“Hey, not too rough” #2

Doom, fps, nintendo, switch, video games

In the previous post I kinda introduced this series of posts and covered the hardware that I first experienced Doom on.

So let’s look at how I’m playing Doom this time around.

The hardware I’m playing on this time around is so different.

I’m playing Doom on a Nintendo Switch Lite.

It’s not the first time I’ve played Doom on a portable game console or device. Over the years I’ve played it on platforms such as the GameBoy Advance, and Windows PDA’s (do you remember them?).

Depending on where I’m playing Doom I’ll either be using the built in speakers of the Switch Lite itself or my VANKYO C750 Bluetooth active noise cancelling headphones. Which are over ear, Hi-Fi Stereo, and apparently deep bass.

The whole setup is light years ahead of the old Amstrad 16Mhz 386sx laptop I first played the game on. This old laptop was 7kg in weight! My backpack with 2 days food for the TGO Challenge was around 10 kilos.

Sitting on the memory card for my Switch are the digital copies of Doom, Doom 2, Doom 3, and Doom 64. Priced at £3.99 each, they are incredible bargains.

Obviously I’ve played Doom on numerous occasions and platforms over the years. Doom 2 has also been played before on at least two platforms, but not nearly as many times as Doom. Doom 3 I have played. But it was only the 360 version if my memory doesn’t fail me. Plus I got nowhere near to completely it. As for Doom 64, I’ve never played that. I’m looking forward to doing so.

Back in the day when I first played Doom I was single. No love interest in sight. I had my first home, a two bedroom flat in the middle of Guildford.

I was working in Byfleet. The software department I was in had an average age less than twenty five. We were a young immature team.

But when Doom came out we were addicted and drove each other on to get further into the game, and complete it.

In the intervening years so much life has happened.

Most definitely one or two of the plays of Doom during those years would have been whilst married, as a step parent, and on the daily commute to Surbiton.

I think the last time I played Doom to completion was probably on the Xbox360 when I was living up in County Durham, in a small town called Crook.

I had not long moved up there.

My failed marriage still very raw.

I was most definitely in a very different place in my life emotionally than any previous times that I had played Doom.

Doom is a familiar distraction. It doesn’t solve or heal what’s going on in my life at the time. But like the other activity I enjoy, hiking. It gives a brief respite. It helps me get through what’s going on.

Today once more I’m single. I’m renting instead of owning. I’ve just returned to teaching after a break of three or more years. Emotionally I’m still in a raw place but for different reasons.

So this time around of playing Doom nearly thirty years later from that magical first time some of the surrounding factors/influences are similar. But there is no way of recapturing or replicating that first time. I’m not trying to.

How do I replicate that competitive spirit for instance? I don’t think any of my colleagues at work or my friends are into video games. Maybe Nathan? But I’m not sure he’d be that interested in this project.

I’m very much a different person to the one that first played Doom in the early nineties. All those experiences will effect my play through and how I view things now.

Obviously I’m really into boardgames now too. And as previously mentioned I now have a copy of the 2004 edition of the FFG Doom board game. So during this play through of the video game I’m going to be hopefully getting that to the table and not only discussing how it stands as a board game. But also on how well it captures the video game.

As I work my way through the game I’m listening to the Audible version of Masters of Doom by David Kushner, and read by Wil Wheaton (yes that Wil Wheaton), on my daily commute into work. I do own the printed version, and I originally read the physical version.

At various points I’ll be diving into DOOM:SCARYDARKFAST also.

I know there are Doom novels, and I’m pretty sure I owned and read the first one. However I’m not going to be reading these as part of my overall Doom experience. But I am going to be watching the two Doom movies.

To be honest I’m not sure how this project will develop, what directions it will take. I’m not sure I’m even capable of doing this whole thing. But I’ll give it a shot and see how it goes.

D&D Grp 2 Session 12 Planning #1

D&D, D&D Grp2, RPG, session planning

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign/session. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one. REMEMBER you have been warned.

