Digital Alterity

I love video games. If you were to total up all the time I’ve spent in my life doing various things, playing video games would only be dwarfed by time spent sleeping. Ever since my parents brought home that Atari 2600, I have had a controller or a keyboard/mouse combo seemingly grafted to my hands.

The following list represents a combination of my personal enjoyment with the game over extended period of time with a nod toward very balanced gameplay. High replay value is a necessity for games on this list because there is no way that a game I’ve played for less than 200 hours is going to make a list this small. Each and every game on this list is a game that I could be happy playing exclusively for the rest of my life.

Without further preamble, I hereby present my list of the best freaking video games ever.

1. World of Warcraft. Without reservation, I place WoW at the top of my personal list of best games ever made. The game is friendly toward new players in a way that Everquest never was. The leveling curve is fast enough to keep you interested without feeling so easy that you don’t care. Every single class is playable and enjoyable, and the sheer amount of side quests, random easter eggs, and collection items mean there is always something new to do. On top of that, Blizzard releases new content at a rate that almost makes you mad because you’re not done with the other stuff yet. No game is perfect, but WoW is damned close.
2. Final Fantasy. I continue to love later sequels in the franchise, but in terms of sheer replay value, no other game in the series can compare with the first one. Final Fantasy for the NES had some serious gameplay issues, but it was so ridiculously fun that you didn’t really care. With the different character classes in your four-person party, the game encouraged you from the outset to try different strategies in order to experience the game in new and exciting ways. Final Fantasy’s game design offers a cornucopia of choices without any one of them being “wrong”. The remakes for the Wonderswan, GBA, and PSP fixed nearly everything that was wrong or frustrating in the original and subsequently took even more hours out of my life.
3. Pokémon Red/Blue. Every Pokémon game has completely taken over my life in sequence, but I’m going to give the crown to the original, which seized hold of my very existence in a way that very few other games have. There was never a moment of my free time that didn’t involve taking my Color Game Boy out of my pocket and playing for a minute or two. Pokémon took all of the choice that Final Fantasy offered, cranked that level of choice up by a factor of 25, and added the addictive collector mentality of CCG games like Magic the Gathering. Simply put, this was the sort of game that was truly impossible for me to dislike. It was designed to stimulate every part of my brain that brings me pleasure.
4. Starcraft. When Starcraft came out way back when I was in college, I enjoyed it casually. I played through the single-player mode. I watched my friends Richard and George play over the LAN for hours and hours. I really liked Starcraft. Coming back to it after playing Warcraft 3 for a while, however, I learned to truly love it. Starcraft is the best RTS game ever created. The wildly different races are nearly perfectly balanced — so balanced, in fact, that playing the game well requires an understanding of what’s popular in the current meta-game. A great economy wins Starcraft games, but picture perfect micro-management of troops can often turn a game completely around. Every unit has a counter that will decimate it, requiring players to actively seek out actionable intelligence on their enemy’s moves. If you never seen a professional Starcraft match from the Korean leagues, you’re really missing out. Starcraft may well be the best video game ever made.
5. The Legend of Zelda. When we got our NES, Super Mario Brothers was a great game. It was fun and exciting, but honestly, it was a lot like games my family had played at the arcades — albeit on a much grander scale. The Legend of Zelda, however, was something else entirely. It completely changed the way I played and thought about video games. Here was a game that refused to be beaten in your first sitting, a game that required you to save your progress for later sessions. Zelda was an action game, but it required you to level up your hero’s abilities in order to defeat later challenges. Boss fights weren’t just a matter of mashing buttons; you had to figure out weaknesses and strategies to emerge victorious. And just when you finally beat the Big Bad and rescued the princess, the game turned 90 degrees and gave you a completely different and harder version of the game to beat all over again. The Legend of Zelda made me the gamer I am today.

I give no explanation or exposition about my scale or my reasoning. They just simply are.

1. The Breakfast Club
2. Airplane!
3. Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Movie
4. UHF
5. Ghost World

Dear DPS classes/specs,

Let me start off by saying that I love you. You make the really big numbers show up above the monsters’ heads and make them stop hitting the tank before I run out of mana. This is a critical part of any group, and I want to /hug each one of you.

