30 Sunday Aug 2015
Posted in Gaming
Collin Brooke has issued a call for a list of five things — books on your night stand, books you want to read this year, songs you’re playing in heavy rotation, recent games you’ve played, snacks in your cupboard, etc. — with the results to be shared in the next issue of Rhetsy. Here’s a list of the most recent games I’ve played on a computer or iPad:
21 Monday Nov 2011
Posted in Cthulhu Mythos, Gaming
Miskatonic School for Girls is a deck building card game currently seeking development funding through Kickstarter. It looks quite cool:
They’re taking pledges through December 5, 11:21 am EST. A $45 pledge will get you a copy of the game with custom insert. (For those of you who don’t know how Kickstarter works, it’s a “funding platform for creative projects” that runs on an all-or-nothing system. People design projects and then present the concept at Kickstarter. If they reach their funding, pledges are collected and the project goes forward. For more information, check out their FAQ.
A thanks to Brendan Riley for making sure I knew about this.
12 Wednesday Oct 2011
Posted in Coolness, Digital Resources, Gaming, Teaching Resources
Tags
cool, desktop publishing, Game, iPad, kern, Kern Type, Portland State, website
As I learned in a desktop publishing class I took as a M.A. student at Portland State, kerning is the process of adjusting the spacing between letters. Kern Type is a game designed to teach you how to kern well. It’s very cool. It even has mutitouch capability for those accessing the website via an iPad. (The image is a screen shot of Kern Type’s front page.)
08 Monday Nov 2010
Posted in Digital Studies/New Media, Gaming, Media Ecology
Rodger Travis of the University of Connecticut has posted a chapter proposal for examining three Bioware MMORPGs from the perspective of oral formulaic theory. I’ll be quite interested to see how this idea takes shape.
23 Wednesday Jun 2010
This fall, LEGO will release a MMO, LEGO Universe, available for both PC and Mac platforms. From the Mashable website:
Beyond the story-driven gameplay, LEGO Universe also features an extensive building and behaviors system that lets players create and animate their own LEGO environments complete with a scripting language that gives life to their creations. Think of it as the online equivalent of the LEGO playtime you may have enjoyed as a kid, with the ability to imagine almost any creation and see it realized on screen. Plus, you’re able to inhabit and enjoy your own created LEGO corner with any friends you see fit to invite into your customized world. [Read more.]
10 Wednesday Mar 2010
Posted in Charles Stross, Coolness, Cthulhu Mythos, Gaming
From Charles Stross’ blog:
Cubicle 7 Entertainment is producing a roleplaying game based on the award-winning Laundry series (The Atrocity Archives, The Jennifer Morgue, and the forthcoming The Fuller Memorandum) by the even-more-award-winning Charles Stross, and uses the also-award-winning Basic Roleplaying System (Call Of Cthulhu) by Chaosium Inc.
“We love the Laundry Files novels, so we’re really excited about this game,” said Dominic McDowall-Thomas, Cubicle 7 Director. “The world of the Laundry is a perfect mix of espionage, conspiracy and tentacled menace from beyond the stars.”
“The books are Lovecraftian spy thrillers. The best elements from both genres are thrown together with a sprinkling of long lost Nazis, terrorist cultists, other foreign governments wanting a piece of the action, as well as Her Majesty’s Civil Service.” added Cubicle 7’s Angus Abranson. [Read more.]
I expect this to be very fun. My introduction to Stross’ work began with an Analog review of The Jennifer Morgue, which begins with:
In The Atrocity Archives (reviewed here in June 2006), Stross presumed that mathematics, topology, physics, and computers all had the power to open portals and let the eldritch horrors of Lovecraft, et al., through. Naturally, there are government agencies whose business it is to prevent disaster, either by stopping meddlers (sometimes by recruiting them) or by cleaning up the mess after the meddling. One of their employees is Bob Howard, once a graduate student whose work became meddling, now a computer geek whose usual job at the Laundry was keeping the computers running smoothly until they needed him for something more active. [Read whole review — you’ll need to scroll down.]
Here’s what I wrote about The Atrocity Archives after I read it:
Lovecraftian SF with a hero named Bob Howard,1 how could I not check it out further? The Atrocity Archives is, essentially, a mashup of H.P. Lovecraft (Lovecraftian mythos, which I’ve long maintained is as much SF as supernatural horror), Neal Stephenson (post-cyberpunk SF), and Len Deighton (cold war spy thriller), all three of whom are thanked in the acknowledgements, with a great deal of government bureaucratic procedure tossed into the mix, all written in the comic vein (because, you know, a serious novel with this much paperwork due to actions such as killing a co-worker to stop a major demonic possession/transdimensional infestation would get tedious). A fun romp, and yet another novel I’d like to teach someday.
Call Of Cthulhu is an excellent RPG set in Lovecraft’s world—as if you couldn’t tell by the title :)—so it makes a logical starting point for a game based on the Laundry series, allowing the game designers to focus on world creation rather than game mechanics. I may have to pick this up just for the sake of reading it. (Yes, I have been known to read RPG rule and source books as you might read a novel or magazine.)