Recommendations February 2012

In this category of posts I will highlight three links I find worthwhile and tell you, the readers, why that is so. In every post like this I will link to one podcast, one other blog, and one free game, be it video-, table-top, RP-, or other. I'll try to keep this as regular category at the end of the month/beginning of the next month, hence the “of the month” attached to each category. Take that however you will. All things presented here are things I listen to/read/play on a regular basis and that is my only certificate of quality I'm offering here.

Podcast of the month: Close the Airlock!
Another week, another actual-play RP-Podcast. These guys are pretty new but spewing out new episodes at a frightening rate. It's a podcast with a regular group of people playing a campaign of Traveller so a somewhat retro-sci-fi setting is the order of the day. With decent production values and a (so far) cleverly designed campaign this podcast highlighting one of the somewhat underplayed games of classical roleplaying I have very high hopes for this one and so should you! Check it out!

Blog of the month: Shut Up & Sit Down
A blog and webshow about boardgames in all their glory and different styles. The two guys running the show over there are video-game-journalists in their everyday-lives and do this as a side-project showing their passion for playing physical games around the table with real people. Be forewarned before going there as they tell it in their about-page and they mean it: You will spend money on games they review. If you're into boardgames at all. If not, you probably stopped reading three sentences ago so why bother?

Free game of the month: Transcendence
George Moromisato's epic space-shooter-roguelike has been out for a while now but it's definetly worth a try. The game is a top-down 2-D-Shooter in a series of randomized solar systems connected by stargates. You loot wrecks of enemy ships or buy equipment at space stations, take jobs for different factions and try to upgrade your ship to keep up with the constantly increasing difficulty of the next solar systems until you reach the last gate, guarded by the Iocrym, to breach the blockade keeping you in the space designated to be the human wilderness-preserve. A steep difficulty and the procedural generation of the universe require equal parts of luck, skill, and good choices to ever get through this but failing can be a lot of fun too.

Play Diary: Rogue Survivor - Vinnie Tarver

In this play-diary I'll do something different to the ongoing Oblivion-series and play a little roguelike called Rogue Survivor, which can be found for free here. Roguelikes are games usually based on procedural generation of worlds, the programmers choice of mechanical depth over graphics, and usually a high degree of difficulty. A famous example would be NetHack. Anyways, Rogue Survivor takes place after zombies have started to overrun your city and you play a random survivor (or zombie, if you want to), just trying to survive for as long as possible. My first Play-Diary of RS can be found here, the second one here.


This was the first time I played with the new rule-set of "classic" zombie-apocalypse, foregoing any mutated monstrosities and skeletons and allowing only zombified men and women in the game. The addition of corpses to this version makes things interesting too. I'd figured it would be easier without zombie-masters around but I was wrong. Also, did that serial-killer get updated too..?

Day 0:

I woke up smashed after this party in the central park villa club. Man, there were people running around all frantic and the radio was on, broadcasting some stuff about the end of the world. I didn't believe it but then I saw them: Actual freaking zombies. I got the hell out of there and ran across the street into the police station. The cops were actually handing out weapons and body armor to civilians. Everything is going crazy! I didn't want to be the one guy without a weapon so I got a shotgun, some shells, riot-gear and a flashlight. I wanted to hide in the basement-cell block so I went down there. There was a guy in one of the cells begging me to let him go and that the CHAR corporation was after him and whatnot. I reluctantly opened the cell and he came out and told me where the secret CHAR facility was that started all of this. Then his body split open and a monstrous creature broke out of him. I screamed like a baby, which got two cops on the plan to check things out. They opened up with their guns and the thing came at us. I emptied my shotgun into it as it ate one of the cops alive. It came at me too while I was frantically reloading, bit me but I finished it off. The bite later became infected, I need to do something about it. There were some army-rations in the basement of which I took some. Then I left, before anyone notices that it had been me who opened that cell. I went to the Western Central subway-station because just the other week I had noticed a sign for a cold-war era bomb-shelter there, which is where I'm camped out right now. Tomorrow I'll go up and find medical help. Hopefully the national guard will be there and it will all be over by then.

Playing Oblivion Day 2 part 3: Unrelated Cult

This is part of an ongoing series. If you want to start at the beginning, go here.

It's early 2012 and I'm playing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Why? Because I (finally) can. Join me on my path to glory and the stabilization of the status quo in almost-Tolkien-land.