I would, however, like to broach a difficult subject. You see, as your party healer in a heroic instance, most of my attention has to be focused on the tank. You know, the big guy up front with all the armor and damage mitigation. If I don’t keep dropping HoTs and Nourish on him, he will expire and make the monsters come rape you. No one wants that. If I’m not ready for an emergency Swiftmend during damage spikes, then that poor bugger is going to die horribly.

Please look at your health bar. It’s the little bar beside your picture at the upper-left of your screen. When that bar starts dropping, please make it stop.

If the big ugly monster is hitting you, you did more damage than the tank could compensate for. This isn’t how you win. Use your abilities like Cower, Fade, or Feign Death to make them hate the tank all over again.

If the floor beneath you looks like it’s on fire, it probably is. Move out of that fire.

I understand that a certain amount of AoE damage is going to happen. I’m happy to fire off a quick Rejuvenation at you to top you off. Heck, during really hairy moments, I’ll even throw you a lifebloom. However, if you’re taking more damage than my Wild Growth AoE heal is giving you back, you’re going to have trouble. Every spell that I cast on you is a spell that I’m not casting on the main tank. If you persist, in taking damage, I’m probably going to have to let you die. And, no, I’m not going to use my combat rez on you. You’ll get rezzed when we’re out of combat.

I’m a healer; I don’t want anyone to die. I just don’t have much choice when you’re committing suicide over and over and over again.

With much love,
Your Friendly Neighborhood Druid Healer

• @sunnysoflo Nope. My parents are teetotalers. in reply to sunnysoflo #
• I started a profile on WoWInsider’s new WoW.com. http://profile.wow.com/user/bactroid #
• Favorite WoW moment: The day that I ended up on a ship with four other druids. Without a word, we all turned into bears and started dancing. #
• What do you mean there’s no donuts? Sad panda! #
• @a12yeartoast Water spirits! Hear your shaman master! Rain! Rain! in reply to a12yeartoast #
• Finally got around to adding my twitter posts to my blog page. http://fuzzcat.bactroid.net/ #
• I really need to move Bactroid.net to a cheaper hosting solution. I know I need to make the time to do this, but it just reeks of effort. #
• I have just learned that we won’t be able to do four ten-hour workdays this summer. This bums me out a bit. #
• Dammit. The sun appears to be out. More rain please. #
• [Witty observation or cunning bon mot.] #
• @weylyn42 “What do mean I can’t use an action point?!” in reply to weylyn42 #
• Realized why my moonkin spec wasn’t working right. SimpleActionSets was pulling in old ranks of spells. #
• Okay. My moonkin version of Besom is now a killing machine. I kill things faster than when I was feral spec. #
• With the exact same gear that I’m using for healing, WoW Heroes reports that laser chicken Besom is geared to run Naxx10 and OS10. #
• Two more player characters dead in the Friday night D&D. I’m a mean and brutal DM. #

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1. Warcraft. I fell in love with Warcraft 3, and World of Warcraft just completely hit all the pleasure centers of my brain. I love the races involved. I love the high fantasy with smidges of sci-fi thrown in. The threats and villains are varied and very intimidating. The factions are well developed enough to not portray either side as completely villainous or virtuous. I want to play 4e D&D in this universe.
2. Marvel Comics. When I was a kid, the best part about reading Marvel comics was that they all worked together to create one big narrative tapestry. The stuff that happened in Amazing Spider-Man affected what happened in the X-Men. All of the characters existed in the same universe, and each character had a coherent role to play in that universe. The Avengers were a completely different team than the X-Men. Wolverine was a very different hero than Doctor Strange. But the threats shadowed all of them. The Marvel Universe is like our world except that nearly anything can happen. Fantasy, sci-fi, swashbuckling, crime noir…All of it just seems to work in the Marvel Universe.
3. The Buffyverse. I was a latecomer to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I had seen the horrible movie version at some point, and that caused me to completely dismiss the TV series. A CGS podcast episode convinced me to give the series a shot, and I was hooked after the first episode. I love vampires and horror, and all of the characters in the Buffyverse seem to be able to deliver wry one-liners that even Spider-Man would be proud of.
4. Star Trek. I won’t tell you how many paperback Star Trek novels I used to have in my house, but I will tell you that I filled an entire bookcase with them. Star Trek offered a science fiction universe that wasn’t distopian or constantly in a state of war. Star Trek offered us conflict but still had an earnest progressive hope in humanity. I would join Starfleet tomorrow if I could.
5. Forgotten Realms. My fascination with the Forgotten Realms is almost completely the fault of Baldur’s Gate. That RPG melted my face completely off, and it led to me playing D&D as a direct result. The Forgotten Realms are high fantasy at its very peak. Every hero and every villain is so armed to the teeth with magic, skill, and divine power that nearly any conflict seems destined to threaten the entire world if left unchecked. That is the perfect environment for both novels and tabletop roleplaying.