In a weeks time we should be holding our twelfth session of this campaign set in Sly Flourish’s City of Arches.

We should be back on track now for having the session fortnightly with the change of job.

After the last session turned into a side quest for those that could make it. It did give me the opportunity to give a bag of holding to the party. Which means I can start seeding in a session or two the bagman.

But at the moment I think the session will be an improv session.

At the moment the party are having a long rest, no idea what they want to do next.

I need to get some adventure seeds planted with them, and progress the main one about the cult, maybe even have the rival to Adel popping up.

In between lesson prep, and the #dungeon23 stuff I need to get my head round the direction of some of these potential threads.

I don’t know about you, but these session planning posts are very useful for me to go back and review what I was thinking.

I’m sure there will be at least another prep post this week. Catch you there.

The cakes a lie #4

nintendo, switch

IMPORTANT FACT! This post was started some months ago and has been sitting in my draft folder ever since waiting to be finished. That is until now…

A fourth post about such a short game!

It has shocked me that I’m writing so much about it.

These posts are certainly interesting for me to write. They are getting me to think more about what I’m playing. Especially in a more critical sense, and applying my limited knowledge of game design.

I hope you are enjoying this deviation from the regular boardgame content.

In the previous post I inelegantly looked at the length of the game. A major critism about it. In this post I’m just as clumsily going to look at the story and audio side of Portal.

Portal has you playing Chell. You wake up from your relaxation chamber at the Aperture Labs, ready to participate in a series of tests. We even get a little warning that there may be a risk of injury. Followed by a bit of equipment breaking. A foreshadowing that all may not be right. We seem to alone. No one else present, except for the metallic voice of GLaDOS.

We have no other option but to go forward taking part in the tests…

As we progress through the tests the facade starts to crumble. The tests start to get more deadly, we stumble across graffiti containing warnings, GLaDOS finds it harder to appear helpful, and comes across more insincere, less interested in your safety.

One stand out moment that shows GLaDOS has a dark side is when you are forced to euthanise a companion cube to complete a test.

I don’t think there can be any debate that the story in Portal follows the Three act structure. The debate if any is over where one act finishes and the next begins.

For me the second act starts around test chamber 9. Until now we are still being introduced to new game mechanics. From now on we start to get less subtle hints that things ain’t right.

The third act, the resolution of the story, is obviously our confrontation with GLaDOS and our escape, which starts at test chamber 19. Which sees GLaDOS try to incinerate us before we escape into the maintenance areas, and ultimately take on GLaDOS.

In the previous posts I’ve harped on about the use of the environment to help tell the story. It’s a standard part of the first person developers toolkit.

Between using the environment and bits of audio via GLaDOS we start to build up a picture all is not as it seems.

Through the use of Easter eggs in the environment Portal is linked to the world setup in the Half-Life series of games.

The majority of the time when I’m mobile gaming (which is basically what I call playing on my handheld consoles) I have the sound turned off. Mainly because in the past that gaming was on public transport such as my daily commute to work, or lunch breaks. Yes I could have used headphones but I was usually also listening to a podcast on my iPod (remember them?)

That habit of playing with no sound has continued now onto the Switch. Or it’s evolved as I have the sound on low sometimes as to not distract from the show on in the background.

However I do use headphones with the Switch when I particularly want to get fully immersed in the game. For this I use VANKYO C750 Bluetooth active noise cancelling headphones. Which are over ear, Hi-Fi Stereo, and apparently deep bass.

It’s this evolved usage and use of headphones is how I’ve experienced the sound whilst playing Portal.

Throughout the game radios play an instrumental version, even faster tempo version of Still Alive.

Otherwise the sound we get are the sound effects of the test lab, and whatever equipment/devices are in the room, and the voice of GLaDOS.

For me apart from the Jonathan Coulton Still Alive none of the other music in the game seems memorable or stands out. In fact when it came to remembering the other tunes I couldn’t. Maybe that says more about me than the music, and what I’m focused on as I play the game.

