fub, posts by tag: games - LiveJournal

My interest in the Dark Souls video game franchise is well documented on this blog — I once even was interviewed for a leading Dutch newspaper about it. So of course I have an interest in replicating that kind of feel in a tabletop RPG. When I wrote an RPG in 24 hours, I produced Miasma, a Japanese-themed take on the concept of undead traveling through the ruins of a corrupted capital in order to fulfill their destiny.
For Miasma, my design hinged on adversaries telegraphing their attacks, and tactical grid movement. The system was diceless — just like in the videogame, not luck but planning and commitment would be the main deciding factors in a fight. Just like there is very little luck involved in the videogame: if there was, then it would be impossible to do consistent hitless runs. It works in theory, but it is slow and cumbersome.

There are more games with the express goal to emulate the video game. Jason Tocci has created a few, based on various (rules-lite) RPG systems. I GM’ed two sessions of Exhumed, but that fell flat because of a lack of narrative thrust on my part and the underlying system. Most RPG systems regard monsters as bags of hitpoints, and it becomes a series of dice rolls to see who is victorious — and that’s just not what Dark Souls feels like to me.

Now, there is an official Dark Souls tabletop RPG in preparation — whether it is an original work or a translation of the Japanese official tabletop RPG is unknown at this time. But the discussion came up on Twitter about what systems or games would be suited to run a ‘Souls-like’ game in. And someone pointed out a setting book for Dungeon World, which is a D&D-like fantasy game using the Apocalypse World Engine. Normally Dungeon World would emulate dungeon-crawling high fantasy games, but of course you can change some of the Moves and add other details to the character options to change its tone completely. Which they did.
The Cold Ruins of Lastlife is one of three ‘Chaos Worlds’, which are settings for Dungeon World to emulate certain types of media. I bought the PDF because I was curious, and all I can say is that it works really well. Perhaps not quite in the way I want a soulslike RPG to be, but there are some really inspired ideas in there.
Dungeon World does not have a combat system as such. Yes, everyone has hitpoints, but everything is left to fictional positioning. There are no rules for turn orders, and characters can try to do any crazy stunt they want to. And while it may be very obvious to everyone else, I had a bit of an epiphany: you don’t need to carefully model all the ways that monsters attack in Dark Souls and make a system out of that — you can just leave it to the GM. Make a list of common attack patterns and trust the GM to come up with an exciting fight. Add a few Moves for the characters to use to give them an edge under certain circumstances, and off you go.

Not like I needed inspiration for another RPG writing project, but it’s an interesting thought.

I don’t recall who wrote it, but a quote I read on Twitter said that every game is like a spreadsheet: there’s numbers and relationships between those numbers. And the goal of any game is to get certain numbers high (score, HPs, XPs) while keeping other numbers low (damage, etc). To do this, you have a few number cells you can manipulate that then influence all the other numbers in complex ways.
Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists: Ateliers of the New World takes this to heart: some interfaces in the game actually look as a spreadsheet! It’s a town-management sim in the Ateliers franchise, which celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2019. In the Atelier games, you play an alchemist (invariably a girl in a frilly dress with a squeaky voice) who needs to solve various problems by gathering ingredients, synthesizing new items and defeating monsters. There’s always a time limit, so you have to make choices on what to spend your precious time on.
It is not different in this game: you get 100 turns to turn a little hamlet into a bustling city.

You play as the titular Nelke, a young aristocrat who came to the hamlet of Westwald to search for a legendary alchemy artefact, the Granzweit tree. And for some reason, all kinds of alchemists from all kinds of different worlds are drawn to Westwald, and they end up helping you.
Each turn consists of two phases. In the weekday phase, you manage your town: you can build new facilities (like ateliers for alchemists, shops to sell the items they produce to get funds, gardens and farms for raw ingredients, buildings with special effects, etc); and you can assign characters from your roster to work in a field or building and give them orders on what to produce. In the holiday phase, you can visit characters in order to raise their XP or friendship level; you can starts special research projects if all the requirements are met (often a certain number of a specific item, the alchemists involved have to be in your village of course, and sometimes there is also a requirement for a minimum friendship level). Another thing you can do is to ‘investigate’, which means assembling a group and walk along a route to collect items and battle monsters in turn-based battles. If you make it to the end of a route, you can assign characters to gather the materials that are present on that route during the weekday — and of course you need those materials for your alchemical recipes. The holiday phase has a clock count-down, and once it’s empty, the day is over and you have to get back to work…
Your father, the lord of the land, gives you orders (build your town to X number of people, earn Y amount of money by selling items etc), that you need to achieve within a certain number of turns. If you fail such a task, the game ends: your father recalls you back to the capital, and that’s it. But if that happens, you can create a special type of save file that allows you to start the game over with bonuses: characters gain XP faster, friendship levels increase faster, etc. So failing makes subsequent playthroughs easier, which is a brilliant design concept: even if you’re not so good, you can still make it to the end if you want to spend the time on it.

