Back With a Vengeance

Ground control to SpacerGal your circuit's dead, is something wrong? Can you hear me SpacerGal? Can you here me SpacerGal?! Here, I've been floating 'round my tin can, far above the world. But, I'm back, rock references in full force, bringing you a roleplaying update, a big boy game review, AND a Child at Heart review! I figure I've been gone for far too long, so why not come back with a bang? So without further ado, let's get things started!

Saurian Insanity

So, as the Snowman mentioned, the addition of the Saurian druid variant in Pathfinder's Ultimate Magic book really made me want to step out from behind the screen and be a PC again. The concept was a little bit more Land of the Lost than Conan, with me never speaking English while in character. Instead, whenever using first-person dialogue, I plan to use the (ready for this under-rated reference point?) Star Fox Adventures saurian language spoken by all the dinosaur planet inhabitants during cut-scenes. Pretty crazy, right? But hey, that's how I do, getting wacky for experimentation's sake. As far as settings go, the Snowman and I have been collaborating on both a high- and low-fantasy versions of dinosaur inhabited worlds for characters to explore. Full write-up on that to come once we finish fleshing it out in it's entirity.

Returning to Raccoon City...

I was down at one of the local game shops lately and stumbled across the Resident Evil Deckbuilding Game. I still had some fun money, and the box has my main RE squeeze on it, so we picked it up and gave it a whirl. Turns out, Bandai and Capcom have turned out a pretty great, fast-paced, (kinda) balanced DBG that I think can definitely stand up with the other big boys coming out this year from Fantasy Flight.

Look at Leon Kennedy all silly with his bangs all around. Yay!

Normally, with a game in a genre getting as crowded as the deckbuilding genre, I'd make a comparison to another game, but I've never actually played Dominion, or Thunderstone, or any of the other hyped up titles. Being my first encounter with a DBG, I didn't fully know what to expect other than a slightly "different experience with each game." So let's dig in and see what makes this game stand out in my collection.

First off, this game is easy to learn, and easy to play. Obviously there are certain strategies to it, what to buy for your deck and when, but overall, anyone can play this game, and I think that's nice. I have a ton of friends who aren't tabletop gamers, but would give this a try simply because of the franchise, and they wouldn't be lost or confused. Every turn, you get an Action, Buy, and Explore to use, and can earn more depending on what cards you play. Actions are used to gain extra damage, draw extra cards, score more Buys, and other cool effects. Buys are pretty obviously when you spend money to add a card to your discard pile, which shuffles and resets as your deck every time you run out of cards. Exploring lets you hunt zombies to kill and score points, but don't get too hasty to score, because if you can't kill the random zombie that flips from the top of the Mansion deck, you'll end up with damage, and that can mean loss of turns, or even the whole game.

We most often play Mercenary mode, one of the three different game modes provided in the rules. It's the fastest played and the least based on stalling and grinding up a ridiculous deck, plus all the characters are more unique, in that they get specific staring decks instead of the stock one used in Versus and Story modes. In Mercenary, you have 15 rounds to score as many points worth of dead zombies as possible, giving it a rapid-fire arcade type feel. It also removes the three super-huge zombies from the Mansion deck, so you don't have to be worried about being one-shot. In Story, the first player to kill the one copy of the biggest infected monstrosity wins. With him coming up at random, and being ludicrously powerful, it can be a frustrating game when you get blasted for 70 damage out of your 80 health on turn 2, but the duration means you can spend more time fine-tuning and customizing your deck. Versus is just what it sound like. Instead of using your Explore action to fight zombies, you shoot at other players, aiming to be the last one standing. With how powerful some of the character abilities are, it seems this mode can get unbalanced really fast, but it is a fun little diversion if you feel like really mixing things up a bit. No matter what game mode you are playing, you use a Scenario to determine what cards will be used. There are certain basic resources that are always there, which are the Knife, Pistol, Green Herb, and three levels of ammunition/gold. The Scenarios add 12 more cards to the available purchasable pools, called resources, and they are usually themed. For example, the Special Forces uses a lot of higher-powered specialty weapons and bonus ammo and damage actions, whereas Mobility uses less super guns and more actions that draw cards and add to your deck. This added variety on top of three included game modes makes Resident Evil remarkably replayable, and a blast for anyone into zombies, the RE franchise, card games, or fun.

I Wanna Be the Very Best

Pokemon. I love it. Look at me however you want with those judging eyes, but this 24-year-old is all about Pokemon in whatever form she can get it. Video games, plushes, figures, and of course, the card game, which is what we're here to talk about. Having not played the card game since my middle-school years, I figured I'd pick up some new theme decks and give it a whirl. Needless to say, I still find it as fun as I used to, but I do have some criticism for it.