I think this is the last post I’ll write looking at the video game. It’s been a blast revisiting an old favourite. The final post in this series will be about the board game. Then once the Doom project is complete I’ll look at coming back to Portal 2.

See you in the next one.

A roll & write trilogy

game night

Last night whilst some club members were playing Railways of the World or team choo choo as I named them. Ben, Charlene and Harrison joined me to play a roll and write trilogy of games by the designers Ben Pinchbeck and Matt Riddle.

We started off our evening of rolling dice and crossing off boxes with Ben and Matt’s first game in this series Fleet the dice game.

I had not played Fleet or Fleet the dice game before. So playing this was a first for me. But one I was keen to play as I enjoyed the other two games in the series.

Fleet the dice game is all about running a fishing fleet. Well that’s the theme.

But let’s face it with a roll and write you aren’t playing for the theme. It’s so hard to do theme in this genre of game.

This game of Fleet the dice game was just the core game, no thrills.

Having played the other two games in the series there are common elements that run throughout them all. So picking up the game was a cinch. You just need to know how it varies from the others.

In this case it’s the flow of the round, the two sets of dice that get rolled at different points in that flow. Plus what is generating you points and when.

There were some pleasing combos in this game. But I didn’t feel the game was as combotastic as Three Sisters.

Ben bought the most fish home for the win!

Next up was the follow up to Fleet the dice game, Three Sisters.

Our play of Three Sisters was an all in game. That’s not just the weather expansion. But also the new rock garden pad that was an extra on the Motor City Kickstarter.

This was a first for Ben, Charlene, and Harrison playing with these expansions. They’d played Three Sisters before. And a first for me with the new pad.

I like the new pad.

Completing a row or column in the rock garden gives you a bonus. You complete a row by marking off a number that matches the die you chose off the rondel.

This gives you an additional factor to consider when choosing that die. Now it’s not only which rondel action you want and the garden you are planting or going to water, but also what you need to mark off on the rock garden to get that bonus.

And you do have to consider things as you won’t fill the rock garden. At best you will fill eleven spaces, but more likely up to eight.

Somehow I managed to win our game of Three Sisters.

Our third and final game of the evening, and the latest to join the series (having only just been sent out to backers) Motor City.

Like Three Sisters this was an all in game.

So we had the unique certificate tiles, plus the Bob’s expansion.

What I like about the expansions in both Three Sisters and Motor City is that they can be added with very little additional over head to the actual game.

Obviously the unique certificates adds no overhead at all, but gives each player a unique sheet. I don’t think I’ll play without these.

The Bob’s expansion uses the auditor die to select a couple of bonuses that can be claimed during a round.

I do like how in both this game and Three Sisters a die is used by the expansion. There is no overhead in using it except remembering to do it.

Harrison won our game of Motor City.

I know for Charlene and I think Ben their favourite of the three is Fleet the dice game. But with the caveat that they need to play Motor City a few more times.

But for me Three Sisters is still my favourite. With Motor City not far behind. Fleet the dice game needs more plays, and to be back in print so I can add it to the collection.

This really was a great evening playing the trilogy. Something I hope we are able to repeat in the near future.

A Pleasant Afternoon of Half Term Gaming

Game day

Tuesday saw a gaming session that would most likely not have happened if I hadn’t changed jobs.

In all likely hood I would have had a shift.

It sounds and looks like I’m hating on my old job. But I’m not.

I loved being a shift leader, and really loved the folks I worked with. And I miss them a lot.

It’s just that days off during the week shifted around, and usually when others were not free. It played havoc with getting together for D&D.

But this post is about the games we played Tuesday.

As this was a weekday daytime gaming session we needed to host the session somewhere other than our usual place (it’s closed during the day). Charlene very kindly opened up her home and played host.

We started off with a game of Trekking Through History.

There was only one way to describe how well I did in this game. Pathetic.

