Combined with the other two concept pieces, I am confident that Rick has perfectly illustrated the game concepts as they exist within my mind. In fact, these three pieces have, in return, given me far more inspiration for the project than most of the previous media sources from which I’d been drawing (samurai movies, mostly).

I’m still neck-deep in this game’s pre-production process. Playtesting is sporadically underway, and while the process is slow, it is certainly gaining momentum.

7. Afterfall: Insanity (PC)

This game received very little fanfare, and still doesn’t have an official support or community discussion forum anywhere online. It’s a damn solid third-person horror game, which clearly takes immense amounts of inspiration from the Dead Space series, especially in controls and user interface. The action is fun, the scares are scary, and despite some kinda lame writing, the story is actually pretty interesting. I look forward to seeing more from this studio.

Link: Afterfall on Gamersgate

6. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (PC)

I can think of at least a dozen close friends who would lovingly place this one at the top of their lists, easily, but for me, the end result of the game didn’t live up to the hype. The combat gets repetitive easily, and when you realize all the unpolished exploits that sit right in front of your eyes, it becomes difficult to ignore them, like a four-year-old pulling hard on your leg and begging for your attention the entire time you’re playing. Despite that, the exploration of the game is second to none, and I’ve paid more to MMOs just to wander around in that open beauty. I highly recommend the PC version, because as with all Elder Scrolls games, if you miss out on the mods, you are missing out on over half of the intended gaming experience.

Link: Skyrim on Steam

5. Dead Island (PC/X360)

While this game certainly did not turn out to be anything at all like that trailer, it did end up being one damn fun game. Two parts Borderlands, two parts Left 4 Dead, and a little dash of Grand Theft Auto thrown in for good measure, I had quite a blast running around on Bamoi Island and murdering zombies. While it certainly had its flaws, I found it to be a more effective zombie survival game than, say, the Left 4 Dead series. This was one of the first games I tested out with my new FragFX 360 game controller, and it worked so well that way that I ended up buying it a second time on the PC.

Link: Dead Island on Steam

4. EYE: Divine Cybermancy (PC)

This one really took me by surprise. One of my close pals recommended it to me, and I’m extremely glad that he did. This indie title is a first-person rpg-shooter hybrid, built in Valve’s Source engine. This game does not hold your hand one bit after you complete a very minimal tutorial mission, and I’m totally on board with that. There are so many elements to this game (hacking, leveling, cyberware, research, psi powers, etc) that new players to it will likely be very confused at the beginning. I was, and I almost put it away for good after a few tries. But I stuck with it and figured out “the trick” to it, and from then on it became one of my favorite all-time shooters on the PC. Best part is that it completely lacks a manual save function – in other words, your actions and decisions count, and when the shit hits the fan, you have to try and deal with it right then and there.

Link: EYE Divine Cybermancy on Steam

3. Deus Ex: Human Revolution (PC)

I was trying to think of a “I didn’t ask for this” joke, but the truth is, this game is exactly what I had been asking for for some time. Pretty much everything about this game blew my mind, and I devoured it hungrily and happily. Even the boss fights, which everyone else hates, weren’t enough to mar the final experience for me. Hardcore fans of the original game like to bash this one, but it’s hard for me to accept most of that bashing as anything other than grognardian teeth-gnashing. WHile the original had some important elements that were handled better that first time, this game stays true to its roots, and delivers one hell of a noir-esque cyberpunk ride.

Link: Deus Ex: HR on Steam

2. Dead Space 2 (X360)

Visceral Games somehow managed to take one of the most concept-perfect games ever (the original Dead Space) and make it even moreso. I don’t have a single complaint about this game. Not one. From the game’s fucking insane opening sequence to the very last line uttered in the game, it is action horror at its very finest, and I can’t begin to imagine how the upcoming third game could top it.