Two new theme decks from a brand new set, featuring Krookodile and Scolipede. I'm positive you can figure out which is which.

One of the first major things I noticed when in the store was the sheer size of the deck box. I thought, this thing is huge for just housing a 60-card starter deck. But when I got home and cracked it open, I discovered that it didn't just have a deck of cards in a huge plastic insert. Take a look at this craziness!
That's a deck, a sheet of surprising decent quality damage and status counters, a set checklist in poster format, that giant two-player starter mat everything is sitting on top of which has the rules printed on the back, a 16-character code card that unlocks the deck for online play on the Pokemon TCG website (more on that later), a shiny little coin for all the coin-flip effects in this game and my favorite part, the thing I think should come with EVERY boxed card game product......Oh em gee, a deck box. Cardboard yes, but still, a nifty deck box themed to the deck to hold your new cards in when not using them. I could kiss whoever thought to include these in the marketing department. Now that I've gone over what you get in the box, let's actually look at playing some Pokemon TCG.

The rules to the game are simple. At the start of the game you put out a basic pokemon as your "active" pokemon and may place as many additional basic pokemon as you like in your "bench" area as "bench pokemon." If your active is defeated, one of these is chosen to step up and replace it. After you've got your pokemon out, you take the top six cards of the deck and set them aside as "prize cards." For each pokemon of your opponent's you defeat, you pick up a prize card. Pick up all six and you win! Each pokemon has at least one attack printed on it to start walloping your opponent. These attacks require energy cards to use, and you can only attach one energy per turn, much like lands in magic. Think your active pokemon is going to get dropped in one more attack? Maybe you should attach the energy to something on your bench so it can come in powered up, or do you take the risk and build your active up further in the hopes of riding it out? Energy management can make a huge differences in these games. Also, you can evolve one pokemon per turn by placing a higher stage version of it on the basic form. For example, that Scolipede up there is a stage 2 pokemon, so I'd have to have his stage 1 out in order to put him into play. And in order to get to the stage 1, I'd need the Basic pokemon that the stage 1 comes from. This keeps the game from slamming out too fast, but I did notice that, with a handful of exceptions, the first person to get out the big stage 2 beasties tends to sweep from that point on. We did have several games in which a player stabilized and managed to turn it around, but in general, big guy first usually means the win. In addition to pokemon and energy cards, there are Trainer cards, things that function like sorceries and instants in Magic, one-shot abilities that help you draw more cards, or search for things you need, or even heal your pokemon. From what I've seen, these are what REALLY make or break the game. A well placed extra draw or hand replacement can change everything in a heart-beat, and while all decks have access to them, it makes it feel like a very luck-based game now that I'm older and more versed in card gaming.

So, all in all, the game is still a blast, but the fact that almost the entire game is hanging on who scores the better draw can get a little frustrating. I've been reading up on the super-competitive aspects of the game, and it's almost all dependent on accelerating draw, so even above the casual level it's a pretty luck-based game. If you're looking for something light, or have someone in your life who loves pokemon, it's at least worth a look with a couple theme decks.

Oh! That's right, the online thing! This is a really cool new thing implemented in the last couple months, and I think it's a fun way to get more bang for your buck out of card gaming. When you sign up on the website, they give you three basic decks to play with that can't be modified. There are currently several different NPC challengers to play against, and if you're really feeling daring you can play against other live players. The new theme decks all have codes in them to add them to your digital collection, and with the deck-builder system currently in beta, it won't be long before you can use fully customized decks to play computers and challengers alike online. yeah, Magic's had MtGO for a long time, but it's nice to have my physical collection digitized without having to rebuy digital copies.

Last Transmission

Ah, it feels good to be back. I hope you all enjoyed my giant return as much as I have, and from now on I'll try to keep my Warp-wandering to a minimum. Next week's post is up in the air subject wise, but as always, you can expect something kiddie and something random. Oh that's right! I'm running a Beyblade tournament at the North 5th Street Toys 'R Us this Saturday, so if you're in the North Las Vegas area, come check it out. Who knows, maybe you'll even make it into the Dispatch!

Missing Dice and Twirling Tops

Hello world, I'm your wild girl! And this is your first real post from me, SpacerGal, the latest contributor to Sin City Dispatch.

