Honestly, I don’t usually get too excited over games.  Even fantasy based CRPG’s.  In fact the last game I was really all up in arms about may have been Bioshock.. And if not that, the Planescape game (Still the best NPC’s I’ve seen in a CRPG).

Dragon age is that rarity, really.  I was making fat eyes about this game since I first came across a post about it many months ago.  There were a few factors that got me pretty pumped to see this game.  One was the fact that it was touted as an ‘adult’ game.  Not one of those spiky-haired ultra giggly teen angst bullshit RPG’s that seem to flood the market from all sides these days, but one that a game that introduces consequences, some pretty brutal fight scenes, and doesn’t shy away from casual nudity (Nothing too pervy though).

The second was the one that really sold me:  It was the spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate.  I loved Baldur’s Gate more than a granny eating a pie made of candy.  To date the characters I’d encountered in Baldur’s Gate were some of the finest ones.  When I’d heard that this would introduce the same concepts of people with hopes and dreams accompanying you.. Well, I just had to jump on THAT train like a salivating lore-nerd.

After roughly a few hours of playing the game, I’m pretty impressed with it.  Its deep.  Crazy deep.  Nearly Lord of the Rings deep.  The maps, the lore, the people, the organizations, political struggles, and seemingly endlessly surprising NPC’s have impressed me.  More-so I’m impressed with the fact that there just isn’t the black and white moral compass in this game.  Some things will just *suck*.  Some people will just die, and you want it to mean something, but sometimes it doesn’t.

Its given me a lot to think about for Felwroth, actually.  While I’ve cobbled together one organization here, or a race there, I never really thought much about how they truly interacted with the world around them save broad brushed beliefs (Khavijas and Khulvarri dislike each other, etc).

There are bad points as well, however.  The game isn’t the ’sandbox’ game most people have come to seemingly demand from every RPG out there (Usually the result is an incredibly dull and directionless story, akin to Oblivion’s main plot thread).  While you are given room to play and plenty of little side quests, your not going to simply pick a spot and head in that direction all the time.  To be honest I like the fact that I’m given several branching paths of concrete storyline instead of “Oh, go here.. y’know.. whenever the hell you want.  No rush or anything”.

The amount of blood is on the ridiculousness level of a Tarintino movie.  It’s passed the point of being macabre to a point of almost hilarity.  Your characters seem to be constantly and utterly soaked in blood.  Which lends itself some hilarity when your sauntering through town talking with some waif, drenched and caked in blood, and she barely bats an eye at the matter.  There’s an option to turn the blood off after a battle is won, but it doesn’t clear up the fact that the rest of this game is seemingly steeped in bloody mess.  The pages of your journal, your spellbook, and even the logo are all just speckled with ichor.  It reached a laughing point with me when I chose to go to a destination on the overland map, and the travel progress line showed up as.. Yep, you guessed it.  drops of blood.

Someone at Bioware seriously needs to get a grip.  I don’t think they intended people to actually laugh at the gushing remains splashing all over the game.

And then there’s the ‘creep expression’ people.  While I can easily suspend my disbelief in most things, since I grew up on games where your character was a brightly coloured collection of blocky pixels, I have to say that I expected at least a level of eye contact/expression that Half-Life 2 had.  Seeing people laugh in game without smiling makes me think that the Chantry has been going from city to city doling out large amounts of Thalidomide to everyone in the game world.

But those are minor quibbles.  They really are.  I’m very impressed with the writing so far.  I’ve been genuinely surprised at some turn of events, I’ve come to utterly loathe the bad guys, and actually care about the people that choose to follow my lead character around.  That’s rare to have in a game these days.

Besides, the battles in this game have been appropriately challenging along the way too.  It gives me ideas for my D&D games.

..I’ll just be sure not to throw blood all over the table the next time we play.

However I’m utterly unable to think of one.

This was the result.  I might just go with ‘Rudyard, the rabbit so drunk he’s nearing death’.  Though he’ll definitely be a loner.

A very, very quick scribbling of Ciranda, a bard.

A bard that apparently likes ribbons.

However, this isn’t about what I’m upgrading to in the future.  Its about a very interesting thing I had seen linked on Penny Arcade recently featuring the following:  http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/10/d-and-d-microsoft-surface/

Its definitely a work in progress, but I really do like seeing innovations like this.  Why?  Because I’m a fool for glowy effects and visual things.  The potential alone to do a slide show, or a text walk-through, or show images of maps/NPC’s/Etc is enough to send an artist into some kind of Geekgasm.

