This post was prompted by The Extinction of Blogs and Prototypes for Blog Revival at Chris Bateman’s Only a Game, as well as several other blogs related to it ( The Day the Music Died and Whatever Happened to Class? as of this writing) I have a couple of large things to say about blogging, it’s role, and if it’s working/how to [...]
Author Archives: Joe Tortuga
March Game of the Month: Prism, rorriM, Lz
March 25, 2013 – 11:38 am
Play my March Game, Prism, rorriM, Lz. Yes, it’s supposed to look that way! Commentary: The One Game a Month prompt for this month was “Rogue.” That leaves me with the idea of randomness, due to the generation of content in most rogue-likes. I had some thoughts about that, but the game I was working [...]
No Universe
August 13, 2012 – 12:28 pm
So, the lead designer of Borderlands 2 was talking about something that might have been a good idea. Then he called it “girlfriend mode”. There’s some problems with that, which revolve around the intersection of the ideas of women gamers, the typical market for a game like Borderlands 2, and the culture of video games [...]
(Tropes vs Women) vs Internet Idiots
June 12, 2012 – 1:41 pm
I like to think that I”m a reasonably empathetic person. That I can usually see where someone else is coming from and why they are doing what they are doing. It doesn’t stop me from thinking they are ill advised or making mistakes when they do those things, but I can usually get it. I [...]
A quick bit of Diablo III dialog
May 21, 2012 – 10:33 am
When you get the Scoundrel as an ally, the game has forced you to have Leah with you as well. The entire time the Scoundrel flirts with her in a way that’s obviously not wanted by Leah. I quickly dumped him, and took the Templar back, but then I got this: Templar: I do not [...]
Harry Barefoot (Of the Bigglesport Barefeet)
May 14, 2012 – 9:59 am
I’m hoping to play some original D&D with the Riders of Lohan tonight, so I spent a very few minutes making a character. This is an absurdly simple task in Dungeons and Dragons, which is good, because I think we should probably rename ourselves Strikeforce Morituri, if their previous adventures are any indication. I used rolz.org [...]
On Paying Attention
January 25, 2012 – 10:02 am
My daughter (aka Goddessdaughter) is lacking in certain important life skills. She doesn’t know that you jump on Koopa Troopers so they won’t be able to attack you in Paper Mario. (And never mind that that lowers their defense so that your other attacks work better.) She skips past dialog faster than any regular [...]
Pen and Paper Gaming Without the Pen or the Paper
December 29, 2011 – 2:04 pm
Well, it’s time to do some online gaming. I knew G+ would be good for this when I first saw Hangouts, but they made them better, and I played in one of Corvus’ Bhaloidam demos (which funded, yay!). I was busy doing two of the free Stanford classes, as well as running a bi-weekly [...]
The Ongoing Search for the Perfect RPG
October 24, 2011 – 9:28 am
I don’t completely remember my first gaming experience. I know it was one of the few at my friend Blair’s house, before his father — a Southern Baptist minister — decided what we were doing was demonic (So we switched to Traveller when we were at Blair’s). I do remember that my red-box human cleric [...]
Elder Scrolls Replay: Arena, Part 2
September 16, 2011 – 8:58 am
If there had never been another Elder Scrolls game, Arena would have been forgotten, or fondly remembered by a few gamers but largely ignored today. Perhaps there would have been a bad third-person console game made from the license a few years ago, and then nothing else. Instead the parts of Arena that are interesting [...]