I Am A: True Neutral Elf Sorcerer (5th Level)

Ability Scores:
Strength-12
Dexterity-13
Constitution-12
Intelligence-14
Wisdom-13
Charisma-13

Alignment:
True Neutral A true neutral character does what seems to be a good idea. He doesn't feel strongly one way or the other when it comes to good vs. evil or law vs. chaos. Most true neutral characters exhibit a lack of conviction or bias rather than a commitment to neutrality. Such a character thinks of good as better than evil after all, he would rather have good neighbors and rulers than evil ones. Still, he's not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way. Some true neutral characters, on the other hand, commit themselves philosophically to neutrality. They see good, evil, law, and chaos as prejudices and dangerous extremes. They advocate the middle way of neutrality as the best, most balanced road in the long run. True neutral is the best alignment you can be because it means you act naturally, without prejudice or compulsion. However, true neutral can be a dangerous alignment because it represents apathy, indifference, and a lack of conviction.

Race:
Elves are known for their poetry, song, and magical arts, but when danger threatens they show great skill with weapons and strategy. Elves can live to be over 700 years old and, by human standards, are slow to make friends and enemies, and even slower to forget them. Elves are slim and stand 4.5 to 5.5 feet tall. They have no facial or body hair, prefer comfortable clothes, and possess unearthly grace. Many others races find them hauntingly beautiful.

Class:
Sorcerers are arcane spellcasters who manipulate magic energy with imagination and talent rather than studious discipline. They have no books, no mentors, no theories just raw power that they direct at will. Sorcerers know fewer spells than wizards do and acquire them more slowly, but they can cast individual spells more often and have no need to prepare their incantations ahead of time. Also unlike wizards, sorcerers cannot specialize in a school of magic. Since sorcerers gain their powers without undergoing the years of rigorous study that wizards go through, they have more time to learn fighting skills and are proficient with simple weapons. Charisma is very important for sorcerers; the higher their value in this ability, the higher the spell level they can cast.

[Generated by the quiz "What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?" Incidentally, I created a character nearly identical to this for the last Neverwinter Nights campaign I played. Coincidence, or shockingly-accurate self-portrayal?]

Gary Gygax, father of the seminal Dungeons & Dragons tabletop game, has reportedly died. Gygax's D&D is the reason I became a gamer 27 years ago, and why I work in the interactive and gaming industries today.

I started "Dungeon Mastering" a D&D campaign with some friends early this year, and it's a real pleasure to get back to the tabletop again after a quarter-century. Online gaming has its charms, but sometimes you just can't beat role-playing the way it was originally intended: Snacks, polyhedral dice, lead figurines; rulebooks and maps; Led Zeppelin on the tape-deck.

Mr. Gygax, thanks for the positive influence on my life. Your legacy lives on.

I can't wait to try Champions Online, the MMO adaptation of Champions, my favorite superhero role-playing game (the kind you play sitting around a table). It looks like Cryptic, the developers behind the excellent superhero MMO City of Heroes, is using everything learned from developing good heroic character-creation and game play and fusing this with a time-tested, highly-flexible rules system--City of Heroes Evolved, if you will.

Continue reading: The Retro Roots of ‘Champions Online’

Gamasutra features a fascinating rundown of what was involved in bringing World of Warcraft to the tabletop as a role-playing game. Written by Luke Johnson of White Wolf, the article identifies "content" as being the biggest challenge in extending Warcraft's world--apparently, Blizzard wasn't comfortable giving White Wolf freedom to invent their own Warcraft lore. Johnson explains the process:

1. We would write the books [...] making stuff up when necessary.
2. The good folks at Blizzard would check the manuscript to make sure that a) everything in it was consistent with both their vision of the Warcraft setting and the information that had already been presented in some other format (the video games, the novels, and the like); and b) that we didn't add anything that they didn't like.
3. The writers would then alter the manuscript as per Blizzard's requests, and we'd return to step 2.

Sounds painful, doesn't it? It's a shame a reputable game maker like White Wolf wasn't given more freedom to expand the Warcraft universe. Blizzard might own Azeroth, but that doesn't mean it has a grasp of what works for tabletop role-playing.

