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    Uplink: Soothing Routine, or Monotonous Punch in the Face?

    I picked up Steam’s Indie Future Pack this weekend–great buy, by the by–which includes Uplink, a game about hacking. And more hacking. …And getting caught. The premise and mechanics are pretty simple: you’re an agent of Uplink with a handle, a plaintext password, and a bank account. You connect to the web through your gateway (think: managed, dedicated server), and hack companies and government databases to earn money, increased rating through Uplink, and status amongst your fellow hackers. There’s also some sort of “hack the planet” or “save the cheerleader” plot in there, but we’ll get to that. Or not, actually. I played this game a few years ago and…

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    D & D: Well, That Was a Slaughter

    The level 1 to 30 D & D 4e campaign Greg and I started last week has proved… difficult. Our intrepid adventurers handily took on the set of Fell Taints (tee hee) they first set out for, despite the whirlwinds and strangely difficult terrain in the big room. On the second excursion, though, the four grumpy adventurers found themselves up against their most difficult encounter: a young black dragon. …In a small room. …With a pit in the middle. Major advantage to the dragon’s breath and fear weapons. They fought valiantly, but ended up as tasty dragon snacks. Turns out they were mere appetizers for the main course. The dragon…

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    D & D: Erathis Save Us

    The setting: our town fell through a portal into a dark and inhospitable world. Luckily, Erathis shines upon us and keeps the darkness at bay… for now. Except that the portal’s not closed. Little pockets of other worlds and planes are landing outside the town, chock full of baddies. Who’s going to squash these bugs? Four adventurous types with big weapons and the gods’ backing step up to the plate. So they’re a little breakable right now. They’ll grow into it, we’re sure. Or we’ll replace them. Flimsy plot? Yes. It’s essentially a miniatures game, combat-only. Greg and I (playing two characters each) are going to work our way through…

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    Assisting in Story Telling: Fun But Complicated

    Last weekend at the city-wide Geist live-action roleplaying game I play in, I let Greg twist my arm into running a plot. In a game the size of ours (10-20 people, depending on sleep schedules), there almost has to be more than one person running stories–there just isn’t enough of one game master’s attention to go around. The trouble with me getting involved in running plots is that Greg is the main game master (or “story teller”, in the Geist system). Nepotism, anyone? Eep. I was very, very worried about accusations of such, especially since I’ve been accused by others of using my “feminine wiles” to get judgments in my…