I am not normally a particularly talkative person. In fact, I go to great lengths to avoid conversation with nearly everyone. Be warned, however, that if you bring up any of these topics I won’t stop talking until at least one of us is dead.

1. Star Trek (especially Star Trek: The Next Generation).
2. Spider-Man, the X-Men, Captain America…Pretty much any topic involving Marvel continuity from the 1960s until the present.
3. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And if you bring up Spike, Giles, or Xander specifically? God help you.
4. Dungeon and Dragons. Any edition.
5. World of Warcraft. I play this game with Excel spreadsheets to back me up.

I wanted to offer a bit of insight into the math behind Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition. Having run the system for nearly a year now, I can tell you that subjectively the system feels pretty balanced. Subjectivity is always a bit of a rub, however. When dealing with systems governed by numbers, feelings are no substitute for calculations and arithmetic. Just for grins, I wanted to calculate the average damage per round (DPR) for the two martial strikers — the rogue and the ranger — to see how they compare. Both classes are, after all, designed for single-target damage and mobility.

Getting the average ACs by level is pretty easy since the Dungeon Masters Guide conveniently provides the information necessary for creating your own monsters. The skirmisher, we are told, is essentially the baseline monster. Soldiers will be a little harder to hit; brutes will be easier to hit, etc. The skirmisher’s AC should be around 15 at first level (character level + 14).

Rogues get a bonus to hit with daggers, so I used the humble dagger as my weapon for this theoretical rogue. In addition, I choose to base this series of calculations using at-will attacks since they are repeatable until the encounter is over. For the rogue, Sly Flourish seems to be a pretty powerful at-will attack, adding both Dexterity and Charisma to the final damage. Since we’re intentionally min-maxing, we’ll choose a halfling for our trickster rogue. Using the standard array, our rogue will have an 18 DEX and a 16 CHA. With all of the bonuses to hit (+3 proficiency bonus, +1 class bonus using daggers, +4 dexterity), our rogue has a 70% chance to hit our baseline skirmisher.

When it comes to damage, our rogue is going to do 1d4+7, and at least some of the time, he’s also going to do sneak attack damage. Based on what I’ve seen in my ongoing 4e game, I’m going to assume that our rogue can get combat advantage 75% of the time. Honestly, with proper tactics and power selection, this is probably a conservative estimate. Given all of these factors, our rogue will do 11.4 DPR. If he takes the Backstabber feat, his DPR goes up to 12.6. Keep in mind that rogue damage is rather situational. If you can only get combat advantage 50% of the time your numbers will drop to 10.5 DPR with backstabber or 9.4 DPR without it.

Rangers require a bit more complicated math since we’re going to use Twin Strike as our at-will power. Rangers get to add their Hunter’s Quarry bonus if they hit with at least one of their attacks. Given this, we have to calculate the probability of events which are not mutually exclusive. This is governed by the equation P(A) + P(B) - P(A and B).