So basically it’s an excuse to assemble all of the characters of all the Atelier games in some kind of mash-up. And instead of the usual Atelier gameplay, it’s a pretty hardcore town management sim. The aforementioned spreadsheet is part of the interface: you can get an overview of all the items/ingredients in the game, how much of it you get each turn (gathering, growing or alchemical synthesis) and how much you consume (through sales or alchemical synthesis). You obviously want to balance this sheet for a smooth running of your town!
I quickly turned off the voice track (which only exists in Japanese), because I was getting tired of the squeaky voices that are so typical of Japanese ‘moe’ games and anime. And most of the dialog is pretty inconsequential anyway — something about one alchemist being fanatical about carrots and another hating them, etc. I ended up skipping most of that too after a while, but if you’re a hardcore Atelier fan, then of course you want to get to the very end of your favourite alchemists’ story-line.

On my third try, I completed the game. Unfortunately, I did not get the ‘best ending’, because I had not expected that to hinge on a single combat encounter — all of your careful town management doesn’t really factor in there, which felt bad. So for now I’m done with the game — I might pick it up again later, but by the end I was really looking forward to seeing the ending and play something else for a while.
The game got mixed reviews and mediocre scores, and that is certainly for a reason. But if you like town management sims and/or the Atelier games, then maybe it’s your cup of tea anyway. I had fun with it, after I started ignoring/skipping the parts that irritated me.

One year ago, when the COVID-19 restrictions had just started, Animal Crossing:New Horizons was released. I had pre-ordered and pre-downloaded it for our Switch, and it was the evening of March 20th when I stepped into that sea airplane to go on the ‘uninhabited island package’. Lots of people have written about how people visited each others’ islands and how overnight a whole community had sprung up around the game, so I don’t have to talk about that. Since then, lots of people have stopped playing — but not us. We even celebrated the new year in the game, with a friend visiting to see the count-down on our village square.

Every day, we do the rounds on our island. The days of hardcore fishing or bug-hunting are behind us, but it’s just nice and relaxing to fire up the game and walk around for a bit. Yesterday was our 365th day on the island.

A power interruption. We had gotten a letter from the company that manages the power lines that they’d be working on the infrastructure on Monday, from 08:00 to 12:00. That’s quite a long time, and no power means no heating, no hot water and no internet. I had reserved a spot at the office, but on Sunday I really didn’t feel like going — who would want to sit alone in an enormous empty office while being forced to drink the horrible tea there? So I cancelled the reservation — I could always use my phone as a hotspot, and if everything else failed I’d just take that time off.
We made sure to have all of our electronics charged, as well as the powerbank and all laptops. We got up extra early so that Klik could take a shower and I cranked the heating up so that the house would get a bit warm. I also made coffee and tea and put it in a thermos to keep it warm. And sure enough, at 08:09, the power went out.
…and it turned on again at 08:28. And stayed on. As usual, we were overprepared, but we’re not complaining. And I was glad I had resolved to stay home, because the trip to the office would have almost taken longer than the actual power cut.

My car got a new battery. Last Friday, my car refused to open with the keyless entry, and when Klik had opened it up with the key, it refused to start. (I had already left in her car to do the grocery shopping.) I had road-side assistance from Toyota, which I called on Tuesday. Within an hour a guy with a tow truck showed up, and he quickly determined that it was the (small) starting battery that didn’t have any charge left. We started the car with an external battery pack, and I drove to the garage. They took some measurements and the battery said it was OK, but it’s getting on in age… So I decided to have them put in a fresh battery.

I pickled some red onions. Super easy recipe, but quite delicious. I like to put them on my salad.

Some local friends started playing Dauntless too. I know these people from the local Pokemon Go scene, and they own a Switch too. We are in some communal chat groups, and on Saturday they sent me a chat asking if I played too. It’s been a lot of fun to team up with them and to show them the ropes. But they’re quite hard-core and have been playing through all 50 levels of the hunt pass in less than a week!
I am a member of a guild, but most of the players there live in Australia, so I often don’t have anyone to team up with when I play in the evenings. And while it can be fun to team up with a group of random players, that is really “hit or miss”. So having people to go around the islands with and helping each other is a lot of fun. It’s what makes co-op gaming so fun.

