I might add... to be fair, some of the indie designers that I talked to at Gencon seemed to be doing better this year than in past years. Wallets seemed to be opening up a bit more freely.
I can probably speak for the Eight Foot Llama guys. I'm a game designer and shared a booth with him in the past, and I've done most of their artwork for them.
Booths are pretty expensive at Gencon: $1000 for a 10x10' area at the cheapest, last I checked. I think Jim Doherty (head llama-herder) just had to make a business decision: Origins or GenCon. Since Origins is closer to him, and more boardgame-oriented, I think he chose that.
I think it's a "dirty little secret" that most booths at GenCon don't break even. I tried it two years with my company <cheap plug> Dogtown Games </cheap plug>. It's very hard for the companies to "make booth". That is, to make enough money to cover your expenses plus the cost of the booth. It helps if you have the "hit of Gencon".
Now, mind you, I know that some companies out there are making money hand over fist. However, most companies there, I think, use it as advertising. If you have a presence and shake enough hands, people will buy your games through external sources. It boosts sales, even if not directly.
More troubling to me is Eagle Games recently declaring bankruptcy, who were known for their gargantuan big-box games.
Since you are an independent than you probably see what an oligopolical stranglehold the Demirubs and the Republicrats have on the American political system.
I don't know what that has to do with anything. The majority of his corruption and criminal acts took place under the Clinton admin. So if anyone is "to blame" for letting this continue it's Clinton. And it could also be spun such that the Bush admin actually pursued him thus are the 'heroes' for taking down a 'villain".
First off, I'm not a fan of Clinton, and I never voted for the man. Some of the crap he signed into law was unforgivable. You implying that I'm a blueblood cardcarrying Lib-rul is off-base. I'm a registered Independent, and vote fairly purple-ly, in a very red state.
Despite my opinion of Clinton, I don't see how it could be his fault that a bunch of PRIVATE CORRUPT BUSINESSMEN who LOOTED PEOPLE'S LIFE-SAVINGS and funneled a good chunk of that change into the REPUBLICAN PARTY would be his fault. How do you think Clinton should have known about it, and how do you think he should have tried to stop it?
Are the Democrats exempt from corruption? Hell no. But I think when the current president and veep use the Enron private jet, and suck several hundred million dollars out of Ken Lay & company, that's notable. When such bribes (let's be real - it was quid pro quo) affects the policy of the country (which it undoubtably did, being part of Cheney's super-secret Energy Task Force) that's notable.
Personally, I leave politics out of it and try not to attribute things like this to politicians I either support or oppose, it helps keep me from making an ignorant ass of myself like you just did.
Well, I know you will be shocked (SHOCKED!) to find out that a good chunk of dough (to the tune of several hundred-thousand dollars) went to Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney.
Just last week a co-worker showed me Thinkfree Office Online which I thought was pretty impressive. Word-processor, spreadsheet, PowerPoint clone, all with 30MB of free disk space.
Warning: it's slow to get started the first time, because of massive Java-Fu.
Ideas are everyplace, and everyone has them. An idea, even a really good one, cannot be copyrighted. You can copyright the implementation of the idea (ie. the words or image) but you cannot copyright the idea itself.
The guys who wrote HB,HG didn't really come up with the idea on their own. I've read the book, and I remember a pretty thick bibliography where they got their ideas. What hypocrites. This is all huff and puff, and Mr. Brown shouldn't be too worried.
Yes, I would like to see the puzzles/internal story arranged in some sort of a linear fashion. If you have a linear story and scramble up the rooms, they shouldn't make sense.
Let me give an example. Last year, there was a section of the Dungeon where one of the party members was separated, and they had to rescue him two rooms later. Now, that is the sort of thing I'm talking about. You can't recover someone before he's lost. That's a _story_ bit, rather than a puzzle bit, and I found it really satisfying. It even gave me some opportunity for role-playing: "Okay, pretend you're paralyzed and captured by the spider." I was the player who was separated in our party. If only they had some minor encounter or activity backstage for me to do, it would have been even better. Regardless, that was one of the highlights of the TrueDungeon last year to me.
Even if there was a couple of those kind of situations in the dungeon, it would go a long way towards satisfying that craving I have to do actual role-playing. Furthermore, while I'm critiquing, on the back of the character cards, give a history and backstory to each PC. "Characters" should be more than a class and collection of stats. (So sayeth the "Storyteller.")
BTW: I was pretty impressed by the message transmission artifacts in the last room. Pretty cool. That made me have to think about the best way to transmit a visual message through a verbal medium. Good left-brain/right-brain puzzle there.
