Meet thy Doom … memoirs of a classic

nintendo, switch

Visiting the Nintendo eshop is dangerous. Especially when they have stuff on sale to tempt you.

The latest temptation for me was something that I own or have owned on several other gaming platforms over the years.

And yet I found myself buying the game again on the Switch!

That game is…

I’ve been playing Doom since it came out in the early 90’s as shareware on the PC.

I owned an Amstrad clamshell 16Mhz 386sx laptop back then. Which had I want to say a 40MB hard drive and 4MB of RAM. I seem to remember that I did upgrade the RAM at some point as well.

At the time I was playing Doom for the very first time I was working in Byfleet for a credit card manufacturer, writing PC software to control desktop credit card embossing machines and cheque printers.

We were a young team, all of us in our twenties. Obviously one ore two were more mature than the rest. But the majority of us were not. Practical jokes were often played. Several times that involved strippers! Like the time I was told I was needed to give a demo of my new software and the hardware it controlled to a client. They let me do the demo for over 20 minutes before giving the signal to the stripper to start her act!

It was a different age. Times were a changing, but they hadn’t reached our office. You couldn’t do that sort of stuff now days and I’m glad. I was a different person then to the one I am now. I’m embarrassed and ashamed of who I was back then.

That was were I was when Doom came out.

I had played and completed Wolfenstein 3D, so Doom was a no brainier for me.

Where I got the game from initially I’m not sure. I think the shareware version was on the cover of a PC magazine.

But wow I was hooked, as were one or two in the office as well. I think we had more than one lunch hour that saw the definition of what a lunch hour was stretched a bit.

I think it would be fair that the competition between those of us playing the game drove us onwards. It was especially fuelled by the end of level stats that told you how many of the secret rooms you had found, and items collected.

The strange thing is we never networked up our PCs and played multiplayer. We played it solo at our desks or at home. Networking PCs together then was a bit of a hassle, which probably put us off the idea.

By the time I had completed Doom I think I was the only one in the office still playing it.

During the years after if Doom was released for hardware I owned then I got it. I had Doom on my HP ipaq pda, and on the gba. I rebought it on the PC. I have it on the 360 and PS3. It’s on a raspberry pi I own. You get the picture.

So it was no surprise that with the game and it sequels (Doom 2 and 3) on sale on the Nintendo eshop it seemed the right time to grab them all.

I like playing original classic Doom. Now days it is almost a comfort thing and like getting to know an old friend again. With the gap between plays being several years there is a haziness to what I remember, it is familiar and yet new!

Anyway I will look more into Doom and how it plays on the Switch in a future post. But first I have Bioshock and the underwater world of Rapture to finish exploring.

If you are a fan of Doom you really must read “Masters Of Doom: How two guys created an empire and transformed pop culture” by David Kushner, and “DOOM Scarydarkfast” by Dan Pinchbeck. The later is a more academic look at the game. There is a Game Engine book about Doom that I haven’t read and don’t own (it’s expensive).

Nan turns 94 today

Uncategorized

Today is a day of celebration as we celebrate Nan’s birthday.

Nan turned 94 today.

Below are some recent photos of Nan with her little guardian angel, Loki. He really is a Nannies boy. A bit like me I suppose.

Before opening Nan’s birthday cards, I asked her what day it was, and if she knew the date. Her reply was it’s not my birthday. So I pointed out it was.

Reading Nan her birthday cards this morning made me feel like those presenters on Anglia tv from my younger days who did the birthday club spot between programmes during the kids part of the tv schedule.

I’m wishing Nan many happy returns for the day. With many more ahead.

Bioshock The Collection – An early look

switch

It’s been a long while since I’ve talked about games on the Nintendo Switch. Mainly because life events meant I had to part ways with it. Boy have I missed it.

But events has bought one back into my life in the form of a Switch Lite.

