Redwolf's Journal (continued)

Time to shift gears, organize thoughts, and refresh my memory. So, our Blue Rose campaign has officially wound down. The ending was a little anticlimactic, but reasonably suitable, with the party getting to tell their story to the queen and being offered titles/knighthoods. I wonder if everyone else had to ponder that as much as I did in that moment. But that means next week it'll be time to take up the 13th Age game that was pitched late last year for Tuesday night Discord-based play. I did go through the process of making a character, but that was two or more months ago now and I haven't really looked at any of the material since. That makes this a good opportunity to do some analysis. 13th Age itself seems relatively familiar as a D&D derivative. Certainly, there are differences in details, but d20+modifiers against an armor class with a familiar range for abilities makes it less intimidating than something wholly different. There are some notable differences in things

There's often a point when a series settles into a routine. The Chronicles of Elantra has done that for a while. Kaylin will be compassionate, focus on her powerlessness while fumbling her way to success using the unique powers she does pocess, be subjected to a lot of explanation from others (especially discussions about differing perceptions), and still generally be entertaining. Cast in Oblivion isn't really anything new even as it gets into more of the powers hidden beneath the Barani High Halls. It was a comfortable read, at least. Chasing Graves , on the other hand, had the bonus of being something new. It also kind of annoyed me by the end. It sets forth a world with some loose borrowing of Egyptian mythology and terms that centers heavily on "shades" - dead bound to physical-ish form, usually indentured to the living. There are plenty of rules about it, with a spirit rising after a death in "turmoil" and being bindable via a ritual performed with

The term that comes to mind to describe Atom RPG is "old school." It's a game very much in the vein of the first two Fallouts. Sure, it takes place in a Soviet post-nuclear wasteland, but it shares the isometric view and many of the design elements from that era. That includes things like being able to make a character build that is severely disadvantaged without really trying and grinding a lot for XP, money, and possible gear. It's easy to be a few hours into the game before finding a half-decent firearm and enough ammunition to use it, which makes dumping starting points toward that end questionable. Some encounters can be brutally hard or trivial depending on when you trigger them. Moving around the map feels slow to the point of frustrating at times. There's a lot of text to read. A lot of those remarks are criticisms, but it's not a bad game overall. It's reasonably engaging and the story has a few twists that are at least somewhat unique. There'

I applaud Bioware (and I guess EA in this case, too) for running an open demo to Anthem. And, after the connectivity issues reported during the advanced/press demo last weekend, I also have to give kudos to those behind the technical improvements - I didn't get disconnected at all. That said, I think I'm probably going to pass on the game. I could point to a lot of little things that I dislike. None of them are truly serious, though. Some may even be "pros" to other players: - Between flight and the menus, controls seem seriously geared toward controller, with keyboard/mouse an afterthought. - The hub appears to be solo-instanced, and pulls you from the third-person view in play to first-person with walking speed that feels sluggish. I guess that inconsistency helps separate it from the rest of the world, but it takes me out of things a bit. - The "freeplay" zones seem decently sized, but are either private or "public," which means four-person