Its eating my life. I’ve ground a Tauren Warrior up to L38, ten levels of that are thanks to two dungeon dives lead by the Wanderer butchering everything with his l85 Orc as myself & Mr. E trailed behind frantically trousering loot and trying not to attract any attention. The big things thats struck me is how much more painful this all would have been if I hadn’t had the rest of the gang to a) hand me a pile of gold and b) a stack of big bags on day one. Slot juggling all the loot and bits from mining, fishing and engineering would have been such a pain in the ass without all those bags. Also, I’ve run down my gold stash by about 70gps, the majority of which was blown on a pile of Moss Agates for engineering and a recipe for mudfish so I could actually level my cooking with fishing.

I’m not loving it the same way as I *love* Civilization, Homeworld, Mass Effect, etc but its got me hooked. I’m putting in four hour stretches traipsing about hills punching gorillas to mine iron because thats all I can level on. If someones going to tell me that there are spiderboots that let you climb steep slopes, I’m going to be pissed. Right now once I get to a flying mount then that’ll be it, all these people looking for help can kiss my ass, I’ll be HALOing in to grab their ores and dissappearing. Also; I’m getting to the point of hating the Alliance, ganking bastards. Iron zones tend to be hazardous, but I’ve my engineering up until I need magecloth and mithril materials now, so looks like I’m going to have to start sneaking into high level zones to loot metals again. This was what I was doing at the start in the Stranglethorn Cape – happily with a Kodo you can outrun a pirate on foot no matter what level he is.

I like some of the little quests; I find I wander about off course a lot trying to find my way up hills to that bloody node thats just out of reach. Fishing is another one that drags you off into wierd places, and one i liked was finding Princess Poobah off on Jaguero Isle. I could just see this battered tauren prospector listening to this tauren princess wittering on about needing her shoes back from King Kong down the coast and thinking “if you weren’t standing on that gold lode, no chance”. Also, now that I’ve found theres a point I’m shooting every random critter I can find – beaches and crabs are fairly efficient.

Certainly solves the ‘what will I do til Mass Effect 3′ question.

Well not really spoiler warning but hell, I don’t want to even risk it. Two things. Three. First – hurray! Awesome! Penny Arcade said ‘narrative juggernaut’ and I whole heartedly concur. I loved the story this time around.

Second – Hurray! Useable melee attack button! In fact the combat interface as a whole is rather nice, even if the gun technology has gotten a little retarded* the ‘I’m about to die’ indicator of meat injury – past shield damage – is this sort of pulsing encroaching veiny ring around the screen. This gets properly intense when you’re in the thick of a fire fight and are trying to scramble for cover. Combine this with the new melee button and you get moments of pure awesome where faced with a asari biotic about to blow the last half-inch of life out of you, it makes more sense to storm the position and beat them to death with the butt of your rifle because that keeps them too off balance to unleash force lightning on you…

Third – and this is the spoilerish bit – your Secretary? Comms Ensign? Whatever – pretty much parks herself at your terminal and coo’s ‘take me captain, I’m yours’ if you talk to her at all. This… well again … oh let me start from the beginning.

I figured out a few things a couple of months ago – that you could play ME1 again as a character, how to make the DLC’s work out here in the back of beyond etc, which all lead to me playing back through ME1 with an eye to exactly how it would crop up in ME2. I took Renegade John, who I’d thought had gotten a short shrift the first time around. This time he just went full-auto renegade – pretty much hunt down your rabid dog (Saren) by unleashing a fiercer one (Shepard). This was a lot more fun – ass kicking and crushing things, following Ubers ethos that was something like an Imperial Inquisitor; if I’m here, the time for ‘due process’ and such like is past. A Spectre getting called in means people are going to die. God will know his own.

Played though the newly added ‘When the Sky Falls’ DLC as part of this – it fit my ‘humans in imminent peril’ criteria for diversion from the mission so that was ok. Butchered everyone, lost the hostages, never mind. Lost Kaiden and Wrex on Virmire this time around – then pitched up in bed with the Asari. From there to the finale was truly awesome to see the difference between trying to do it as a low level dude the first time around and not on a second loop as the same class of character. Being able to *scare* the bad guy was cool.