For melee rangers, we’ll assume that our ranger has an 18 STR (to match our rogue’s 18 DEX above) and that she’s using a +3 proficiency weapon like longswords or bastard swords. Because rangers don’t get a class bonus for melee weapons, we’re looking at a 65% chance to hit our skirmisher. Given this percentage chance, we can calculate that our ranger is going to apply Hunter’s Quarry damage 87.75% of the time. But not so fast, since our melee ranger is also up in the thick of combat, he should also be maneuvering for combat advantage at all times. Increasing your chance to hit, increases your overall DPR.

Considering damage for our melee ranger, we’ll assume that she’s either going to take Weapon Proficiency (Bastard Sword) or Lethal Quarry (+1d8 damage for Hunter’s Quarry rather than +1d6) as her first level feat. The numbers work out to be 10.2 DPR for our bastard sword ranger and 9.8 for our Lethal Quarry / longsword ranger. So, if you’re building a melee ranger for damage, pick up the weapon proficiency feat before Lethal Quarry. Also, worth noting is that combat advantage doesn’t cause our damage to spike upward like the rogue. Assuming only 50% combat advantage, our average DPR only drops by about 0.3-0.4 — a far cry from the 2.0-2.1 DPR that the rogue loses with the same calculations.

Archer rangers have to be a bit more strategic with their shots. Normally, bow users have a slightly lower chance to hit because of the lower proficiency bonus (+2 for both the longbow and the greatbow), but the Prime Shot class ability compensates for this somewhat, giving a +1 bonus to hit as long as the ranger is the closest party member to the target. Without Prime Shot, archer rangers have a 60% chance to hit, but prime shot will bring that right back up to 65%. With prime shot, our chance to land at least one attack and therefore do our Hunter’s Quarry damage is exactly that of our melee ranger: 87.75% of the time. Being further away means a modest drop to 84%.

Given these percentages, we can calculate that our greatbow ranger will do 10.74 DPR without Prime Shot and 11.5 DPR with it. Our longbow / Lethal Quarry ranger will output 10.38 DPR without Prime Shot or 11.1 DPR with it.

The end results look something like this.

tl;dr The two PHB martial strikers are on pretty even ground. If you have a mind for tactics, then the rogue might be your best choice. If you can consistently get combat advantage through flanking, your damage scales up accordingly.

Over and over again, I keep trying to read Justice League / JLA / Justice Whatever-They’re-Calling-It-This Year, and over and over, the book fails to keep my interest. I think that the repeated nature of my attempt to buy into the book speak to a certain desire to read Justice League stories, so I’m going to throw out the idea that I’m just not into the characters. No, I think the problem is strictly in the execution. Here’s what I want out of a Justice League book. If DC could consistently deliver this, I would buy every freaking issue.

• Emphasize the relationships between League members. You know what Claremont’s X-Men or Wolfman’s Teen Titans did really well? Exactly what this bullet point is about. I could read a comic that had zero punches thrown, zero bad guys apprehended, and zero big villain reveals as long as the team dynamic is being explored. I want to see team members with crushes on each other. I want to see tension between Batman and everyone else. I want to see Superman struggling to live up to his reptuation with newer members. I want to see Flash trying to balance the League, his solo career, and his family. Basically, give me a shoujo Justice League, dammit.
• Take some time building up plots. Yes, I understand that Justice League Unlimited was ridiculously successful. Comics, however, are not television. You don’t have to be done in one issue, six issues, or even twelve issues. Leave dangling plot threads — preferably plot threads that deal with the main characters’ lives.
• Admit that the Trinity will always and forever be in charge…and then move on. Black Canary is an interesting character, but she’s not the person in charge of the League. The whole bit where Wonder Woman, Superman, and Batman were secretly running things behind the scenes was one of the creepiest things that Meltzer introduced. Make it those three officially in charge as co-chairs of the League or something. Once you’ve done that, then you can stop trying to explain why they’re not in charge and get back to telling good stories.
• Stop trying to team up the villains. It never really works. The tropes of the genre make it really hard for us to believe an evil team-up. Evil characters in superhero comics tend to be megalomaniacs. The Injustice Society bits stretch our suspension of disbelief just a little bit too much. Just make a single villain really, really scary, please.
• Don’t worry about the larger DC continuity. Seriously. I don’t want to figure out why Superman is suddenly blue and crackling with electricity. I don’t want to know why Batman can’t make it to this adventure. I’m a big fan of continuity in most cases, but this title just begs to be quasi-standalone.