Link: Dead Space 2 for Xbox 360, on Amazon

1. Bastion (PC)

If you are a fan of Zelda-like game play, you are doing yourself a great disservice by not playing this game. I didn’t even touch it until the last handful of days of 2011, but that experience was enough for me to crown this my top game of the year. Everything about it amazes me, from the spot-on music to the story-meets-gameplay-without-pause narration, to the fun mechanics and the beautiful scenery.

Link: Bastion on Steam

Coming up next, perhaps a post on my favorite tabletop moments? Who knows…

I’ve been using Catch notes up until this week. Their devs really dropped the ball on their latest UI overhaul, and have most likely just lost themselves a customer. The new web app is hideous, and full of features that are completely unnecessary to the solitary note-taker – aka the majority of their userbase. Sacrificing quickly-accessible tags and making the app completely unusable on a 10-inch netbook screen in order to add in facebook-like collaborative “streams” is not acceptable to me. Unless they change it, and soon, they have lost my continued support.

Again, apologies for the watermark.

One of the game’s main themes involves investing current power into future options, and the choice between what works right now and what might work in a few moments. I’m going to keep with that theme when implementing maneuvers. Instead of just being able to activate them left and right at will, or placing artificial “only once per shindig” limitations upon them, I’m going to require that players actually use cards from their hand to activate them. Each maneuver will have an Activation Rank, starting at 10 and going down with character advancement. By sacrificing a card from your hand with a face rank higher than the maneuver’s activation, you can use that maneuver’s ability.

This enhances the strategy behind the conflict, and should hopefully work nicely with the innate risk vs reward setup. Players will have to choose between holding onto the higher cards for use against their opponent, or investing them into their maneuvers for immediate effect.

Now it just remains to be tested.

Initial player-established War details were wicked awesome: The war is an “undeclared foreign war” against “massive hordes of unwashed primitives.” Despite their side’s use of “rolling dreadnought tanks with massive 100+-member crews,” the war was ultimately lost, the home economy across the sea ravaged, and the soldiers were all stranded there with “nothing to go home to.” The locals are usually known by their derogative nickname, “the shitweeds.”

The First Founding featured four soldiers in a moment of crisis: The war is lost – do we follow the suicide charge orders, or do we retreat to live and fight another day? The Sergeant tried to convince everyone that this charge was their destiny, their duty as soldiers. The Recruit dissented, having a family back home, but was quickly insulted by the Sapper. This provoked the Recruit into lashing out, which spawned a vicious explosion-heavy fight between him and the Sapper. The Recruit ultimately took the Sapper’s head, but the fight was so traumatic that he then simply fell to his knees and wept as The Enemy ran him down. The Sergeant and the Veteran, meanwhile, finally agreed that this was indeed a waste of their lives, and they rode off into the night, retreating from the charge.

This resulted in their Pack’s First Founding being colored by the following three grabs: Desertion, Regicide, and Survivors. Ouch.

Character creation was next. Sarge and the Veteran remain in the pack today as Den Mother and Trail Blazer respectively, along with a new Leader (the Road Captain) and a Masked member from the local populace (The Enforcer). A nice variety of Bikes and Fighting Styles were chosen, although the group’s off-road capability is very, very limited.

Following that the players laid out the actual details of the Pack itself. Calling themselves the War Pigs, they all wear masks styled after demonic boars, which are required attire when astride their bikes. The leader’s command icon is an old bleached skull from a massive pig-monster which once almost wiped out the entire Pack. Called The Boar by the pack, each member has also secretly given it its own name that no one else knows. This skull is mounted as a standard on the leader’s chopper, and frequently adorned with trophies from fallen enemies. Attaching these trophies is called “feeding the Boar” and one of the Pack’s taboos is that the Boar must be regularly fed, or bad things happen to them. They ritually partake in copious amounts of drugs, frequently going on peyote-like spirit quests, guided by the Boar. They don’t care about hairstyles, as long as their facial hair is curled into Boar Tusks (one of them even has similar facial tattoos). Finally, they have a taboo against sleeping in the same bed twice, unless they are “on furlough.”