Lucky I enjoy playing the game. Despite doing really badly score wise I did take some really cool treks through time.

I do love that element of the game, and the stories you can tell with the cards. One moment you are painting in caves, the next helping write a play with Shakespeare.

But those history books will show Marcin won the game.

Our next game was one of the current hot games of the moment, Flamecraft.

Charlene’s daughter joined us for this game because she really liked the game.

I know Charlene said her husband was very competitive when playing games. But experienced gamers are a different type of competitive.

This would be a learning experience for the daughter.

I really liked Flamecraft.

The copy we were playing was a pimped out retail version. Which meant it looked pretty cool on the table. From the lovely plastic dragon figures to the wooden resources. I did like the gold coins. They had a nice weight to them.

But to pimp out the game like this takes it from an affordable, value for money game, to a too expensive for what it is game.

It’s definitely a gateway game.

Which if it looked like this at the retail price would be a must buy, and sell even more copies especially to non-gamers. But I can’t help feel that a non-gamer playing this pimped out version (or Kickstarter version) would feel cheated when they opened their retail copy.

Having said that I think this game easily stands up there with classic gateway games such as Catan or Ticket to Ride.

I like how completing an objective makes the shop you are currently in more rewarding the next time you or another player visit it.

I would like to see a bit more variation in the dragon powers.

Overall it’s a nice game that Jeff won.

How did Charlene’s daughter get on against three ruthless gamers? She held her own. But learnt that when given a resource we ain’t being generous. Especially when she can’t keep the extra resource because she already has the maximum allowed. So we get the bonus/reward and she gets nothing. I’m hoping in future games she uses that tactic herself.

We finished off the afternoon with a game of Dune Imperium with both expansions Rise of Ix, and Immortality.

I really do enjoy playing this game. Even more so despite it being a space hog on the table with the two expansions.

Since getting the Rise of Ix expansion this game saw the most tech tiles bought in a game. I think this was more to do with the tiles that came out.

None of us used our house token to reset the trade row this game. But this is something I’d house rule if I was just playing the base game. It fixes a complaint some have about the game.

I did trigger the end of the game with one round to spare.

My emphatic victory with 13 points was not only the highest score for all the games I’ve played to date.

It was made even more sweeter because I took an alliance token from Jeff. That point swing is massive in Dune Imperium where victory points are hard to get, and scores so tight.

Plus earlier when I got to take a random intrigue off of Jeff the one I got scuppered Jeff’s end of game scoring plans and gave me one to aim for. Which I was able to pull off with a slight change to my plans.

I had a great afternoon gaming with friends. And a really big thank you to Charlene for opening up her home to us, and for providing pizza.

Grp2: When last we left our heroes… #11

D&D, D&D Grp2, post mortem, RPG

The party hadn’t been back at their digs long before there was a knock on their door. Drenol, Jeb, and Babs answered the door.

It was their neighbour a gnome called Nala. She needed their help. Her husband Hornwin had gone down into their cellar and hadn’t come back up and she was worried. Apparently they had a rat problem.

After a little debate whether they would help, they did indeed end up going next door to find Nala’s husband.

In the basement after destroying a swarm of spiders, triggering a stink cloud and throwing up. The trio found Hornwin lying unconscious in the corner of a room that had dire giant rats in it.

After defeating the dire giant rats and a were rat that appeared the party had the corpse of Hornwin in front of them. It would seem Hornwin had been a were rat.

After breaking the news to Nala that here husband was dead the trio returned home.

Post Mortem

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following part of the post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this part of the post and join me in a future one. Don’t give in to temptation go read something else.

This was our first session since the end of November.

Work shifts and the seasonal thing that happens in December being the main factors getting in the way of the session happening.

The change of job opened up my ability to say “I’m free on …” and for regular sessions to be planned again. I think if the work front hadn’t changed the campaign would of just ended. My old job was getting so that planning or committing to anything was just not possible.