I went with the Lite over the full blown Switch because of price, and when I previous had one I used it as a handheld only. I don’t remember ever connecting it to a tv.

One of the games I got with the Lite was an old favourite from the Xbox 360/PS3 days Bioshock The Collection.

For your money you get all three of the games that make up the Bioshock series. So that’s Bioshock, Bioshock 2, and Bioshock Infinite. Which instantly makes it great value in my eyes.

One thing I hate is as soon as you put in the memory card and click to play the game you have to download an update. Which is exactly what happened when I went to play the first game in the series Bioshock. For some reason this took an age (I left it over night along with downloading some of the digital games that I have). Which meant this morning was the first chance I had to return to the underwater utopia that is a now a crumbling dystopia, Rapture.

As Bioshock went through its splash screens it sinks in that it is approximately 12 years since I played the original on my 360, whilst living up in the North East, in a small town called Crook.

That’s long enough that whilst playing the game it feels familiar but also new. Sometimes I remember what but not how, or vice versa. There is still a learning curve but less steep. I think the best way to describe it is it’s like getting to know an old friend once more.

I will say Bioshock looks amazing on the Lite. With the Lite having a slightly smaller screen (5.5 inches) than the Switch (6.2 inches) I think this works in its favour. Both models have the same pixel resolution 1280 x 720, but the smaller screen gives the Lite a better pixel density, so it is a little sharper.

I can easily read the text on the screen. It is small, and I do have reading glasses these days.

The controls work really well with the inbuilt joycons of the Lite. And this is more a comment of the Lite but the position of everything button and joystick wise is great for me.

I’ve only spent a couple of hours playing the game this morning. But Bioshock is still a great FPS with RPG elements. Big Daddy is just as scary as I remember him. The little sisters are still unnervingly twisted. I still love finding the audio diaries of various occupants of Rapture left scattered around the place. They add so much to bringing Rapture and the story to life. It’s still pretty frickin cool getting plasmids and the “super power” they bestow. Who wouldn’t want to shoot fire or electricity from their hands?

And I love that some decisions I make during the game have meaning and impact the game later on. Back in the day I did manage to finish Bioshock with the good ending. I need to decide at some point soon do I try and repeat that feat or do I try for the other ending? I’m not sure which way I will go. That’s almost exhilarating thinking about it. How will I feel at the time will impact the decision. But will there be regret and wishing I had chosen the other path once I make the decision? Although switching to the ending I haven’t seen is possible at any point it’s that struggle then not to be tempted to go for it.

What’s nice about this edition of the game is that there is directors commentary for you to unlock as you play. There is a museum to explore with concept art, models etc. Plus there are downloadable missions/challenges that are separate to the main campaign.

An aside: since owning my previous Switch Nintendo have made getting screenshots off the Switch and onto a smart device a tad easier.

Right time to get back to exploring Rapture.

Essential DM Reading For D&D

D&D, DM/GM Tips

Who am I as a newbie DM giving advice? How do I know what to advise another new Dm needs to read and pay particular attention to from the core books?

Luckily the Dungeon Dudes talked about this in a video Christmas Eve. Yes I know this might seem a bit late to be telling you about it. But to be fair I wasn’t going to do a post about it. Then Sly Flourish did a post about reading material for DM’s and I thought you know what I should make a record of this for myself (and share it with others).

So I have screen grabbed the summary from the Dungeon Dudes video (link below) of the pages that they think a beginning DM should read. I added the image to the notes app on iOS (it seems to be my go to note keeping place at the moment).

You can watch the video HERE, or jump straight to the detailed good stuff that they put into a Google doc HERE.

Personally I think I have distilled a lot of this stuff down to a single A4 page!

I call it a cheat sheet, and is something I can refer to quickly (it’s something I keep wanting to do for the likes of Genesys or Judge Dredd too). It’s basically all the dice based checks as simple formula (as the snippet above shows). You can pick up a copy from Dropbox HERE (it’s a word doc so you can edit to fit your own needs if you want).

