So I’m playing Warhammer Online again. I had to transfer my highest level (only 15) off of the closed server he was on. I think there is are only four servers left. It took Mythic 4 days to fix the problem with transfers. In their defense they probably only have a staff of two. For some reason I really like the easy to get into RvR of Warhammer. Below is one of the result screens from a scenario match.

I’m currently playing on a free ten day come back type of deal. Not totally decided if I’ll stay and pay after the ten days are up.

To get an idea what the RvR is all about here are a bunch of screenshots of a little skirmish in front of a castle that happened last night.

Edit
Ten days was all I needed. Not coming back for $14.99 a month.

Torchlight is the direct descendant of the first Diablo game. It follows the first Diablo in every aspect. One town to get quest. A deep deep dungeon to kill monster for items and gold. Just about everything in that first Diablo game you can find here in Torchlight. The game has a number of old Blizzard devs on board that helped make the first Diablo game so the similarities maybe obvious. The music was done by the same guy who did the music for the first Diablo. So it is no surprise that on more than one occasion it reminded me of the music from the First Diablo.

Torchlight has a very cartoony feel that one suspects was influenced by World of Warcraft.

The game does bring a few things from the Fate games (which themselves are inspired by Diablo). The pet for instance is pretty much something retained from Fate. This pet though is handy since you can send your trusty dog (or cat) off to the surface to sell when you fill up your inventory. A few other things worth mentioning is that once you beat the main quest you get the option to retire your character and pass down an item to a new character. When you do this an infinite dungeon opens up as well. So reply value is up there.

The game has three classes. Follows the usual templates with minor variations. You got a big bad warrior, a magic user, and a ranged type of rogue. All of them can specialize in melee and they all get 4 spell slots. And of course a three tiered skill tree to specialize in different buffs and powers.

Torchlight is single player only. Only on the pc. The game sells for twenty bucks. They eventually will put out the games editor so you can make you own levels, monsters, and items (just for a start). This currently is only available online from the games website or third parties like Steam. The devs mention a free to play mmo is on the table next.

Wow what happened to October? Games happened. To many good games to play. Two in particular that grabbed me and took up my time. These two came out towards the end of October. Borderlands and Torchlight. Both of these games share a few things in common with the Diablo games. The only thing in common with Borderlands and Torchlight is that they both have loot. Wonderful abundant loot. But the similarities end there between the two games.

Borderlands is first and foremost a first person shooter. It has a cell shaded style that may turn some off. I think it’s more of a comic book cross hatching style myself. You can see in the screenshots what I’m talking (maybe) about.

Borderlands has a very light rpg mechanic pasted into the shooter. And these guys get it right by keeping the shooter aspects dominate and letting the rpg stuff be secondary. As mentioned Borderlands has loot. Lots and lots of loot. They borrow from Diablo and World of Warcraft so you if you played either of those the loot will look familiar. You got white vendor trash, green, blue, purple and orange items. Each color denotes a higher quality of item.

Borderlands is out now on the PC, Xbox 360, and PS3. Be warned despite what the developer of the game may say the pc version is port of the console game. It currently suffers from a number of problems and I suggest the console versions over the pc game.

I’m playing WoW again. Here is a quick video of my Death Knight kicking some ass.

Click To Play

Filename: wow-darkturk.avi

Downloads: 123 Size: 21.31 MB Version: 1.0 Updated: July 26, 2009

This videos uses the xvid codec.

Diablo II Multiple Resolution Patch. Awesome.

Filename: D2MultiRes-v102.zip

Downloads: 60 Size: 522.5 KB Version: 1.02 Updated: July 23, 2009

Found it here.

So we have had about two real games of dnd so far. The 4th and the vacation killed a few Saturday games. This second game though has the beginnings of what I wanted in the first place. A good long campaign to keep me entertained. Man, I had fun.

The group is playing The Scales of War an adventure path from the Dungeon magazine. We just started the first part of this and it’s called  Rescue at Rivenroar. It starts out with the player characters relaxing and drinking at a tavern. Not too long after, monsters of course bust in and try to start some shit.

A recap on the players.

My Niece (age 9) playing a Cleric
My Nephew (age 8) playing a Fighter
The DM’s Kid (age 8) playing a Wizard
The Newb (age 35) playing a Paladin
Me (age 37) playing a Fighter

So once the first combat started till the end of the session a few things of note happened. Shows the different egos or attitudes at play.

