Meet the Crew: Baker Street Holmes

Doc Watson: Today, we’re introducing a new author for the blog. Fellow readers, I introduce to you my dear friend and associate, Baker Street Holmes.

Baker Street Holmes: Thanks, Watson! So I’m brought to understand that there is tradition within the red shirt crew to use the first post an introduction.  Where to begin…

Well, I guess I should begin by saying that Doc Watson is my best friend, hence my first connec-tion to the blog, as well as the root of my Nom de Plume.  He directed me to here, and I was so enamored with the site that when they asked if I would be interested in contributing… I can’t do this: I begged.  Pity was taken.  Here I am.

I share Junior Varsity’s love for Shakespeare and am still waiting for “And That’s Shakespeare: Hamlet” and “And That’s Shakespeare: The Tempest”, two of my favorites.  I also love fantasy, I’m a big fan of the Kingmaker, Kingbreaker series and the Circle of Magic Series.  Really anything with a novel system of magic (see what I did there?).  I’m going to talk more about books in an upcoming post.

As far as games go, I’m a huge RPG fan.  HUGE.  I love MMORPGs, most of all the City of Heroes/Villains series.  Handheld consoles are mostly restricted to Pokemon though home console games include Rogue Galaxy, Oblivion, Marvel Ultimate Alliance (1 and 2), Fallout: New Vegas and so on.  Probably my biggest passion has been table top/pen and paper roleplaying games and I have played everything from a psychotic drow child to a post-apocalyptic Don Quixote; a cyborg-octopus hacker to a MLP:FiM Pegasus paladin.

So as for some real content for this first post I’d like to recall a topic from one of the Red Shirt Crew’s own podcasts: Top 5 TV characters.  My attention was captured by this mostly because I never really thought about what my top TV characters would be.  After a lot of thought, these are the characters I decided upon:

Kaylee of Firefly:  She is amazing.  She’s cute, adorable in affect, but she’s not a wallflower.  She speaks her mind and doesn’t shy away from any topic be it love, dildo use, sexual interests, and so on.  She’s a genius with engines and incredibly loyal to her crew and Serenity.  Number 2 on my list of most attractive celebrities.

Dr. Spencer Reid of Criminal Minds:  He. Is. A. Genius.  Literally: IQ = 187.  Degrees and doctorates all over the place and an eidetic memory to go with them.  But what I love the most about his character is how socially awkward he can be.  One minute he’s telling you the day and time of a co-worker’s birth and then he’s confused by the term BFF (best friends forever, in case we have any Dr. Reids out there).  It’s hilarious.

Burton “Gus” Guster from Psych: Triple threat of perfect best friend/side kick traits: multitalented (tap dancing, encyclopedic knowledge of pharmaceuticals, “Super-sniffer”), amazing bravery and loyalty when it really matters, and willingness to put-up with Shawn’s high-jinks.  Should I ever become a fake psychic detective (something I have not ruled out), I want Gus by my side.

Brian Griffin from Family Guy: Actually more of a serious answer than you might expect.  In many ways his portrayal on Family Guy is an expression of the internal struggle we all face between our animal instinct and a desire to fit to societal expectations.  He can talk about political problems one minute and then be chasing after his own tail in the very next scene, usually embarrassed or frustrated that he has lapsed into primal reactions.  That, and he’s funny.

Lastly: Ms. Frizzle of The Magic School Bus:  Because fuck yeah Ms. Frizzle!

Introducing: Baker Street Holmes

Red Shirt Podcast #14: Future of Video Gaming

This week on the podcast, we discuss the future of gaming, including zombies, RPGs, RTSs, MMORPGs, and FPSs. Also, hilarity ensues. Enjoy!

For the first time ever, we’ve put our podcast on File Dropper. It should be much easier now for you all to listen to it. 🙂

file storage online

Sound test: 0:00

Part 1: On Zombies in Pop Culture, and What Will Take Their Place: 0:11

The Obsidian Debacle: 11:05

Part 2: The Future of Gaming: RPG’s 14:17

Our failures to check on youtube licensing: 27:03

Part 3: The Future of Gaming: FPS’s 28:56

Slapshoe: 43:36

Part 4: The Future of Gaming: RTS’s 44:40

Notch Indie Madness, Assassin’s Creed, definition of an RPG, and the Great Emu War: 58:04

Part 5: The Future of Gaming: MMORPG’s: 1:07:45

Legend: The RPG You Should Be Playing

Depending on where you go on the Interwebs, you may or may not have heard of a little pen and paper RPG called Legend. (If you haven’t, go click DAT link, or read on and come back to it.) It was originally released with all proceeds from the sale of the PDF of the rules going to Child’s Play charity, and raised nigh-on 13 grand doing so. It’s an exercise in making a d20 game off of the chassis of D&D without actually having it be D&D at all, and the results are interesting, to say the least.

