Recent content by craddoke

No one's breath is baited, unless you don't do fishing correctly.

That's pretty good, actually -- they can even have the pivotal moment look like an interactive cut-scene telling the player what buttons to hit, but the trick is that you don't have to do it, it's not really a cut-scene, and not doing what the on-screen commannds say is the key to winning...

System Shock (and Bioshock) games have all been about free will -- or, rather, an illusion of free will that gets dispelled with a reveal/turnaround part way through the game. At this point, players have come to expect that twist so the writers are going to need to be more devious than ever. A...

The public domain?

Another movie?

These are really nice -- with all the gilt-edged editions and reverential treatment, you tend to forget that Tolkien was just an obsessive hobbyist working out distances between imaginary locations on the back of some scrap paper much like all those hundreds of thousands of teens playing AD&D...

Sequel? Pfftt! Why bother with a whole sequel when you can sell a satisfying ending (or two) as DLC? In fact, let's help publishers kill two birds with one stone: "Pre-order now at Gamestop to receive the special 'renegade' game conclusion DLC (for just an additional $9.99)! Pre-order at Target...

Aren't social justice warriors just paladins? You know, smiting evil when it's somebody who's not a member of their clique and closing their eyes and plugging their ears when members of their own party are "aggressively interrogating" the prisoners?

It's hard to explain to someone who hasn't played it how far beyond every other CRPG Planescape really is -- and not just the paint-by-numbers games; even the other classics like Fallout and Baldur's Gate suffer by comparison. You know what can change the nature of a man? This game.

Man, I thought "turnips" was some kind of euphemism.

In related news, Windows 9 will be replacing the unpopular "tile" desktop of the previous iteration with new-and-improved "blocks."

I suppose an eventual crash is possible -- although the likeliest cause would be the final dismantling of the first world middle class by predatory banking and business practices and the financial stresses of climate change. I figure that gives us about 100 more crap installments of COD before...

Nothing much to say except that this is an excellent plan -- still not sure I would move from AD&D 1e, but now I'm guaranteed to give the new rules a read/try. More importantly, this will make it incredibly easy for someone new to RPGs and kind-of interested in D&D (but not enough to start...

In a roundabout way, this comment gets to my biggest concern about how they are releasing the new edition. The contents of the starter set (no character generation rules or adventure design guidelines) and staggered release of the core rules would seem designed to complicate the creation of...

Roll20 is pretty awesome - especially the integration with G+ hangouts given the huge presence of RPG players already using that network. I've gone from not playing AD&D in twenty years (outside of some sessions with my kids) to two campaigns and eight hours of playing a week for the last seven...