If DC could deliver this consistently on a monthly basis, I would gladly pack four bucks an issue. Seriously.

Technorati Tags: Justice League of America, Justice League, JLA, comics, DC

Some time last week, I had an idea for a new D&D character that just wouldn’t let me go. Those of you who are writers probably have some inkling of what this is like. Suddenly, I was hit by character background, common phrases he would utter, appearance, cultural history — essentially everything I would need for a really detailed character background. After days wasting brain cycles on this thing, I eventually had to commit the character to paper.

Belgar is definitely a player character. I have no desire to “waste” him as an NPC when he strikes me as really fun to play. He’s very definitely a 4e character, but I’m tempted to fire up some kind of 3e warlock if we start lowbie characters sometime soon in my Gainesville gaming group.

Does this write-up inspire you? Feel free to use Belgar in your game. Heck, feel free to play your own version of Belgar. I certainly wish I were.

The Story Thus Far

In the early days of the world, when the world itself was still cooling from being forged by the hammer of Moradin himself, the Primordial Chaos was always one short breath away. Looking with boundless love upon his dwarven children, the Soul Forger gave unto them the mountains filled with sturdy stone, precious metals, and the finest of gems. Unto us he gave the bountiful stone and the wisdom to harvest the mountain’s bounty and even the sacred runes to inscribe the song of the earth itself. One thing he did ask of us: Delve not into the secret core of the mountain for that knowledge is not for mortal minds to keep.

If history were merely a record of the greatest deeds and most frightful tragedies of a people, then the tale of the Hammerforge clan of dwarves would be on the lips of every mortal alive. In their efforts to uncover ever more pure veins of precious metals, those ambitious dwarves delved too deep, opening a portal into the very Elemental Chaos that the gods had pushed aside to order the world into the realm we know. There in that realm of madness, the Hammerforge dwarves made the acquaintance of an eldritch being built from purest, most draconian evil. With honeyed words, the fiend convinced the dwarves to exchange their servitude for the power to drive the giants away from their mountain homes. Thus were born the first of the dwarven warlocks.

When the church of Moradin saw the success of Clan Hammerforge in their campaigns against the storm giants, they began to inquire into the sudden and overwhelming victories. When the bishops detected the brimstone stench of devils upon the Knight Generals of Clan Hammerforge, however, the mountain itself was torn into a vicious civil war. The church emerged victorious in the end and systematically purged all records of the Hammerforge Clan and even of the war itself.

Belgar Stonebreaker was born in the mountain halls that marked the ancestral home of his clan for countless generations. However, at a young age, his family was chased out of their caverns after a siege by frost giants and settled in a predominantly human township. His family, indeed a large number of his clan, maintained a close-knit dwarven culture in the town, creating something of a dwarven ghetto. The humans gladly took the dwarves in, viewing the weaponsmiths and gem-cutters as a welcome boon to trade with the neighboring settlements. The cross-cultural relationship over the years has been a strong one born of mutual benefit.

Belgar was always an apt pupil in the subject of history, looking to connect with the dwarven heritage that he felt deprived of. He spent nearly every spare moment in the temple of Moradin, digging through old birth records, military histories, and census data. The dusty tomes and delicate scrolls became a refuge for young Belgar, a home that no giant could ever drive him away from. The lay priests welcomed Belgar’s dedicated efforts and came to depend on the bright young scholar’s efforts to categorize the mountains of information that the church had become the caretakers of.

In leafing through a shipment of uncategorized tomes sent from a distant temple, Belgar stumbled upon the tragic tale of Clan Hammerforge, a legend that gripped his heart in a way that wouldn’t leave him. The fascination quietly became an obsession, and Belgar kept an eager eye open for any scraps of forbidden knowledge related to the Hammerforge Pact. His search eventually led him far afield of his town and his clan and into the libraries of the larger cities. After two years of searching, he found the keystone that pulled together all of the secret knowledge he had gathered thus far. Belgar had found a timeworn ritual that claimed to be the exact rite that the Hammerforge clan had used to bind the infernal powers to do as they bid. Secretly gathering together all the materials for the rite certainly proved to be an ordeal, but Belgar’s obsession wouldn’t leave him until he at least tried the binding.