But that was just prep. Set up for ME2** if you will. First time in I did it in what I like to think of as ‘Mass Effect the proper way’ – which is play through with what you think are the correct decisions, without trying to meta game it. Some times that means you stop someone from shooting someone, defend the helpless and find the dudes fish. Other times it means you chuck that fucker off a mega-scraper, beat a confession out of a suspect and leave the guys father to go down for a crime he didn’t commit. Its all about saving the galaxy – no, I don’t have time for that trivia or yes, thats a nasty threat that needs to be stopped.

So, I started as Renegade John once again and carried on as before. Started up, wandered around a bit, figured out what the hell was going on and had some issues. John had his head in a strange place by the end of ur-renegade ME 1 playthru. The first minute of ME2 is the Normandy getting shredded by The Big Bad. John wakes up in a regen tank… somewhat disturbed by this… as he wandered around, trying to untangle what the hell and getting no support from the fucking council despite hauling their lame asses out of the fire he gets access to another ship with all the aforementioned stuff – including Ensign Perky. Renegade John’s attitude has always been ‘end not the means’ but even then, theres a piratey line you don’t cross and banging one of your crew on the railing of the astro-nav console is on the far side of it.

Trailing about doing missions, I was struck again by ME’s judgement. The option to ‘take the soul-sucking monster for a concubine’ isn’t something a renegade does, its something someone terminally stupid would do! For the love of little apples, ‘we’re here to hunt it because it kills what it mates with’ does not logically lead to ‘hey sexy monster, lets get it on’. I did like that this time it was slightly more reasonable to get to know your crew this time. The characters of the shipmates are great – some I liked a lot, others not so much, but that was intentional according to the designers. There were some character related options I did miss; you were shoe-horned a bit into your attitudes towards certain things I could have done with an ‘ah fuck it’ option at a few places. Particularly some of your old crew – Liara and Ashley/Kaiden (depending) both give you static that you don’t stick around to argue and I’d have made other arguments. F’rinstance you wake up in Cerberus clutches but say you head straight to the Alliance they don’t want to know you, and you don’t get the option to tell Cerberus to bugger off and then have to take bullshit from people about working for Cerberus when you’re not allowed leave! But… I think thats a good indication of the depth of character interaction. I also liked that they let the fact that all these different people were stuffed on a ship come out – sometimes you’ve to go break up fights between some of the polar opposites, which is fun and also satisfying because its sensible that something like that should happen. You can have sensible conversations with a lot of the ordinary crew too which is very cool.

As before though, Renegade John doing it ‘properly’ gets the short end of the stick compared to the angelic Paragon Jane; where John was forced to make some tough calls because hadn’t gotten high enough in either renegade or paragon to unlock certain persuasive skills, Jane could just pull a Picard and make people magically see reason by the same stage in the game as all her choices had been Paragon. (Mostly. Sometimes even the best of people can’t resist stabbing up a brigand with an arc welder while his back is turned).

I loved the settings; again like the beach on Virmire, I would have loved to just wander around on some of the settings, they seemed awesome beyond awesome. The overheard conversations are fantastic, great little slices of life. Some of them are hilarious, some are kind of sad (asari girl who’s going to live a thousand years talking to her short-lived salarian step-dad about remembering him when he’s gone) but the amount of time I spent hanging around earwigging on randomers is a very good sign of how good those little pieces are. Some reviews had it that the settings were linear but given that the even slightly more open ones lead to me wandering around (as you would) trying to figure out where exactly in some giant skyscraper city you’d find an X-widget. I think the linearity was a good idea; look at all the chaos and adventure packed into just earth, in just our era. Imagine trying to sift out the signal from the noise on multiple worlds of significantly higher complexity. Thanks, but I’ll pass on that bit of realism.

Here again, where Renegade John had gone through it on ‘its the mission, stupid!’ and taken no chances with leaving live enemies behind, Paragon Jane had turned over every rock in the galaxy (even gone to new systems to find new rocks that might be unturned), fetched every stuck kitten out of its tree and councilled every stim addict and addled pregnant woman she could find. Thus, John went through, found stuff and did things, and then Jane would find the same rooms now stuffed full of people she’d helped or let live or variously touched before – crooks gone straight (John had executed them), psychic message-drones from reincarnated aliens (John had dissolved the reincarnation in acid), and addled fanbois trying to save the galaxy (John had menaced and pistol-whipped them iirc). Janes inbox also filled with random messages from people she’d helped and again had people falling over her to ‘come look me up when you finish doing whatever it is you do’.