I press my horse onwards and leave the Imperial Capital behind in order to get some more adventuring done for the second time. Is there anything going to stop Martor from exploring new towns, finding ancient ruins, discovering new lands? Definitely not and the stupid localization won’t stop me from enjoying this game, even if it breaks in-game riddles (sometimes I wonder how these people make money with these sorts of translations. Strongly reminds me of the German version of Futurama where you could totally notice whenever the translators failed to understand a joke and pathetically failed at delivering any resemblance thereof or, worse, simply translated badly). So I decide to head towards a nearby city named Skingrad that Martor and Martin (what a duo) must have passed while fast-travelling to the Blades’ secret fortress but that I haven’t seen in-game yet.

Animals are the better NPCs…

Video game programmers have been giving you a “friend” to go a bit of your in-game journey with you for decades now. It has always been a nice thing not to be all alone in a virtual world, a friend is someone who isn’t out to get you. Or a major annoyance and the buster of the suspension of disbelief.

There are four basic types of non-hostile NPCs (non-player-characters for those unfamiliar with the lingo) in video-games. The first two types of NPC are relevant bystanders, such as shop-owners and quest-givers, and civilians, who mill about just to make the world seem more alive. These have been present from the early days of RPGs and have since invaded other genres, such as action-based or strategic games. As backdrops and static shopping-implements, these characters are okay. The other two types are what can get really frustrating: Protectees and Side-Kicks. And any combination thereof. Let’s talk about them.

Pen and Paper: Campaigns and One-Shots – a Taxomony of RPG Story-Lines

I'm a passionate pen & paper role-player and have been for about fifteen years (with a rather long interruption in active play)/ a bit more than half my life now. I started out around 7^th grade in a traditional group of misfits pen&paperin' it up trying to level their ill-conceived DSA (Das Schwarze Auge, the earliest German spin on the fantasy-level-grinding RPG type that DnD invented) characters through a string of loosely connected adventures GMed by the one amongst us with the least imagination. It wasn't pretty and after it all sort of stopped happening I didn't play until university. As we have an on-campus role-playing society, it was easy to find like-minded people there and I started enjoying the weekly gaming-session on campus every Wednesday, with two bi-weekly groups each semester, which also led to private gaming-sessions on an almost weekly basis. Good times. The topic of this post, however is a different one: The different flavor of adventure to be had simply by differentiating narrative length.

Playing Oblivion Day 2 part 2: Ghost Story

This is part of an ongoing series. If you want to start at the beginning, go here.

It's early 2012 and I'm playing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Why? Because I (finally) can. Join me on my path to glory and the stabilization of the status quo in almost-Tolkien-land.

I haven't gotten far away from the city, in fact, it's right on the other side of the water, when a bandit fires arrows at me from some interesting-looking ruins. I bring up the map and notice that this is a named place – interesting. Martor must get off his horse and charge the bandit. The place is half in the water, features a big statue that is strangely intact in comparison with the rest of the compound. By the dead bandit there are some bottles of dark beer sending a smile on Martors lips. Then I realize that there are stairs with an entrance to some underground dungeon. Adventure here I come! Maybe there is some of that mysterious side-quest-wine down there. Martor chugs down three of his newly looted beers and enters the dungeon.

Schmidtennistan Files part 2: Inner Workings of the Reich

Seven decades ago my grandfather was a child in Nazi-Germany, playing war-games with a friend of his. These games were rather elaborate and involved not only toy soldiers but also diplomacy and even bureaucratic processes of the two countries involved. I found the files containing what my grandfather made up back then and here is the second part of my analysis of them. For the first part, go here.

Schmidtennistan is a military dictatorship. A protocoll about an answer to a diplomatic letter sent to their closest ally/constant enemy Dreessenistan casually remarks that it was replied by the Dreessenistani military dictatorship, which makes it seem like they view themselves as something different but just look at the names of the list of the Schmidtennistani government my grandfather meticulously created: Reichspräsident (president) General Duro, Reichskanzler (cancellor) General Duro [both the same person - just like Hitler at the time, which for my grandfather, born in the 1920s, was probably a synonym for government], Foreign Minister Oberleutnant Wallmar, Ministry of Interior Hauptmann (Captain) Feng and the list goes on. Every single member of government is apparently from a military background. It's your typical fascist junta, I guess.

Talking about Boardgames: Cargo Noir

For my birthday my girlfriend and I bought a new board-game for our small but growing collection. An important factor in this purchase-decision was the fact that the box boasted that the game was one of the few auction-based games that work as well for two players as with a larger group. As we sometimes play with just the two of us this was interesting for us so we gave it a shot. Did it hold up? Find out in this review!

