My life has been very busy lately, with one thing or another, and
the hour is late. Thusly, I shall follow the name of my column
and talk about a few random things.
Plugs:
Its time for the monthly plug.
- Its Sluggy. Its freelance. Read it, for it is nifty.
Check out my interview with Pete Abrams in a previous column.
With that out of the way, lets get down to the nitty-gritty.
Ive recently become addicted to a new game. It is called
Oblivion. Its a free shard running UO. If youve played Ultima
Online on any of OSIs servers, this is completely different.
There are all sorts of different races, necromancy, tons of
different ingot and log types, and a GM staff that actually cares
and runs fun events. Theres something fun in playing UO
paintball or capture the flag. Even if you dont play UO, the
shard is free. Just grab an old copy of the software from
somewhere, load it on, and get it set up. Their page is at
. Check it out.
Not too long ago, I stumbled across another rather interesting
site. This one is at . I went there, picked up the
RPG version at my local gaming store. It uses the SAKE
engine. I recommend picking it up. The thing is like, six bucks,
and even if you couldnt find anyone to play it with, its worth
the read just for the laugh. Oh, and they have a full menu and a
bunch of funny games on the site. Ive never tried to play
hangman in Japanese before.
I picked up a copy of Age of Mythology. Ill review that pretty
soon, as soon as I can pull myself away from Oblivion enough to
get it installed.
Saw a few old movies and a new one, too. Pitch Black was
bad. I wish the screen was pitch black, because then Id have
only had to suffer through half of the horror. The only fun part
was guessing the order that the people would die in. Its old
enough that you should have heard of it, but heres the plot:
Spaceship carrying civilians and a prisoner crash lands on a
rather deserted planet, people *somehow* survive, and they just
happened to have landed near a deserted scientific outpost. Oh,
and it just happens to have been at a precise time when a solar
eclipse happens, unleashing photophobic monstrosities that just
happen to have a taste for human flesh (since we dont come
from that world). With all these coincidences, I felt like anything
could happen . . . you know, like maybe even Vin Diesel might
suddenly start acting. Alas . . .
Ran was an awesome movie. Its a really old one, a Japanese
take on Shakespeares King Lear. There was quite a bit of plot,
a fair amount of war scenes and great character interactions.
Again, heres the plot in a nutshell: Old king decides to retire,
and bequeath his kingdom to his three sons, the oldest gets the
best castle and land, the middle one gets the second best, and so
on. Only the third one speaks up, voicing his doubts as to his
brothers cooperation. This gets him banished. Varying power
struggles happen, and the plot is expertly manipulated by a
character that you might expect the least. Oh, and it doesnt
have a Hollywood ending. Ill just leave it at that.
I finally picked up a copy of LotR, Extended Edition. I watched
it. It made me mad. Why? Why did they feel the need to cut
those scenes out? They only made the movie better! Argh!
What is an extra half hour when youre already there for three?
I would have watched it if it was a five hour movie. Also, Im a
bit disappointed in them for releasing two different versions so
quickly. If my in-laws hadnt picked up a copy of the normal
dvd, we might never have found out about the extended version
until we got the first one. Anyway, I recommend this to anyone
that even remotely liked the movie. If you havent seen the
movie yet, watch it. Im not even going to give you a summary.
Watch the extended version first. Its much better. I almost
wish I had the willpower to avoid seeing the second movie until
the extended version of that came out.
Ok, one last thing here.
I discovered cheapass games. While not exactly a roleplaying
game, these things are incredible. As they say on their box,
theyre interested in bringing you the game, not the production
costs. As such, each box is pretty much a board, whatever rules
are needed, maybe cards if its a card drawing game, and then a
list of the pieces you can pawn from other games. I havent
seen a cheapass game in the store for more than 7.50. This is
something you could take to your gaming group for a break.
Maybe bring a few. I recommend starting with Kill Doctor
Lucky. Youre trying to kill this . . . rather lucky doctor (reminds
me of some of the games Ive GMed). You stalk his mansion
and try to kill him with clue-like instruments of death (I killed
doctor lucky with the monkey paw in the parlor!) without being
seen by other players, but watching them so they cant kill him.
It lasted about fourty-five minutes, and we were laughing almost
the whole time. Nothing like trying to kill someone with a tight
hat. Anyhow, anyway, check them out at . Yes,
you heard me. Cheapass.com. Not .net. Thats an entirely
different story.