In the DM Guide there is the infamous Appendix D: Dungeon Master Inspiration with a list of books to “help you become a better storyteller, writer, performer,and mapmaker.”

However Sly Flourish recently (in the last couple of days as I write this) wrote a post with an alternative reading list for DM’s (link HERE). Which I thought was a particularly good reading list (with links), and not just because I had more than one of the books on the list (and felt a little smug having them already).

I like lists like this because they often suggest titles that I may never have considered or even known about. And new sources of inspiration and knowledge are always welcome.

I hope folks have found this a useful post.

Check mate!

chess

Last year one of the couple of break out hits from Netflix was The Queen’s Gambit.

It tells the story of Beth Harmon during the 1950’s and 1960’s, and her struggle with drugs and alcohol to become a chess master.

Apparently the seven episode series is based on a novel of the same name. I’ve never read it naturally.

But this incredibly well told story about a flawed chess protege caught the imagination of the world.

It made chess the hip game to be seen playing. Chess set sales went up. And I’m assuming as did the download of chess apps.

I have to admit at the time even I was tempted to get into the game and all the hype.

What stopped me at the time is that chess is what we gamers call a “lifestyle game”. Well it is if you want to progress and get to a reasonable standard.

Usually a “lifestyle game” is a game that you not only play a lot of, but when you are not playing it, you spend a lot of time talking about, reading, researching, working on tactics, etc for the game. An example would Magic the Gathering (MtG). Chess easily fits into this for many.

At the time of Queen’s Gambit being dropped on Netflix and almost getting caught u- in the wave of excitement to play the game of chess. The one thing that stopped me was the knowledge that there is only really room for one “lifestyle game” in a persons life. And I already had one in my life, MtG (although later this year that may be challenged – but more of that later if and when it happens).

But before Christmas I gave in and bought a cheap travel chess set (less than a tenner – just) so that I could try running a game or two over on the Fenland Gamers discord server in an attempt to try and increase engagement over there. The games of Mastermind that I had been running had petered out, with just one participant taking part.

It would be me against the clubs hive mind!

I hadn’t played chess for decades. Potentially the last time being my teenage years. Even then it was very casual, I knew the basics, and there was no way I could have been described as anything but a novice (and that might be giving myself too much credit for my ability or lack of).

I found out how chess notation worked. Refreshed my failing memory on how castling worked. And relearnt what en passant was.

We ended up having two games of chess using the discord server over the Christmas and New Year period. Which ended up with them being me playing Jonathan. For the record I won both of them. I wouldn’t say our games were amazing, we made lots of tactical errors I’m sure. But we had fun.

I did get a couple of kindle books on chess opening moves (kindle unlimited was useful for once) that I need to spend time reading. Jonathan got his hands on a chess computer (which considering all things like apps, are surprisingly expensive). And we have both downloaded the chess.com app (I need to start using this).

I recorded all the moves from the two games in the iOS notepad app, plus added them to the comments in the bgstats app for the two games.

So as you can see even these casual game or two I started dipping my toes into those deep murky waters of what makes chess a “lifestyle game”.

Guess what? Jonathan and I haven’t played since!

When we do it’s Jonathan’s turn to be white and to go first.

Big Green Stompy v2

Commander, Deck tech, magic, MtG, MtG Deck Building

It’s been a long time since I’ve done one of these deck posts. There are more planned. After all I have two new decks nearly finished, and three other decks that need updating with new cards.

I thought after the post the other day about one of the upcoming Kaldheim cards that I was really excited about I’d finally update the Big Green Stompy deck this morning.

Some times it is so easy to update a deck. Especially if its one I built a long time ago and I wasn’t using “good” cards but ones I had at the time.

Other times it’s so hard to do, as you don’t want to take cards out. But you have to because you want to use the new cards.

Below are the updated decks stats. The AMC has crept up.

