Please wait...
For $9.99 for 6 games, one of them basically an "Unlimited Adventures" game... yes...
But keep in mind, these are early CFRP games. There isn't any real role playing. It is easy to get confused because event though it is non linear - it is easy to "lose the plot". Also... 1st ed. rules are merciless without a human DM behind the DM screen to fudge rolls in the players favor. You'll die, a lot. The Gold Box Companion is necessary - and you've got to kind of be your own generous DM. :)
But... the rules are super faithful to 1st ed, and it is basically a simulator of the exploration and combat systems of AD&D. The limit is.. you know... if you find a bunch of treasure - in a pen and paper campaign you can work out having part of the team stay with the treasure, someone else going and hiring a bunch of porters... and work out the cost to get that heap of gold and gems back to town. In this game... you end up just leaving most of the treasure behind. Because the encumbrance rules are strict.
But the feeling of progression is cool... and you really could take the characters, write their stats onto a pen and paper game - and play them there.
Thu Oct 14 2021 16:31:07 MST from TheDaveI've always wanted to play the old dos D&D games. Are they worth buying on GoG?
Also: That's awesome that you can run it that way.
Wed Oct 06 2021 23:10:15 MST from ParanoidDelusions <paranoiddelusions@wallofhate.com>Found myself wondering today if the GOG support for Linux extends to ARM. It doesn't. Which is stupid. BUT... I thought to myself, their old games run on DOSbox - they've just put a wrapper around it to make it easy for end users... I wonder if I can just install DOSBox on ARM and then copy over their DOSBox games and run them on my Pi400+.
I totally can. Witness Curse of the Azure Bonds running on my Pi 400+.
Sounds like a good deal, then. I totally used my Baldur's Gate characters as NPCs when I was still running 2nd edition.
Thu Oct 14 2021 20:44:23 MST from ParanoidDelusions <paranoiddelusions@wallofhate.com>For $9.99 for 6 games, one of them basically an "Unlimited Adventures" game... yes...
But keep in mind, these are early CFRP games. There isn't any real role playing. It is easy to get confused because event though it is non linear - it is easy to "lose the plot". Also... 1st ed. rules are merciless without a human DM behind the DM screen to fudge rolls in the players favor. You'll die, a lot. The Gold Box Companion is necessary - and you've got to kind of be your own generous DM. :)
But... the rules are super faithful to 1st ed, and it is basically a simulator of the exploration and combat systems of AD&D. The limit is.. you know... if you find a bunch of treasure - in a pen and paper campaign you can work out having part of the team stay with the treasure, someone else going and hiring a bunch of porters... and work out the cost to get that heap of gold and gems back to town. In this game... you end up just leaving most of the treasure behind. Because the encumbrance rules are strict.
But the feeling of progression is cool... and you really could take the characters, write their stats onto a pen and paper game - and play them there.
I'd recommend it. It is an easy way for a lonely person without other geek friends to get some pretty satisfying AD&D gaming in.
:)
Fri Oct 15 2021 11:16:17 MST from TheDaveSounds like a good deal, then. I totally used my Baldur's Gate characters as NPCs when I was still running 2nd edition.
Thu Oct 14 2021 20:44:23 MST from ParanoidDelusions <paranoiddelusions@wallofhate.com>For $9.99 for 6 games, one of them basically an "Unlimited Adventures" game... yes...
But keep in mind, these are early CFRP games. There isn't any real role playing. It is easy to get confused because event though it is non linear - it is easy to "lose the plot". Also... 1st ed. rules are merciless without a human DM behind the DM screen to fudge rolls in the players favor. You'll die, a lot. The Gold Box Companion is necessary - and you've got to kind of be your own generous DM. :)
But... the rules are super faithful to 1st ed, and it is basically a simulator of the exploration and combat systems of AD&D. The limit is.. you know... if you find a bunch of treasure - in a pen and paper campaign you can work out having part of the team stay with the treasure, someone else going and hiring a bunch of porters... and work out the cost to get that heap of gold and gems back to town. In this game... you end up just leaving most of the treasure behind. Because the encumbrance rules are strict.
But the feeling of progression is cool... and you really could take the characters, write their stats onto a pen and paper game - and play them there.
Started a D&D5e campaign with a couple of young dad friends. One is building a game store right now as his second business. This could be fun, but so far almost nothing has happened in four weeks.
