Keeping the Fire Going

Sometimes the inspiration for a post comes from out of left field*, and this certainly fits.

Zinn over in Jinxed Thoughts --yes, Zinn's back!-- had a post this evening about a Choose Your Own Adventure book series, called Dice Man:

From Jinxed Thoughts.

Zinn is a fan of Judge Dredd, and so that cover caught her eye. Only one of the stories covers ol' Dredd, but that's fine. That post she wrote jogged my memories about the Choose Your Own... style books that I'd bought back in the 80s while I was forbidden from playing RPGs, and I have no idea where they are now: Tolkien Quest/Middle Earth Quest series and the Lone Wolf series.

***

I had the top three books, but this is
a sampling of what was put out.
From u/aelphia on this Reddit thread.

Let's talk Tolkien first, shall we?

This was my gateway drug into the Middle-earth Roleplaying System by Iron Crown Enterprises, but I'd almost completely forgot that little factoid. Back in the 80s when I was banned from RPGs, the first book appeared at one of our local bookstores,** so I naturally snapped it up. 

Inside the book looked a lot like the traditional Choose Your Own Adventure books, only there were fights and skill checks involved, and for those checks you could either close your eyes and point a pencil at a page in the back with random numbers on it or you could get out some dice and ...you know... roll for it. There was even a miniature character sheet in the back, as I recall, and the story itself was well done.

I know now that the book, being produced by Iron Crown Enterprises, meant that the quality was bound to be high, but I had no idea what to expect. I mean, the old Choose Your Own Adventure books themselves suffered from uneven quality from book to book, so I had kind of steeled myself for a potential let-down.

But the best part? It looked like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, so it passed whatever invisible inspection my parents' had, and besides it was the size of a paperback***, so I could easily toss it in a book bag or in the middle of some other books and nobody was the wiser.  After the third book I didn't see any more being published, but that was okay by me; by then I'd moved on to hiding the MERP RPG books themselves in my room.

Having done some short research, it appears that the series was restarted when I was away at college, which is why the actual number of Middle-earth Quest books is much larger than the three I remember.

***

There was also another reason why I was okay with the Middle-earth Quest series ending, and it was this series that I stumbled upon at that same bookstore:

From the Lone Wolf Fandom Wiki.

I knew from the moment I saw it that I was too old for the target audience, but I quickly snapped it up and skimmed the inside anyway. There was a similar system in place to that of the Middle-earth Quest books, so I acknowledged that it was more for elementary and middle-school kids and swallowed my pride and bought it. 

Looking back on those Lone Wolf books now, I can see the obvious kid-oriented plots, but I was still happy to feed my RPG habit with these supercharged Choose Your Own Adventure style books. The funny thing is, I tired of these more quickly than the Middle-earth Quest books, mainly because after the first story arc finished, the author Joe Dever went back and started another story arc with your character essentially starting all over again. In an echo of complaints about every MMO expac ever, I wasn't so thrilled to essentially toss out all of my old abilities and weapons just because. Still, I have some very fond memories of these books that kept the RPG flame alive for me in the 80s when things looked bleak for me.

#Blaugust2023

*A slang term referencing baseball. The outfield in baseball is the farthest away from home plate, so "out of left field" is slang for "from out of nowhere".

**It feels so weird saying 'bookstores' these days, but when I look back on it, the 70s and 80s were 38-48 years ago. We even had a bookstore at the local strip mall a short bike ride away from my home, and that's something my own kids would never ever comprehend. To them, going to a bookstore is a "pile into the car and drive for 20 minutes" event, especially since the Borders 10 minutes away closed back in 2011. And that was the summer before our oldest mini-Red began Seventh Grade; she'll be 25 this Fall. (!)

***And cost as little as one, too!

It Is a Puzzlement

I've mentioned before about how Modiphius Entertainment came out with a pencil and paper Dune RPG, and I am puzzled.

Yes, they did win an Ennie award for it, but...
From the Modiphius website.

I mean, it not only exists --and Modiphius won awards for it-- but I just can't wrap my head around the concept of an RPG based on the Dune universe. 

While I can understand the concept of a strategic game, such as the legendary Avalon Hill board game Dune,

It had been out of print for so long
--and the Herbert estate had sat on it--
that I figured it wasn't ever going to see
the light of day again. Still not sure how
Gale Force Nine pulled this one off.
From Boardgamegeek.

an RPG based on the intellectual property is an entirely different matter.

