2010 in review

Floating around somewhere is a post I did early last year saying what I wanted to acheive in gaming in 2010. I would link to it, but I can’t seem to find it. Regardless I thought I would sum it up here:

• I spent the better part of 2010 writing, in collaboration with two others, a 66 person LARP called Al Shir-Ma. It’s set in an Arabian Night-esque world which borrows from Al-Qadim. It was done for the yearly KapCon gaming convention here in Wellington, and it’s first run through is happening next weekend. It’s been a really interesting experience and has I think made me a better scenario writer. But man, has it been a lot of work.
• I wrapped up my campaign, using the Green Ronin A Song of Ice and Fire rules, in a not hugely satisfiying way. By the end I’d kind of lost interest and time, and it all got a bit too railroady. It showed me that I really want to run long term games that leverage off character backgrounds and story rather than some over arching plot I’ve come up with. Means less work for me too.
• I ran Peril in King’s Landing a pre-written scenario for ASoIFRP. It’s one of the few times I’ve actually run a pre-written scenario and while I liked the low prep of it all, I found that I had the most fun when I was adding in new elements passed on player actions.
• I played a lot of Xbox 360. Notably Alpha Protocol, Fallout 3, Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2 and Fallout New Vegas. Some of these games, like Mass Effect, I played through for a third time so I could carry my character into the new game. Yes I am that much of a geek.
• I played a lot of table top and LARP games. For the first time I played more than I GM’d and it was great.
• I discovered some great new table top games like Prime Time Adventures and Apocolypse World.

So from a gaming perspective 2010 was great. Though as the silence from June on might have told you, other stuff wasn’t. Now though it’s time to look forward to 2011!

Alpha Protocol – ready to execute

it’s not long now till the Obsidian produced, Sega published spy-rpg will be hitting consoles everywhere. I’ve been pretty excited about this game since I first read about it and I really like what I’ve continued to read about it. Over at Game Spot there is a new impression article which talks about the way decision flow on from each other. The best part of the article, for me, was

You then have the option of killing or sparing her, and the player decided to let her live. As we returned to our home, we got a video message from her employer asking us to meet, and we found out that not only was Sis his bodyguard, but she was also a mute. By not executing her, the player was given an “I don’t hit girls” award, which in turn resulted in a 5 percent discount with all of Sis’s factions.

I’ve always wondered why spy/stealth games aren’t turned into RPGs more often. I’ve recently been playing Splitter Cell: Double Agent and there have been heaps of opportunities for roleplaying decisions already and I’ve only made it through 2 levels! So it will interesting to see how they combine the two. I just hope that they don’t sacrifice too much of either the more traditional shoot ‘em up stuff or the RPG elements in order to fit into some kind of box. It seems to me all that ever does is dilute the whole experience.

Read the whole Game Spot article here.

Thoughts on console games

I’ve often wondered why it is that in recent years my interest in computer gaming has dropped off. It usefully had something to do with not being able to keep my PC at the tech level it seemed it needed to be in order to play the games I was most interested in. Then there was that I was getting all of the fun gaming experiences I was after from my table top games, and I didn’t need to sit alone in my room squinting at the screen. Oh and I also had a partner who wasn’t so keen on me doing that either.

But with the arrival of “next-gen consoles” (as they are still sometimes called) suddenly all those games I used to want on my PC could be played through a console. All I needed then was to just pay the $500 (rather than $2000) for the Xbox 360 and I’d be playing like the old days.

Except it also drew my attention to the games that were out there. And even though there were pretty and action packed they lacked something important that I have come to love in table top gaming. And that is deep character interaction. I know that to create a game with that kind experience would be so hard, it almost isn’t worth it but I think some games soon to be hitting the shelves might be getting close. Games like Mass Effect 2, Alpha Protocol and Dragon Age seem to be pushing that roleplaying experience one step further.

This feeling is summed up very nicely in a Kotaku article just after E3

I’m not sure what it says about me, that my biggest game moment of E3 2009 was a dialog decision. Maybe I’ve seen too much over the years to be impressed by simple game announcements or the promise of technology still a good year away. Maybe I’m just a science fiction roleplaying dork. Either one works.

I guess being a roleplaying dork just means I like complex human interactions, even in my pre-scripted games. So in anticipation of this glut of CRPGs coming out in a few months I’m going to take the plunge and buy my first console. Just as soon as I can get over my internal, PC game loving snobbishness.

Game design in CRPGs – some links

I’m on a Kotaku link buzz here, but these were interesting.

First up is how uber-CRPG designer Chris Avellone hates CRPGs and their clichés.

Second up is how horses change the design of CRPGs and why Dragon Age won’t have any.

Both of these are reasons that as long as I’ve got friends and dice, I’ll keep playing table top games.

Alpha Protocol – Looks interesting…

While reading up more about Fallout: New Vagas I noticed another game which might make it’s way onto my Xbox when is released. It’s called Alpha Protocol ans is also being developed by Obsidian and being published by Sega (I wasn’t even aware they still existed!).

It’s going to be one of those action/rpgs that seem so popular these days and looking at the various videos and trailers avalible it will no doubt be quite pretty. However it was this section of a First Impressions post over at Game Spot that got me really interested (emphasis added by me)

The guiding principle of the game is to make you feel like one of the three J.B.’s:Jack Bauer, Jason Bourne, and James Bond. To do this, Obsidian has the services of writer Chris Avellone, who wrote the acclaimed Planescape Torment, to create the people who inhabit this world. The team is trying to eschew the notions of clear right and wrong and keep the excitement high by giving each character a specific set of interests.

Planescape Torment?? Awesome! That game is widely considered to have some of the best dialogue ever, so fingers crossed he delivers again. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.