Hey Man, well this is Babylon

I got this little fella in the mail today from a good friend in Atlanta. Thanks, Kathryn. He now joins Darth Tater and the Meth Monkey to cause rampant mischief in my domicile.

(I totally meant to post this Friday, but when saving it I forgot to set the auto-post time-thinger and only realized it today. Might as well add a few more notes to it, then.)

I was going to mention this last week but got side-tracked: the Alliterated Games Forums are down for an indefinite period of time. No one was using them, and they were just collecting spammers and bots. If I bring them back up in the future, it will likely be as part of…

The new website I’m putting together! The current AG website isn’t all that easy to update without me breaking things, so I’m setting up a content management suite to handle the basics. My first order of business is to get the basic game pages set up and an official newsfeed. After that, having a forum again would be nice, but it isn’t a major priority. I also want to set up a cart application, so folks can buy things directly from my website, without me having to handle fulfillment through Paypal.

Alpha Protocol continues to rock my knickers. I am only halfway through the game, and I’m already itching for a second play-through. My current style is the suave, stealthy master of the silent kill. My second play will be all BigGuns McDoucheBaggins, the no-questions-asked bullet-loving commando. I am looking forward to see more of the drastic changes in story and play I’ve already sipped with the handful of checkpoint replays I’ve experimented with in the game so far.

One thing about it that I really dig – and wish other games would pick up ASAP – is the Social Mission. A lot of Alpha Protocol’s game play involves hands-on espionage, sneaking into secret complexes and doing all that cool stealth-action spy stuff that makes movies like The Bourne Identity awesome. But almost as many game missions are purely social: you arrive on scene, meet a guy, try and make a deal of some sort, and hopefully walk away with a new ally or piece of information. The clothes you wear in these missions frequently makes a difference, so you should remember to switch out of that tactical armor before heading off to have dinner with the syndicate honcho, otherwise you might piss her off with your incredible social faux pas. I love this, and aside from Mass Effect 2 – which only has a small handful of missions like these – I’ve not seen it implemented in other mission-based games.

This coming weekend will be Free RPG Day! Every year I get excited about this one, as my favorite local game store Guardian Games always has a big shindig to celebrate. This year I’ll be running the new teaser adventure Final Sanction for the upcoming Deathwatch RPG from Fantasy Flight Games – the newest RPG in the Warhammer 40K product line. I’m not well-versed in the W40K universe, but this one looks nice – it’s the equivalent to me of the Starcraft storyline: Space Marines in massive suits of power armor fighting wave upon wave of infectious buglike monster hordes.

I leave you with a video for a song that’s been stuck in my head all morning:

I totally forgot to mention this, but in the most recent edition (March 2009) of the RPG Review, both QUAD and my KnownWorld hack were featured for all to see. Awesome! Thanks, Lev, for helping to spread the word! If any of you read the RPG Review and found your way here as a result, I welcome you to head over to the new forums if you have any questions about those games, or just want to stop and chat.

As for the rest of you, if you haven’t heard of the RPG Review, I highly encourage you to check it out. It’s a RPG Fanzine along the lines of the late Shadis, Polyhedron and Dragon (pre-3rd Ed, that is) Magazines, only in a completely digital format. This magazine covers just about every RPG under the sun, from hardcore combat grinders to intense storytelling games and more. The format is simple and easy to digest, and reading it takes me back to the joys of my younger days of gaming, when similar fan magazines could only be acquired by special mail-order or through old Prodigy dropboxes. Ah, nostalgia!

Last night I played my first game of Left 4 Dead in months, and while a bit rusty, we kicked ass. It was great to buy a new Xbox, take it home, plug it in, and get an invite to play within 10 minutes. Fabulous. So yeah, I have zombies on the mind, oh yes.

The Cannibal Contagion Print Draft is about… 3/8 of the way to completion. I’ve got the basics the way I want them, and I’ve formatted and inserted the art all the way through to just at the end of the character creation section. I want to take this moment to once again elucidate how fucking awesome I think the internal art is. Leo and Vero did a knock-down bang-up fantastic job capturing exactly the feel I was looking for. I’m almost getting a bit choked up each time I place another of their pieces within the text, because each one works so damned perfectly. Seriously, folks, mega kudos. You rock.

Something else? Thanks to working on this document, I can’t get “Eye of the Tiger” out of my head.

One Last Thing: I Promise you, I am working on some play reviews of the GameStorm sessions. However, they are far from complete, and I’m choosing to put more creative direction into assembling the print draft of the game by next week’s deadline. So, once that deadline is reached, and the draft has been sent to the printer, rest assured there will be reports. Oh yes.