Sun Dec 26 2021 04:48:26 MST from Wangiss <wangiss@wallofhate.com>Started a D&D5e campaign with a couple of young dad friends. One is building a game store right now as his second business. This could be fun, but so far almost nothing has happened in four weeks.
My D&D game with my Sacramento cohort is often like this. Sometimes we get annoyed enough at scheduling conflicts that we play on a non-standard day, like we're planning to play today, I think
The amateur luthier friend who's been telling me how to fix my Telecaster is a dead-bored cancer pharmacist. He's an introvert with low Trait Assertiveness, so he took a very steady job that doesn't involve a lot of people. So he's trapped in the bed he made. Lucrative and zombifying. So I invited him to my D&D chat on Facebook. This will allow him to live out some sense of personal agency with an interaction level that's not too high for his temperament. We still haven't started because the other dad who was going to DM doesn't know how to rock and roll. But I'm going to Chuck Berry the eff out of this campaign and they'll all have a great time dealing with it. The setting is Ravnica, which is Greek to me. So I'll watch some explained videos on YouTube and get jiggy with it.
When the Metaverse catches up with online FRP gaming... I mean, campaign pen and paper gaming - I'm in... if we can do it in VR... and it amounts to all of us just sitting around in a virtual room *as if we were really there*... I'm all about that.
VR is the real deal - man. I got a Vive Cosmos Elite - and instantly went out and bought an original Vive... and I've been so plugged in exploring the possibilities, and I've just scratched the surface. It is fairly crude right now - but it is about to... I think it is the singularity. It is going to really fucking change things. It isn't just Facebook hyping it. I mean, there is some of that going on - but all the futurists see it... all the evangelists see it. This isn't 3D TV... it is more like... widespread inexpensive modems.
We could already do it after a fashion. Really all someone needs to do is make a room that feeds your computer into the display as a "laptop" - have your character sheet there... you don't need the minifigs and all that other shit... the DM could have all his data on his laptop. But that is just ONE thing.
I could take my M4 to Circuit of the Americas now and drive it, and drive it hard and well. I would know where to brake, I'd know what lines to take... I'd have to take a couple of slow warmup laps to get it dialed in... but the hard parts, I've got. Same for Nordschelife Nurmburgring. You could teach me guitar, remotely - and with digital teaching enhancements - like.... the ability to "possess" your view and see your instrument from your eyes as you played it.
Think about how once someone delivers THAT... how it is going to change the world. Just in learning guitar. Learning languages. Imagine immersively spending 5 hours a day for 3 months in a VR community that is Spanish speaking.
There is so much we could be doing NOW that we're not. But it is like the WWW. I saw *this* coming... this BBS... I knew we would get here. The same is going to happen with VR.
And I'm 51... it is basically too late for me to do a lot with it - especially by the time it comes to fruition - and who knows how the Government is going to come in and shit on it for "our safety". They need to get out of the way and let it be a wild frontier for the next 20 years or so, like the Internet was at first... But I don't think the political climate will let that happen - and that will arrest and retard its development.
But... maybe, in the next 3 years or so, we can be sitting down in a virtual living space to play some pen and paper FRP games.
Sun Jan 16 2022 21:52:55 MST from Wangiss <wangiss@wallofhate.com>The amateur luthier friend who's been telling me how to fix my Telecaster is a dead-bored cancer pharmacist. He's an introvert with low Trait Assertiveness, so he took a very steady job that doesn't involve a lot of people. So he's trapped in the bed he made. Lucrative and zombifying. So I invited him to my D&D chat on Facebook. This will allow him to live out some sense of personal agency with an interaction level that's not too high for his temperament. We still haven't started because the other dad who was going to DM doesn't know how to rock and roll. But I'm going to Chuck Berry the eff out of this campaign and they'll all have a great time dealing with it. The setting is Ravnica, which is Greek to me. So I'll watch some explained videos on YouTube and get jiggy with it.
Wed Feb 16 2022 18:19:11 MST from ParanoidDelusions <paranoiddelusions@wallofhate.com>
Nice! You leveled up.
Heh... from serf to 1st level sellsword. :)
Any time you get a hit die bump is a good day. Plus saves and class abilities to add.
Playing D&D with the DM in Kosovo is turning out to be more difficult than expected. Plus we've all been on break so long that we're not in the groove.