Ok according to the Decked app that I use and CardKingdom if I had to replace this deck I would not be able to. But below I’ve listed the top 10 most costly cards that the deck currently uses.

Like so many cards, The Immortal Sun is in need of a reprint. It’s almost a staple for me, and possibly many others too. If at the same time they could reprint Growing Rites as well I’d appreciate it.

Ok here is the bit you really want the cards that make up this version of the deck.

Note yes it might be on the low side for lands. But there are mana rocks, cards that reduce the cost, creatures that tap for mana, and cards that search for lands. Plus cards that increase the amount of mana that lands tap for.

Creatures:35

1 Boreal Druid
1 Elvish Mystic
1 Feral Hydra
2 Hungering Hydra
1 Llanowar Elves
1 Mistcutter Hydra
1 Leaf Gilder
1 Melira, Sylvok Outcast (Alternative Commander)
1 Primordial Hydra
1 Voracious Hydra
1 Deathgorge Scavenger
1 Lifeblood Hydra
1 Llanowar Tribe
1 Managorger Hydra
1 Steel Leaf Champion
1 Thrashing Brontodon
1 Elvish Piper
1 Vizier of the Menagerie
1 Yeva, Nature’s Herald (Commander)
1 Gigantosaurus
1 Ohran Frostfang
1 Seedborn Muse
1 Aggressive Mammoth
1 Carnage Tyrant
1 Gargos, Vicious Watcher
1 Hydra Broodmaster
1 Hydra Omnivore
1 Kogla, the Titan Ape
1 Oran-Rief Hydra
1 Giant Adephage
1 Tornado Elemental
1 Khalni Hydra
1 Worldspine Wurm
1 Ghalta, Primal Hunger

Spells:43

1 Adventurous Impulse
1 Animist’s Awakening
1 Attune with Aether
1 Sol Ring
1 Bonds of Mortality
1 Emerald Medallion
1 Heroic Intervention
1 Land Grant
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Nylea’s Intervention
1 Thought Vessel
1 Charge of the Forever-Beast
1 Crushing Canopy
1 Cultivate
1 Garruk’s Uprising
1 Gift of Paradise
1 Growing Rites of Itlimoc
1 Krosan Grip
1 Nissa’s Pilgrimage
1 Retreat to Kazandu
1 Rhonas’s Monument
1 Unbound Flourishing
1 Vivien, Champion of the Wilds
1 Court of Bounty
1 Leyline of Abundance
1 Momentous Fall
1 Return to the Earth
1 Tempt with Discovery
1 Whirlwind
1 Wilderness Reclamation
1 Doubling Season
1 Garruk, Primal Hunter
1 Primal Vigor
1 Vivien Reid
1 Vivien, Monsters’ Advocate
1 Caged Sun
1 The Immortal Sun
1 Wave of Vitriol
1 Zendikar Resurgent
1 Praetor’s Counsel
1 Sandwurm Convergence
1 The Great Aurora
1 The Great Henge

Lands:22

1 Detection Tower
1 Emergence Zone
1 Field of Ruin
15 Forest
1 Guildless Commons
1 Temple of the False God
1 Tranquil Thicket
1 Bala Ged Recovery // Bala Ged Sanctuary

Kaldheim Spoiler Gets Me Excited!

Commander, magic, MtG

At the end of this month MtG players get their hands on the new Norse inspired set Kaldheim.

Until then we are in the middle of what is known as spoiler season. Which is basically when WotC use various content creators (mainly streamers and YouTubers) that they deem worthy to reveal cards from the new set (and hopefully building up excitement) over like a two week peroid before revealing every card in the set.

WotC did spoil one card that has me very excited for it, and adding it to my Big Green Stompy Commander deck.

This deck is my mono green deck that plays big creatures. Naturally there are more than a handful of hydra in the deck. I think it would be fair to almost say I’m not far off from this being a hydra tribal deck.