I honestly can’t remember the last time I found one of Yahtzee’s “Zero Punctuation” reviews to be amusing or informative. I think it might have been back when the music changed at the beginning of each episode, but I can’t be sure.

Your edge has dulled, mate. Find another schtick.

I really should start posting here more often!

Reading:
Red Seas Under Red Skies, by Scott Lynch. This is my second attempt at reading this. I got about 100 pages in on it sometime last year, but couldn’t focus on it for some reason. This time I’m doing much better, and am pretty hooked. My one complaint: I’m kinda tired of Locke Lamora. He’s an ass and is growing less and less sympathetic with each turn of the page. I fear he is going to be another Drizzt Do’Urden “Mary Sue” character. Jean Tannen is far more sympathetic, and frankly, far more interesting.

Writing:
Trying to finish up the newest draft revision of Cannibal Contagion. This one’s looking awesome, and I believe the product is nearing completion.

Watching:
Finishing up Season 4 of Battlestar Galactica – it FINALLY started getting good again with episode 6, after five totally abysmal crapholes of boredom kicked off what looked to be a pretty mediocre season. Also, watching through Season 2 of Avatar: The Last Airbender with the Lady. The fact that she’s enjoying it excites me.

Playing:
I bought a new copy of Thief: Deadly Shadows recently and gave it another spin. I tried this game a few years back, and while I couldn’t get into the controls at the time, something about it has stuck in my brain like a nagging compass alignment ever since. After finding out that it is compatible with the Xbox 360, I tracked down a copy and have started playing it again. This time, I’m all about it, and I love the stealth controls. So far, this is an A+ game for me.

You have my promise, I’m still here. These last few weeks have been remarkably hectic. Admittedly, most of the free time I’ve had lately has been occupied with the games Dead Space and Fallout 3, but happily, there are a handful of… other developments as well (*squee*). Bethany and I have been working on our first-ever “Team Hotness” walkthrough, this one being a spoiler-free romp through the delicious halls of the USG Ishimura in Dead Space.

I’ve also been addicted to the sweet savory crack that is Fallout 3. I’m putting together a series of shorts blurbs about it that I hope to release on here soon.

Also, I’ve returned to a few of my older story projects, getting some creative writing in. No, I’m not one of those NaNoWriMo folks, as I just don’t have the time or desire to cram an entire novel in a month, nor do I personally wish to read the garbage scow of a creation that someone such as myself might actually manage to hastily assemble in such an inadequate span of time. I’ve just had that creative itch return as of late, and I’m liking where it’s going so far.

Uhm, that’s all for now.

- NPC

Yesterday, while on my daily lunchtime walkabout downtown, I saw a guy on a motorcycle. He was wearing samurai armor and had a sword. It was awesome, and yet another reaffirmation of my love for this wonderful city.

Remember Showbiz Pizza? Watch this. Right about 3:02 is there it gets really damned awesome.

Man, I remember as a wee little kid how Billy Bob used to appear in my nightmares.

Reading: Nothing at the moment, sadly.

Wearing: The usual.

Planning: A long weekend with very few major activities, and hopefully some Savage Worlds excitement.

Playing: Parasite Eve and One on the Playstation.

Not Playing: The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness

Writing: Some notes for an upcoming city-building project with the game crew.

Listening: A crap-ton of electronica Chris uploaded to my FTP server over the last few months.

Watching: The Wire, which after two episodes is now possibly my new favorite TV show. Writing this good should be canonized and worshiped.

Anticipating: Massage tomorrow! Having a new home! Yeah! Bioshock coming to the PS3! Yeah!

Dreading: Packing, although thankfully I’m still mostly packed from the last move.

Obama won the Oregon primaries. Sweet. He currently (read: still) has more delegates than Hillary. Even sweeter.

Hillary needs a new do. She has Andy Warhol hair, and it’s quite hideous.

That game One that I mentioned?  Sweet Jeebus it’s hard.

I want more TV shows and movies where the main characters are ugly, or even just plain-looking.

Portland now has a gay mayor who shares a name with both a crappy beer and a long-dead former Governor. He’s also pretty handsome, too.

Anyone remember Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure? I think the character Large Marge should have her own TV show too.

Looks like I might be kicking up an InSpectres mini-campaign in June, to get read for the Iron Kingdoms game in July. This mini-campaign would be modern, and the characters would be a new franchise of the widely popular Ghost Facers company.

I’m enjoying a really good discussion on methods of player narrative empowerment within Shadowrun.