First was the argument between me and the Pally about where the Wizard should plant his fire spell. The thing does 1 burst damage which means where it’s fired off it flows out in every direction around the place it was ignited. Basically I wanted the Wizard to fire it off in a spot that would hit three monsters. The Pally wanted one square back so it only hit the two monsters. The way I wanted it to go would make it hit me and the Pally as well as the three monsters. The Pally wanted it to just target the two monsters in the back and spare the good guys any friendly fire. Now I felt it was an acceptable risk to hit where I wanted. I would rather see three monsters hurt than two. Both the Pally and I have good hitpoints and armor class. We could have took it. There was a good chance the Wizard would miss us anyway. I backed down and let the Pally have it his way.

The next point that I enjoyed was after the combat was over and we got to do some talking to npc’s. Generally speaking this is the shit I hate. I’m the type that clicks through the quest text in mmo’s like WoW. I want to kill shit. This time it was different. We had a monster to interrogate. A monster who was held in a stockade. It couldn’t get to us. Man, I couldn’t wait for two reasons: First, I was going to see how far I could push the DM with my kind of bullshit. Second, I just couldn’t pass up the chance to fuck with a monster Jack Bauer style.

There were a few roadblocks to get through before I could mess with the monster. There were guards around that would not allow the monster to come to any harm that would cause it to not be able to stand trial for its bad deeds. So first I had to get rid of the pesky guards. I had the Wizard use Ghost Sound.

Ghost Sound Wizard Cantrips 1
With a wink, you create an illusory sound that emanates from somewhere close by.
At-Will, Arcane, Illusion
Standard Action Ranged 10
Target: One object or unoccupied square
Effect: You cause a sound as quiet as a whisper or as loud as a yelling or fighting creature to emanate from the target. You can produce nonvocal sounds such as the ringing of a sword blow, jingling armor, or scraping stone. If you whisper, you can whisper quietly enough that only creatures adjacent to the target can hear your words.

So with this I had him create the sounds of battle in the distance. Four of the six guards took off to check it out. The last two I managed to convince that I would not kill the monster. So there was no worry if it would miss hanging at the gallows after it was found guilty at a trial.

So I introduced myself to the monster and played the nice guy. I asked it about its base of operations and its leader. We even had the Pally speak goblin to it in hopes it would play ball and give us good info. After it was done I went up to it and leaned close to its face and told it if it was lying I would come back and kill it. To prove my threat I pulled one of my longswords out and pressed it up against the right side of its head and cut its ear off.

The kids were of course very amused that I was behaving this way. I just wanted to get a feel for how far one could go with this DM. Next time in addition to another ear (for my new necklace I’m making) I’m going see if the DM will let me cut off a monsters testicles. I want to build a name for myself in the game world. Plus it’s damn fun to abuse the poor monsters in this manner. But somehow I doubt I’m the first player to do so.

I can’t wait for next weeks game. Hopefully more monsters will learn to fear the name Turk Shakespeare.

So my first step into the world of Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition was pretty successful. Spending the money on the books and all the accessories was well worth it. The group I ended with was a perfect example of how easy it is to start playing Dungeon and Dragons. The players were:

My Niece (age 9) played a Cleric
My Nephew (age 8) played a Fighter
The Newb (age 35) played a Paladin
The old Bellman (age unknown) played a Wizard
The Bellman’s kid (age 14) played a Rogue

Other than me and the Newb none of the players have ever played any pen and paper RPGs. The kids have dabbled in some of the MMOs I’ve played so some of the concepts were not to alien to them.

I was the Dungeon Master and I sucked. Running combat was fine. But anything were I had to try to convey a story of any sort using NPCs just was horrible. I felt like a dork trying to speak as if I’m the NPCs. I ended up awkwardly reading the text out of the adventure book. We made it through two encounters and the one awkward bit with npc interaction. Total time spent playing was around five hours or so.

A little after the first encounter was finished the Teacher came over. The Teacher lives next door to the Newb. He’s played DnD and has been a Dungeon Master before. I was hoping he would show up as we played. In the back of my head I was hoping I would be able to pawn off the DM duties to him. By the end of the session it was decided he would borrow the books and read up on the new stuff in 4E. With any luck I will have some people to play Dungeon and Dragons with. I want to play. I don’t want to be the DM. I do think I’ll continue to abuse the kids and run a kids game for them. I’ll try to practice getting over my feeling like a putz when speaking for NPCs.