no consistency when it came to how to hit an enemy with an attack. Defense were pretty much an action and removed some characters’ ability to act at all.

Characters have hit points AND another damage tracking stat called SDC (structural damage capacity). It’s kind of similar to how the d20 Star Wars game tracked damage, which was also dumb.

Oh, and there’s another type of damage besides SDC...MDC (mega damage capacity), or simply mega damage. One MDC is the same as 100 SDC, but SDC weapons can’t damage MDC material. This also means that a single point of mega damage can kill a regular person, unless their total HP and SDC equal 101 or more.

There were no generic NPC stats. NPC stat blocks had random rolls the GM had to make, including all the attributes, hit points, and even figuring out skill levels themselves.

And that’s just a few things. Still, I love the setting and the dimension hopping adventures you could have. But, when I heard that Pinnacle, the guys behind Savage Worlds, was running a Kickstarter to adapt the setting to Savage Worlds, I was handily skeptical. I wanted to know how they would tackle the problems the original game had and how well they could translate a game that has 84 expansion books and an additional three being published “soon.” That also doesn’t cover the vast catalog of “Rifter” magazines that cover all of the Palladium games. It’s honestly a nightmare of logistics when looking at what to cover and what to leave on the editing room floor. This is especially true when it comes to North America, the series main focus as there are 17 world books about the area (out of 32 at the time of writing).

Thankfully, many of my fears have been washed away. Rifts for Savage Worlds (or Savage Rifts as it is sometimes called) is actually a really good beginning to something that could expand into a great series of products. It’s also great to see that someone was finally able to license Rifts away from Palladium, who have had multiple financial problems and are very protective of their IPs. Doing cursory looks at the main rulebook, Game Master’s Guide, and “Savage Foes of North America,” I have to say that Pinnacle is knocking it out of the park.

The classes are generally kept in check by Savage Worlds’ experience system and giving advantages to classes that aren’t some of the more iconic ones. Attributes are easy to understand and also tie into skills, which is just as easy to understand in the new system. NPCs have pregenerated stat blocks, and they’ve translated MDC in such a way that I don’t it completely overpowering.

That being said, I still think that the equipment section is a bit lacking. Considering the vast collection of equipment spanning the library of books published for Rifts, the 32 pages covered in The Tomorrow Legion Player’s Guide just doesn’t satisfy my tastes. Granted, looking back at my copy of Rifts Ultimate Edition, I realize that the core rulebook from Palladium actually has less than the Savage Worlds version, at least when it comes to armor, power armor, robot armor, and vehicles.

Also, I miss the art in the Rifts line of books. John Zeleznik, Kevin Long, Wayne Breaux Jr., and Ramon Perez are all staples of my teen years. It would have been nice for Palladium to let Pinnacle use some of that art as a part of the licensing agreement, but sadly we don’t get any of it.

Final Thoughts: This is a godsend. I love Rifts and what it could have been since I started playing RPGs over half my life ago. It’s a great setting and now it has a great engine running the mechanics of the game. Savage Worlds is a great system to be running the complete insanity that is Rifts.

If Pinnacle were to take anything from this whole review, I hope this is the blurb that gets put on the cover: “PEG took a combination of rules diarrhea and vomit and remade it into a fun, easy to understand game.”

Website: https://www.peginc.com/product-category/rifts/ Price: $30 for The Tomorrow Legion Player’s Guide ($15 on Drive thru RPG), $20 for the Game Master’s Handbook ($10 on Drive thru RPG), $20 for the Savage Foes of North America ($10 on Drive thru RPG)