I'm wasting time on Oblivion RIGHT NOW. It's still awesome.

anybody else looking forward to Fallout 3?

I'm going to go out on a limb and say NOT billytea's friend who wouldn't buy the nuclear power plants.

Sorry - the x-post just made me laugh and laugh.

Actually, while a lot of Fallout 3's trailers & screenshots had me excited, when I finally got down to watching actual gameplay I was left with a decided feeling of "meh".

I'm looking forward to Castle Crashers & Gears of War 2. Those are some seriously disparate games.

Gears 2, Fallout 3, Fable 2 and the next CoD game are all on my to buy list. And they're all coming out this year. I'm gonna be broke.

Glad to see this thread picking up a little bit after a small lull. I know I've been slacking a bit about posting in here. I get to play some D&D today, and I'm looking forward to it. I'll report back later.

We didn't end up playing Power Grid this weekend. We did play Rock Band (RB2 coming out 9/14 for Xbox!), but mostly we played Ticket to Ride and San Juan.

San Juan. I won, but I'm not sure I like it. It seems like a pointless debasement of Puerto Rico. OTOH, it's a leaner meaner PR with excellent decisions for what to cut and what to keep. It was not easy for the first-timer to pick up, however.

Ticket to Ride was awesome. I lost (3rd out of 4 players), but I see a lot of potential for different strategies to try. Plus little plastic trains! Nice art direction through and through.

On another topic, I had to give a spiel today on identity in virtual worlds, and some of the research (hi Sox) on Second Life included the phrase "It's not a game. I don't ask for do-over [if I do something wrong]."

Which got me thinking...I'm used to going back to the last save point in computer RPGs, and in fact timely saves are a key gaming skill. But only once in a serious pen-and-paper RPG (a couple times in goofy ones like Paranoia) have I ever seen a "do-over" happen.

Survey? Do you tabletop gamers expect computer-like do-overs while playing D&D or similar? Or is it more "like real life" and you always deal with the consequences of your actions?

Do you have notes you can share on your SL thing, Raq? Or is it confidentially worky stuff?

But only once in a serious pen-and-paper RPG (a couple times in goofy ones like Paranoia) have I ever seen a "do-over" happen.

I've seen someone, say, allowed to reroll healing if they get 1s, and if a character dies, the sequence of events is often examined closely for rules or abilities or favours that might have been overlooked. I've never seen someone ask to do an action over because their chosen action didn't work out so well.

Frankly, my initial reaction would be "It's a game. You don't get do-overs." You don't get do-overs in chess, or Bridge, or Ticket to Ride either, if you're playing halfway seriously. I think video games are the anomaly, not PnP.

Survey? Do you tabletop gamers expect computer-like do-overs while playing D&D or similar? Or is it more "like real life" and you always deal with the consequences of your actions?

Suffer the consequences. The only exception is when a player has said something in-character but hasn't quite understood the circumstances which would be clear as day to the character.

Our crew has what we call the "thought bubble" rule. There's about a 10 second takeback period for dumbass statements or actions that your character does, where you can claim that whatever you did was just a cartoon-style "thought bubble", and I'll generally let you off with a merciless mocking, rather than a well-deserved death.

Given the kind of general dumbassery our crew's prone to, it's kind of a lifesaver.