If only it wasn’t a Windows 7 thing.

Then again I don’t have the thousands of dollars this thing is probably going to cost to create.  Seriously, a fully visual table?  Yeah, that’s not going to just burn through a bank account at all.

Still a pretty need application of touch software.  Pen and paper games will never die (Honestly, I’ve seen so many posts about people who’s kids are really getting into pnp games lately that there is always hope).  However they might take on a different feeling or visual aspect in the future.  Sane people will always crave some kind of face to face time with friends which is impossible to get even over the best of networks/ventrillo setups.

MMO’s are nice, yes, they’re interesting time wasters, but you don’t get to really tell a story through them.  Stories are set about by whatever company is making and updating the game.  Some people just want to tell the story through characters, or through worlds of their own.  I think that’s something that will always remain.

Then again, I once believed my cats were psychic, so what do I know.

(shhhh… they’re listening to my thoughts RIGHT NOW).

She had a point.  Honestly some of the best work I’ve done was from stuff that I just started to draw on a whim without any real forethought.  It also gives me a chance to start drawing a variety of things again.  Some of which aren’t terribly interesting to look at, and some fo which will be posted here at a later date (When I’m not running around like an idiot trying to get things done for Thanksgiving.. I’m reacting like it sneaked up on me this year or something.)

That said, here’s an image of a race I’d written up for Felwroth years ago, but had never drawn until now.  They’re called the Dweomarra.  Sort of like tieflings in a way, but they’re more nature/sylvan based than Infernal based.  They’re outsiders, deeply ingrained in the natural world, but with a strange tinge of the wicked running through them.

I don’t have a name for this one yet, since it was pretty much drawn from scratch without a plan.

**Beware of nudity and all that**

Oh, and an autumn background, since its that season.

However I became deeply impressed by the early stages of the new Google Wave.  Its hard to really explain what it is, but for the first time in quite a while it actually showed off things that really inspired me.

The more that I had seen of the Demo, the more inspired I became.  Thoughts of interactive Felwroth Wiki’s with those I trust or who are interested, A way to share images in context, live blog updates, etc.

But the really big one was collaborative story.  I’ve been trying to do more open writing with others again and find that the best ideas come from the times that I get to jam out a story or even an idea with others.  In fact a dear friend actually got me back into this frame of mind after citing that a lot of writers collaborate this way.

So with Wave, I could see myself becoming a *lot* more productive in getting stories out there.  Even if its in snippets.  Edits would remain and slowly a story would take on form and meaning and suddenly have a solid place.  I like the idea of starting, say, a ‘wave’ about the Javarran people and having three folks offer up thoughts, twists, or even entirely new edits on the race and suddenly they’d have a permanent ‘history’ in the world (Well, at least in the wave browser.. or whatever its called).

I’m going to be poking around on Wave I think.  Probably far more than I do on Facebook or Livejournal, both of which I haven’t updated in a long time.  I just see myself getting more interactive use out of Wave.

I’m acutally going over a whole bunch of ‘Wroth wiki’s in my mind right now.  Even though I should be sleeping.

Stupid sinus headaches.

I realize I’m the odd man out here.  In fact, there was a monolithic debate about why in the fourth edition that the nine alignments were condensed.  It was odd to me that this could be such a contentious thing.  Considering all of the other sacred cows that were sacrificed for better or worse (Vancian spell system, I happily dance on your grave), you would think that alignment would be pretty minor.

But thinking about it, I can see why it was a big deal to a lot of gamers.  Its human nature to categorize things.  To have things set neatly and evenly in a set of quantifiable boundaries.  Its easier to simply say “Orcus is Chaotic Evil” than to say “Well.. He’s acting more out of rage, something in his past is affecting him”.  When people think of a leader who would actively crush every other nation under their boot while maintaining draconian law in their own lands, they think “Lawful Evil”.  But what if that leader didn’t have the alignment tag on him?  You might be forced to consider that said leader was actually acting out of a wish to do good for his own people.  Perhaps he’s looking for a way to create a lawful society of peace within his borders, and tired of chaotic elements from everywhere else pushing into his territory to create havoc?  He sees adventurers as a threat because.. well, they are.  To him, the PC’s are *gasp* evil!

Before I go on, I realize the above analogy might be construed as some kind of political point.  It isn’t.  I just used a random analogy, its not a diatribe on forgiving or blaming any real world power.

