Author Archives: Jason "Zeeblee" Leonard

Stats to Who: Roleplaying Doesn’t Care About Numbers Part 2

Posted on by Jason "Zeeblee" Leonard

Zeeblee

As promised I am now going go through the Stats-to-Who process of character creation.  The Stats I will be working with is from Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 because I think most people will be at least passingly familiar with that system (as it is the face of roleplaying).  Below is a quick summary of the Stats:

Race: Human
Class: Fighter
Level: 2
Feats: Exotic Weapon Proficiency(spiked chain), Combat Expertise, Improved Trip, Combat Reflexes

This may not seem like much, and you’re right.  A DnD character also has skills, equipment, attributes, and languages.  But attributes are determined randomly, and the other bits aren’t really required at this point.  For those unfamiliar with the spiked chain Fighter twink, this is the beginning core to a build that has many variations.  The basic idea is that in DnD 3.5 you can trip your opponents from range with the chain, and if they try to get back up you get free attacks on them and can keep them lying prone.  Over time you can add more area control maneuvers, damage, or whatever, but for now I am only going to care about the core.  Now to the steps of character discovery!

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Game Analysis: Remembering

Posted on by Jason "Zeeblee" Leonard

Zeeblee

As a rather big fan of ambient music and experimental composition I was delighted by the game Remembering, which delivered both exquisitely.  Unfortunately I feel it suffers from some key design flaws which actually run counter to its advertised goal.  On their main site the creators state,

Remembering is a game that leaves room for the player. By building a world based on sound instead of visuals we’ve created a place that relies on interpretation. It offers the chance to perceive it in a personal way.

This is not what I experienced.  Yes, the game had a great soundscape, but it also relied on visuals and was not open to exploration.

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Roleplaying Does Not Care About Numbers

Posted on by Jason "Zeeblee" Leonard

Zeeblee

Has anyone ever told you a story that you really not not care less about?  It was probably about something inane and uncontrollable (they had very little or no influence on the outcome), like winning a game of Chutes and Ladders or War.  It might have even gone like this:

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How I Got Stuck in a Spokane Starbucks

Posted on by Jason "Zeeblee" Leonard

Zeeblee

One week I got sick and didn’t post. Then there was a celebration and I didn’t post. Next I had an entertaining bus ride followed by drama at my work, and I didn’t post. So as a form of apology/an extended excuse I present to you the story of how I got stuck in a Spokane Starbucks. Schadenfreude, enjoy it.

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Game Analysis: Great Gatsby for NES

Posted on by Jason "Zeeblee" Leonard

Zeeblee

It has been a good long while since I’ve read The Great Gatsby, but I’m fairly sure that The Great Gatsby for NES does not truly reflect the novel in any way outside of its cutscenes and aesthetic.  It’s built just like any old platformer where it tells you the controls, but doesn’t tell you anything about the game world (though the controls are not displayed in-game).  It’s really short, so there isn’t all that much to actually comment on, but I found it enjoyable and worth a playthrough.  The lack of a pause button means it’s sort of an all-in adventure, but due to its short length that’s actually not that awful.

The one thing I will comment on is how I think it did a poor job of educating the player on how to fight the first boss.  Your attack (throwing a hat) operates as a sort of player-seeking boomerang.  The first boss is most easily defeated through the use of this mechanic by throwing the hat and then jumping up near the boss, but there is a problem:  the game doesn’t really present this to you as something important to practice until the boss fight.  Just about every enemy you encounter can be dealt with by just throwing the hat straight at them, which then also makes it bounce straight back to you.  The range on the default hat (there is a yellow hat power-up) is also extremely short, so there isn’t much opportunity to alter its trajectory.  On top of that the screen is actually rather thin, and since it tracks the player avatar (keeps it in the center) the short attack range of the default hat ends up being almost equal to your field of vision.  This makes it so you can’t really prepare for enemies by throwing out long shots, which also means that there isn’t much time to play with hat trajectory.  The issues of range/sight combined with how just throwing straight is all you need means the player likely won’t discover and develop the technique(s) required to manipulate the hat projectile in the first boss fight until that very boss fight.  Developing the skill required to defeat the boss is also rather unsatisfying as it never comes up again and the rest of the game can pretty much be played as before (throwing straight shots).