The radio news has improved significantly between ME1 and ME2, from being kind of dull to being fantastic, often mentioning things that Jane had done in her previous adventures. The news on the scumpit of Omega was particularly brilliant, given they don’t like humans at all. Actually, one thing I do remember now – Illium, the asari planet – after wandering around for too long Jane was becoming twitchy at the ‘valley of the valley girls’ squeakiness. Didn’t affect me while I was playing John. Odd.

Missions. Mostly pretty good – I liked the unusual ones a lot too – a sneaky one with Kasumi, a sort of extended club crawl for Samarra, a stalk with Thane. All the rest were various frag fests on various terrain, fair enough, but I think a few more ‘Mission Impossible’ style ones like the finale where you can utilise the fact that you’ve got a spaceship, a shuttle, a hovertank and a buttload of spec ops people could be fun – even if its just a ‘fit the peg to the hole’ style of common sense and maybe a show down. I have to say I thought the main finale was a bit… odd, I don’t think their big reveal had the oomph they thought it had, to me it was just ‘wuh? really?’ but never mind. Essentially I thought their final mcguffin could have been given a different and far more satisfactory form, especially since they’d achieved some admirably grim and spooky settings and set pieces on some of the interim story missions. Difficulty through out was good; challenging enough that I hurt my hand pounding on the desk in frustration on more than one occassion, this is good, I want mileage out of a game. The various bad guys were interesting, the howling zombie husk hordes have gotten significantly nastier for ME2.

So basically the game splits in three blocs – main arc missions, recruitment missions and sidequests. The recruitment missions come in pairs of aquire team member and assist team member tidy up loose ends prior to suicide run. John, on ‘its the mission stupid’, again (again!) made the cardinal error of believing his briefings that ‘its of the utmost urgency’ that he go retrieve the SignalWidget. So he did. This then slightly later triggers the Kicker. Now, sensibly, the Kicker opens the Finale but also has a clock built into it. John was set to go deal with it but a bunch of the team were complaining about unfinished business. He threat assessed, dealt with the ones that were Clear and Present (you, with the plan to cripple a geth beachhead, we’ll do that – you, with the sickness, take some pills we may not survive this anyway), then set off to fix the Finale. Alas, he’d done too much before setting off on it, so by the time he did it, even doing quite well, the whole expedition turned into a blood bath with massive casualties, both recruited operatives and among the crew.

So, when the credits rolled and the option to continue or restart came up, I hit continue to do some of the missions I skipped…. and then was horrified to find it really was a ghost ship. Those two crew who were usually thick as gossiping thieves in the crew quarters? One of them didn’t make it, the other one just sits there alone now. Ensign Perky? Eaten. The wisecracking heatsink crew? Eaten. The two scots engineers who had some of the best lines in the game? Now theres just one of them. It was like the Ship of the Dead, I swear any sense of victory or satisfaction turned to ash.

Thus, replaying as Paragon Jane I ignored the boss mans prompt entirely, made sure that every single one of my crew were recruited and all tucked in snugly in the ship with loose ends tied up, closure achieved and various wayward children stomped on (yes, this was the Paragon path, I swear). Similarly, Jane looted the galaxy for ores and cash to make sure that the ship was kitted out and that everyone was holstering state-of-the-art and nothing less. Thus, when the Kicker came up again she struck a dramatic pose on the bridge and said “Do it NAU!’ sending the ship racing through the gates of hell and putting high cal cryo rounds from her Widow anti-tank rifle though the heads of anyone who got in her way. So, mission accomplished with much the same outcome***, except Jane returns to a ship full of cheering crew (even if Ensign Perky was a bit traumatised by nearly being liquidated) and sets out saving the galaxy again, this time with her squeeze on tap in the captains stateroom (Private sector – has its benefits over the old public sector Alliance Navy). Again. Even where this time John got the girl, it seemed cold comfort.

Thus ends ME2, with the teasers along some of the load screens of ‘hang on to your saved games to port to ME3′. Hurry the hell up Bioware! Though, from their pov, no hurry at all – I’m both shelling out for every DLC they drop and I even shelled out £50 for a Limited Edition Collectors version of the game just to get the DLC code for the limited armour and rifle. I am revenue stream for them, I’m guessing they’ll feed us DLC’s for a while yet. I can live with that :)

Mass Effect – if you haven’t played it (you shouldn’t have read this far) but do anyway.

