DanJW

Happy birthday Hermie!

This seems like a great time to nominate a new head_smiley!

Happy birthday Murdoc! And belatedly Armchair too! And Loonyboi! Gosh so many birthdays.

Space Hulk: Vengeance Of The Blood Angels Also Really though metallic corridors are just going to get compared to Doom.

Sounds wonderful. How come the long term response has been pretty average? I should point out that I haven't played it yet, so I'm not in fact disagreeing with you.

Wow, that sucks. In UK£ Farcry is £2.50. In the past we normally get a markup too. At £2.50 I'm happy to gift the game to a long-time thumb, just on principle.

I like the really whimsical stuff that comes out of the indie scene (like that Nikolai Tesla game). That's just really imaginative and fun. and yeah I love speculative fiction, although I am slowly finding a growing interest in non-genre too. This thing with Activision though - it's all just gimmicks. They have run out of ideas - if they ever had any - on how to make things interesting without resorting to a genre shift. And genre shifts are not in fact interesting. I don't hate or despise these titles, I may even play some of the,; I just don't find the trend to be all that wonderful either. It makes me sigh. It's down to bad writing and creative impoverishment. Imagine if the same thing happened in other mediums. What if Ian Fleming had thought "hey I can't think of anything interesting for James Bond to do any more. I know! I'll re-imagine him as a pirate! Yarr!". Something I got taught by an art tutor: get all the easy and obvious stuff down on the page quickly. Get it out of your head. Then come some better ideas, the ones that don't feel too cheap. Get those out too. Now... keep going. This is where you get stuck and the works gets tougher. But this is also where real creativity and good art happens. Whatever you do keep working at it. Activision are clearly only capable of stage 1, with an occasional smidgen of stage 2. Rather than exploring and developing their ideas they keep hitting the reset button. Although this is a problem with games in general (Hollywood too).

Well, the individual sessions would be really short. A quick bit of scene setting, some choices about where you're going and why, a few rounds of combat. This would allow you to all start in quite different places. How does everyone else feel about this? It also means that those that are ready can go while the others are still building their characters.

Oh I wasn't worrying, I just really wanted to draw it There is another option regards the formation of the party: I could run short individual sessions (or small group for those who know each other) that act as prologues and help your PCs to reach the same place. It might be nice to have a one-to-one practice run for those new to the system and it would give you a bit to talk about when you all meet.

OHMIGOD i played it and there was a midget riding a sealion And a ninja horse being ridden by a spy. And something that was pixellated out. best

Really the clue to the game concept is in the name. You know in cyberpunk you have all these faceless, evil corporations that treat people like cattle or test subjects? The ones that are unconcerned by legal or ethical matters? Well in this game rather than the hero you play one of these faceless corporations. Cool eh? You know the type, what's a good name for it, oh yes; The Syndicate..?

After failing to so far illustrate a wooden, musical automaton, I gave in and photoshopped up an island. With some help from cartographers guild tutorials. That place may yet suck me in. But hey, more maps for you! I'll keep scribbling away at character sketches because you guys already have my creative juices flowing. So yeah here have an island!

Of interest to all thumbs podcast listeners: 75% OFF ALL FARCRY GAMES ON STEAM

As with the Warforged, I am happy to have Dragonborn in the campaign but I haven't written anything for them yet - I have only the most nebulous ideas about how they fit into the world. So they'd be rare and raise a lot of eyebrows, and we'd work together to develop the race (I like all the races to have more of a culture and a bit of a twist on them from the default PHB description). I'd say wait and see who the characters are (note you don't have to be all Full Disclosure with each other, just with me). Then if there's a natural fit or an interesting pairing/grouping, hash it out.

I'm already concerned that there is a 'main protagonist'. Syndicate games were all about people as expendable resources. Heh that parody is accurate too. The script is trying way too hard to be futuristic, when the scariest thing about Syndicate was that it was 'near future'. With X-COM too, it seems the new vogue is for taking classic strategy game IPs and making slightly lacklustre FPS games out of them that miss the point.

The only other thing I still need to know is whether the PCs already know each other, or whether I'm going to bring you all together at the start of the game. Or a mix. Feel free to use the Obsidian Portal forums to discuss stuff. I'll set up the myth-weavers as well so that should give us dice-rolling and realtime chat.

OK lets get this show on the road! I'll aim to get the first post up at the weekend. In a moment I'll do a quick roll-call to make sure we have a viable party.

I feel pretty much the same way John. Although I'm pretty familair with the WH40K setting. One other minor super tiny niggle: despite all the blood, the art design looks pretty cartoony. I'd go as far to say that they have done too good a job of recreating the citadel miniatures - but those are designed to be recognisable when looking down at a tabeltop and to to have personality whilst being small scale (design considerations that also apply to RTS games). Scaled up, I would expect everything to be more realistically proportioned. And MOAR GRIMDARK!!!!1 Also, needs more dakka.

Yeah that's a great little film. I'm going to see a play this weekend written by a friend of mine which is along similar lines. With the addition that the four actors play four roles each. In quick succession. There's something like 120 costume changes in total. It's been written to be "almost impossible to perform". I helped build the set and even just from that it looks like it's going to be hilarious. Oh also the audience chooses a murder weapon during the interval. This gets revealed to the cast in the last couple of scenes, which dictated how the play is going to end. There are four very different ending. It's called Four Play. YaY!

Many happy returns to Ben, Thunderpeel and Bbx!

On one level I don't have a problem with it. On another level it would be nice to not 'kiddify' everything. Not everyone wants cartoon characters or fantasy in their entertainment. I think there should be games on offer with more verisimilitude. I doubt Guitar Hero would have become a household name if it had been overly genre-fied from the start. Note: I was going to make a point about being 'grown up' and having games about the real world. But I don't want to imply that fantasy can't be grown up. But you know what I mean.

Someone has been teaching it wrongness alright.

Yeah it's not great. But the more it gets used the more it learns, so it might get better with time. Or maybe not.

Including Pripyat. uUeFx2fJSNE There's been photos coming out of the zone for a long time, but the recent ones have been just as fascinating and weirdly beautiful. And now they also include weirdly anachronistic isolated people wondering around.

Yeah I love Urban Decay and exploration too. The poignancy and echoes of the past, the melancholia and suggestion of transience and mortality - all part of what makes it such great subject matter. Like I said above, I find it weirdly beautiful. YES!