Lance, please don't let it seem that I'm dissing TD. I really liked it.
I know there was a story before and after the adventure, but the story in the middle (during the adventure) seemed somewhat nonexistent. Again, the backstory was fine, but the story itself was weak. I think it was a series of puzzles framed by a story, but it wasn't actually story-ish itself. For example, you can shuffle those rooms, put them in reverse order (except for the last room, of course) and the story won't change. A story comes from plot details being revealed over the course of the adventure, until the plotline is finally revealed at the height of tension. If TD missed the mark, it's because it's story was weak.
I just found the forums for TD (thanks for the link). I'll post more detail there of what I mean.
As a gamer, game designer, and game illustrator, I went to this year's GenCon. I think it was probably the smoothest GenCon that has been held at Indy. Past years featured computer foobars which really put a damper on the rest of the show. I didn't hear any complaints about those kind of glitches this year. The lines seemed to move along better, as well.
Dominating the show, naturally, were WotC and WizKids. WizKids were giving away free crack, I mean, HeroClix starter packs. Damn, I fell for the trick, too, picking up some cheap booster packs at another booth.
I participated in TrueDungeon, a "live action" old-skool dungeon crawl, which had each room feature a puzzle and/or combat. If you failed, your character took damage. My group managed to make it through without losing any party members. There was a reported 90% death rate, so maybe we are just really smart, right?:-)
On the other hand, I was a bit dismayed that TD seemed like a money-generating machine, with (stupid and rich?) players allowed to buy treasure with real cash. I saw geeks walking around with vests composed of TD treasure tokens. I saw other geeks with three-ring binders full of treasure tokens. Me? When asked if I wanted to buy their stupid tokens for $10, I said, "No thanks, I'll just use my massive intellect!":-) Also dismaying... I prefer story to mindless dungeon crawl. I wanted a hint of a story, but we really got none of that.
On Saturday night, there was a bit of tension between the gamers and fans of the Indianapolis Colts. That was worth seeing: freaking the mundanes. OK, someone please tell me which is weirder: a guy dressed up as a Stormtrooper, or a guy that paints a blue horseshoe on his face?
There are good ways of doing ads that I don't mind (nice little textads that I even occasionally click on) and then there are stupid ads that try to pop up, fake themselves as Windows alert-boxes, and punch-the-monkey type ads. Guess which kind of advertising Doubleclick uses?
But I'd be willing to call his bluff. If the obnoxious advertisers go away, will there still be a web to surf? The web was there before the obnoxious advertisers moved in. I tend to think that it will stay around after they are bankrupt.
The page of troll names has been around July of last year, and according to the author, is a careful collection of verified troll usernames. The passwords are NOT leaked. The user has simply created a page to collect verified troll accounts (using password hash matches, among other tools). Odds are that the person submitting this to Slashdot and K5 was one of the trolls, themselves. Ha, and Slashdot fell for it! Major troll victory.
Repeat, the passwords were not leaked... But, if my Wikipedia password is leaked, so what? Some loser-hacker can change my preferences so that math code looks funny? Whoop-ee-freakin'-doo. If my Wikipedia account gets deleted, I'll just make another. Is there anything inherently valuable in a Wikipedia account?
This is being blown out of proportion in typical Slashdot fashion.
From hardcore research to performance art, the Envision Center at Purdue U. is a virtual reality room. It may have 3 or 4 walls (depending on the application). Users of the technology wear special goggles to pop the projections on the walls into a 3D environment.
It looks pretty cool. I keep planning to trek across campus and check it out.
I use Adblock, too. But Adblock still downloads the offending junk, but just doesn't show it. (I think.) A hosts file will keep it completely out, without bothering to download.
After using Dan Pollock's hosts file for a few months, virtually all of that monkey business has disappeared. That, Firefox, and Adblock have made the web bearable for me.
Thanks! That's a big help! It wasn't my game, so we were taught by the owner, and I think it was his first time playing, too. After the first room, we started to accumulate a big pipeline of critters to bash through. As soon as we hacked a couple of layers, more showed up behind.
Played Doom board game... a mini-review...
on
DOOM: The Boardgame
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I played the Doom boardgame a couple of weekends ago and although I was a fan of the video game, I really didn't care for the board game version. We played a game with 3 Marines against the evil baddies, and here's a microreview of the game.
The first thing I noticed was the game had approximately a metric buttload of figurines, dice, cards, and widgets. Heck, I think there are even some out-of-state fireworks and dancing girls in the box. So, if you're into games with lotsa bits, Doom has some serious heft to it.