* Two general technological things that hacked me off were the new ‘improved’ gun tech and the replacement of the Mako tank with the Hammerhead hovertank. First the gun-tech; I liked my old weapons; if they overheated up, then they took a while to cool down & become functional, you worked it into your strategies. Sometimes it was a pain, but you could always switch out to alternative weapons if the fighting was really thick. In ME2, all weapons use standard heat-sinks, basically universal ammo packs in function. The heat builds up as before but then you eject the heatsink and slap in another. Great, keeps a rapid rate of fire going… until you run out of heat sinks. This is gruesome if you’re using an Assault rifle which is supposed to be a storm of lead; multiple times I ran out of ammo for the rifle, then the shotgun and was reduced to plinking at the swine with my pistol. I could very much empathise with Zaeed’s long wistful discourse on his old assault rifle and how much he missed it. Solid step backwards in tech, plus I thought the old version with its ‘future, different’ feel was just more spacey and cool.

Second – Maaaako, come back all is forgiven. I was never one of the anti-Mako fanatics, especially since the replacement is ARSE! Again, maybe the maneuverability is better but the armament is crap, a rocket launching main gun, compared to the heavy railgun and coax machine gun of the Mako – in fact, all I want is my coax back, is that too much to ask? Why did you take it away in the first place!? When you’ve had to drive up to some stubborn Geth to pry him out of cover, you don’t want to pound him with high explosives – you want to shred him with machinegun fire or squish him under your tires. Oh yes, the Hammerhead doesn’t have tires. Boo. I want my Mako back.

** I finally got my grubby paws on it after a half dozen tries involving lots of different online and real stores and two different versions. Finally, finally I get it, install, start noodle about making sure the settings are optimised and that the online bit works, then I hit go. And stare at the screen as it flickers between two frames for a while before I realise, seeing this for the first time of course, that it had crashed. Never mind. Reboot. ME2 crashed a lot on me, at all sorts of random places, but I think it was mostly due to my machine over-heating.

*** The big choice at the end if ‘destroy the McGuffin or bring it back’ but doing it ‘properly’ I can’t think of any reason to bring it back. The entire game has been spent going site to site where research teams have been overcome and monsterised by dead and dormant pieces of kit from just these same people. Everything I’ve witnessed through out the two games says that contact with these technologies equals madness, death. Keeping it around and worse, flooding it with researchers/fodder is practically guaranteeing trouble. No way, not on my watch, boom was Johns thinking. Janes thinking ran more towards ‘even if I thought this was a good idea, you sir are an untrustworthy arse and you can kiss mine’ – Boom.

In both cases, these games demonstrate really nicely how developers should create sequels. the best sequel keeps the core feel of the original game, and adds new depth and interesting features.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2 is a Titan; it is the largest dollar-value entertainment product launch ever. The original COD4 was something of a sneak success. The single player campaign had all the qualities of a full movie, with interesting and distinctive characters, and varied plot.

What drove the game to real success though, was the multiplayer system. The main innovation of COD4 was that it introduced MMO-like qualities such as XP, loot (in the form of weapons unlocks) and quests (in the form of challenges such as kills requiered for particular weapons). BattleField 2 had some of these features, but COD4 took a much more arcade-oriented, small-squad tactical model. It was twitchier, and combined with the XBox matchmaking system to make a tight game with accessible progression.

The sequel, COD4:MW2 extends the multiplayer and adds a new mission-based cooperative ‘special ops’ game type. If, like me, you dive straight into the multiplayer, the game asks you to consider the single player missions. Infinity Ward correctly inferred that the real meat is in the online multiplayer.

Your loadout in the new game includes an expanded secondary weapon list, including shotguns and rocket launchers. They have moved some of the more broken perks into death-streaks, which are activated by dying lots. This means that you get a chance to come back with a bit of help if you’re having a bad round.

There are also new kill-streak rewards. You can now unlock them and pick three from the list which runs from UAV to the 25-kill-streak, round-ending nuke.

Everything also has a challenge associated with it, all the weapons and all the perks. They give unlocks including thermal sights and heartbeat sensors.

The whole thing makes the game far more customisable, and rewards almost every choice you make for your class.

The original Assassin’s Creed was a great game, but was widely regarded as being too repetitive and a little shallow. On the plus side, the core mechanic of free flowing parkour was the best of any game. The sequel took the criticism head on, and added more side missions and the ability to buy upgraded gear, as well as an upgraded base of operations. While these aren’t super-deep, they add up to a very nice increase in the depth of the game.

