Been awhile…
Posted by Jon | Filed under Tabletop RPG
Since I or anyone has posted. Sorry for the delay, got plenty to add to this blog…
The robot revolution has arrived… and damn, is it cute.
Posted by Kim | Filed under Tabletop RPG
Nissan demonstrated their latest model of Eporo “robot cars” at CEATEC in Chiba City today. These little guys aren’t just adorable – they’re brilliantly designed. The inspiration behind these robot cars comes from the movement patterns and obstacle-avoidance techniques of both bumblebees and schools of fish.
Schools of fish are able to travel in groups and not run into obstacles or each other for a few reasons – lateral-line sense, sight, and communication. The lateral line is a sense organ, found mostly in fish, that detects movement in the surrounding water. Nissan has replicated this using a laser range finder, which allows the Eporo to avoid both obstacles and other Eporo.
Since Eporo contain an artificial lateral-line sense, they can sense where the other Eporo in the “school” are located, and can maintain a safe distance between themselves.
So, what does all this mean? Well, Nissan intends to evolve the Eporo into the future of automobiles. Not only are they developing electric car technology; they’re combining it with collision-avoidance technology as well.
At some point in our lifetimes, we may very well see cars that are not only fully electric and sustainable, but entirely capable of keeping us safe on the road.
You can learn more about Eporo technology here, and watch a full demonstration of the Eporo from CEATEC below.
Rogue Games releases Colonial Gothic revised!
Posted by Kim | Filed under Tabletop RPG
Last week, Rogue Games released Colonial Gothic Revised, a long-awaited follow-up to, er, Colonial Gothic (I know, you couldn’t guess that on your own, right?). This is such a cool game. As you’d presume, it takes place around the time of the USA’s colonization, and the years leading up to the American Revolution.
Oh, you think history is boring, do you? How about we throw in some magic, and supernatural enemies? Yeah, that got you thinking, didn’t it?
This game was a very early release from Rogue, and the play was a bit buggy – some inconsistencies, things left out of the rulebook, etc. However, with the Revised edition, just about all of that has been fixed. There’s so much more information, and a lot of the inconsistencies have been cleaned up with regards to the rules, etc.
There’s a free 7-page preview downloadable from the e23 link at the beginning of this post. It consists of some background info in the form of letters, and some chapter excerpts.
The players take on the characters of more-or-less everyday people, dragged out of their normal lives to fight the supernatural forces guiding events in the 13 Colonies.
For long-term GURPS or D&D players, the rule system may seem uncomfortably different at first. Each character has five stats – Might (strength), Nimble (agility), Reason (intelligence), Resolution (willpower), and Vigor (health). You also have stats which can change throughout the game, and they’re pretty self-explanatory – Vitality (your health, lose it and you die), Sanity, and Faith. Most decisions are made with two 12-sided dice.
The biggest complaint I’ve heard about the original Colonial Gothic is that it just wasn’t quite enough, in any respect. The Revised edition has really fleshed the game out, hopefully making it much, much more playable. I, for one, can’t wait to sink my teeth into this game.
Check out the main Colonial Gothic site here.
The System is Down..
Posted by Jon | Filed under Tabletop RPG
Well, this is the first post in a monthly series that looks at different RPG gaming systems, their advantages and disadvantages, history, resources, and so on.
I will be starting this series off with a look back at the Palladium system, and more specifically, their most popular setting in their “Megaverse”, Rifts. Since its creation, over a quarter million copies of the original Rifts rule book have been sold and over 60 source books have been created.
Created in 1990 by Palladium’s creator, Kevin Siembieda, Rifts is set primarily on a post-apocalyptic Earth, that has been covered in “ley-lines” of mystic energy. This has awoken psychic and magic abilities for the population, and also all sorts of mutant life-forms. Where these Rifts intersect, rifts can be opened, and provide gateways to other worlds. This allows for all sorts of possibilities, and opens up the entire Megaverse of sourcebooks to be used, as the system is the same for almost all the worlds available.
The game uses the d20 system similar to Dungeons and Dragons (roll initiative to see who goes first, roll a d20 to strike/parry/dodge, and so on) but that’s where the similarities end. Filled with massive 20+ foot-tall robots and mechanized vehicles, psychotic “crazies” with super powers from electro-implants in their brains, the game becomes a gorefest and can twink our really quickly if not kept under control. Rarely are characters themselves injured; instead, characters vehicles and powers are slowly chipped away until they can recharge (Inner strength Points or Potential Psychic Energy for psychics and magic users respectively) or repair their robots. This is basically because once a character is stripped down to their bare human selves, they become “meatbags” that can EASILY die from a single blow. The simple reason for this is something called Mega Damage. Energy Weapons and other high powered guns do exponentially more damage than regular ones do. Even a single point of Mega Damage will obliterate even the most hardened human, who only possesses SDC (Structural Damage Capacity). This is because one point of MD is equivalent to 100 SDC, and as most guns rarely just do 1 point of damage, human characters are vaporized when taking 20 MD (translating into MD as 2000 SDC!) Robots, other super armored war machines, and some magic/psychic abilities endow their users with MDC, or Mega Damage Capacity. No matter how much SDC a machine gun does, it will just bounce off MDC structures, even if you fire at them for hours, potentially doing thousands of points of damage. This is similar to shooting at a tank with a machine gun. Sure, you might scratch the paint and scuff it up a bit, but you’ll never penetrate the amour. So, with all this said, frail humans without any powers are really powerless to resist death, and for this reason alone, the game never feels “life threatening” because, even if your amour gets shredded, you can often retreat to get repaired and live to fight another day. Personally I prefer a certain degree of risk and danger in games, and this one doesn’t ever really provide that.
Another point against the system is the ability to tweak your character upon creation to make a super combat oriented persona who has bonuses of +10 or more to parry and dodge. This provides a laughable situation whereupon a players character is untouchable, and the Game Master must exploit loopholes in the rules or fudge die rolls (both become predictable and implausible)
However, regardless of these minor flaws, the game does have an immense amount of flexibility and replayability, and although a tremendous about of skill is required to properly GM a game of this type, it can be very fun. This is the first system I even played with any sort of seriousness. If I tally up my gaming experience with this system alone, it makes up for the bulk of my 15 years spent with RPG’s, when split between GMing and playing. Probably because while the system escalates power and “twinkiness” very quickly, there are plenty of sourcebooks available that escalate the difficulty of opponents to match. This makes the majority of the equipment in the original rulebook obsolete (it is only ever really referred to for rule checking), and almost forces the dedicated player to purchase a number of these sourcebooks. Don’t get me wrong.. it is easy to get drawn into wanting the new books and the new equipment, especially if the player is a gearhead and wants to have some elite piece of kit that no one else in the party has.. But regardless, it isn’t a cheap game to invest in. Most people I played with spent at least $200-$300 on books within 5 or so years!
So if you want to give it a go, and can get into detailed combat that might take 1 or 2 hours for 15 seconds of in-game time, like big robots, and can find someone with a huge collection of source material, go for it. You will be very satisfied!
ARhrrrr – An augmented reality shooter
Posted by Jon | Filed under Tabletop RPG
This technology is absolutely amazing.. The game play is fairly simple, as it is only a concept, but the images are very detailed and stutter free! I can’t wait to see where this sort of idea goes!