With those bits comes a lot of dice-rolling. Each weapon has an array of dice to be thrown, each with varying damages, ranges, and ammo-usage. We found ammo to be extremely scarce. Each player starts out with a small amount of ammo, and it tends to run out quickly -- at least one out of every three attacks. Due to some bad die rolls, our "sharpshooter" marine was constantly running out of ammo, and had to often resort to the classic "fist" attack. (Which, strangely enough, seems to be more effective than the pistol.)
The line-of-sight rules combined with Evil's spawning rules seemed a little out-of-line. Evil was able to use a constant supply of cards in his hand to spawn new bad guys (which is a departure from the video game). Evil could spawn anywhere he could put a critter out of our "line-of-sight". Unfortunately, even one or two little critters could block line of sight for a big critter. When we finally started working carefully to cover every corner, being careful of line-of-sight, Evil played a "Darkness" card which allowed new baddies to spawn. Twice. This was all great fun for the Evil player, but irritating and frustrating for the players. (In the original game, a player could "clear out" an area and use it as a safe zone. Nothing doing in the board game.)
The game allows 6 respawns of the players before the evil player wins. Which is a good thing -- us players had lost 3 lives before we got out of the first room. The game also took a long time to play. We played for nearly 3 hours before we gave up the ghost, but none of the players except for Evil seemed to have a good time.
Earlier the same day, we played the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" game, which is along the same lines as Doom. A similar theme, a similar style of play (one player versus the rest), but Buffy seemed much better for some reason. Buffy kept things simple, which Doom bogged down with the details.
I'm not really looking forward to playing the Doom boardgame again, but I'll probably give it another shot to see if there was something that I missed. Although it had lovely pieces, I think the gameplay was a lot of dice-rolling for three hours, with the odds stacked frustratingly against the Marines to the point of being "not fun." Maybe the dice were just not with us. If you like the pretty bits, and like slapping a bunch of dice and figures around the table, then you might want to check this out.
Slashdot Mirror
Bill, you're well known in the Esperanto world as the star of the pre-Star Trek thriller "Incubus", written and performed in Esperanto.
Cxu vi ankoraux regas vian Esperanto-kapablon de tiu filmo?
(Have you still retained your Esperanto ability from that movie?)
Cxu vi uzis gxin iel ajn poste?
(Have you used it an any way afterwards?)
[Sorry, folks -- I'm using the X-system here instead of actual Esperanto characters, because Slashdot doesn't seem to like Esperanto.]
Thanks!
Amike kaj dankeme,
Scott S.
Well, there's 2001 Anthrax attacks after 9/11, which was not thwarted, and we're not any closer to finding the culprit.
I might add... to be fair, some of the indie designers that I talked to at Gencon seemed to be doing better this year than in past years. Wallets seemed to be opening up a bit more freely.
I can probably speak for the Eight Foot Llama guys. I'm a game designer and shared a booth with him in the past, and I've done most of their artwork for them.
Booths are pretty expensive at Gencon: $1000 for a 10x10' area at the cheapest, last I checked. I think Jim Doherty (head llama-herder) just had to make a business decision: Origins or GenCon. Since Origins is closer to him, and more boardgame-oriented, I think he chose that.
I think it's a "dirty little secret" that most booths at GenCon don't break even. I tried it two years with my company <cheap plug> Dogtown Games </cheap plug>. It's very hard for the companies to "make booth". That is, to make enough money to cover your expenses plus the cost of the booth. It helps if you have the "hit of Gencon".
Now, mind you, I know that some companies out there are making money hand over fist. However, most companies there, I think, use it as advertising. If you have a presence and shake enough hands, people will buy your games through external sources. It boosts sales, even if not directly.
More troubling to me is Eagle Games recently declaring bankruptcy, who were known for their gargantuan big-box games.
First off, I'm not a fan of Clinton, and I never voted for the man. Some of the crap he signed into law was unforgivable. You implying that I'm a blueblood cardcarrying Lib-rul is off-base. I'm a registered Independent, and vote fairly purple-ly, in a very red state.
Despite my opinion of Clinton, I don't see how it could be his fault that a bunch of PRIVATE CORRUPT BUSINESSMEN who LOOTED PEOPLE'S LIFE-SAVINGS and funneled a good chunk of that change into the REPUBLICAN PARTY would be his fault. How do you think Clinton should have known about it, and how do you think he should have tried to stop it?
Are the Democrats exempt from corruption? Hell no. But I think when the current president and veep use the Enron private jet, and suck several hundred million dollars out of Ken Lay & company, that's notable. When such bribes (let's be real - it was quid pro quo) affects the policy of the country (which it undoubtably did, being part of Cheney's super-secret Energy Task Force) that's notable.