So I had time to finish off my Video Game project. All my Launchbox emulated games now have a clear logo. It was a fun project. Seeing if I could find existing transparent logos, making them from cover art or title screens. It was a fun creative outlet that helped my skills with GIMP improve. It helped me clean up my Sharp X68000 platform, pulling out the ones where there were no translations and weren't things where the translations don't really matter like SHMUPs. Most of my hobbies are so weird that I don't even attempt to tell people about them. So shooting this off into the either so I've at least shared it somewhere.
https://redstate.com/brandon_morse/2022/02/21/amazons-lord-of-the-rings-proves-why-gatekeeping-can-be-good-n525653
Everyone fucking misses the forest for the trees with this.
Hollywood - the entertainment industry - sees ALL of these properties as the "Next Harry Potter/Hunger Games."
They want a YA literature phenomenon. That is why they don't care about the canon or the established fans (read - mostly white and Asian guys and mostly over 45 at this point).
And their market research indicates that their target market WANTS diverse and inclusive casts that have strong representation for minorities and other oppressed groups.
Female leads must be created. Strong minority characters must be created, and LGBT characters must be created.
ALSO - subversive themes need to be involved. The Orcs cannot be monolithically evil. There have to be GOOD ones. The bad ones - became bad because of the injustices they suffered through stereotypes and loss of opportunity.
Every fucking time. They want Hunger Games again. They want Twilight again. They want Harry Potter again.
And they'll ruin EVERY franchise that we have ever had to try and create it... without realizing - it'll come on its own, organically, of something NEW - just like Harry Potter and the Hunger Games did.
Lord of the Rings is an AD&D 1st edition world. You can't reimagine it as a 5th edition world. If you want a 5th edition story aimed at 5th edition players - someone needs to write that from hole cloth.
When you try to rewrite these franchises... be it Bond, or Shannara, or Dune - or whatever it is - to fit a modern YA Literature audience tastes - you just alienate the loyal fan base - and pander to the YA audience in a way that makes them never adopt the new material. Instead - they look for genuinely new material.
Not sure why they don't fucking get it... any of them. Not the studios, not the journalists, and not the people who keep pointing out the obvious of what the effect is.
The CAUSE is the problem - and the cause is... you're not going to turn Tolkien's Lord of the Rings into a Young Adult phenomenon like the Hunger Games. You're not going to turn Stephen King's Dark Tower into a Young Adult phenomenon, you're not going to turn James Bond into a Young Adult phenomenon.
And you're not going to create a NEW young adult literature phenomenon trying to fill a market-researched checklist of what YA audiences want in gender, race and sexual preference.
Instead - you've got to do what good writers have always done... write a good story where these things fit and make sense in the scope of the world you create... not because you feel there is a quota of these things that has to be met - but because your story has a PLACE where putting these thing STRENGTHENS the story. Stop reimagining Marvel Super heroes as women, minorities or gays - and create NEW stories about new super heroes where women, minorities or gays are the heroes.
Care about the story more than about the quota you're trying to fill.
Jesus Christ it is annoying.
Yup, that is Jordan's The Wheel of Time on Amazon in a nutshell. ^^^^ Not really even good enough to be called WoT Fanfic.
Jesus... the other thing I notice is how the news has really just become a huge, hidden commercial advertisement.
My news feed is curated - not by me or by my choice - so that all I ever see is BMW, driving-sim, VR reviews, F1 controversies, Star Wars and LoTR ROP promotional stuff.
I mean... you know, Canada has become a fascist nation and Biden is ready to go to war with Russia over the Ukraine - and I haven't had ONE news story pop up in my Google News feed about that shit.
But it is worse than that. They've decided I need to hear every time Lewis Hamilton or Mercedes bitches about Abu Dhabi 2021 or Red Bull or Christian Horner bitches about Mercedes bitching about that - or anything related.
That I need EVERY article telling me WHY I should dump whatever VR solution I'm using and jump in on Oculus. They're pushing this so transparently obvious... "The BEST VR... Minecraft is now on OCULUS!" etc. etc...
And almost all of it basically comes down to, "Oculus is now able to do something Valve Index or HTC Vive has been doing since 2016 - but with the advantage of having to be in Facebook/Meta's walled garden in order to do it!"
The Rings of Power on Amazon thing - I get why they *think* I'm a target demographic... but all their hype-machine on this franchise has made me do is decide I'm never even giving it a CHANCE. I mean... they're still trying to actively destroy the good will they've generated with the Maladorian on Disney+ and it looks like Amazon isn't even going to make an ATTEMPT to get that far with Rings of Power.
