My first thought for running an RPG using a computer as an inept go-between to human interaction was obviously Paranoia. Certainly the scenario we played (Implausible Deniability) lent itself to receiving text messages and that’s something Roll20 can let you do moderately well. It was fun, it was goofy, they fought a bread monster, a whole bunch of clones died, and at one point all the players dashed off to their kitchens to wrap their heads in foil and spent the rest of the session playing like that; so I consider that a win. It IS mildly exhausting and frustrating though.
So I was delighted when Greg took over running Monster of The Week. We’re definitely on the Mystery Machine gang end of the MOTW spectrum and not the X-Files end, but damn it we have solved some mysteries and had fun doing it. Grumbly overprotective Demington, shadowy agent Jen Doe, angelic weirdo Parisia, totally normal guy Morgan, and regular weirdo Marston have thus far worked on The St. Olaf Vendetta, The Belaire Eviction (Marston files all of these using Robert Ludlum naming conventions) and just wrapped up The Wayzata Compossibility.
The system is simple and broad enough that we don’t get bogged down and the stories are fun enough that there’s time for both genuine tension and levity. And the characters have been fun to let grow; like vines, throttling each other upwards towards the sun.
The immediate horizon is full of, hopefully, more of MOTW, as long as Greg feels like doing them and Alice is Missing, an RPG I Kickstarted. Alice is Missing is supposed to be a silent roleplaying game, played entirely over text messages, with no specific GM. I’m very curious to see how this goes: it does seem like a game for this time. I’m not sure how often you could replay it, but if I get two satisfying sessions out of it, I’d say my money was well spent. The publishers, Hunters Books sent out the PDFs and there is supposed to be an app and a Roll20 incarnation. No sign of the app yet, but I’d be down with using the Roll20 – there are so many atmospheric graphics for the game that I want to make sure I use whichever version maximizes those.
On then, to those Asterisks.
* Is Ghost of Tsushima, the PS4 exclusive that caused me to go out and buy a PS4. It is a historical Samurai action title that puts you in the shoes of pretty-much the last samurai standing against the Mongol invasion of your wee Japanese island (and therefore the invasion of the rest of Japan). For all the historical detail, amazingly this isn’t a Japanese title and Japanese reviewers seem delighted that foreigners got so much so right, to the extent that I’ve seen one reviewer get mad that Japanese developers couldn’t have done this first.
The central theme of the story is extremely Samurai-drama with the Protagonist Jin wanting to take on all these foreign invaders nobly and properly, but finding that super difficult, being persuaded to take on all these foreign invaders ignobly and sneakily, because that’s much more efficient and effective. So does he betray the ideals of the culture he is fighting to preserve? That is some chef-kiss level Samurai angst. In fact, it’s maybe too much tension and angst: I find myself playing this and enjoying the hell out of it, but I can’t do it mindlessly and I can’t do it for long.
The game is absolutely gorgeous, and every once in a while you’ll find yourself in a swaying field of pampas grass, with pollen wafting across your field of view as the sun sets on the glittering harbour and think, I wish these fucking three Mongol spearmen would stop trying to skewer me up so that I could enjoy the view and write a haiku about it. Or go pet a fox. The fight mechanics are fine and modestly gratifying, prioritizing fast decisive results over prolonged parry/riposte/parry/riposte slogs. And the duel mechanic (Jin’s noble, proper way of killing Mongols) is as much fun as a well executed sneak attack streak, so that’s good.
** It’s been out for a while now and it was one of the first big titles for PS4, just as Ghost of Tsushima is one of the last, but Horizon Dawn Zero is absolutely tremendous. I had been playing one of the Tomb Raiders on the XBone before I got the new console and I love my bow-girl adventure games. HZD is more than just bow-girl adventure time: it scratches that primitive peoples scrabbling for survival in the remains of a much more advanced civilization. I mean, technically a lot of games have that theme of protagonist interacting with Lost And Technologically Advanced Civilization Of The Past, but in common with Numenera, the humans of the game have been catapulted back to the bronze age by whatever apocalypse befell the LATACOTP and live as herders and hunters among the mega-fauna of the age, which it turns out, are definitely, obviously robots.
