Revenge!

Born in the crucible of nuclear fire, our vengeance burns brighter than a thousand suns.

(Risk Legacy Spoilers Below)

Synchronicity: To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

Far too busy of late, with little time for relaxation or exercise, and the results are fairly predictable. I’ve been suffering from a bit of insomnia over the past couple weeks or so, and finally caught the chronic cold the kids have been trying to fob off on me for the past month. Fortunately this pace won’t last for much longer, as the final exam for my last course in the certificate program I've been studying for is next Wednesday. I’m going to buy myself a new iPad as a celebratory reward for being so awesome and doing as well as I have with everything that’s happened in the last few months. Also, the weather has been wonderful, and I’m looking forward to some languorous relaxing this long weekend.

Of late my mind has been obsessed on various aspects of sleep, dreams and death, acutely picking up various bits of related detritus floating about my immediate info sphere. Hmm, that’s a bit weird to celebrate perhaps, but the strange thoughts have been quite refreshing in their way. It’s somewhat difficult to get them on down and correlated into something intelligible, but I’ll try anyway. 

Death, sleep and dreams are great movers in video games, both from a story and mechanical standpoints, and there are a number of aspects I’ve been tossing around in my mind. Ultimately, their representations in games end up quite surreal at times, mashed and mutated into specific purposes for the game, resulting in some pretty nifty experiences. 

I noticed on GoG.com the other day that Alan Wake is coming to the PC, and I’m looking forward to giving this a go when it comes out. The insomniac horror angle seems pretty interesting. But for the moment, I’ve mostly been playing Troika’s unfinished masterpiece The Temple of Elemental Evil, including the latest version of the Circle of Eight’s mod pack. I’m playing a version that includes quite a lot of new content, in addition to changing many of the encounters in the game, with interesting results.

Last night I finished the moat house, which ended a bloody battle against Lareth the Beautiful, the cleric of Lolth, and his dozen or so bandit guards. It was hard fought, with the hireling thief Furnock of Ferd buying the farm, lamenting with his last breath his lost retirement aspirations. After gathering the loot, I decided to head out the back door into the nice clearing and dismiss poor Furnock from the party, effectively if not actually burying him near the place he had fallen.

 It was somewhat mercenary decision I must admit, as I couldn’t make the cost to get him raised without selling some or hard won and much needed magical miscellany. He’d out lived his usefulness, and my own rogue was now experience enough to handle any locks, larceny or other stealthy skullduggery we may require.

However, before I could consign Furnie to his long night dirt nap in that idyllic clearing, I came across one of the Circle of Eight’s many wonderful additions:  a few notable evil NPC’s and their cronies lying in ambush. Having just come from a hard fought battle in which most my martial and magical resources had been exhausted, I was mercilessly slaughtered. I was forced to reload and contemplate the obvious solution.

I would have to recover my spells and hit points by resting in the late Lareth of Lloth's opulent  bed chambers, a dangerous proposition.  This is one of the aspects of modern Bioware RPG’s and their ilk that I miss the most, the lack of strategic resources that needs to be carefully husbanded.  Though I do like Dragon Age’s metered mana magic system and tough tactical combat, I still miss the strategic management of finite resources, like hit points and spells in a classic Dungeons and Dragons crawl. It results in some interesting choices that are missing from a CRPG that focuses only on the tactical aspects of conflict.

Spending the night in Lareth’s bedroom resulted in the party being awakened after only a couple of hours by some unruly zombies. Though easily dispatched, it set us back a couple of hours, and when we finally awoke in the morning several had contract an nasty case of Filth Fever. Wonderful. I hope that doesn’t leave too much of a mark. I may have to pay the local cleric to get that looked after, but his tithes are utterly ruinous. It was pretty late at this point, so I decided to save the ambush battle for tonight. I expect it should go pretty well, now that I have my web and entangle spells refreshed.

This has probably meandered on long enough, I think. I had hoped to write a bit about some of the weird dreams I’ve had as well due to my insomnia, but that’ll have to wait. For now, I expect I’ll keep on contemplating the role of death, sleep and dreams in CRPG’s, and how they can add a lot to both story and mechanics, and hopefully have something less anecdotal to put down in the near future.

Rest in Peace, Furnock of Ferd.

Paradise Lost

Machination is no more.

Those who are faint of constitution, or who wish to have certain mysteries remain inviolate are advised to turn back before it is too late.

You have been warned (Risk Legacy Spoilers).

Machination

On Saturday we played our seventh game of Risk Legacy. After failing spectacularly in the previous two games playing as the Enclave of the Bear, I returned to my tried and true Die Mechaniker. I'm happy to report that the Boys from Hy-Brasil soundly defeated the Saharan Republic and the Enclave of the Bear in a simultaneous two-pronged blitz, cementing their hold over South America and declaring  dominion over the sovereign state of Machination as reward for their third victory under my leadership .

As you can see, it's been a rough go over the past seven games. Sadly, there remains a single starting point in South America that other players can still take advantage of, unlike Australia, which James has bottled up for himself.

The game is full of surprises, and an absolute blast. The previous weekend at the Three Moves Ahead board game meet up I learned of something quite astonishing.

No good can come of this.

This little surprise sits on the bottom of the box under the tray. I never knew it was even there. The question is how long we'll be able to resist opening Pandora's box. Perhaps we should institute some sort of vote at the beginning and end of each game, each player getting a number of votes equal to their number of victories.

Looking forward to our next game.

Hello World

I've been putting this off long enough, I think. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Dave, bearer of the self-evident sobriquet of Furious. Canadian born and bred, I'm a dutiful father, husband, son, friend, software developer, inveterate gaming geek, et cetera.

This digital domain's primary purpose is to store the  meandering musings of my furious mind on whatever games of the moment I find fascinating. Board games, role-playing games, and all manner of digital diversions and their ilk are likely to be represented, depending on my somewhat mercurial moods.

I've come to that age where internal processing and memory are no longer sufficient to compile and contain all the necessary run times, and  much of the extraneous metadata will be dumped here from time to time, in an effort to keep my poor old ordinator functioning and free of extraneous diversions. Or something like that.

Basically, there's a lot on my mind and on my plate at the moment, and I feel a certain need to skim of some of the supernatant cerebral effluvia that seems to collect too quickly of late. So I'm dumping the dross here until I can figure out what I'm going to do with.

So, let us exult then in this supercilious sophistry, and shout out our traditional salutations!

main()
 {
        printf("hello, world\n");
 }

Just a Fool

The weird irony of this journal’s first entry dawns on me mere moments after sending it. The postdate hits me like a truck.

 “April Fools”, it calls with a Mockingbird cry and a Cheshire smile. How apropos.

I’m not entirely certain how many journals I’ve created and then quickly abandoned by the road side before the journey has barely begun. It seems this one has gotten the upper hand however, smashing me into the rain slick asphalt long before that opportune chance to toss it aside just happens along.

We’ll see about that.

Lousy SMarch weather.

Updated my Journal...

What can change the nature of a man?