Hey Man, well this is Babylon

I’ve decided to start a new series of posts on this blog wherein I review the various bits of pizza I eat. As some of you may know, I’m something of a Pizza Snob. I’ve worked on and off again at pizza places since I was 14, including chains and family-owned establishments, in capacities as both cook and Deliverator. I’ve dined on good and bad pizzas in 24 states, and consider it my second-favorite (but first-most-taste-seducing) food. I’m sitting here at work, munching on some leftovers from last night’s pizza run, and thinking “Man, I sure do have a lot of long-winded, mostly useless stuff to say about pizza. I should blog about it.” Okay, why not?

I’m not a fan of numerical rating systems for anything, so instead I’ll be using a pretty simple descriptive rating system that should be self-explanatory. I’ll be judging the pizzas I eat on Cheese, Crust, Sauce, Toppings, Service, CPQ (Cold Pizza Quality), and RHV (Re-heat Value). The actual ratings are as follows: “OMG!”, “Yum!”, “Pretty Decent”, “Okay”, “Meh”, “Yuk!”, and “Never. Again.”

Thus begins Episode 1: Papa Murphy’s.

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I just posted a new revision to the Cannibal Contagion playtest rules. This one’s kind of a biggie, and consists of two big changes that were suggested by recent in-house and external playtesting. The first one: I’ve renamed the four core characteristics. Yep, those four silly acronyms were irritating to most people, so they’re gone. The Agsomafa is staying, but that’s it. The new names: Kill, Cool, Grit, and Savvy. The rules and the character sheets have been updated to reflect these changes.

Second, the text has been completely reorganized, with a few sections merged and the table of contents shortened significantly. Things are easier to find, flow more logically, and most of all, the bare bones text is getting organized in preparation for the eventual art that will accompany it.

As always, the downloads can be found here.

Been a lot of things since my last real update. I’ll see if I can remember them all.

This past Thursday was another test run of the Cannibal Contagion rules, and mechmuertos Crazy Cat Lady character has to be one of the most side-splittingly hilarious characters I’ve yet seen in a RPG today. My next order of business for CC is putting together an actual demo quick-start game scenario, complete with 4-6 pregenerated characters - most likely the same characters that will be primarily featured in the game art. Thanks to Chris, Chris, Sam, Chris, Chris, Chris, Kenji, and Chris for coming over to play. Read more

Today I had some bursts of inspiration for a game idea I had earlier this year. Did a lot of work, including some setting tooling and some thematic laying-out. Here’s some of the stuff I wrote. Read more

Cannibal Contagion tonight, woot! The roster: Sam, Bethany, Chris, Kenji, and that mechmuertos guy who I believe is a real-life Lego man. Five is enough for my purposes. I’m intending to take a less-ridiculous approach to this one, and focus more on evoking some visceral themes, and I do hope the players can help me out with this. I’m looking forward to going back to the core setting, and also using all the current mechanical extensions in the system.

Yesterday I got the PS2 game Psychonauts in the mail. This game reminds me of all that I really really loved about Ratchet and Clank, only Psychonauts does it better, and has a more awesome story (I mean c’mon, it was made by the guy who did Grim Fandango). Here’s an upcoming game of his that sounds hilariously awesome, too:

Brütal Legend follows the story of Eddie Riggs (named for Eddie the Head, the mascot of Iron Maiden, and Derek Riggs, the artist who created him), who is living as a roadie for a Heavy Metal band. The game begins one night before a gig. As Riggs is tuning a guitar, an accident happens and he starts to bleed, his blood dripping onto his cursed belt buckle, which bears a strong resemblance to Motörhead’s Snaggletooth emblem. Before he knows it, the beast on his buckle has come alive and transported him into a Heavy Metal and Nordic fantasy inspired alternate history where demons have enslaved humanity.

After escaping the Temple of Ormagöden, where he first appears in the Heavy Metal past, Eddie meets Ophelia, a love interest likened to the same character from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Ophelia is soon severely injured and Riggs must climb a mystical mountain to do battle with a motorcycle driving bass guitarist (voiced by Motörhead’s Lemmy), called the Kill Master (reference to Lemmy’s last name Kilmister)– an ironic name for a guy whose riffs are said to heal wounds. Eddie will also meet Lita Halford (a double-reference to Lita Ford and Rob Halford) and her younger brother, Lars (probably named after Lars Ulrich), who help Eddie and Ophelia start a resistance movement against Lord Dolivicus, his Glam metal minion, General Lionwhyte (voiced by Rob Halford and a reference to the band White Lion), whose hair is so luscious, he uses it to fly (maybe an ironic reference to Halford’s baldness), and their legions of demons to free the world. Eddie will also encounter the local wildlife, including half boar/half motorcycle “Razorfires”, a giant three-tongued lamprey (that gets its tongues run over by the Deuce), and giant chrome spiders that spin silk which can be made into magical bass strings.

Must. Get. Man, I wonder if this game can be played with a Guitar Hero guitar. That would kick so much ass, there are not enough hot pants in the world to cover it.

Recently, Bethany (the wonderful roommate) and I have had some scattered discussions about Challenge and such in video games. What I find most rewarding are the challenges in games that require ingenuity and grit to overcome. When I fight a bad guy and have to use the environment to my advantage, and only barely manage to come out of it with a bar or two of health and no ammo, that’s rewarding (who’s yo daddy now, motherfucker?!). When there’s a complex series of puzzles involving non-ridiculous assembly and manipulation of in-game objects and variables, and I figure it out after a good deal of puzzling over the components, that’s rewarding. When I defeat a Big Bad against which I exhaust all my ammo and am forced to resort to using only a crowbar or a rusty pipe, that last meaty crunch is a very satisfying reward. When I defeat a gaggle of goddamned Malboros despite all my party being Doomed, Poisoned, Charmed, Berserk, and/or Confused, that’s rewarding. When a game gives me a task to complete and leaves the choice of resolution up to me, figuring out interesting ways to complete it is definitely rewarding.

When the game environment steps away from the game’s mechanics and tells me I have to press a button in the next 0.7 seconds or flat-out die? That’s not rewarding. When a section of the game can only be overcome by memorizing a precise pattern that can only be discovered by either A) reading a walkthrough or B) playing it over and over and over and over again until you learn the pattern, that’s not rewarding. When the only way to solve a puzzle is by assembling seven completely unrelated (and completely missable and forgettable and droppable) items from scattered stages of the game either by A) reading a walkthrough or B) doing it accidentally, that’s not rewarding. When I fight a normal human boss that can only be overcome by filling it with twice as many bullets as it took to take out every stage enemy from the last three game levels combined, for no other reason than “that’s just how stage bosses work” (I’m looking at you, Max Payne), that’s not rewarding.

Frustration does not equal reward. Essentially, when the gameplay becomes grueling, the game loses me.

Also…

The fact that Fallout 3 will come to the PS3 really excites me. Even more exciting, though, is this video - Dead Space has strafing and total camera control, yay! The camera controls and movement look pretty damn perfect for my preferred style of play. My day is now complete. WANT. VERY MUCH WANT.