It isn't that the news cycle has become a big corporate commercial advertising medium though - the worst thing is that I realize it has been that way for a LONG time - and I just was... blue-pilled about how my tastes were being manipulated, how they were building hype and excitement and anticipation in me for things - and not just me... but EVERYONE... and how it is done with *intent*. It isn't just that they're "covering things that people are interested in..." it is that they're PUSHING interest and creating it... and convincing the public these are just "human interest and entertainment news".
They're not. They're advertisements. They're commercials posing as Entertainment News.
We are *literally* living in the dystopian future that Blade Runner and other Cyberpunk visionaries predicted.
And... they're... any criticism on social media of the Amazon RoP series - like, about a black female dwarf with no beard... gets met with such an instant volume of brutal hostility. I haven't waded in at all... But I've seen others that do - and it is like a horde of orcs descending down the columns on the Fellowship in the halls of Moria - chasing those who speak out into an inevitable confrontation with a Balrog. Except the Balrog isn't EVIL - he is misunderstood and was created by the inequity and indifference of the elves, humans, dwarves and hobbits. The Balrog is a fucking VICTIM of the machine of the entitled beings of the surface world.
These people are justifying that there is no actual Tolkien canon that states male elves had long hair... and people are coming back with quote after quote from the Silmarillion, from the LoTR, from the Hobbit... descriptions, elven lore, poems, that constantly describe elves as having long flowing hair.
Elven males have long hair. A short haired elven male would stick out like a Blonde haired 6'2" 280 pound Japanese guy. Dwarven women have *beards*.
Orcs and Goblins and Trolls are monolithically EVIL races. Middle Earth is a place of black and white dichotomies. It is, by Tolkien's own admission, blatantly in the books - a time in Northern European prehistory ages before our recorded history. The Hobbit describes that Hobbits are still around, but they avoid the big folk and are excellent at hiding from us.
People are suggesting that if Tolkien would be turning in his grave because of the Amazon adaptation of his work (and he certainly would...) that he would probably hate ALL of the interpretations of his stories. That may be true - but just because he might have hated previous versions doesn't justify perverting it even FURTHER from the original source. It is like, "Tolkien may have created the world - but fuck him, he is long since dead, and we'll do what we want with it..."
While also claiming to love the thing he created that they're destroying.
And I think that *this* is happening because the media has shills embedded in Middle Earth with well rehearsed and scripted counters to objections they KNOW loyal fans are going to voice. You don't need an ARMY of them... you need a couple of very persuasive ones that will create a following of OTHERS ready to jump on their bandwagon.
Any criticism of what we've seen revealed of Amazon's RoP series is ALREADY racist or sexist. The idea that loyal fans see the work being twisted and perverted and moved outside of the RULES OF THE UNIVERSE defined by the guy who created that universe is unlikely. Nope - just racists and sexists. White males gatekeeping the Tolkien world from people of color and women - because... I don't know... it is our *precious*... and while Monolithically Evil Orcs is *racism* - assuming that we're all jealously keeping Middle Earth to ourselves - and ourselves are all straight white males - because we're as covetous of Middle Earth as Gollum was of the One Ring... isn't RACISM... it is... "speaking truth to power in the name of equality, tolerance, and inclusion."
It's all bullshit. I guess I should be happy they're ruining these things for me now BEFORE I give them a chance, rather than springing the bullshit on me after I've already paid them my money for admission.
My longtime DM and great friend is currently deployed to Kosovo at the moment as part of the NATO force there, which is actually pretty great since just a year or so ago he was in the Ukraine, so I'm really hoping if things go truly sideways there that this assignment will keep him out of consideration for deployment to the neighbor states.
In any case he is GMT-1 so trying to voice game means he would be talking loudly in the middle of the night in some cases. Apparently the walls are thin so we're exploring all the ways to keep in the mix and have fun as a group.
He was obviously bored to tears on Sunday and was using the dicebot on Discord to roll up a bunch of characters so I pulled out the Pathefinders v2 starter box I picked up for a song on the pre-Christmas Humble Bundle charity deal and started DMing to him in Infocom style, all text. Another group member saw what was going on and jumped in to offer advice and I added her into the group. I used a hastily modified version of the pre-gen characters and added in some of my own tweaked magic-item flavor. We had a great time in something very reminiscent of Citadel style messages and plan to add another player and do it again this weekend.