Their prospect-initiation ritual is rather gruesome. Upon being first allowed to ride as prospect, the newcomer must wear a mask made from an actual boar’s face, tanned and stinking. This mask must be worn until he makes his first solo kill of a marked enemy of the Pack. There was also discussion of the Prospect having to eventually stew and eat the mask, but I’m not sure if those details got hammered out and committed to Pack law.

I look forward to seeing The War Pigs in action in the coming sessions.

Post-Session Musings

The default “suicide charge” First Founding scene seems to work well enough, but I’m thinking it might not be fully apparent that committing to the charge doesn’t necessarily mean the characters are doomed to die. Believing that they are might factor into their decision.

The basic conflict mechanic worked out well, but needs some in-the-face clarification. I need to make a cheat sheet and print it on the character sheet itself, just a quick bullet list of things to consider (like the two ways in which Ki can be spent for bonus cards).

Some dragging aspects of the Pack Creation system were very immediately apparent. Sacrifices were too many, and took too long to come up with and then write down. Going forward, I’m changing it to a stripped-down, more group-inclusive process: define one sacrifice for yourself, and one each for the guys to your left and right.

There are too many initial Grabs. Revision: First Founding survivors get two free Grabs (those they inherited from the first scene). All characters get one free grab attached to each of their three Trappings (Role, Style, and Bike). The Pack as an entity itself has three Grabs as well, established at the end of the First Founding. Undecided if players can then nominate one last bonus Grab for the player next to them.

Also, the Rank bidding system is confusing and ultimately unnecessary. I’m stripping it out and replacing it with simple group discussion.

In countless numbers, the husks hang in the silent darkness of the space left behind after all the stars died. They slowly crumble into the void, keeping one another company as all that is left of the universe decays around them. A seemingly endless mass of these once-great arks and flagships house a seemingly endless number of isolated tribes, descendants of the crews and occupants that once piloted them, generations ago.

Yours is one such tribe. Your people have grown up knowing nothing but the ship and its stories. Maybe old Creakbones knows the stories that came before, or even that there was a before. Maybe you’re in contact with the tribe on that husk that you can just barely see from your remaining portholes, illuminated by the farthest reaches of your home’s fading lights. Maybe you’re one of the lucky tribes that has kept its hoppers in some semblance of function, and you can even get to that other husk. Maybe, just maybe, your own husk can still move, too.

But water is running low, and the graskevyns are pounding at the airlock. The ancestral leader has just died without an heir. Puddles of something oily and orange are bubbling from Below, and touching it makes your pee burn. The air got thinner and slimy in the old houses so you had to seal them up forever. Another husk is on a slow but certain collision course with yours, and you have no way to escape. And from the Place Beyond the Dark, It is calling your name and it’s getting louder and your skin is starting to flake on your thighs and you feel like you’re going to throw up but you haven’t eaten in days and ohmigodit’scomingrun…

Sufficiently Advanced is an Apocalypse World hack which takes place after the end of the universe. Empires have risen, warred, and destroyed each other, leaving behind nothing but a seemingly-infinite graveyard of spaceships, all floating near each other in the void. Generations of people have grown and died in these ships, the last remnants of the people who once occupied them.

Very heavily inspired by the movies Pandorum, Event Horizon, Screamers, and Serenity, this game uses most of the Apocalypse World rules as they are written. A few of the playbooks will be tweaked, and I think the Chopper won’t work at all. New ones would fit in well, one based on scavenging, one based on space-walking (and void madness), maybe more. Maybe some new Moves involving using and/or deciphering old tech.

I think I’m gonna take a break from the usual course of things and work on this one some more tonight.

Thanks to Rick Marcks for delivering this piece of undistilled awesome.

(Watermark-free images will likely be available in the future.)

EDIT: I’ve updated the image for a much less overwhelming watermark.