Um, right. Sure you do.
Well, I know you will be shocked (SHOCKED!) to find out that a good chunk of dough (to the tune of several hundred-thousand dollars) went to Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney.
Very insightful! I wish I had some mod points, but here: have an imaginary one.
Me, too. It's a Pacific Time Zone conspiracy, I tell ya!
Just last week a co-worker showed me Thinkfree Office Online which I thought was pretty impressive. Word-processor, spreadsheet, PowerPoint clone, all with 30MB of free disk space.
Warning: it's slow to get started the first time, because of massive Java-Fu.
YOU CAN'T COPYRIGHT AN IDEA.
Ideas are everyplace, and everyone has them. An idea, even a really good one, cannot be copyrighted. You can copyright the implementation of the idea (ie. the words or image) but you cannot copyright the idea itself.
The guys who wrote HB,HG didn't really come up with the idea on their own. I've read the book, and I remember a pretty thick bibliography where they got their ideas. What hypocrites. This is all huff and puff, and Mr. Brown shouldn't be too worried.
I'm somewhat surprised that nobody has mentioned the 11th annual Interactive Fiction Competition going on right now. However, today is the last day to be a judge.
Oh. I was the Cleric. Remember me? (Kidding!)
Yes, I would like to see the puzzles/internal story arranged in some sort of a linear fashion. If you have a linear story and scramble up the rooms, they shouldn't make sense.
Let me give an example. Last year, there was a section of the Dungeon where one of the party members was separated, and they had to rescue him two rooms later. Now, that is the sort of thing I'm talking about. You can't recover someone before he's lost. That's a _story_ bit, rather than a puzzle bit, and I found it really satisfying. It even gave me some opportunity for role-playing: "Okay, pretend you're paralyzed and captured by the spider." I was the player who was separated in our party. If only they had some minor encounter or activity backstage for me to do, it would have been even better. Regardless, that was one of the highlights of the TrueDungeon last year to me.
Even if there was a couple of those kind of situations in the dungeon, it would go a long way towards satisfying that craving I have to do actual role-playing. Furthermore, while I'm critiquing, on the back of the character cards, give a history and backstory to each PC. "Characters" should be more than a class and collection of stats. (So sayeth the "Storyteller.")
BTW: I was pretty impressed by the message transmission artifacts in the last room. Pretty cool. That made me have to think about the best way to transmit a visual message through a verbal medium. Good left-brain/right-brain puzzle there.
Why? It seems like a good place to get new ideas and play new games. At least that's what I get out of it.
Lance, please don't let it seem that I'm dissing TD. I really liked it.
I know there was a story before and after the adventure, but the story in the middle (during the adventure) seemed somewhat nonexistent. Again, the backstory was fine, but the story itself was weak. I think it was a series of puzzles framed by a story, but it wasn't actually story-ish itself. For example, you can shuffle those rooms, put them in reverse order (except for the last room, of course) and the story won't change. A story comes from plot details being revealed over the course of the adventure, until the plotline is finally revealed at the height of tension. If TD missed the mark, it's because it's story was weak.
I just found the forums for TD (thanks for the link). I'll post more detail there of what I mean.
As a gamer, game designer, and game illustrator, I went to this year's GenCon. I think it was probably the smoothest GenCon that has been held at Indy. Past years featured computer foobars which really put a damper on the rest of the show. I didn't hear any complaints about those kind of glitches this year. The lines seemed to move along better, as well.
:-)
:-) Also dismaying... I prefer story to mindless dungeon crawl. I wanted a hint of a story, but we really got none of that.
Dominating the show, naturally, were WotC and WizKids. WizKids were giving away free crack, I mean, HeroClix starter packs. Damn, I fell for the trick, too, picking up some cheap booster packs at another booth.
I participated in TrueDungeon, a "live action" old-skool dungeon crawl, which had each room feature a puzzle and/or combat. If you failed, your character took damage. My group managed to make it through without losing any party members. There was a reported 90% death rate, so maybe we are just really smart, right?
On the other hand, I was a bit dismayed that TD seemed like a money-generating machine, with (stupid and rich?) players allowed to buy treasure with real cash. I saw geeks walking around with vests composed of TD treasure tokens. I saw other geeks with three-ring binders full of treasure tokens. Me? When asked if I wanted to buy their stupid tokens for $10, I said, "No thanks, I'll just use my massive intellect!"
On Saturday night, there was a bit of tension between the gamers and fans of the Indianapolis Colts. That was worth seeing: freaking the mundanes. OK, someone please tell me which is weirder: a guy dressed up as a Stormtrooper, or a guy that paints a blue horseshoe on his face?