It's been a long while since I DM'ed so it was nice to get over that mental hurdle and feel that creative rush that DMing with friends can give. They defeated the giant rats in the cellar of the Otori Fishery without having to retreat and fun was had by all.
That is awesome. I want this to be something that can happen in VR... where we're sitting around a game table, with maps, screens, dice... we can all see one another's avatars. Hell, something like this should work as both a VR and a desktop game.
I want the "fantasy" graphics to be primitive enough - tokens, lead figures, whatever - that I am envisioning the game in my MIND. I'm sick of virtual 3D worlds generated by computers. My mind's eye is far higher resolution.
Mon Feb 28 2022 21:55:57 MST from thanatosMy longtime DM and great friend is currently deployed to Kosovo at the moment as part of the NATO force there, which is actually pretty great since just a year or so ago he was in the Ukraine, so I'm really hoping if things go truly sideways there that this assignment will keep him out of consideration for deployment to the neighbor states.
In any case he is GMT-1 so trying to voice game means he would be talking loudly in the middle of the night in some cases. Apparently the walls are thin so we're exploring all the ways to keep in the mix and have fun as a group.
He was obviously bored to tears on Sunday and was using the dicebot on Discord to roll up a bunch of characters so I pulled out the Pathefinders v2 starter box I picked up for a song on the pre-Christmas Humble Bundle charity deal and started DMing to him in Infocom style, all text. Another group member saw what was going on and jumped in to offer advice and I added her into the group. I used a hastily modified version of the pre-gen characters and added in some of my own tweaked magic-item flavor. We had a great time in something very reminiscent of Citadel style messages and plan to add another player and do it again this weekend.
It's been a long while since I DM'ed so it was nice to get over that mental hurdle and feel that creative rush that DMing with friends can give. They defeated the giant rats in the cellar of the Otori Fishery without having to retreat and fun was had by all.
Tue Mar 01 2022 12:46:50 MST from ParanoidDelusions <paranoiddelusions@wallofhate.com>That is awesome. I want this to be something that can happen in VR... where we're sitting around a game table, with maps, screens, dice... we can all see one another's avatars. Hell, something like this should work as both a VR and a desktop game.
I want the "fantasy" graphics to be primitive enough - tokens, lead figures, whatever - that I am envisioning the game in my MIND. I'm sick of virtual 3D worlds generated by computers. My mind's eye is far higher resolution.
This kind of ties in with my post in the VR room, so I'm precisely with you on that thought.
Yeah.. see... I say this all the time. I miss Ultima 3. I think that was the high point. It was OPEN world. You could be a thug, you could be a saint, you could be a paladin, you could be a rogue - but it wasn't defined in the game, it was in how you PLAYED the game. The graphics were crude... just representations of what was happening... icon based gaming - so you SAW the game in your head.
When things got good enough that Garriott could graphically convey HIS vision and strictly tell HIS story the way HE wanted it played - the franchise suffered, because the freedom of individual visualization and character pathing was destroyed.
And it never came back. If 20 different people play Skyrim, the visual and game play PERCEPTION is the same for all of them. Sure, they can make variations in the way they achieve the end - but you're going to be the same characters doing the same scenarios and the graphics are so well defined you're all going to describe the same basic things...
Ultima 3 was so rough that 20 different players would all come away with 20 different unique perspectives of what the game meant to them.
It was *better* *despite* the limitations of the machines running the games.
Wed Mar 02 2022 18:46:04 MST from thanatos
Tue Mar 01 2022 12:46:50 MST from ParanoidDelusions <paranoiddelusions@wallofhate.com>That is awesome. I want this to be something that can happen in VR... where we're sitting around a game table, with maps, screens, dice... we can all see one another's avatars. Hell, something like this should work as both a VR and a desktop game.
I want the "fantasy" graphics to be primitive enough - tokens, lead figures, whatever - that I am envisioning the game in my MIND. I'm sick of virtual 3D worlds generated by computers. My mind's eye is far higher resolution.
This kind of ties in with my post in the VR room, so I'm precisely with you on that thought.
Wed Mar 02 2022 22:12:08 MST from ParanoidDelusions <paranoiddelusions@wallofhate.com>It was *better* *because of* the limitations of the machines running the games.
Fixed
Works for me.