My daughter played a lot of Oregon Trail 5 and really enjoyed it. Turns out you need a not easily found patch for it to run on XP though.

Next to none. You need the powerhouse consoles to run graphic like that.

I wonder what the next generation will be like.

So far I've discovered that Neverwinter Nights 2 is fun. Sort of reminds me of Baldur's Gate II with better graphics, but with inferior attention to detail. The character models are pretty disappointing, but that doesn't really hamper gameplay. I'd just like to make Dude Swift and Mentos Fresh a bit more distinctive looking.

The construction toolkit looks kinda interesting to play with, but I doubt I will ever have time to mess with it.

OK, you know what bugs me about tieflings in4.0? There's no "-ling" in that design. Seriously. That creature should be called a tieftor, or tiefosaur, or even tiefoceratpos.

Yes, we are giving 4.0 another shot while I'm still on bedrest.

Will Arkham be available on PS3?

Yup. PC, 360 & PS3.

ION, the people making the Blood Bowl video game have been releasing a lot of teaser trailers this week & the latest ones shows in-game play & team/character creation.

Best of all, you can play the game either as turn-based or real-time. I am so ready for this game!

[link]

After not gaming for almost a year, I've actually got two D&D 4th Edition games that I will playing in starting up in a couple works. I've read the PHB and I'm looking forward to giving it a shot. It's definitely a major shift from previous editions, but it has some promise.

That said, I think if I ever run a game again, it will probably be a 3.5 game, house-ruled and borrowing liberally from the Pathfinder RPG.

I downloaded the free beta version of Pathfinder off of Paizo's website and they've done a lot of things I was thinking about doing with 3.5 before 4 came out (merging skills together. Giving characters more feats and more reasons to stick to a single class.) though not necessarily exactly how I would have done it (I probably would have merged skills differently and I think some of the boosts they give to the core classes are either bit over-powered and/or cheezy. The Sorcerer, in particular, has a lot of abilities that make me go "WTF?!?"

But for folks like Sean who hate 4th Ed, it might be worth looking into. Especially right now, while it's still free.

I definitely like the "casters can use as many 0-level spells per day as they want, but the number known being determined by character level. I do agree with 4th Ed's philosophy that a Wizard should always feel like a Wizard, not sometimes forced to being a really crappy crossbowman. And unlimited Ray of Frosts or Detect Magics won't really break the game. (The only 0-level I wasn't sure how to get around was Cure Minor Wounds "I can heal everyone up to full after every fight, it's just going to take 500 rounds to do it!", but Pathfinder fixes it by removing it and inserting a "Stabilize" spell.)

What really leaves me scratching my head, though, is they replaced the Monk and Barbarian per day special abilities with pools of Ki and Rage points, respectively, to power them, but then changed the Paladin's Lay on Hands from a pool of healing points and replaced it with a number of uses per day.

Before the Aus Open Mens' Final yesterday, Wallybee and I had my brother and a couple of his friends around to play Battlestar Galactica. One of them was late, having initially forgotten about it, so the rest of us had a four-player game while we were waiting.

By coincidence, it lasted almost exactly the half hour it took for the other guy to show. While trying to spool up for our very first jump, and fighting the Cylon basestar that starts in front of our ship, we turned up three more Cylon attacks, including one that sent our FTL prep back a space, and no skill checks. Our only pilot, Starbuck, spent more time in the sickbay than in a Viper (and was a Cylon anyway, not that that wound up mattering). We placed and lost every single civilian ship before we jumped even once.

Anyway, the final guy arrived by then, and we started a five-player game. Wallybee was Admiral Adama, and my brother Brendan was President Gaius Baltar, the magnificent bastard. (We also had Starbuck and Helo, and I took the Chief, since someone had to clean up after the others.)

It was good fun. We worked out that Helo was a toaster pretty early, but Baltar was acting a touch suspicious:

"Ok, nice shot Adama, the basestar's at two damage. I've executive ordered Starbuck back out in a Viper. Baltar, what are you doing?"
"I'd like to spend a card to board Colonial One and collect Quorum cards."
"...Did you not notice that we're under attack?"
"We're always under attack."
"..."

And then another Crisis card allowed Baltar to look at Helo's (Toaster suspect #1) loyalty card. Baltar wouldn't tell us what it was.

And then Wallybee got the Crisis card where the Admiral can demand the Presidency.

"Ok, so this is your choice. Either you can tell Brendan to give you the Presidency and force a crisis or you both lose two cards."
"Yeah, he can give me that. President Admiral sounds pretty good."
"You can just both chuck the cards."
"And your point would be?"
"...Ok. Brendan, you can either give up the Presidency or you wind up in the Brig."
"Brig it is. I like my quorum cards."

Of course, while in the Brig, he refused to help with anything. "I need my cards to break out of the Brig."
"So you'd rather see the Fleet get damaged. Interesting."

Anyway, I figured him for a Cylon at this stage. (It's Gaius Baltar. How could I not?) Apparently Helo did too, because on his turn he Exec Ordered Baltar to let him try to escape the Brig (successfully). And Baltar's next action is to brig Helo, who was indeed a Toaster, and apparently Baltar wasn't one after all.

"So why were you just collecting Quorum cards instead of fighting the Cylons before?"
"Have you checked them out? There's one called 'Authorisation of Brutal Force' I wanted to get hold of."
"...Were you planning to shout 'No more Mr Nice Gaius!' when you played it?"

Helo did the honourable thing and reappeared on the Resurrection Ship. He later did the slightly less honourable thing and gave me his other Loyalty card. Dammit. I was now also a Cylon. For some reason, no one else seemed to pick up on it, and despite sabotaging a couple of significant checks, I went undetected for the whole game. We still lost - we got Morale down to 1, but the last few crisis cards included a flurry of jump icons - but I felt pretty good that no one suspected me after I was given a Loyalty card by a Cylon.

So anyway. Fun game. I think we won't have much trouble getting everyone back again.

I've decided that the 3.5 rules are not overkill for a CRPG. Coming up with different character builds is quite enjoyable. Playing with a D&D based game also made me think back and realize I started playing D&D in the 4th grade which is the grade my daughter is in. Somehow that makes her seem suddenly older.

I didn't start playing until sophomore year of high school.

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