To make those hydra and any other that I put a +1/+1 counter onto I have the following three cards in the deck.

As you can guess with just one of these cards out the hydras can come in pretty big. If I’m allowed to have more than one of these cards out at the same time (a pretty silly move by the other players) then the hydras start to become silly.

However I do play one hydra that just abuses the cards above and the math can get insane! That card is Primordial Hydra.

I think in a previous post many many moons ago now I told you about a Commander game at my FLGS where I indeed did have Primordial Hydra out with Primal Vigor and won the game swinging in with a 156/156 hydra. You can imagine how insanely large Primordial Hydra would have gotten at the start of my next turn.

Now with Kaldheim I will have a new instant add to the deck. And forgive any pun but it doubles down on the counter doubling for me! The new card is Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider.

For my deck it’s an insane card and increases the odds of me hitting a way to double my counters. That’s the bit I like a lot. A 6/6 with tramp and haste for 6 CMC is nice, and a green deck not a lot to pay, and possible to play early ahead of curve with the right ramp pieces in hand. And I have ramp in the deck. It’s green!

The final paragraph on the card is a really nice bonus. Which if I’m reading this correctly means that while Vorinclex is on the battlefield any Planeswalkers that opponents play comes in with half the counters on it! Which means it takes longer for an opponent to ultimate them and gives me and others longer to remove the Planeswalker. Plus it negates single +1/+1 or -1/-1 counters being placed if my understanding of the text is correct. But making sure that whatever permanent the other player brings in with counters is smaller is amazing.

So in my deck this is a monstrous card indeed. I think you can see now why I am excited about the card.

Pointcrawls

D&D, RPG

Ever since Sly Flourish in his weekly DM Prep YouTube video mentioned and then started using Pointcrawls in his Eberron campaign I’ve been curious.

Being the lazy so and so I am. Instead of doing my own research on Pointcrawls, I decided to wait for Sly Flourish to write a blog post about them.

The waiting game paid off when Sly Flourish recently put up a YouTube video about Pointcrawls with links to articles that go into them in more depth.

I’ve embedded the video below.

So why am I interested in Pointcrawls?

Way back I wrote a post about travel and making them interesting.

Within our campaign we have land and sea travel.

For the land travel I have tried using The One Ring rules, or a version of. It went ok. For the sea travel I used a variation of the hex crawl rules from Tomb of Annihilation. Which also seemed fine.

But I’m constantly conscious of the players getting bored, not engage, or tired of the repetitive nature that these types of travel have.

Pointcrawls sound like from what Sly Flourish has said something I may find solves some of this. Obviously it will have its own drawbacks. Which I’m sure will become clear once I start reading the articles Sly links too.

And the one thing I can be sure of with current world events is I have time to look into this before our campaign resumes.

Quest Decks by Dice Dungeons

D&D, first look, new arrivals, RPG

Nearly a year ago now I backed a Kickstarter for these deck of cards to be used with RPGs called Quest Decks.

By there end of the Kickstarter there were ten quest decks unlocked. These decks covered various genres and types of missions:

” •  The Notice Board – Filled with traditional quests a party may find in a fantasy town.

•  For The Crown – Plunges your character into a world of nobles and intrigue. A chance at bigger rewards, but with higher stakes.

•  Into The Stars – This sci-fi themed deck will take your players on Interstellar adventures. Designed to work great for space-fairing games such as Stars without Number and Starfinder.

•  Grimm Adventures – Explore spooky crypts and dark secrets in this eerie, ghost-themed deck.

•  Coastal Threats – Great for coastal regions and seafaring campaigns. Explore docks districts and seek buried treasure.

•  Far-flung Journeys – Embark on quests that require distant travel that will take you beyond the edge of world.

•  Neon Dystopia – From megacorps to mechanoids, dive into the neon shadows of the future in this cyberpunk inspired deck.