I think that’s why I’ve always ignored alignments.  Not because they are bad, but because I’ve always liked the way things get more complex when you don’t have the option to place things into neat perspective.  I feel more restricted when I have alignments forced on my characters, or villains, or what have you.  I tend to leave it up to the players as to figuring out the motives of enemies.  Yes, its a given that undead are evil and we don’t need a tag to tell people that, but what of their ruler?  The king driven mad by watching his city razed and whom after escaping his imprisonment returned to his charred homeland and ritually raised all of his citizens in an effort to reset history, as warped and cruel as it may be?  Is he hopelessly evil?  Or is he tragic?  Or is there something else behind what he’s doing.

I could use Cinders as an example.  She’d actually be considered a shade of chaotic evil (Maybe more Chaotic neutral) if I used the strict alignment systems.  For example:  She’s stolen crops from farmer’s fields without remorse or understanding why its wrong to do so.  She’s invoked a very black, very primordial curse on the first Prior that she and her friends ended up defeating, ensuring that the Prior (actually an evil entity itself) would writhe in the nine hells for eternity in the afterlife.  She would be considered a heathen in many cultures, her bloodline is feared and in some cases deeply loathed.  She has (along with her party) awoken something terrible in the once quiet darkness of a forgotten Amantiri tomb.  She’s even laughed maniacally while bringing down frost-laden destruction on hopelessly wounded and quaking enemies (Mind you, they brought it on themselves).

On the other hand, she could be considered Chatoic good for:  Helping rebuild a failing church.  Helping a dwarven cleric who’s mind was warped by unknown magics navigate his way to safety.  Helped a town rid themselves of the Priory of Orthane (A group dedicated to the control of the Lorrnath peoples, and who have been into some extremely shady dealings as of late).  She’s practically brought light and joy to Berrand.  Despite all of the terrible things she’s been through from a very young age, she still wouldn’t bring down random or willful destruction on innocent people.  And most of all, despite all of the tortures she’s gone through, she still finds joy and wonder in the world.

So really, Alignment couldn’t really fit in her case.  As is the case with almost all of the characters (mine or otherwise) that I’ve come across.  Its a matter of outside perspective as to what alignment a person might have, and thusly I happily wave goodbye to a system I’ve always found bloated and unneccesary, at least in my games.

Pumpkin madness is on its way.

Firing off negative reviews is also quite a bit easier than writing anything positive, such reviews also garner more views since its more sensationalist to hate something than review what you enjoy about it.

Lately, however, its starting to get incredibly worn out, sad, and surpassing the great nerd war topics such as Kirk vs. Picard.  I’m not saying people shouldn’t be critical of what they believe is going on with their beloved game, but droning on about the same subjects ad nauseum is starting to border on the pathetic lately.

“Well, if they would only support the older editions.” is one gem that gets dragged up to the surface and paraded around like some utopian literary messiah.

Sure, it would be nice if every company would never outdate any of their products ever.  If they could count on enough of a customer base to actually hire the staff and writers to continuously update every old work, program, or car, we’d have this wonderful singing paradise where birds would land on our shoulders and children would grow up behind white picket fences.

The reality is that no company I can recall – outside of archival services – actually does this.  Microsoft isn’t going to update Windows 3.1, no matter how much you hate Vista.  Adobe isn’t going to put out a new version of Photoshop 2.0, the original AMC Gremlin isn’t going to suddenly start rolling off production lines any more, and as far as I know Bic won’t be going back to feather quills with bells on them as the hot new writing tool.

Sure, I loved the older versions of D&D as well.  There are things I still miss about first and second edition.  I was one of those that didn’t care for third edition in the end, finding it to be an utter nightmare to write campaigns for (Seriously, having your big evil boss die due to one spell is asinine), and while I did air a few complaints, I didn’t groan on an on about it like a child being forced to go shoe shopping with mom.

I don’t think I’d mind it as much, if I didn’t have to wade through heaps of this whining every time I found an interesting thread about a new edition.  Hell, I wouldn’t mind it if it was at least productive whining as that could lead to correction or innovation, but having to climb past the ‘Version x is homogenous’ or “Version x doesn’t promote roleplay” (The latter of which is utter bullshite, by the way) on boards dedicated to the version of the game I’m looking at doesn’t help.  That’s just being bitchy for the sake of being heard.

We get it.  You won’t change.  If you have suggestions to make things better, by all means lets hear it.  And for those who do play 4e, lets stop being jackasses and showing up on threads dedicated to older versions of the game only to whine about how inferior they are. (Yes, the fanboys are just as bad as the Eeyore types).  I’d like to get to a point where every second topic on a discussion board isn’t about what version is ‘best’.

A bit more of a rant today, I guess.