Social Interaction Dice-ectomy

The Snowman really dug into one of the things that has become a signature of my GM style, and that is the removal of social interaction skills in 3.5 OGL/d20 system games. I've never been a fan of the Intimidate or Diplomacy rolls, as they just don't make sense to me. Granted, I like a more abstract game with less emphasis on rules and more emphasis on both storytelling and character development for my players, but even setting my distaste of rules lawyering aside, they seem so counter-intuitive to roleplaying. In my mind, the purpose of a roleplaying game is to, you know, play a role, and using dice to determine how NPC feel about you detracts from this.

Part of removing these dice actually lies heavily in how detailed an environment is, and it does take going an extra couple of miles on the GM's part. Not going to lie to you, I spend hours upon hours developing even the most minor of NPC, delving deep into imagination to forge histories, personalities, quirks, and flourishes for the people my players will be meeting. Creative writing has helped make Leviathos feel more like a living, breathing world, and I have several very lengthy stories about the adventures of my main NPC that I'll probably end up sharing here.

As far as game elements are concerned, I find my players open up much more when they have to actually talk down a furious guard captain or frighten a native into telling them about an ancient secret. This opening up leads to better player chemistry, deeper, more interesting characters that players want to come back to time and again, and a fuller world for the GM to dig into.

I ultimately decided to start trying this method out a while ago. I had kind of a falling out with D&D after a very poorly run game, and most of the problems came from the heavy-handed book ruling. After wrestling with myself about what could be done to get away from the rules without completely stripping them away, I decided to do two things. The first was to remove those interaction dice, and the second was to remove alignment (but that's a story for a different time!). I sat down and started collecting all the characters I had ever played, reworked them into a new world of my design, and ran with it. After further developing this place, I thought about all the best roleplaying experiences I had ever played out, and realized they all happened when the players were entirely in control of their path. And that, my friends, is also a story for a later day. More on my style coming soon!

Childlike Nature: Let It Rip!

I work at a toy store, so naturally I see all of the kid's games, fads, and the latest anime tie-ins. And of course, I buy these things! Occasionally, there's a real gem in the midst of the loads of crap spewed out by the major distributors. One of those gems is Beyblade, the game of high-performance top battles. On the surface, the toy line and game elements are just a cash grab based on the new show, but when you dig a bit, it's actually a surprisingly deep game with a certain appealing simplicity.

The goal of the game is to make sure your top is the last one standing in the "Bey Stadium," a big plastic bath tub with a bowled bottom and two side pockets in which your tops can get stuck. You and your opponent count down in sync and on the last count, you both launch your tops into the stadium from a launcher powered by a toothed rip-cord. They clash against each other, breaking down each others speed until one falls over. Simple enough, right? Now let's look a little further.

There are three types of tops, and your choice can literally make or break the game before you even launch.
Attack types are super-aggressive, ripping around the beveled stadium at ridiculous speeds, often fast enough to fly out and hit bystanders if they aren't careful. They hit hard enough to knock most tops over or into the pockets, making them lose. But of course, this speed and striking force come at a cost. They have little to no staying power, so if they don't win quick, you're going to be outspun.
Defense types are heavy, wide-bottomed tops designed to withstand the brutality of attackers. It's rare that an attacker will be able to even make a defense top budge further than a few inches before running out of steam, and while these have more staying power than attack types, they still suffer from higher friction due to their bottoms and weight.
Stamina types weigh in at almost nothing, stand very tall compared to other tops, and can spin for upwards of 3-4 minutes when not being hit. The obvious weakness here is the lack of weight and high profile. Attackers will eat them alive, whereas defense tops will be struggling to keep up with the speed of these lighter contenders.
Balance is self-explanatory. They draw from the strengths of each of the other types, but this blending of strategies more often than not ends up in expanding weaknesses or lower performance compared to specialized tops.

So it's kind of a rock-paper-scissors, where Attack beats Stamina, Stamina beats Defense, and Defense beats Attack. Where this can really get interesting is in the customization. Oh, did I not mention all of these tops can be stripped down to five parts and reassembled in whatever configuration you find fits? This is where all of our physics lessons come into play, and savvy players will spend time digging through parts and testing all sorts of combinations to find what works best. There's more to it than this, but I'll get into that next time.

Last Transmissions

There ya have it. I hate dice outside of combat and I enjoy silly kid games. You'll definitely be seeing more of me in the coming days, as we have another Pathfinder session with more wacky elements coming into play every week, including a discussion about my "persistent world" experiment. And of course, there's more to say about high-performance tops, so be on the look out for your favorite space-faring gamer! Ya'll have a good one now, y'hear?