•  Eldritch Omens – Bring a touch of madness to your game and investigate unknowable horrors with this Lovecraftian themed horror deck.

•  Uncharted Expanse – Take your sci-fi adventures to edge as you explore the outer regions space.

•  Partners in Crime – This deck will have you using all your wits and cunning to plan heists, shake down shop owners, and fight for territory.” (Taken from the Kickstarter page)

I backed for five decks of my choice (a decision based on funds, and interest), and the physical copies arrived a couple of days back. I’ve had the digital versions of the decks I chose for a while. But unless I was in a hurry to use them, printing my own copies to use didn’t appeal to me.

The nice thing about the digital version of the decks was the “bonus” content. These are pdfs that any DM would find useful. There were three in total, A Lively Encounter (tables to add depth to random encounters), 50 Plot Points to Add Depth to Your Side Quests, and D100 Names (can never have enough lists of names).

The decks themselves are fine quality wise. I’d have preferred maybe better card stock for the deck boxes and cards. However I plan to sleeve the cards anyway, which means the deck boxes are redundant and most likely for the bin.

Each deck consists of forty five quest cards, three blank cards, a quick guide card (although the Quest deck didn’t have this), and an advert card for more Quest Decks.

I’m looking forward to using these Quest Decks. Tie them in with some of the other decks and the npc dice, and it’s possible to create a random quest, dungeon, and NPC’s on the fly during a session. Or as inspiration whilst session planning.

What is old is new!

D&D, RPG

Well the new year is upon us and so far very little has changed from the previous year. It’s just more of the corruption, lies, ineptitude, shelfishness and just plain old incompetence.

My bedtime routine during the last few nights has consisted of listening to the 12 Days of Christmas Edition Wars from The Tome Show podcast. “In this special mini-series Brandes Stoddard and Sam Dillon take a deep dive into the Dungeon Master’s Guides from each edition of our favorite game.”

It’s been a fascinating look at the previous editions and this morning I finally got round to digging out the Dungeon Master’s Guide 2 for D&D 3.5, and the Dungeon Master’s Guide for D&D 4.

There were a couple of things that the hosts mentioned that I thought sounded still valid for use with the current 5th edition. And I wanted to make sure I had them as notes to refer to later on when session prepping or running a session.

The first thing I added to my notes was the sidebar on page 30 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide 2 for 3.5. This contains “Sample Move Descriptions” and “Sample Quips and Battle Cries”. I thought these would be something I can add instantly to my combat encounters (once our sessions start back up).

I also made note of the Prioritizing section on pages 32 – 34. This is all about what you can do preparing for a session based on how much time you have available to prepare. Although I’m a fan of the Lazy DM. It’s always handy having another opinion. Plus I thought at some point it might be an interesting exercise to contrast and compare the two.

Page 34 also has handy ideas on aids you can create outside of the session to help improvise at the table. Which cross references to a handy table on page 98 to create random tavern names. I already have plenty of tables to use for names. But I might look at the other suggestions in a post.

I thought the Random Politics table on page 86 looked very useful for its intended use of creating a quick political profile for a medieval-style kingdom. I can use this every time my adventurers discover/arrive at an island.

The 50 Rumors and Hooks on pages 88 – 90 to use within Towns and Cities looks handy for bringing them to life in my campaign.

Another long but handy list/table to have starts on page 99 – 101 is the 100 Instant NPC Agendas. This will hopefully bring my NPC’s to life and make them more memorable.

The Dungeon Master’s Guide for 4e had one page I wanted to add, and that was purely from what The Tome Show said about it. That was page 42. It talks about actions the rules don’t cover. When I saw this page I thought “this looks kinda familiar”. Indeed it did it looked similar to a page from the Lazy DM Workbook. And like one or two comments by me above I think it will be a the subject of another post comparing the two.

I should note that a fair bit of the advice on sessions, planning adventures and campaigns that isn’t system specific still is of use today.