My second D&D group is approaching the end of the scenario. They’re playing through The Forest Shrine, my second D&D scenario, and they’ve arrived at the ‘end fight’. The first time they attempted the fight, it almost ended in a Total Party Kill and the group had to beat a hasty retreat. Since then, I’ve talked to a few of the players about their character’s abilities and how that interlocks with the rest of the group. The second time around, their tactics were much better and they really coordinated their actions. It’s still an interesting fight, but they were never in the kind of danger they faced during their first try — even though the opposition is the same. D&D really rewards ‘system mastery’ in that way.
I already have an idea of a sequel, but I want to talk to the players first on what they would like to see more of.

Remember when Animal Crossing: New Horizons came out just as we went into the first lockdown, and it turned into a bit of a lifeline for many people? You could visit other islands and keep in touch with friends. People celebrated birthdays and weddings in-game, and there was a regular iftar on an island too. In my mind, it’s really intertwined with the situation.
So what better way to say goodbye to 2020 by opening up your island for visitors for the end-of-year countdown, and a friend visiting to send 2020 off in-game?

I’ve been trawling through the “free to play” category on the Switch e-shop, just to try some things out.
I started out with Spellbreak, in which you play a wizard running through an arena where you need to find equipment that will make you more powerful. With that equipment you can attack other players (or bots) to ‘banish’ them and take their loot. Meanwhile, a storm steadily closes in, so all remaining players are forced towards the same spot. It’s the umpteenth iteration of a battle royale game — PUBG started the craze and Fortnite really popularized it with their free-to-play variant of the same concept.
The first game I played, I actually won! Turns out that your first game is always against bots, so that you can get a taste of the gameplay, and the feeling you’re actually good at this! Good move on the part of the makers, but as more and more real players got mixed in with the groups I played against, my ranking dropped considerably! I’m really bad at aiming projectile weapons, and with people jumping and flying around, it just doesn’t work for me. (I also never learned to play with a keyboard & mouse, and so pretty much every first person shooter is off-limits to me. And yes, I played this with a controller, but I never got good at aiming in the first place.)
The monetising was all aimed at cosmetic items and emotes and stuff like that — not essential to win — obviously, because who would play a game where the person who spends the most simply wins?behem
It’s just not my game, and so I uninstalled it after a few rounds. I don’t think I enjoy competitive multiplayer games like that.

This week, I installed Dauntless. In that game, you hunt ‘behemoths’, big monsters that have something to do with how the world shattered into separate ‘islands’ or something like that. I haven’t even bothered to read up on all of the background, which I’m sure is pretty deep but not really needed when playing.
Apparently it’s like Monster Hunter in that you, eh, hunt monsters. By attacking particular pieces of the behemoth (like its tail or legs) you can ‘harvest’ parts of the monsters, which you can then use to craft weapons or armour that is infused with the power of that monster. And of course, if you crafted an ice weapon, that’s pretty powerful against a fire monster, and vice versa. There are different types of weapons with their own specialities, and through quests and bounties you can earn things to improve your equipment, etc. There’s a lot to do, and there are various game modes that offer you different challenges — though in the end it all comes down to slaughtering an un-ending parade of monsters!
The game can be played alone, but the best experience is to work together with other players. I don’t have voice chat enabled and while there are emotes and phrases for in chat, nobody has time for those during a hunt: while you’re fiddling with your controls, the Embermane you’re fighting might be charging towards you! I do think it’ll be a lot of fun to play with friends, but since I don’t know anyone who does, I’m just a rando in a party of rando’s. Kind of liberating that you do not need to coordinate with someone else which hunt you’ll be going to do, too. I am not a stellar player though: my personal rating is almost always (far) below the rating of the team as a whole, though I do have my moments. Instead, I try to revive other players as often as I can, because that’s a better contribution towards the team goal than attacking myself. 😉
And this being a cooperative game, it’s not cheating if you spend real money to get better items in the game. So there are players who have sunk quite some cash into the game and have better tools and weapons — and that’s fine, because you’re not playing against them anyway. The monetising is at times rather “in your face”, but it’s absent during a hunt, so it doesn’t bother me much.
I’m not sure how long my obsession with it will last, but it’s certainly fun to fulfill missions or set your own goals and to hunt some monsters.