The tl;dr is here for you:
-d20 game
-8 core classes
-Built off the OGL frame
-Completely divorces itself from D&D fluffwise while still having similar things
-You can be a Sentai Ranger if you want to (you know you want to)
———————————————————————————————————–
While the game has had itself many contributors to content and testing, the man at the head of all of this, stroking his beard maniacally while writing the next adventure, is Jake K. Like Athena from Zeus, so too did Legend spring from Jake’s head (headache probably included) – the story goes that a friend of Jake’s had collected all of their houserules for D&D, and from their started crafting Legend, which uses the 3.5 Open Game License content as a structure, but ends up branching out in many different ways. Character generation, for one, is entirely different: Classes are comprised of three Tracks each, which comprise all of the class’ intrinsic powers. Instead of D&D, which had some overly complex and arcane multiclassing rules, Legend just lets you swap a track out for another track in a different class. In essence, to paraphrase the commercial, if you want your character to do something, “There’s a Track for that.” Want a Rogue that sacrifices their ability to dodge threats for the ability to place traps? There’s a Track for that. (The Ranger has it, actually.) Want a Paladin who can build tiny robots to make his armor better? There’s a Track for that. (Machinist Savant.) Do you want to become a goddamn Sentai Warrior and live out your childhood dreams of being a Power Ranger in a game? There’s a Track for that too. (Vigilante.) Which brings up another point about CharGen – there are some freestanding tracks that you can sub in (like the last two examples). There’s also another option – something that touches on the economy of Legend, called Full Buy In. See, Legend did away with money in the traditional sense (I can hear you gasping now) and instead has an almost Borderlands-like item loadout that increases as your character’s level does. Initially, you start out only having minor items and a few consumables, but as the game goes on, you unlock the ability to carry more and better items. The Full Buy In option for CharGen lets you sacrifice most of your items for the ability to have a fourth Track, which allows you to customize even further.

There are a bunch of holdovers from D&D, which is to be expected, given that it uses it as a base – you’ve still got Feats to pick, the races are mostly the same, you’ve got mostly the same core classes (Legend’s core classes are Barbarian, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sage (which is kind of like a Jedi), Shaman (your basic caster) and Tactician (which is also a caster, but is more along the lines of a battlefield control caster). But even those that are the same are attacked from completely different angles, and feel new – which is because the creators of Legend wanted to get rid of the D&D 3.5 trouble of screwing your character over from not picking the “most optimal” path. A goodly number of the possible character combinations are actually viable characters, and the most wonderful part is that you can make the absolutely most ridiculous character you can think of and it’ll work. Case in point: Playtesting one of the adventure modules, I made a character who basically a Sith Power Ranger who instead of wielding a lightsaber instead wielded a lighthammer – a warhammer made of spiritual energy. Just think about that for a minute.

The other wonderful thing is that this game doesn’t try to be the standard fantasy story – while it certainly CAN do fantasy, there is no real default setting for this game as of yet. The game’s first campaign setting, Hallow, has a primer up on their site, and is effectively Eberron (the D&D 3.5 setting) set in space and a whole lot grittier. But it’s not all crazy, far out ideas – the first adventure released was entitled Osaka Street Stories, and was set in a slightly fantasy-ized 1990’s Japan – as in, what if Japan’s traditions about demons and spirits were real, and you’ve got the Yakuza employing demon hitmen to take out the owners of a mysterious box guarded by the spirit of a ramen shop. That spirit, of course, being a fire-breathing demon octopus chef. There are other settings in the works – the creators promised a setting entitled “Sherlock Holmes – Demonslayer” and I can only squeal with unbridled glee in anticipation, because that sounds pants-crappingly amazing. There’s another setting, called Comfortably Grim, which is supposed to be cyberpunk – I asked Jake how gritty this was going to be, using the series Ghost in the Shell as a base. His response? “Tengen Toppa Ghosten Shellen: Firepower is Magic.”

The takeaway from this is that this is a system that can do whatever you want it to, and if the system doesn’t do something you want it to, the development team is very open to suggestions and will usually end up putting those things in. The game handles everything from high fantasy to gritty hard sci-fi with ease, and means you don’t end up having to learn 87 different game systems to be able to play with your game group. Now, that being said, there are a few downsides: They haven’t put out any kind of Monster Manual yet, so it’s very difficult to have people fight anything outside of something representable by one of the base races (there are a few monstrous races in the main book, which is a help, as well as a few monsters statted up as teasers). Since there is currently only one published adventure, and it’s not even in the game’s main setting, it is difficult to see where the rest of the game is going. Further, the whole game is basically operating under the same principle that Minecraft did: We’re gonna release an unfinished product, and keep updating it as there are problems found/we feel we need to add more cool things into it. It can lead to some rather odd things, and some of them are just absolutely gamebreaking bugs that ruin it for everyone: The Sage used to have the ability to not only summon a Wall of Thorns, but also Force Push people into it, effectively meaning you could turn anyone into Swiss Cheese.

