Just to put my money where my mouth is....

I have yet to actually play 4.0 myself, but several other people in my other gaming group have. The people who have played it were very excited about it, and liked everything they were hearing, but that all changed when the game came out.

The biggest problem they have is the way monster challenges scale, and the way they are dependent on the entire group being there for the whole fight. Basically, if you are fighting a monster (or group of monsters) that are appropriate for your challenge level (or lower), you *will* win, every time. It can be exciting (though there have been many complaints about the "accounting" thing Pete mentioned), and it may take a while, but you *will* win, and there's little the monster can do about it.

If you are fighting a monster that's above your challenge level, you *will* lose. Every time. Slowly, perhaps, but inexorably you will lose.

That's the report I've heard multiple times now.

And while everybody loves the *idea* of skill challenges, the designers have a very poor understanding of probability, and the math is *still* broken, even though they've tried to fix this problem in errata.

There are other major complaints, but that's all I remember off the top of my head. But the main point here is that both the guys in my group that were excited about 4.0 now never want to play it again.

And while I have yet to play it, I already have a pretty good idea from just reading the PHB that this is not the style of gaming I enjoy.

BT, that was awful. Painful. Gah.

So, there's a computer version of Robo Rally? Really?

Shame on you Sean. Though, unfortunately, your group may be right. Though our group has been asking for harder challenges because we've been eating the shit out of the level-appropriate ones. I think we just have good synergy.

If I had to pin down one thing in the combat that bugs me it's that I spend so much time weighing up the powers I could use that the narrative of the combat is lost.

The out of combat stuff seems just as good as we always ran rather rules-light out of combat anyway.

So, there's a computer version of Robo Rally? Really?

www.gametableonline.com (along with a number of other games; Axis and Allies seems to get the most attention).

Re skill challenges, I love the idea, though it does seem they haven't got them working right. In the adventures I played on the weekend, there were encounters called skill challenges, but they seem to have thrown most of the mechanics out the window.

For instance, in one challenge we had to corral some artisans to renovate a delapidated temple. There was the occasional social skill check, and I think we appraised some stonework in there somewhere too, but we also had to roleplay dealing with a classroom of unruly five-year-olds, and we had a combat against a wererat and his ratty minions. This allowed my character to create what may well become his signature dish, the four-rat sampler plate: swarm, giant, dire and were-.

I have a Wii! And a Mii and I suck at Tennis.

Also I seem to have forgotten my password to my wireless router. Tomorrow I go buy games for the Wii.

Bowling was fun.

My big gaming time-suck of recent has been returning to GTA IV. I finished the story last year, and now I'm finishing off a few side quests and jumps and discovering how much of the radio stations I haven't listened to.

This is all a warm up for the GTA IV DLC coming in Feb. Another 10 hours of story fun, this time with a biker gang. Can't wait.

Oh, re the online RoboRally, you can of course play against other opponents, or you can pit yourself (so to speak) against AI robots, up to seven of them. The AI, of course, never puts down a "Turn Left" when it meant "Turn Right", and is extremely efficient at working out its route; conversely, it makes suboptimal use of the option cards, and isn't really able to anticipate what the other robots might do.

You can play any of the scenarios in the original rulebook (including team games), and they have the special rules programmed in (e.g. in Set To Kill, everyone has a double laser). There's also a map editor that allows you to design your own courses. I'm missing a lot on how that works; you can program special rules in the courses you design, but I don't know how.

I love Robo Rally, I kick everyone's butts. I love watching everyone shifting their bodies as they work out the route in their heads.

Meanwhile, I have purchased my very own copy of the Battlestar Galactica boardgame. We're playing this weekend with my brother and some friends of his. Wallybee and I tried out a two-player variant Monday night, mainly to get familiar with the rules. The peculiar genius of this game is the Cylon mechanic, and with two players it's not really relevant (one of you may be a sleeper Cylon, but that's very different from, say, a guaranteed two cylon cards out of five players). So we didn't get the full experience.

It was still a lot of fun, really. It delivers on theme, and we're both fans of the series, so that was a big plus. Wallybee chose to play Admiral Adama, and I decided the best fit for a good spread of skill cards would be Apollo. That helped with the theme (Apollo has an ability, "Alert Pilot"; whenever a viper gets launched, he can decide to pilot it. I decided when he did that he was probably flouncing, and I would tell Wallydama "All I ever wanted was to make you proud of me!")

We won the game without being seriously challenged. We got attacked between pretty much every jump, but since every other turn saw Apollo shooting down toasters (and occasionally on Adamabee's turn too), our firepower was generally well sufficient. We never seriously suspected each other of Toasterhood, so the crises were fairly easy to manage. I can see it being very different with more players and a good dollop of paranoia.

Upshot: I'm looking forward to Sunday. This could be a lot of fun.