• 10 Indie, Student Game Competitions: A Shortlist for Your Submissions
  List of 10 indie game competitions, including the obscure "Arcademy Games Awards," allegedly part of the equally-obscure Toronto Future Play conference, and the dreadfully-mismanaged Vortex competition (also Toronto-based).
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• Previous Edition Dungeons & Dragons Downloads
  Free PDF / RTF downloads of classic D&D modules (prepackaged adventures) and other material, including campaign setting documentation. Good on Wizards of the Coast for making this stuff available.
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• Five Short Video Game Industry Keynotes
  Sadly, hilariously poignant: "The game industry is in trouble. We can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing before. We need to do this other thing, which is the thing that I’m doing."
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• Canadian Game Journalism: Not Worth It
  Game designer/reviewer Ryan Creighton rages against the dismal domestic games journalism scene. Brutally honest commentary from someone who's been there.
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Is World of Warcraft's unending grind causing players to seek alternate forms of in-game entertainment? Seems so. Mini-games created with Warcraft's extensible "add-on" system have been in play since at least 2006, but a game update earlier this year made it even easier for players to create their own fun.

The Guild Bank, introduced with patch 2.3, presents a 14 by 7 grid intended to be used for item-storage. One imaginative player got the idea to use the grid for a variant of Checkers (aka Draughts). Playing pieces can be any item in one's inventory. The "board" layout might not be suitable for Chess, but probably a Go- or Reversi-variant. It might be easier to play these games on the tabletop (as was the original intent), but that would defeat the whole cool-factor of bastardizing Warcraft.

• Second Life Climate Change Conference [World New News - Digital Trends]
  "By using Second Life, the minsters were able to reach a much wider range of the earth’s population to talk about the impact climate change is having on everyone." If 'wider range' means reaching up to 200 people who happen to have high-end computers and substantial bandwidth, then yes, mission accomplished.
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• Make My Day
  Interactive streaming video 'choose-your-adventure' for the iPhone. Make decisions at critical points. Someone should port all the old laser-disc games to the iPhone: Dragon's Lair, anyone?
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• Zombies!!! tops 100,000 copies sold
  Tile-based strategy game Zombies!!! sells 100k copies since 2001, not including localized versions or expansion packs. Bloody good sales for a relatively obscure tabletop game. It's an easy pick-up-and-play game with tiny plastic zombie figures, so that explains some of the appeal.
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• Four Days In The Center Of The Board Game Universe [Gamasutra]
  "While they don't have much direct relevance to the video game market, the design ideas introduced in board games do evolve into video game mechanics." Which is one of the reasons I teach board game prototyping as part of my game design theory course :)
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• Phase - your music is the game.
  Phase, a rhythm game that uses songs on your video iPod, is now available for download on the iTunes store. By Harmonix, MTV, and Aaron Stewart. Finally, a game on the iPod that's actually been built for the iPod. Not like those other ones.
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• Pollinator (Leapfroglog)
  A casual game prototype made with Mobile Processing by Kars Alfrink, who writes "[M]aking is an important part of the design practice, it cannot be replaced by lots of thinking." Can I get an 'amen?'
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• 50 Greatest Game Design Innovations
  Epic Ernest Adams breezes through his top 50 innovations. Top 10 includes exploration, storytelling, stealth, avatars with their own personalities, leadership, diplomacy, mod support, smart NPCs, scripted conversations, and multi-level game-play.
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Back in high-school my friends and I developed a tabletop miniature game involving B-movie style giant monsters. We unimaginatively dubbed it The Monster Game and tinkered feverishly with its mechanics (and creating variants such as Monsterball) for at least a couple years. That's why the 14 year-old in me is giddy as a schoolboy at the news that Monsterpocalypse, a collectible miniatures game involving giant monsters, is planned for release next year by Privateer Press. Obviously there are going to be plenty of crazy-looking, pre-painted miniatures involved (something like 80 in the initial set), but I'm particularly excited at the prospect of miniature destructible buildings. Me smash! Rarrrr!

I'm rather out of the loop in terms of CMGs (collectible miniatures games), but the three things that strike me most about the genre are:
1) Isn't mass-producing these things an incredible waste of precious oil resources?
2) I pity the poor bastards who have to paint those things for my gaming pleasure. Sweatshops, I'm sure.
3) Proprietary, stats-locked systems like HeroClix cramp my style. If I can't tinker with it, I ain't buying it.

On the heels of last year's marriage of computer game developer CCP (maker of sci-fi MMOG EVE Online) and White Wolf (maker of tabletop RPG Vampire: The Masquerade) comes an announcement that communities following both companies will be deliberately cross-pollinated.

A campaign has been launched to introduce White Wolf fans to EVE Online with the hopes that both large communities will be interested in subscribing to the upcoming CCP-developed MMO based on White Wolf's World of Darkness universe. An EVE "corporation" (in-game team) was created specifically to attract White Wolf community members, but is open to all.

More information on the in-game corporation "White Wolf Enterprises" can be found on its official home page, which serves as a bit of a gateway for one fan base to acclimate to the other. I have no doubt that a significant portion of each game community will be interested in the other's back yard, giving CCP's pending World of Darkness game a healthy kick-start.