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.