It’s possible for games to go too far. I found GTA IV extremely frustrating because there was hour upon hour of tutorials for the many different mechanics that were added, which all needed their own tutorial, and which were not really skip-able.

It will be very interesting to see what the next two editions of these games are like. The third Assassin’s Creed game is likely to be set in the game’s near-future setting. I was thinking that I would like to see a 19th-Century setting, but I presume they won’t go for a third historical setting, though it is possible.

Overall, both sequels are excellent; I recommend them to anyone who might like them.

Surfacescapes Demo Walkthrough from Visual Story TAs on Vimeo.

[SPOILER WARNINGS - All what follows]
What this meant was that rather than explore down the history trees of the NPC’s I tended to shout ‘we’re soldiers, damnit’ and glower from the command station as we chased the bad guy. So first time around, people died, other people acted like I should give a damn and mostly my take was ‘everyones expendable for the mission’ and so on. This was Renegade John, who was not a pleasant person and will probably be most missed by the makers of high quality assault rifles (of which he was fond) when he finally buys the farm. John ignored the humans on the crew in favour of the alien Merc and renegade cop who were both suitably … results oriented for him. John never even figured out where one of the crew could be found on the ship.

Second time around, I played as Paragon Jane the Sniper War Hero, who was initially based on WWPD (What Would Picard Do?) who Felt Your Pain and Did The Right Thing. This went well, mostly, resolving through silver-tongued charm much of what Renegade John did through snarling intimidation. Where the charm became odd though was when after spending time actually getting to know my crew, after one mission not one, but two of them seperately decided that Paragon Jane was delicious and they would have some, please. I nearly fell off my chair laughing and figured that channeling Picard had some how turned into channeling Kirk…

Well fine, a somewhat bemused but flattered Jane carried on around the galaxy righting wrongs and cleaning up the Admirals embarassing mistakes on the premise that if the council didn’t think there was anything to worry about and they’d been around a lot longer, who was she to gain say them. Mostly she did a lot of by-the-way mineral prospecting because she like driving around in the Mako and found that generally any settlement she buzzed past that took pot shots at a clearly marked, heavily armed APC was usually full of bad MoFo’s who needed a lesson in hospitality from a 155mm railgun slug. Then all of a sudden she gets back to the ship after yet another mission to find she has to talk down the two crew who’ve decided to make an issue over who’s the commanders personal plaything. Again, I fell around laughing, even Kirk never had to deal with this (afaik?).

By the time I actually got to the ‘this is a suicide mission bit’ – where John had been ‘shut up and suit up’, Jane was ‘oops, conflict of interest, um…’ and then – hilariously – scarpered off to rescue her honey leaving one of the hapless marines to hold down the trigger on a nuke – and this was the good and righteous thing to do in the eyes of the computer. Needless to say, the rescuee was very grateful for not being radioactive ash (more on this later).

Back to the Council, reported on what I found and again they went ‘meh, we’ll send some guys’. John had shouted and thrown things, Jane was still somewhat concerned she wasn’t hallucinating, so went with it. Once back in space, John had gone straight for the bad guys jugular, brushed off the crew whinging about dying on the morrow and got on with it. Jane took a big detour to find some antiques and kick the things known to be threats like invading Geth as opposed to what was potentially a prolonged hallucination that had been induced in both her and the bad guy by the same broken mcguffin. When Jane finally decides loose ends have been tied up enough and goes after the bad guy, again, the ‘night before battle’ plays out except this time Jane and the rescuee end up in the infamous Mass Effect sex scene, and again, I fell off my chair laughing.

Poor Renegade John, doubted and unthanked, like Ahab focused on his nemesis while the happy warrior Paragon Jane was the apple of her Admirals eye, beloved war hero to the public, flying around the galaxy with her crew fighting to share her bed. I think the system treated John a little unfairly – possessed colonists, people whinging about weapons research and all the Stuff That Doesn’t Matter If The Reapers Come – these things he brushed aside, drove over or filled full of incendiary death. This was because John took the mission seriously – Doom is coming, no I do not have time to hear about your sister, or fix what you dropped, or tell you its going to be ok – you’re a goddamn Colonial Marine, rub some dirt on it and get back in line!