The writing for the game has been great so far; there aren’t many cut scenes that make me actually cheer the screen like an imbecile, but this game got it out of me. Strong recommend for fans of Numenera, but also anyone who likes well written and implemented bow-girl games. It is, unfortunately, on hold just now (and I haven’t even started Last of Us, which I picked up for cheap, because I also want to play Last of Us 2 because it looks amazing), but I’m certain I’ll get back to it.
From two well-written, beautifully detailed sandboxes with crafted stories to uh, not that, my attention is being held right now by No Man’s Sky.
No Man’s Sky isn’t meticulously crafted, managed or written in the same way that the other games are, but you can’t say it isn’t a sandbox. Boy howdy, is it a sandbox. 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 procedurally generated planets to explore.
Sometime (almost all the time) things just don’t make sense. The missions might not make sense, the economy is nonsensical, the dialog is garbled rubbish even when you have translated it, the descriptions of items and people play out like madlibs: and it is FUCKING FANTASTIC. As long as you keep in mind that the game is just a series of tables interacting randomly, the meaning you the player can give to the results of those umpteen d100 rolls is amazing.
There are some real strong points to the game’s set up that are deliberate though. You really do have to work at making yourself understood to the inhabitants of the universe, and it pays off to do that. You are thrown in at the deep end, dying on an alien planet and you just have to pick yourself up from there and begin a story that you can absolutely 100% abandon and just go play in the sandbox. The feeling of being alone is tremendous. The ability to impose your own meaning (and names) on the game elements because there isn’t a strong over-arching story or setting. There is no map because no maps have been made: you want to map a planet? Get to work then. And showing up on an obviously occupied planet, but claiming it as your discovery: darkly satisfying. “Choking Space Hobo” to “Wandering Intergalactic Magnate” has a lot of very satisfying stops and milestones along the way.
There are a few things that eventually grate. The same-ness of space stations and freighters is a bit dull. Those four identical hazardous flora (grabby, puffy, explody and tentacly) things all suck. Maintaining damaged freighters and keeping them fueled is tedious. Some of the multiplayer stuff isn’t well implemented and the multiplayer missions we got were buggy as hell.
But there’s just so much wonder. It’s earliest critics derided it as a Screensaver/Wallpaper generator and you can’t take that away from it. So much weird stuff, so much creativity in what people have done with the things they can build. Since I started playing there have been two updates – adding a Mech exocraft (my beloved, clumsy, leaping Minotaur) and derelict space craft to salvage and both of those things seem like substantial and cool additions. I’m hopeful that the growing number of players (since the game was made more easily available and the positive reviews recent updates have received) will mean that they’ll keep the big changes coming.
I’ve put 80~ hours into that game and I still feel like I’ve barely started. But I did fulfil my lifelong dream of owning a lighthouse, and I even solved the problem of having a solar-powered lighthouse, so I’m very happy with how it is going. It’s also a game I can play in front of a 6 year old (HZD sort of is too, for the most part – but GoT is most definitively not) and she gets a kick out of wandering around and flying my spaceship and naming stuff. And when you see my space hobo in his pastel purple and silver accented jumpsuit, you’ll know who had a hand in the customization.
And last, but by no means least, World of Warcraft Classic. Man, that’s been fun and not in the expected nostalgic way: no, it’s just a good game. It always was. When I was done with it, I was done with it and the appeal was gone. But, surprisingly, it’s been fun to go back and revisit some familiar places, and especially at max-graphics, which is a breeze to today’s PCs.
I’m surprised I wasn’t more nostalgic or more immediately put off by the game – I think I was expecting one of those two extremes. There is a lot to still love about that game, mostly, that it is a platform for getting together with your friends and bashing some dungeon and a game that can while away some time by yourself as the world deals with (gestures broadly) all this 2020 shit.
Anyway, stay healthy and let’s play a bunch of games together whenever this shit show draws to an end.