Cargo Noir is a game designed by Serge Laget, published by Days of Wonder. It’s an auction-based game with a couple of simple mechanics that have the players competing in auctions for wares of which they must gather as many of one type as possible. They can then exchange their wares for cards that are either boni for gameplay or simply victory-points for the ultimate counting for winning after the last round was done. It's all rather simple and elegant, it takes less than ten minutes to explain the game to a new player and all the mechanics are quite intuitive and obvious. The game features two different kinds of currency, coins and cargo. Coins are used in conjunction with ships, the play-pieces, to bid on batches of cargo. Cargo, unlike coins, is used to actually buy things like more ships, additional storage space, slight economic advantages when being overbid or simply victory-points.

Playing Oblivion Day 2 part 1: Lost in the Dark

This is part of an ongoing series. If you want to start at the beginning, go here.

It's early 2012 and I'm playing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Why? Because I (finally) can. Join me on my path to glory and the stabilization of the status quo in almost-Tolkien-land.

So I have to do this whole slow-walking sewer-section again. Okay, might as well practice this little dashing-attack I noticed happening whenever running and pushing the left mouse button for a longer time. Martor goes for a yelling attack-lunge whenever I do that and I go berserk against some crabs and giant rats for practice. Baurus (the Blade I'm stuck with here) is not much of a help here, yelling “This one is mine!” at some point and then proceeding to not draw his sword and look at the rat that is attacking me. Martor rolls his eyes, draws his own weapon and cuts the rat down himself. Typical Baurus: Spouting big words but not following them with any sort of deed. He probably only got his position as the Imperial bodyguard for looking snappy in his Blade uniform…

Play Diary: Rogue Survivor - Max Jones

In this play-diary I'll do something different to the ongoing Oblivion-series and play a little roguelike called Rogue Survivor, which can be found for free here. Roguelikes are games usually based on procedural generation of worlds, the programmers choice of mechanical depth over graphics, and usually a high degree of difficulty. A famous example would be NetHack. Anyways, Rogue Survivor takes place after zombies have started to overrun your city and you play a random survivor (or zombie, if you want to), just trying to survive for as long as possible. My first Play-Diary of RS can be found here, the second one here.


This one is a longer one, making the perma-death at the end a very harrowing experience. It's not my longest run ever but I think it's second or third and the longest one I have written down. I'm posting this in celebration of the nice spike of traffic that Roguedjack, the maker of Rogue Survivor has given my blog by posting links on his developer-blog. Thanks, man!

Day 0:

The news were true and I had to get the hell out. Z everywhere, fighting, screaming. I ran the store and then left to the east side and found shelter in a subway station; then went hauling more ammo and guns from that weapons-store twice. Now I'll sleep. More looting to be done tomorrow, I guess.

Day 1:

Two more hauls, one for ammo, one for food. I have a decent stash of canned food now. Tomorrow that other gun emporium is going to be it. Not much else happening. The police warned about bikers and gangs trying to take over now that the city order is collapsing. I'll take care.

Day 3:

Two hellish days seem to be finally over. Yesterday morning I saw one of the notorious gangs of bikers marauding down West-street so I decided to delay my excursion to the weapons emporium and check out the police station. It was quite a hike there but I looted a pharmacy for some energy- and caffeine pills. At the station I got myself a riot armor and another shotgun plus shells for it. In the cell block I decided to set those trapped there free. There was this guy who said he was working for CHAR and that they were the cause of all of this. Right after he told me where the entrance to their secret facility was (and I started thinking he might just be nuts) his body burst apart and some monstrosity replaced him. The thing attacked and the prisoners and I were in complete pandemonium. I emptied round after round of buckshot in it, it clawed at me, it was horrible. In the end it was dead, a lot of the prisoners were too and I was hurt as well. I patched myself up and it was night but I had to press on so I took the caffeine pills and went through the night. Took a route via the weapons emporium to get more supplies. On the way back I ran into a group of bikers roughing up some guy. In the ensuing street-battle the guy and I killed three of them. Then I brought the loot home to my hideout. Went once more to get some more stuff. Tomorrow I'll have to set out and try to find more food and medical supplies. For now I'll take a long sleep and go to bed early.

Things to come 2

What's coming up next around here? As usual, in no particular order, posted when I feel like it throughout February:

-Continuation and conclusion of the Schmidtennistan-files. My grandfather as a nerdy kid playing wargames will probably be material for two more posts.

-Day 2 of the Oblivion play-diary. It gets a serious twist towards the end of that day...

-Some more Minecraft-musings in connection with some other examples of emotional impact in games. Why are these cubes so scary?

-Reviews of some board-games I've been playing recently. Not the most up-to-date ones, mind you but the twist is that I often play them with just two people (my girlfriend and me) and most games don't hold up to well with only two players. Some do though, so if you want to play the occasional game with your significant other, these could be interesting for you.

I'll also probably slow down the publishing rate to four times per week, roughly. Maybe every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Yeah, that sounds about right. So, thanks for your interest, all five of you who are reading this!