A Butterfly Dreaming » Computer and Video Games

The Humble Indie Bundle

Scott — Fri, 07 May 2010 04:47:38 +0000

Soooo… six months later. I guess this sort of fell by the wayside. And I make my return with a brief post. Ah, well, so it goes. I just wanted to direct any gamers out there who haven’t already heard of it to wolfire.com’s Humble Indie Bundle. This is a “pay whatever you want” sale [...]

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The Humble Indie Bundle

Gencon in Review

Scott — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 18:03:33 +0000

I was treated to a short adventure of my own on my way home from Gencon: my return flight was evidently booked for September 16, instead of August 16. Of course, with a hundred thousand gamers leaving Indianapolis on Sunday, all of the flights out were fully booked. Fortunately, a ticketing agent for Continental went [...]

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Gencon in Review

Cryptic Offering Lifetime Subscription to Champions MMO

Scott — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 13:39:14 +0000

Cryptic Studios, formerly of City of Heroes, has been working on the Champions MMORPG set for release September 1. They’re taking a page from Turbine and offering a lifetime subscription for $200. They’re throwing in extra costumes, an in-game widget, eight extra character slots for alt-aholics like me, and access to the Star Trek Online [...]

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Cryptic Offering Lifetime Subscription to Champions MMO

MMORPG Armageddon?

Scott — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 13:34:45 +0000

While catching up on the news this week, I came across an interesting tidbit at Virtual Worlds News: Worlds.com has sued NCSoft, the publisher of such games as City of Heroes, Lineage II, and the ill-fated Tabula Rasa. Worlds.com was one of the early developers of virtual worlds; WebWorld, their earliest, launched in 1994. That’s [...]

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MMORPG Armageddon?

Wrapping Up Warcraft

Scott — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 19:40:31 +0000

When I ran the first part of my Shadowfang Keep adaptation, I brought a stack of pre-made characters. I explained the basics of each class and the d20 mechanic, told them we’d get to the rest during actual play as it came up, and jumped right into the adventure. This is a faster start than [...]

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Wrapping Up Warcraft

Stealing, By the Numbers (IV)

Scott — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 20:03:01 +0000

At about this point, I ran into another quandary with my adaptation of Shadowfang Keep. I’d eyeballed it at ten encounters, but, after four encounters in, I was running low on potential roleplaying encounters. There would inevitably be some roleplay before the confrontation with the archvillain Arugal, but aside from that, my options were limited: [...]

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Stealing, By the Numbers (IV)

Stealing, By the Numbers (III)

Scott — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 19:57:07 +0000

The courtyard of Shadowfang Keep, in Warcraft, is full of worgen, wolves, and undead servants. This was the first major change I made to the setting: given what I’d already decided about the two factions squaring off against each other, that simply wouldn’t work. Furthermore, the players would just have experienced two fights; a third [...]

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Stealing, By the Numbers (III)

Stealing, By the Numbers (II)

Scott — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 22:01:45 +0000

With the outline for my new players’ excursion to Shadowfang Keep complete, I next moved to what we used to call “stocking” the dungeon: placing monsters, treasure, and other elements inside and developing a map key. To begin with, I needed to decide how long I wanted to make the dungeon. That seems a bit [...]

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Stealing, By the Numbers (II)

Stealing, By the Numbers

Scott — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 20:30:20 +0000

One of the most useful pieces of advice new game masters often get is: steal. Take elements of myth, literature, movies, and anything else that you like, and find ways of using them in your game. Recently I had an opportunity to demonstrate fourth edition Dungeons & Dragons for a couple of old friends, none [...]

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Stealing, By the Numbers

Class Action Filed against Spore DRM

Scott — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 18:35:50 +0000

It’s kind of old news that the latest Will Wright game, Spore, got slammed for its Digital Rights Management (DRM) measures — it’s got nearly 3,000 Amazon reviews as I write this, and the average rating, which had dipped to one star, is still a measly 1.5 stars. The newer news (as of Sept. 23, [...]

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Class Action Filed against Spore DRM