It’s been quite a while since I posted here. But I don’t really have much to say, because not much has been happening.
We’ve started to relax our strict distancing a bit with our respective families. Klik has resumed her visits with her mother, but she does keep her distance (no hugs etc). And yesterday we visited my parents for a ‘garden date’: we sat at one end of the garden, they at the other. It was good to chat with them in person again, and we could also do a few chores for them that they are not equipped to deal with adequately anymore.

I’m playing in three online RPGs, and running one — that’s maybe a tad much, but so far I’m really enjoying this increased activity. Lots of fun with great people.

Other than that, most of the time we’re just playing Animal Crossing — I don’t seem to have the energy or focus for much more. I’m doing a lot of online stuff with it (mostly getting DIY recipes from villagers on other islands), and today we managed to get the coveted 5 star rating for our island! We might do a little video tour to show it off to our parents…

The release of Animal Crossing:New Horizons could not have been timed better. Well, it would have been timed better if it had released a few days early since people are spending more time indoors. (And that was in fact what happened for people who had preordered from a store here in the Netherlands: they were shutting down all their stores, so people got their copy two days early!)
I did, in fact, uninstall Pocket Camp from my phone because it was too intrusive and the gameplay (such as it is) is shallow, but I also bought AC:NH. Digitally, so I can play a game that I have a physical copy of as the ‘main game’, and still be able to check up on my island without having to swap cartridges!

I love it. ‘My’ island is called ‘Fubbashima’ (because of course it is), and I’m having lots of fun with running around planting trees and flowers, fishing, and catching bugs. Klik also wanted to try it out, and we really dove into it. There’s a lot of players complaining that they have to share their island with the other players on the console, but I love playing together. We have our houses next to each other, and we often discuss how to best design our island together. When we get crafting supplies, we leave the excess in between our houses so the other can make use of them.

I’m considering getting the Nintendo Online for this game so we can go visit other players and send them gifts — but of course that only make sense if I know people who also play online! So if you do, drop a comment to motivate us!

With a month to go to the release of the new Animal Crossing game for the Switch, the hype is certainly building up — at least, I see a lot of people being excited over on Twitter. I’ve never really played any ‘tend & befriend’ games, and I am wary of the time-bound aspects: I do not want a game to dictate my schedule, I’ll play when I feel like it. Years ago, I played a kingdom sim where you’d plant crops that would ripen in 8 hours, but would have rotted on the stalk after 2 hours more, so you had to act within that two-hour window. I uninstalled the game (can’t even remember what it was called) and never invested in such a game again.
And AC does have real-time aspects to it, like everyone you meet has a birthday, and if you interact with them on that day, something special happens. Or certain events only occur within a certain time period. But since there is no ‘win condition’ (that is: you don’t seem to ‘finish’ the game), that’s not a problem — it’s not a ‘progress blocker’. And I’ve found through playing Pokemon GO that I don’t suffer from FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) in such games: if I don’t catch that one ‘mon during that one event, then that’s fine with me, really. So I think I can deal with it.

I’m used to playing games with clear objectives, that you can ‘finish’ once a whole chain of objectives have been cleared. AC doesn’t seem to be like that, and it is really all about building relationships with the ‘villagers’. And that is its own appeal: Pocket Camp is amazingly affirmative. You pick fruit off the tree and give it to a friend, and they say something like “Wow, are you this generous to all your friends? You are amazing!”

I wonder what it says about our society that we turn to games to get experiences like that. But I do know that it shows there is hope for us yet.

Yesterday, we visited Essen for the annual Spiel tabletop gaming exhibition. My purchase list was empty, but as usual we didn’t return empty-handed… We left a bit after 9 am, and went straight to P10, the off-site parking with lots of capacity, as the parking near the Messe itself fills up almost immediately. We were not going to make the same mistake as last year, when we spend a lot of time in a traffic jam past the Messe, and ending up at P10 anyway.

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We had a delicious pulled beef burrito to end the day, and left the fair as it was winding down. 19:13 we were back at the car park, and it took us some time to find our car back — next year we really need to make sure we take a look at the signs! We were back home before 9 pm, which wasn’t bad at all.
It was not as busy as I remember from last year — but then we went on the Thursday, which perhaps draws more deal and novelty hunters. Yes, hall 3 was jam-packed, because that’s where all the big stands from all the big publishers are, but the rest of the halls were quite navigable. And hall 5 and especially 6, where most of the ‘fringe’ stuff was (like RPGs…) were nice and quiet (relatively). Not sure what we’ll do next year (a lot also depends on klik’s working schedule), but I certainly didn’t regret going on Friday.