But I’m willing to look past this flaw because of just how classy the game is.  Or maybe it’s because I drank a martini every time I grabbed up a martini power-up…

Zeeblee

Classification Necessary: Problems with Horror

Posted on by Jason "Zeeblee" Leonard

Zeeblee

A week ago I was going to write an article to bounce off of Mattias’ horror game article about SCP Containment Breach.  A week ago I was going to use Hostel by Eli Roth as a sort of whipping boy/strawman example of what makes a bad horror movie.  But in my haze of sickness, working nights, and sleeping for multiple days straight I realized that my perspective on what “horror” is was flawed.  I searched for definitions to support my claim that Hostel was not a horror movie because it offered no scares and no suspense, but I was met with definitions that incorporated discomfort and sickened responses.  Being horrified is not just being scared, but also being disgusted.  In this way Hostel can still be called a horror film (but still not a good one).  But this broadness of definition offers up a problem, one that I ran into a lot when I used to work in a video rental store (yes, those still exist), and the problem is:  When someone asks you to recommend a horror movie, how do you respond?

As most people would do I always end up recommending my favorites, but I’ve noticed that my favorites never really include movies from the genre of horror that Hostel was aiming for.  I’m a big fan of suspenseful films like The Shining where the focus of the film is to make the characters feel uncomfortable as opposed to films like The Girl Next Door (Jack Ketchum’s version) where the goal is to make the audience feel uncomfortable.  Now, you may argue that the goal of The Shining was to make the audience feel uncomfortable, and you would be correct, but it does so by making the characters feel paranoid and unsafe, and the audience then empathizes with them also feels paranoid for the characters.  The Girl Next Door on the other hand makes the audience uncomfortable via the brutal treatment of the characters.  The audience isn’t paranoid about whether or not they will be safe, but is instead disgusted by just how unsafe they are, and rather than paranoia of the future the audience is more hopeful that the present situation will end.

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Movie Review: Mad Max trilogy

Posted on by Jason "Zeeblee" Leonard

Zeeblee

Growing up I am relatively sure that I was introduced to the Mad Max movies in reverse order.  Like many people the first one I saw starred Tina Turner and featured the line “Who run Barter Town!”  This also happens to be the one which most people have seen if they have seen any of the three films (at least that’s what I have observed in my own experiences).  Next I saw The Road Warrior and learned to “just walk away from the gasoline.”  Of the series this is the one that people either haven’t seen, or didn’t realize it was a Mad Max film until later.  Finally I saw it.  I saw the original.  I heard the gospel of the Night Rider, and I saw Mad Max.  Now that I’ve built up some drama I’m going to go ahead and ease the tension with a simple categorized review.

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Controllers: Interfacing With Your Audience

Posted on by Jason "Zeeblee" Leonard

Zeeblee

When discussing game mechanics we need to remember that there is more to gameplay than just the on-screen interactions.  There is a real-life interaction happening during every single game you play, and it occurs between you and the controller.  When designing a game you can’t just take this for granted, and it is actually an interaction which deserves a lot of thought.  How you want your player to interact with the game world can determine exactly what system your game should be released for as well as whether or not you will need an extensive controls tutorial to educate your players.

Before getting started on your game you should ask yourself, “What control systems do I have access to?”  This is an important question because each controller type places hard limits on potential player actions.  By this I mean that every controller has a different number of buttons which players can press (or nobs/joysticks to fiddle with, but we can pretend they are just a bunch of buttons), and that number of buttons acts as a ceiling value for how many actions you can offer to the player.  On one end of the spectrum we have the single-button, single-joystick Atari, with the Xbox 360 controller being somewhere in the current middle, and near the end the current rendition of the computer keyboard.  To be more specific:  A Nintendo controller has eight buttons (A, B, Select, Start, four directions on the D-Pad) while a computer keyboard can have around 84-102 buttons.  This means that if you were to assign a single action to a single button that the Nintendo can support eight individual actions where the computer can support at least 80 different individual actions.

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How I Make a Character

Posted on by Jason "Zeeblee" Leonard

Zeeblee

As a person who is primarily a player in roleplaying games instead of a storyteller (game master, dungeon master, etc.) I figure the best place to start is where we all start: character creation.  Everyone has their own preferences when it comes to character creation, so in no way will this to be taken as a “how-to” guide.  This article is merely a sort of stepping-stone and perspective-setter.  The three approaches I take to creation I will call Who, Stats, and Hybrid.  In this article I will do a quick overview of what each of those approaches looks like, but I will save delving into each for later articles.

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