It was good to be back behind the DM screen.

As there was fifty percent of the players unable to make this session I went with a one shot adventure for those that were there.

I went with a Mike Shae adventure idea he said he used as an introduction adventure for level one characters of clearing out the basement of the tavern of the rat problem.

But my party were a couple of levels higher. So I could use dire giant rats!

I used a map from the Lazy DM Companion for the basement. Well part of it. I didn’t need the whole thing.

In one of the rooms I added a glyph of warding that when triggered (which it was) cast the spell cloud of stink. If any character had covered their nose (as warned) I gave them advantage on the constitution saving throw. It did lead to a comedic moment of describing the character throwing up with reference to the infamous scene from Team America. With the added bonus of the Babs character slipping up in the resultant pool of vomit.

My dice rolling during combat was atrocious. I don’t think I landed one hit! Although I did roll high on saving throws. So it evened out in the end I suppose.

Once or twice I used the fumbled searches deck to come up with items to find. I should of made a note of the items. One was a book that I said was titled 101 rat recipes, and a burnt bit of parchment. Despite the party trying to find any hidden writing on the parchment they found none. But they only used the old heat and lemon juice ideas to find any. I still have an opening to use this as a plot hook at some point. But I did like using the deck and found it very useful.

I felt the dire giant rats were underwhelming. I think the hit points could have been maybe three times the original value, instead of doubling them. It might have helped if I landed an attack.

I did have the npc they were meant to be saving turn into a were rat. Which they killed.

There was a little discussion over whether the npc got death saving throws. My train of thought was they were killed as a were rat, there was no mention before delivering the killing blow they were “pulling their punch” and aiming to just knock out the npc. So taking the were rat down to zero hit points killed them. As they died they obviously reverted to their original form.

I liked the ingenious use of the bag of holding to get rid of the grimiskas. Now the party have a bag of holding. I have a plot thread there to pull at some point now.

I thought the session worked well as a side distraction from wherever the main campaign is going for those that were able to make the session.

At Last A Weekend of Gaming

Fenland Gamers, Game day, game night

A week into the new job and already I’m seeing a difference in what I can do in my spare time.

Finally I made a Friday Night gaming session in 2023. I know it’s only two that I missed but still that number would have gone up. In fact I don’t think I would have got any of this weekends gaming (apart from maybe todays) done if still in my old job.

My first game of the evening was Survive: Space Attack!

Somehow I managed to win the game. It wasn’t by design.

I don’t look at the values of the survivors at the start, or care which one gets placed where. During my turn if I get to place a monster/alien I combine the rules “shits and giggles” and “rule of cool” for placing it. I have no plan.

And yet I won this time. Don’t figure.

We followed up my victory with a game of Long Shot: the Dice Game.

I really do prefer this to Camel Up! for my racing, placing a bet, style game.

With four players the game has its backwards and forwards as everyone tries to manipulate the race. For a longtime I thought my two horses were going to take the top two spots, but in the end Colin and Jonathan managed to out manoeuvre me and get their horses into those spots instead, leaving me with a third place finish only.

Jonathan like his horse romped home with the win.

After nearly a two month hiatus our D&D group finally got back round the table on Saturday afternoon. But I’m not going to write about that in this post. You’ll get to read all about it in the post mortem.

This afternoon (Sunday) saw Julie and me meet up to play a game or two.

We started out with a learning game of Mariposas. Yeah the game by the Elizabeth Hargrave.

I think Mariposas was always going to suffer from what I can best describe as “second album syndrome” after having such a big hit with Wingspan.

What I like about Hargrave is her using less common themes for her games. Mariposas is about butterflies and their migration. I think her next game is based on some Russian experiment where they were breeding foxes to domesticate them. Themes that have a very broad appeal.

I have to say I was surprised how light Mariposas was. It felt very gateway like.

The game also played very quickly. It takes place over three seasons (aka rounds). You start off taking only four actions on the first round, five on the second, and finally six on the third and final one.

