Of Worlds to Play in and Places to Stay in

The warmest of greetings to you!


Worlds (meaning: settings) usually have a common theme, or multiples of them. Some are dystopian to the core or support honorable actions. Others may have layers upon layers of secrets, waiting to be discovered, and so forth.


The world of "The Witcher", written by Andrzej Sapkowski, is near to the first example, with some bits of the others here and there and a generous serving of "fairytale, but for adults", including brutal murder and sex (consensual if it's involving the protagonist Geralt, but there's also quite a bit of rape in numerous backstories).


"Hey, but what about the games? Are they good?"


Well, thank you for offering such a conveniently placed segway, audience member who may or may not be entirely fictional!


To answer the question that was so graciously provided: I guess so? Every game in the series has it's own faults and curiosities, with large variances from game to game. The first installment told it's story in a very linear fashion, the second game went deeper down the hubworld-hole and the third is as much open-world as a storydriven RPG can possibly be without seriously impacting the telling of its story (shame on you, The Elder Scrolls-series. Shame on you.) Combat is hardly good, but at least serviceable in the first two games, although the second installment feels quite boring after a while - more so than the first one.


Back to the title of this post: As a place to play in, the Witcher's world is very exciting. Lots of interesting characters; choices to make that aren't just black or white. Makes for a world that is easy to immerse yourself in; especially when you feel like you are making a difference. Having an impact on the story is a huge deal for immersion!


But! Would you really want to stay there? If you would be a citizen of the world the story plays in, would you have a good life? In the Witcher's world, the answer just has be no. Because noone has a good life there. There are no happy people. The only good, decent folk you meet are those that live in monster infested areas. Monsters that easily disasseemble a normal human being. If the portrayal of the setting in the games is to believed, then there's really no reason not to shiver and cry every time night falls. Those that aren't under constant threat of being dismembered (meaning: those behind walls) are either massive scumbags or the victims of intense racism.


I guess what I'm trying to say is:

Even the non-player-characters in a fictional world deserve to be relaxed and happy ever so often. Even if it makes for a slightly less exciting setting.


May your life be filled with the kind of happiness you never get bored of!

Of Paths to Find and Players to Entertain

Ah, welcome, welcome! Sit, have a drink, and listen to my tale, friendly stranger!

(DnD stands for Dungeons and Dragons. This will be important later on.)

So. Magic: the Gathering. It's a card game; Most will know it, some won't, but this is just my intro to what I'm actually getting at and like most intros completely irrelevant.
Anyways! 3 of my friends and myself were booster-drafting (you unwrap packs of random playing cards, then build a deck from those cards, then proceed to make fun of your opponents for being manascrewed. Yes, this is a simplified exaggeration). After drafting, the evening still had a couple of hours in it, so we decided to give the Starter Box of Pathfinder a spin. Yup. All that intro, just to lead into Pathfinder. I wasted everyone's time, especially my own. Whee!

Pathfinder: The Starter Box

What do you do when you have friends over, everyone's saying "man, I haven't played DnD in ages, that could be good for a bit of fun", but time's too short to build characters and/or to conjure a campaign for the game master from thin air?
You play the DnD Starter Box!
And if people want to play something with DnD-flavor, but don't want ACTUAL DnD? Well, I guess that's what Pathfinder is for, since Pathfinder is, quite literally, an almost-clone of DnD that grew/evolved into it's own thing.
Included in the Starter Box of Pathfinder are 4 pre-made characters, one rule book for the players and one for the game master (with a starter adventure) and an astounding amount of cardboard creatures to put onto the playing mat, which was also included in the box. The others chose characters, I did some minor prep work; and off they went, to a moderately exciting adventure.

Pros:
-somewhat detailed pre-made adventure. Can not account for everything the players might be trying to do, but offers little snippets of text you can read to the players for immersion and explanations of the various enemies and how they should act.
-custom battle mat that has the dungeon layout already printed on it. No drawing of caves of walls, everything's ready to go.
-lots of things to loot. Keeps players very eager to discover and search around!

Cons:
-some really stupid errors in the descriptions. In one line it says that skeletons are resistant to piercing and slashing damage, some lines later it's slashing and bludgeoning. How does that even happen?
-very easy encounters, stupendously hard boss fight.
-No discernable rhyme or reason to the dungeon layout. Just a couple of rooms, each with it's own gimmick, strung together.

In the end, it was simple and relaxing fun with a couple of hiccups. Not much more to say about it - left a lasting impression on me with those stupid errors. Just another thing to make fun of when talking about Pathfinder. (I don't like Pathfinder. Maybe I'll write about the "why" sometime.)

May you never step in something you'd rather not have stepped in!

Of Delays and daring Investments

Greetings to you, stranger!

I've held off on writing because I did not have a stable job. I felt that was sort of a requirement. Now I truly, honestly have a stable, proper job. Trial period is over, still employed. Hooray!

As for the daring investments: With the sudden influx of a proper, stable income I starting buying everything I really really really really wanted over the last ~5 Years. This includes, but is not limited to an HTC Vive and a drone/quadcopter with camera.

Will write more on the weekend - gotta hurry now. Volunteered to do some translations for my mother.

May you never run out of ink in your pen at inopportune moments!

Of Cats and the Internet

Ahoy Mateys!


To put it bluntly: this is about porn. Catgirl-porn. I met an Artist, I got a picture, I got inspired, I wrote something. Whooo.

More about gaming in a few days (playing Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic at the moment).

It's pretty tame, not at all like the portal-scene I wrote (also on this blog).
Have fun reading, if you are into that stuff.
Which I am. Yay, furries. Sue me, Internet.

Salutations!

Of Gigantic Guardians

...Or, to be more precise: About Gigantic.
The game Gigantic, which is in alpha right now.
I got a chance to play it!

Gigantic mixes the personality-focused similarities of DotA-style games with TF2-gameplay. That's pretty much it - you pick a specific dude or chick from a list of dudes and chicks, and play this one dude or chick throughout the whole match, leveling up and enhancing your abilities. There are no Items and there is no farming/lasthitting/denying. Just objectives and killing the enemy team so they can't take objectives.

Of Shadows...

..and the running through them.

If you are not familiar with Shadowrun, here a short summary:
Shadowrun is a Pen&Paper rule set, tied to its own setting. Cyberpunk, augmentation, hacking, virtual reality, mega-corporations, all the funky near-future stuff.
It also has elves, dwarfes, magic and dragons. The blend of these two is hard to grasp at times, but makes, if nothing else, for some pretty unusual gameplay.

Back to the Topic at hand: Shadowrun Returns!
No, that's not me, exclaiming that Shadowrun has returned and will lead us into a bright future. That's the game's name. I'm not quite sure why, because "Shadowrun" never really went away, but the title could be referring to the previous games in the franchise. Those were, as far as I am aware, mediocre at best. This one is good though!

Of Dragons and Disappointment

I'm still not sure if I should be writing about this.
Not because "no one cares what I have to say" - if I felt that way, I wouldn't have a blog. Not because I'm afraid of spoiling people - just don't read it (I will try my best not to spoil anything though). My concerns are that my opinion may not be based on good enough evidence - I've seen a bit, but I would hate to be called out on inaccurate statements based on just about 2 hours of gameplay. And I wasn't even the one playing!
But since I'm already writing about it, might as well go all the way:

Why Dragon Age: Inquisition is a Bad Game

Ah yes, a headline, worthy of any gaming site or magazine. No clickbaiting here though. Honest Opinion following!