RPGs are meant to be personal, so even when you have a troupe or stable of players, such as in Ars Magica or Vampire: the Masquerade, you can identify or understand the motivations of the player you're inhabiting at the moment. That intimacy doesn't necessarily translate into a universe where factions war with each other and unless you're at the heart of the malestrom you end up being chewed up and spit out. The novels themselves are focused among the people at the very center of everything, and Paul's family in particular, so a game like that necessitates you have to be attached to a noble house and perform deeds for that house. That sounds a bit closer in tone to, well, this particular game from Wizards of the Coast:

At the intersection of Eurogames
and RPGs, likes this one.
From Boardgamegeek.

People I know who have played Lords of Waterdeep like it, but then again those folks tend to love Eurogames in general, and the crunchier the better.

I guess I'd have to see Dune in action to really make a better judgement, but for me it certainly seems like this has to be a hybrid type of RPG at best.

#Blaugust2023

Twenty Three Years Later, The Argument Goes On

Back in the year 2000, when most non-gamers thought of computers, they thought of the Millennium Bug. Or maybe the Dot Com Bust, which began in March of that year. 

But for us gamers, the year 2000 was more well remembered for two games that released within a few months of each other, and because they both kind of fit into a similar game type their fates became intertwined: Diablo II and Baldur's Gate II.

Released on June 28th, 2000.
From Wikipedia.

Released on September 21st, 2000.
From Wikipedia (again).

The fact that the game that released first, Diablo II, was an Action RPG and that Baldur's Gate II was more of a "traditional" RPG was kind of lost in the discussions that followed, as the fans of the two games devolved into two separate camps as to which game was superior.

I know, the concept of both games being good was kind of lost on people --myself included-- as I found myself being the Baldur's Gate fanboy among my gamer friends at work. 

And yes, I will freely admit that I was outnumbered in the arguments that followed. Part of that was simply because I lived with D&D for so long --and dealt with so much crap for it back in the 80s-- that a good, well-designed D&D game was always going to get my love. That what my friends loved the most about Diablo II, that you could use gems to customize your gear, wasn't why I played Baldur's Gate II. BG2 had story, the setting, a familiar system, and honest-to-god romance storylines in the game that blew me away. In an early prelude to my love-hate relationship with gear in MMOs, my friends' preoccupation with gear wasn't what drove me to play either of these games.*

***

The irony is that here, in 2023, we're back to the Diablo vs. Baldur's Gate arguments with the releases of Diablo IV and Baldur's Gate III within a few months of each other.

Just like before, D4 released
first, on June 5th, 2023.
From Wikipedia.

And BG3 followed suit later,
on August 3rd, 2023.
Can you guess? Yes, it's from Wikipedia.

One thing is certain: I won't be playing either game any time soon. I've got other games to play, and once I settled all of my bills for the month, I had other spending priorities in mind. 

I mean, I'm sure both games are nice enough, and they likely scratch the itch of their respective fanbases, but at this stage in my life I can afford to wait. 

That being said, if people want to make arguments here, go for it. Just play nice. It's been quite a while since I've had to wield the ban hammer on someone other than a spammer.

#Blaugust2023

*Although having also played a Paladin in my early D&D days, I'll freely admit that Bioware adding Carsomyr, an actual Holy Avenger, to the game was highly inspirational. No, I didn't play a Paladin in BG2, but my heart soared knowing it was out there.

Meme Monday: Back to School Memes

Because it's that time of year again in the US, may I present a selection of memes to remind people of how much fun (kinda sorta not) school was:

I feel this. Big time.
From imgflip.

That's akin to those lines in the movie Wargames:
"Who proposed the concept of reproduction without sex?"
"Your wife, sir?"

Been there. All that's missing is the
"MOOOOM!!" or "DAAAAD!!"
From Facebook six_pack_mom.

Having played Minecraft, I actually
get this one now. Well, more than I would
have before then.
From knowyourmeme.

To Boldly Fumble Along...

Some days you just want to fly around in your starship.

There she is, the USS Bohr.
And yes, I named her after Neils Bohr.
I am such a Physics geek.

Uh... I've been just goofing around Spacedock when I login to Star Trek Online for so long that I forgot how to get to my starship.

I mean, shuttles do make sense, right?