This even came down to the very start – someone said ‘the captains waiting’ – so John went to talk to the Captain. Jane stopped to chat on the way – and actually got to know the Red Shirt from mission one; John had no idea who this guy was so when he earned his Red Shirt, he was somewhat less than crushed. Jane had actually seen the equivalent of the photo of his yacht, the Live Forever and went ‘aw…’ and meant it when she said ‘its a shame he got killed’ later.

But to get to the title of my post – playing through as John, its just and FPS, something like Half Life 2 – the people are there and you’re kind of attached to some of them but when bad shit inevitably happens, its not a tragedy. Playing through as Jane, actually getting attached to some of the people, I was really torn up at the end of it. These were my crew, I wanted that button from Civ where it lets you play on afterwards, just to keep beetling about the galaxy. I wanted to go sit on the beach back in Ilos and bullshit with them. I felt we’d grown as people *snfs*.

It managed to get me as invested in the characters as Buffy or Farscape at its best. This is from a 2D media which is at its core and FPS. I thought I was past all that, if not entirely immune, and so fully immersive, dedicated RP simsense would probably be my doom. Much like WoW, it is going on my preemptive Nyet! list.

Mass Effect 2 is due out in about six months or so, should tide me through next rainy season. Its supposed to tap the existing saves from ME1 and draw on the choices you made to set up the new character. Just enough time between this and then to play through it as a Terran Supremacist and see if I can surpass Renegade John’s badness (he kept getting brownie points for actually doing his job which kept him somewhat balanced). I think an biotic-slinging adept could be fun…

Luckily, Fantasy Flight Games picked up the franchise, and their books have, from my point of view, been pretty good so far. From what my (evil) GM has said, though, there does seem to be a bit of White-Wolf Syndrome, where they don’t let the GM in on much more information than the players, making an integrated campaign hard while the books are still coming out.

For those of you not familiar, the first game was about being the retinue for an Imperial Inquisitor. I presume we’re building to playing Space Marines, but each game is taking its time, and so much the better.

The next offering from FFG is an extension to the universe, where the party play Rogue Traders. Rogue Traders seem to be somewhere between break-bulk cargo traders and corsairs. The Rogue Trader has a warrant that lets him sail his vessel on the edge of the Imperium, and can end up with (limited) contact with Xenos.

The joy of the 40k universe is that everything is on a cosmic scale. Even when playing Dark Heresy, I had a real sense that we were cut off on each planet, and only rarely able to cross the vast, deadly expanse. I hope the same feeling can appear in Rogue Trader. The ships are vast, kilometers long and with tens of thousands of crew.

No Enterprise, these ships are thick, heavy, dirty and mysterious. The crew are superstitious, ignorant peasants, slaves to inherited roles tending great machines.

The possibility of playing out an entire game of mediaeval court power inside the walls of a ship flying through the Empyrean Waste is something I really look forward to.

You’d barely have to leave the ship to play out an epic tale.

Instead, you can have a written account.

The convention this year had several surreal elements to it. The first one was the Friday night was better attended than before. I have to say that I was impressed with the numbers. People came down and played in the LARP, and we were introduced to the fact that Doom had taken the lead of a platoon of L5R-playing Germans, who he led through the con and straight into the Sudetenland.

The LARPs seemed to run fairly consistently well. I heard good things about the Fan & Sabre, including the fact that the whole LARP were dancing in a courtly fashion, which must have been quite the scene.

We had at least 4 tables for tabletops for each event. There is a definite correlation between having BRO as your RPG dude and good RPG attendance. It’s been shown at Gaelcon and Leprecon now. A Kudo each to him & Siskington.

The Guest for the Con was Richard Borg, creator of Memoir ’44. I have to say, Richard proved a superlative guest. He added a friendly, avuncular quality. Richard was very eager and joined in games, told interesting stories, and even spent some time playing with the two baby con attendees this year. I had the honour of victory over him in the inaugural Battle of Hoth, under Rebel Alliance General Honan’s direction. The real heroes of Hoth were Princess Organa, and her unit composed of elements from the Echo Base Reserve Fizz Band, Woodwind section. Led by Senator Organa, the Bith managed not only to inflict critical damage to an AT-At, but drive the 20 metre tall walker back across the open, snowy battlefield. Though none of the Bith survived a second engagement with the Imperial Walker, another unit under my command delivered the killer blow after Gorman made me re-roll my victorious grenade result.

2009 will live as a year of infamy for another reason. This year, Le Mysterieux Table Cinq de Monté Cristo was defeated by Sample Number Nine. I am still in considerable shock, but suffice to say that we will be back next year, with a fully armed and armoured battle station.

