Back to campaigning and looming October deadlines

This weekend will by my first D&D game in just about a year.  A lot has happened since then on this rollercoaster of life.  I'm excited to be back in the game, to gather round the table with friends I haven't seen in a while and rolling dice like the good old days.  It is also an opportunity to debut a new revision of the system I've been tinkering with for close to four years now.  Turns out taking time off gives you a new clarity towards what you were designing.

Dark Souls: Choice in Weapons

This time I'm going to look at choosing a weapon and how it is handled in Dark Souls.  The most basic thing to take a look at is whether or not you can wield it, that is do you meet or exceed the stat requirement?  As I mentioned before the Souls series is designed so that you can complete the game right from the get go and that is still true here.  Most straight swords required a decent but average mix of strength and dexterity, curved weapons require more dexterity while axes and hammers require more strength to heft properly.  For the most part almost all weapons can be wielded from the get go provided they fit the base stats your archetype gives you (your thief won't be wielding morning stars and your iron clad knight won't be firing any bows from the get go).  The only weapons that require stats beyond what is given at level 1 are the extremes:  the freakishly large swords, axes, and shields that require equally absurd strength requirements or the specialist katanas that require a good deal more Dex to make use of their Iai strike and elongated edge.

Dark Souls: Fantastic Vistas

As I emphasized in the previous post Dark Souls is an electronic game that most closely emulates the feel of old school D&D.  It is simple yet contains a great deal of depth, the more effort you put into learning to control it and understanding the inner workings of its world the more you will benefit and the easier you can progress.  As a longtime DM I find the idea of not just mechanics, but basic gameplay that motivates the players to become more engaged with handling their characters but most especially learning about the world you've created to be a very fascinating and coveted concept.  One way Dark Souls approaches this is simply the scenery and setting and the gorgeous vistas you can reach if you simply pay attention.

Happy Fourth of July

On the fourth of July

There is no better time for a medieval fantastical Captain America.

To make a cameo in our games

Dark Souls: Play Smarter (Play Cautiously)

Quote by Bruce Lee

Dark Souls makes no qualms about being a difficult game.  The world is dangerous and it wastes no time in telling you that.  It is a series where dying is a fact of life but also of gameplay.  You play either as a soul trapped within the Nexus beneath the confines of the Arch Demon ravaged world ala Demon's Souls.  Alternatively in Dark Souls you play as one cursed by undeath seeking to restore your humanity and rekindle the fire left in the world.  Dying is expected of you as it is deeply ingrained into these settings.  Those that die too often, that lose their humanity become hollow twisted versions of themselves, even NPCs can fall victim to this.  Death is not the end of the world.  Instead dying teaches you; it teaches you not to make that mistake again.  Should you possess the skill and the patience to return to where you perished you may reclaim all the souls (universal experience and monetary unit) and humanity (universal gameplay unit) that you had lost.  In this respect you are encouraged to keep playing, to get back to where you slipped up and start again without having starting anew.  Death does not impede progress, it makes you more prepared for what else awaits in your journey.  Death is the key to becoming great and fulfilling your destiny.  Death will force you to be smarter, and you will grow to be very cautious.

Swift Death from the upcoming Dark Souls 2

Dark Souls

Dark Souls: a game for the traditionalist, a game for the rising challenger, a game for the old school and a game for the new.  It is a game with a high bar of entry and an even steeper learning curve.  It is a game that turns away many but is deeply loved by a dedicated few.  It has turned heads for its old school resurgence and commitment to solid design and gameplay without the modern tactic of player handholding.  It makes no claims to be something that it is not, desiring only to be judged on its own merits.  It is a dungeon crawler and a world spanner, a game of survival and a game of frustration, a game of intricacy masked by bare simplicity.  It is also the cleanest adaptation of the spirit of Original D&D that has graced any console of the past; more so than TSR/SSI' offerings.  If you've got the time I'll try to explain why.

Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated

My oh my, the last post was in October of 2012.  An empty promise to return by December at the semesters close of my first foray into Grad school.  As you can imagine, life did not slow down but instead that roller coaster picked up quite a bit of steam.  In addition to the usual trifecta of work, school, and social life some things took a turn for the extreme at the start of the year.  I was preparing for my next career step which involves quite a bit of studying and physical readiness tests where my living situation became most dire, I wish this was my usual flair for exaggeration.  I'll spare you the gory details but it culminated in me having to move in the dead of night.  Fortunately for me I've got some great friends and I've been taken care of till I got back in my feet.  Now I'm settled in with some of my old friends, one of which has pledged to get me gaming again and I admit the siren call of clinking dice has not been far from my mind.

In the meantime I'd like to start posting again.  I've accrued a few posts in my hiatus, most of them dealing with very well done games I had played in my off time whose design decisions bear mentioning.  After that I want to start posting excerpts from the game system I was working on years ago.  As I mentioned earlier I'm preparing for a major career change and it is likely that I will not have the time to devote to this endeavor when I get in, not for perhaps a few years so I'd like to get this off the back burner while I can.  Plus I'd really like to get this out and published before the next rendition of D&D hits shelves.  I've purposefully avoided taking a look at any of the beta material to avoid influencing my work.  This has been quite difficult because I really like the design decisions Monte Cook makes and his reasoning for them.  The way I see it, the faster I get this hammered out the faster I can get back to reading and studying design, my odd hobby of choice.

Expect another post this week, I believe Dark Souls will be on the agenda.