Oh wait. I can beam aboard...

Duh.

And away we go...

Why yes, I do like my atoms scattered
across the universe.

Now, where to go? Oh, I don't know. First star to the right and straight on 'till morning, I suppose...

Spacedock is busier than I thought.

Once I figure out how to exit the system, that is...

Anyway, I'm going on an adventure!!!

#Blaugust2023

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Grind

One thing about Classic --and Classic Era/Vanilla Classic in particular-- is that you can simply grind out a level or two whenever you feel like it. 

By that, I mean that you can simply run about and kill monsters until you level; no quests required. 

Sometimes that "grinding out a level" is a side effect of doing something else in the game, and in my particular case that's because I've been grinding out materials I need for leveling professions: cloth of various forms and some magic items I can disenchant for their basic components. 

This system has worked for me, keeping Era Cardwyn in relevant gear as she went up in levels, but when I looked back on the previous month I realized that of the last ten levels she gained she got most of that experience through the grinding process than anything else. 

Unlike, say, Retail WoW, the crafting professions provide viable gear that remain useful throughout the entire leveling process. Are you a Frost Mage? A Fire Mage? Guess what? You can get the majority of your useful gear through simply making it yourself rather than having to constantly run dungeons. That doesn't mean that you can skip running dungeons at all, because there are still really good gear pieces in there, but you'll find that if you don't get the drops you want off of the bosses, your "back up" gear courtesy of the crafting professions will work nearly as well.

And a nice thing about working on crafting professions is that you can plan ahead more easily because you might get the recipe early enough that you can start working on what you need beforehand. 

Like what Era Card is doing right now, which is killing demons --always a noble concept-- for Felcloth. Card can turn that Felcloth into Mooncloth, and then subsequently make a Robe of the Archmage, which is a Mage's best non-raid chest piece. 

Little things like that are why I enjoy hanging around in Classic Era, because when I went back to Wrath Classic I found that the crafting professions I prefer aren't nearly as useful. With Tailoring, you can make bags and the odd item, but being useful for the leveling process? Eh, not really. Some of that is the focus of the game, where it shifted away from being a world that you inhabit and more toward the raiding process to finish the story, and some of that is the developers' better understanding of what works and what doesn't, so they increasingly put the majority of what works behind dungeons and raids. And if what a crafting profession did supported the raids, it got the lion's share of attention. Otherwise... Not much.

I'm happy to keep plodding along, however. It's stress-free playing, and I'm all for that.

#Blaugust2023

EtA: Corrected some grammar.

Old Man Being Old

If there's one thing that brings out the "old man yelling at cloud" meme, it's the people who rush to the end in a game. 

Unless the game you're playing is predicated on a timer to win, what's the point?

Like oh, say, THIS one. From Hasbro,
which is also the owner of Wizards
of the Coast, ironically enough.

Sure, in a video game there are your share of DPS races that you have to go fast for if you want to win a game, but I'm talking about a methodology about approaching the game itself. And unlike a methodology of following the current metagame, which can encourage skips and bypasses and speed running*, I'm talking about injecting speed into a game that wasn't built around it.

Obviously it's diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks, but when I first encountered this phenomenon early in WoW's Cataclysm expansion, there were all of these players who rushed to the end and then spent their time in Stormwind or Orgrimmar complaining that they were bored. 

Pick a Feral Druid, any Feral Druid...

"I'm bored" is now a tired old meme, but back then in 2010 that was my first encounter with it, and I was thrown for a loop.

I still am, honestly.

If you're bored in an MMO, go play something else. Nobody put a gun to your head and told you to try to go as fast as you could in a game to finish it as quickly as possible. And from my perspective, "the internet told you to do it" is the 2023 version of "the Devil made me do it". To which my response is "What a load of horsecrap."

And that's coming from someone who had an email address back in the 1980s. I may be a grumpy old man, but I'm a grumpy old man whose internet activity from the mid 1990s can still be found online today.**

Hey, if you enjoy speed running, great. Go for it. But don't expect any sympathy from me if you chew through a game and ingest all the content and then complain there's nothing to do. 

#Blaugust2023

*Or even the entire concept of Mythic and Mythic Plus, which in Retail WoW is based upon how fast you can finish an instance while still accomplishing certain tasks; essentially a video game version of Perfection while hyped up on meth.

**You have to do some hunting, but it's still there.