Add in end of round objectives, a bit of set collection, and you have a pleasant gaming experience.

At under £30 for a copy it’s not bad value.

Our next game was a first play of Motor City.

Once you get over the iconography this game feels very different to Three Sisters. Its definitely more puzzley and a lot less combotastic.

I liked the game a lot, and needs unpacking in-depth in another post after more games have been played.

We finished off the afternoons gaming with a game of the flip and write Silver and Gold.

It’s been a great weekend of gaming. Something I’ve not had in a long time.

“Hey, not too rough” #1

Doom, fps, nintendo, switch, video games

Welcome to the start of a long series of posts about the classic video game Doom.

Back in the early nineties I was living in Guildford and working in Byfleet for a credit card manufacturer as a programmer writing software to control desktop embossing machines.

I used to use my personal computer at the time for developing on as it was better than anything the company had. Bare in mind this was a 16Mhz 386sx (so not even a full blown 386) Amstrad clamshell laptop with a 20MB hard drive, and 4MB of RAM.

It was on this “beast” that I first played the shareware version of Wolfenstein, followed by its successor Doom.

Both games captured the imaginations of myself and my colleagues. We spent every free moment of our breaks playing the games in the office. There was definitely a competitive element between us that saw us competing to make more progress in the game than the others.

I did complete both games.

Doom did really stand out at the time as something special. The lighting, level design, hidden rooms, levels that were at different heights, jump out of your skin moments, and iconic monsters.

Since then over the decades I have played Doom on nearly every capable platform I’ve owned. Whether that was a windows powered pda, member of the GameBoy family, or full blown games console like the 360.

Now some thirty years later I’m once more returning to Mars to take on the forces of hell in a dramatic play through of Doom on the Nintendo Switch.

For the record this will not be the first time that I’ve played the Switch version of Doom. When I first purchased the Switch version I naturally played through a few of the levels. Memory fails me about whether I finished the game or not.

So what’s different about my playing the game this time around?

I think this time around it will be the total immersion of all things Doom between sessions. Such as rereading Masters of Doom, and DOOM:SCARYDARKFAST, plus a first time reading of “I’m too young to die“ by Bitmap Books.

And like my Portal posts (once I put the remaining two up) there will be a look at the table top versions of the game.

So it’s possible you won’t see another post in this series for a week or two as I finish the Portal posts, keep my #dungeon23 stuff going, and prep my lessons. Until then see you in the next post.

Yep still here…

life, the universe, and everything, still alive

Well it’s been a busy week at work. I’m definitely swimming in the deep end!

But it’s good to be back in the classroom.

Tomorrow sees me attending my first Fenland Gamers Friday evening gaming of 2023. Something I don’t think would be happening if I was still at my previous job.

I did get some gaming done last Sunday when I got to try Encyclopedia. Which Colin and Ben trolled me with by saying some online were calling it “the game Wingspan wanted to be”. Which is total b.s. and most likely click bait.

The games are completely different. Encyclopedia is a fine game, but it shares no mechanics with Wingspan. I’d have put it closer to Marco Polo with the dice placement mechanic. I definitely like Wingspan more.

This was a Kickstarter deluxe version of Encyclopedia we were playing with. I have to say I wasn’t a fan of the metal coins. They felt so light. No weight to them at all. A very disappointing tactile experience.

Whilst out gaming I was able to do a bit of business at the same time.

Marcin was selling his copy of Doom the Board Game 2004 edition.

I’d had this edition on my wish list for a while. Or more accurately my “it’d be nice to have a copy” list.

So I was more than happy to snap it up at the price he wanted.

But now I need to try and track down its expansion, and the 2016 updated edition. The later is easier to get hold of.

With this purchase the pressure really is on to finish off my Portal posts that are sitting in my draft folder. Then I can start this Doom project. Which will be the most epic thing I will have attempted on the blog. Whether I’m up to the challenge or capable of pulling it off is another thing!