Hey Man, well this is Babylon

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.

I recall a fantastic Playstation 1 game called simply “One.” It was one of the first third-person action games I’d ever played, and I thoroughly loved it. I want to find it again. So, guys, can you imagine how hard it is to actually search down and find a game called, simply, One? Yeah. It’s goddamned hard. EDIT: Nevermind, I finally found it on ebay. That was tricky.

Anyway, last night I tooled around with the settings of two pieces of Playstation Emulation software: PSX Emulator and ePSXe. The first one is almost perfect. It does everything wonderfully, plays without a hitch and a bare minimum of settings tweaking. Fabulous! Not really, though, as the graphics look pretty lame on a crisp LCD - this is because the software doesn’t make use of hardware acceleration, and thus the games look like they did originally. Not so bad, I guess, but… ePSXe, with the right settings, makes the games look a whole lot nicer, and greatly improves on the original appearances. This is great! Right? No, sadly, because no matter how I tweak the graphics, and no matter if I run from the PSX disks or from ripped ISO files, the cut scenes are always sped up a fraction and lack sound. That kinda blows. Read more

After a good deal of in-house testing and rules clarifications, I have the external Playtest Rules draft uploaded and ready to go. If anyone has a group that is open for a session or two of some quick pick-up zombie-survival gaming, please download this, give it a read, and let me know what you think. Included in the document is a sheet with a list of a handful of specific questions I have regarding the game play, and I’d greatly appreciate it if any playtesters would return to me with their answers after playing.

You can download the full 100 pages of the playtest rules (including both the sheets and the card templates) here. - Last Updated 9/27/2008

You can download both the Character and the CiC sheets separate from the rules: Player Sheets, CiC Sheet. - Last Updated 9/27/2008

You can download the printable NPC, Weapon, and Mojo cards separate from the rules here. - Last Updated 9/27/2008

—–

Update 9/27/2008 1:48 PM: Lots of changes! This is the fourth official release draft, greatly updated from previous releases.

I’ve just now gotten around to setting this place up for extended use. I sense a long road ahead with this project. Ultimately, I would like to move all my games here, and set up an Alliterated Games section, preferrably with a different header image.

- Nathanael Phillip Cole