In dark shadows of the mountain he believed to be the exact mountain the marked the genesis of the Hammerforge Pact, Belgar scribed all the right ritual circles, chanted all the right liturgies, and burned all the right herbs as incense. When the apex of the ritual beckoned, convinced by the swirl of arcane energy he could feel coursing through his spirit, the dedicated scholar thrust his left hand into the very embers of the ritual fire, expecting that the magical energies would certainly protect him from harm.

Since that day, Belgar commands infernal forces as a warlock of the Hammerforge Pact. No being has contacted him to collect on the bargain, but Belgar now understands that ritual bound him to service and not the other way around. Belgar remains committed to the side of ordered civilization and dwarven virtue, but he knows full well the danger of the powers he has dealt with. He intends to use evil’s own power against itself, and if he has to sacrifice himself to save the world, he’s willing to go down fighting with a dwarven curse on his lips and the taste of ale in his throat.

Mannerisms and Minutia

• Belgar has been away from his clan for going on three years now, but he maintains strong ties with his family and with the remnants of his larger clan. His letters home, entrusted to caravans and merchants along the road, tell of the faraway places and interesting cultures he encounters in his travels.
• Belgar always wears a pair of black leather hand gloves that he uses to hide the lingering scars on his left hand from the binding ritual that gave him his powers.
• Like all members of his clan, Belgar is trained in the use of warhammers and chain mail.
• When Belgar inflicts an enemy with his warlock curse, a ghostly pentagram appears on their foreheads.
• The infernal forces that power the Hammerforge Pact are bound to the lower planes by Moradin’s own hand. In order to affect the world, they can act only through the warlocks that serve as their agents. The fiends depend on their warlocks who in turn depend on their devilish patrons for the power to affect the world.

Technorati Tags: D&D, Warlock, Roleplaying, RPG, Dwarf

Talking Head: Statistics show that more Americans than ever are now obese. Childhood diabetes, heart disease, and other obesity-related ailments are in the news almost every day. Traditional weight loss requires diet and exercise, but what if you could easily and safely loses weight by thinking happier thoughts? That’s the premise of an exciting new book from BigPub Corporation, entitled Weight Off Your Back. Joining us tonight we have the author of that book, health professional Ronald King.

Vapid Idiot: Hi, TH. Glad to be on the program.

Talking Head: In addition, we have Dr. Wayne Parker, respected scientist at the world-renowned Peer-Reviewed Research Institution.

Respected Scientist: Good to be with you.

Talking Head: Ronald, why are Americans becoming so fat?

Vapid Idiot: Well, TH, if I could boil it down to one cause, it would have to be all the negative energy we take in by thinking depressing thoughts. Those negative thoughts make us hold on to all the fat in the food we consume, making us fat. In previous generations, the world was a much happier and safer place, so we were able to eat even fatty, homestyle food without getting fat.

Talking Head: Interesting. Dr. Parker, you response?

Respected Scientist: I’m really astounded by Mr. King’s claims. There is a strong correlation between a high-calorie, low-activity lifestyle and increased body mass. We have a lot of excellent, peer-reviewed experiments that indicate that the only way to lose weight is to increase your physical activity, decrease your calorie consumption, and generally take in fewer calories than you burn with exercise. There’s no credible argument to the contrary in the health community.

Talking Head: Ronald, it seems like your book has the scientific community in something of an uproar.

Respected Scientist: Not surprising, TH. The information in my new book really turns a lot of the “old thinking” on its head. Losing weight doesn’t have to be a painful exercise. My methods provide a safe, easy alternative to traditional starvation-based dieting.

Talking Head: Well, it seems like this is one debate that’s going to be raging for sometime! Again, that new book is Weight Off Your Back by Ronald King, available in bookstores everywhere.