The staff and committee this year were awesome. The Con went off with surprising ease, and all the good numbers (attendees, kotei, players at games) were up. We even had free pizza from Just-Eat, which rocked.

The closing ceremony was fun. Noodle instigated Order 66, which left the committee a smoking ruin of nerf-clustered corpses. We also had a short slide show to remember icecream by. I will leave that below for your perusal.

Closing

So as you’ve probably guessed from the opening, my rollercoaster relationship with that online monstrosity, which was riding high about a month ago, is once again hurtling down into “Oh-my-god-I’m-wasting-my-fucking-time”sville for the third time. This time around it comes complete with hourlong “Log on and do nothing” sessions, interspersed with the occasional 5 hour Naxx grind that makes me want to kill myself. So, having lost this fight on points twice before I can see how this is going to play out, and I’m throwing in the towel early this time, before my metaphorical boxer suffers too much brain damage.

But, much like a junkie starting out onto the straight and narrow, I found myself in desperate need of a methadone fix. First up I tried Painkiller.

Painkiller is a weird game. Imagine if Quake and Serious Sam had a love child. This would be the game the child wanted to grow up to be. It’s really fast paced, has tons of spawning enemies, and a hilarious cavalcade of weapons to mow them all down with. It seems Painkiller decided they were tired of the “2nd attack button just doing a similar attack to the 1st one” stuff that every game seems to have these days. You know…you get a rocket launcher. It fires rockets with the left mouse button and lobs grenades with the right one. Painkiller pretty much said “Fuck that,” and combined their grenade launcher with a gun that fires wooden stakes ala Von Goosewing from Count Duckula. Go check out the demo, if only for the arsenal of unbelievably ridiculous (and fun) implements of death. The whole thing is only 3 levels long, and you should play through it in about an hour (less if you’re not the ham fisted R-tard that I am), and the boss fight is pretty damn cool.

However, good and all as it was, I was not prepared to get the full version. And by “get the full version” I mean download it illegally from some torrent site. And that’s the real gauge these days, isn’t it? If I can’t be arsed stealing it, it’s probably not the game for me. Then it occurred to me…maybe the same inexplicable cosmic alignment that occasionally strikes Gabe over on Penny Arcade had affected me as well.

“Maybe that’s what I need, an RPG,” I thought, and set off in search of foul monsters to slay, gold to procure, and an insanely complex plot to ignore.

…to be continued.

It got me thinking about Gaelcon, and about writing con scenarios in general. Xaosseed suggested this a while back, but I thought I would put down my observations on how I think scenarios should be written to help GMs at cons run better games.

Structure & Length

The recurring question when faced with a blank, mocking page is how to fill it. In my experience, I tend to find that I tend to wait ’til much too late and then totally over-write.

A Con scenario is a particular thing. It needs to fit into a three hour slot, which can in reality be as little as two and a half hours. I think that it can be useful to break up the scenario into a set of scenes.

One scene can be something like a fight, or a conversation, or a travel or something of that sort. They need to be discrete and purposeful. Ideally, you can flesh out the interstices between scenes for the GM, but they should be able to do some of that themselves as well, and will need to given the way players can dance on a scenario writer’s intentions.

For length, I would recommend 5±2 scenes for the complete scenario. That means that there needs to be at the absolute minimum a beginning, middle and end, but that’s probably not enough. A five scene structure might look like this:

1. Setup
2. First Task
3. Reveal / Conflict
4. Second Task
5. Conclusion

Scenes

Setup means getting the characters sitting down, making it clear who their characters are. In your timing, you should budget for time getting into character and solving setting questions. Some parties are very slow to set up, while others get in within ten mins.

Tasks are how I am describing extended system oriented events. These could be combats, sneaking events, interrogations or long puzzles. I think two of these is enough in most scenarions, but obviously some scenes might look more like tasks as well.

Reveal/Conflict depending on the shape of the narrative, this is where the initiative will normally change, either with the party or their enemies taking charge for the remainder. Normally this should be where the party can say ‘we know what to do, now we need to do it’.

Conclusion is commonly forgotten. It’s more than the epilogue, though that is also good. Ideally, you will have built the scenario towards this scene, and have shown as much as possible in advance to the players. Player anticipation is arguably the most important way to build a railroad scenario like a con game, and so the more they know that their characters only suspect, the better.

The Onion is the best.