If that's the case, I wonder what he thinks about us blocking friggin' Doubleclick and his crapware cronies with a HOSTS file.
There are good ways of doing ads that I don't mind (nice little textads that I even occasionally click on) and then there are stupid ads that try to pop up, fake themselves as Windows alert-boxes, and punch-the-monkey type ads. Guess which kind of advertising Doubleclick uses?
But I'd be willing to call his bluff. If the obnoxious advertisers go away, will there still be a web to surf? The web was there before the obnoxious advertisers moved in. I tend to think that it will stay around after they are bankrupt.
The page of troll names has been around July of last year, and according to the author, is a careful collection of verified troll usernames. The passwords are NOT leaked. The user has simply created a page to collect verified troll accounts (using password hash matches, among other tools). Odds are that the person submitting this to Slashdot and K5 was one of the trolls, themselves. Ha, and Slashdot fell for it! Major troll victory.
Repeat, the passwords were not leaked... But, if my Wikipedia password is leaked, so what? Some loser-hacker can change my preferences so that math code looks funny? Whoop-ee-freakin'-doo. If my Wikipedia account gets deleted, I'll just make another. Is there anything inherently valuable in a Wikipedia account?
This is being blown out of proportion in typical Slashdot fashion.
From hardcore research to performance art, the Envision Center at Purdue U. is a virtual reality room. It may have 3 or 4 walls (depending on the application). Users of the technology wear special goggles to pop the projections on the walls into a 3D environment.
It looks pretty cool. I keep planning to trek across campus and check it out.
To quote a Bugs Bunny cartoon: "Penguins is practically chickens." :-)
I use Adblock, too. But Adblock still downloads the offending junk, but just doesn't show it. (I think.) A hosts file will keep it completely out, without bothering to download.
After using Dan Pollock's hosts file for a few months, virtually all of that monkey business has disappeared. That, Firefox, and Adblock have made the web bearable for me.
Thanks! That's a big help! It wasn't my game, so we were taught by the owner, and I think it was his first time playing, too. After the first room, we started to accumulate a big pipeline of critters to bash through. As soon as we hacked a couple of layers, more showed up behind.
I played the Doom boardgame a couple of weekends ago and although I was a fan of the video game, I really didn't care for the board game version. We played a game with 3 Marines against the evil baddies, and here's a microreview of the game.
The first thing I noticed was the game had approximately a metric buttload of figurines, dice, cards, and widgets. Heck, I think there are even some out-of-state fireworks and dancing girls in the box. So, if you're into games with lotsa bits, Doom has some serious heft to it.
With those bits comes a lot of dice-rolling. Each weapon has an array of dice to be thrown, each with varying damages, ranges, and ammo-usage. We found ammo to be extremely scarce. Each player starts out with a small amount of ammo, and it tends to run out quickly -- at least one out of every three attacks. Due to some bad die rolls, our "sharpshooter" marine was constantly running out of ammo, and had to often resort to the classic "fist" attack. (Which, strangely enough, seems to be more effective than the pistol.)
The line-of-sight rules combined with Evil's spawning rules seemed a little out-of-line. Evil was able to use a constant supply of cards in his hand to spawn new bad guys (which is a departure from the video game). Evil could spawn anywhere he could put a critter out of our "line-of-sight". Unfortunately, even one or two little critters could block line of sight for a big critter. When we finally started working carefully to cover every corner, being careful of line-of-sight, Evil played a "Darkness" card which allowed new baddies to spawn. Twice. This was all great fun for the Evil player, but irritating and frustrating for the players. (In the original game, a player could "clear out" an area and use it as a safe zone. Nothing doing in the board game.)
The game allows 6 respawns of the players before the evil player wins. Which is a good thing -- us players had lost 3 lives before we got out of the first room. The game also took a long time to play. We played for nearly 3 hours before we gave up the ghost, but none of the players except for Evil seemed to have a good time.
Earlier the same day, we played the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" game, which is along the same lines as Doom. A similar theme, a similar style of play (one player versus the rest), but Buffy seemed much better for some reason. Buffy kept things simple, which Doom bogged down with the details.
I'm not really looking forward to playing the Doom boardgame again, but I'll probably give it another shot to see if there was something that I missed. Although it had lovely pieces, I think the gameplay was a lot of dice-rolling for three hours, with the odds stacked frustratingly against the Marines to the point of being "not fun." Maybe the dice were just not with us. If you like the pretty bits, and like slapping a bunch of dice and figures around the table, then you might want to check this out.
Security vulnerabilities for Internet Explorer 5.1 announced...