 This game definitely warrants a look, though, especially if you enjoy D&D-style games without necessarily wanting to commit to D&D fluff. In its current state I’d give it a 76/100 – it’s fun, it’s easy to learn, it does fun things, it just needs the kinks ironed out and the last bit of core content released.

-Super Jew, AWAAAAAY!

Rusty Hearts

Today, I have decided to talk about a new MMORPG game I have just found online called “Rusty Hearts.” This entry will be semi-short, seeing as I just started the game, but I will try to provide as much information as possible. If I had to classify this, I would consider it to be a hack-and-slash MMORPG, although, slightly different from normal hack-and-slash games in my opinion. The game has a pretty interesting story-line from what I’ve seen so far, and the graphics are nothing to sneeze at either. What I truly like about this game is that even though it is an MMORPG, man of the dungeons you explore are done solo, no worrying about hundreds of other players getting in your way or stealing your hard earned items. Instead of creating a character, like what is done in many other MMO’s, you are given the choice of one of four main protagonists to play as. Each one has their own strengths, weaknesses, personality, etc, but it can be kind of annoying when you run across 4 or 5 other people who are playing as the same character as you. I would recommend this game to others to try, but whether you like it or not is your own opinion to make. I’ll provide more information and a better review of the game once I get to play it more, but until then, I leave you with this gameplay trailer.

Brace yourself…Skyrim is coming

You should have pre-ordered

It’s almost here

Bethesda told of its return

It delay was to be expected

Til the time after Oblivion DLCs

When the fans of Elder Scrolls would isolate each other with theories

But every one wanted to believe

Believe it even existed.

And when the truth finally dawned,
It costs 60 dollars!
There is one we await,
In their tongue it is Mereth:
SKYRIM!

If you can’t tell, I am excited about Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. For any of you who aren’t reading reports and looking for screen grabs, it takes place about 200 years after the events of Oblivion (if you do not know what Oblivion is I cannot help you) in the northern province of Skyrim. After the death of the empire a civil war has broken out and you (surprise!) are the only one who can stop the Nordic god of destruction and his minions from destroying the world in fire.

For any of you who were unhappy with some parts of Oblivion, the game engine has been redesigned, the menu has been streamlined (skyrim skills menu) and auto-leveling (your environment leveling with your character) will not be returning (this means that you will find easy parts in the map, but you will also find parts too difficult for your character depending on what level he/she is and your skill as a gamer).

As the Madgod of the Shivering Isles, Lord of Battlehorn Castle, Knight of the Nine The Grand Champion of the Arena, Champion of Cyrodiil, Listener of the Dark Brotherhood, Arch-Mage of the Mage’s Guild, Master of the Fighter’s Guild, the notorious Gray Fox I humbly request that you look into this game.

If you do look into Skyrim, I take no responsibility for a significant drop in your GPA.

The Mouse Guard RPG

Tom here. I’ll be skipping an introduction and moving straight to content.

So you may or may not be familiar with David Petersen’s Mouse Guard. It’s a comic series about mice. I’ve never read it. This article is about the Mouse Guard tabletop RPG. If you’re a fan of the comic, pick up the damn RPG and don’t even bother reading this article. Seriously.

For those of you who don’t read the comics, the game is pretty cool all by itself. It runs on a simplified version of the Burning Wheel engine. If you haven’t heard of Burning Wheel, shame on you, because it’s pretty nifty even though it’s not really my thing. The way it’s been translated to Mouse Guard, however, is really slick. This is a no-nonsense game engine, and it allows and encourages some really fun characterization and easy story-building. It’s very structured, which is good, and which makes it extremely accessible to neophyte roleplayers. In fact, the whole tone of the manual makes it extremely welcoming for the inexperienced, and it’s a refreshingly easy read for the veterans.

Also, here’s the best part: the manual is heavily illustrated with panels from the comics.

These mice are fucking adorable. Go buy this game at once and gaze in glee at these adorable little rodents scurrying around a big scary world doing gritty, hard-boiled things while still failing to look anything other than completely adorable. They are the cutest things ever! They’re even cuter than Puppies and Pawprints!

You should all also know about Puppies and Pawprints and shame on you if you don’t.

And did I mention that these mice are gritty and hardboiled? Because seriously, when you are a mouse and just about everything that’s bigger than you wants to kill you, and the most sophisticated piece of technology you have is a sword, shit gets real. It’s a really cool game and a really interesting bit of cognitive dissonance – adorable characters, dark world. It’s like playing Pokemon 40,000. In the grim darkness of the far forest, there are only mice.

But yeah, five out of five, would play again etc. Go get that shit. Tom out.