Month: May 2021

What your MMO character’s hair color says about you

Bio Break

When it comes time to create a new character, it’s inevitable that a choice of hair color is part of that experience. But what does your MMO hair color say about you? For the judgey among us, here is an easy-to-access chart:

  • Black: Obviously, you’re evil incarnate and your hair matches the tar-black soul you harbor. Also, black goes with everything.
  • Blonde: Do people pick blonde? I always thought this was a myth…
  • Light Brown: You’re spunky and adventurous, ready for good-looking kills with a chipper quip afterward.
  • Dark Brown: Your character is the fourth kid of seven, denied admittance to a good school and sent off “adventuring” to free up a spot at the family table.
  • White: You’re not old, oh no, just a very young and desirable hero who wants to make a strong impression of future potential.
  • Grey: OK, now you’re old and you’ve just broadcast that…

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Nintendon’t Direct – Everything I Don’t Want to Hear at E3

Adventure Rules

Prediction season for the Electronic Entertainment Expo (now even more electronic!) is upon us, and rumors are already flying from sources both reputable and not about the kinds of things we might hear at the various presentations this year. Now most years here on Adventure Rules I have done some kind of reaction post for various conferences or otherwise shared my hopes and dreams for the next year of gaming. This year, I find myself fascinated with a different sort of question: what could Nintendo announce at E3 that would make me shut off my computer and think about my life choices? As a Nintendo fan, my entire sense of self is validated by whether or not people think their Nintendo Directs are good. Liking them is my whole personality, so it is very important that they don’t screw this up so I can still feel good about myself when…

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June 2021 Game Pass, Game With Gold Updates

The Boss Rush Network

June is coming, and so are the updates to the Games With Gold, as well as new additions to the Xbox Game Pass library.

For starters, if you have Xbox Gold here’s what you can expect this month as part of your subscription:

  • The King’s Bird –Available June 1 to 30
  • Shadows: Awakening –Available June 16 to July 15
  • NeoGeo Battle Coliseum –Available June 1 to 15
  • Injustice: Gods Among Us –Available June 16 to 30

Game Pass subscribers will also see these in their library ready to download:

  • SnowRunner (Cloud, Console and PC)
  • Peggle 2 (Cloud)
  • Plants vs Zombies: Battle For Neighborville (Cloud)
  • Secret Neighbor (PC)
  • Wild at Heart (Console and PC) – Day One Release
  • Knockout City (Console and PC) – Day One Release
  • Maneater (Clould, Console and PC)
  • Conan Exiles (Cloud and Console) – Optimized for Series X/S
  • Fusion Frenzy (Cloud)
  • Joy Ride…

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Boss Rush Banter: Who is Winning the Console Wars?

The Boss Rush Network

Left to right: PlayStation, Nintendo and Xbox

It is the age-old question that has been asked every generation, “who is winning the console war?” The question that has been the start of many schoolyard fights, office meltdowns, the end of friendships, and the start of divorces. The fight that has destroyed lives will now be bought forward into a professional manner, and I will be the judge, jury and executioner of this age-old question.

What gives me the right to answer this question? Because I would be unbiased in the decision that I put forward; I have no allegiances in this battle.

As a gamer that has been gaming for 20ish years on multiple consoles, I have understood the concept of the battle. The battle is to prove we have made the right decision in our purchases and that everyone else is wrong in theirs. So the question begs to…

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Age of Ashes #67: Ike’s Final Chapter

Pathfinders' Guild of Berkeley

Normal Person 2.0 remembers little of his traumatic imprisonment by Voz Lirayne. But he will never forget the friends he made along the way. (-GM)

17th of Gozran, 4720 AR

ike R.I.P.

As the party walks towards the stone golem, I have a weird feeling that we have done this before. Perhaps a powerful mage turned back time for some reason. But no matter what happened, they still need to kill this golem. Mike trips it a few times, making it super easy for the party to kill it. Suddenly, three ghastly bears and Voz Lirayne herself appear from around a corner and attack them. She casts black tentacles, but it is ineffective and traps nobody.

Mike continues tripping bears, but their rotten stench makes Laria Longroad sick. Voz makes mirror images of herself to become harder to hit. Slimerat then uses chain lightning, killing two of the bears…

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Shadows of the Ruinous Powers – Session 60

Dyson's Dodecahedron

(Being a series of quick game notes trying to account for the events of many sessions of playing through The Enemy Within using the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1e rules.)

Session 60

Something Rotten in Kislev

  • Gottlieb [Witch Hunter] – I 63
  • Larry [Mercenary Captain] – I 58
  • Othmar [Assassin] – I 56
  • Brother Nate [Witch Hunter] – I 54
  • Wilfried [Templar] – I 53
  • Karl [Artillerist] – I 45

The scene is set. The area of battle agreed upon. The terrain scouted. The battle lines assembled.

Then Larry punches Father Bear.

In the face.

HARD.

And the battle is over.

The Leshy is less than impressed, having lost his bet with the Vodyanoy. But a deal is a deal…

He summons forth a bird and hands it to the party… squished by his massive hands.

So he summons a second bird with a massive eye for a head and gives…

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Where’s the next generation of retro classic consoles?

Bio Break

In my office, I have three classic consoles hooked up for my kids (or, occasionally, myself) to play: the NES classic, SNES classic, and Genesis mini. They’ve proven to be a great investment, especially the SNES one.

But have you noticed that despite amazing sales, especially in Nintendo’s quarter, everyone just stopped making these things? The NES Classic came out in 2016, the SNES Classic in 2017, the horrid PlayStation Classic in 2018, the NeoGeo Mini in 2018, the Genesis Mini in 2019, the TurboGrafx-16 Mini in 2020. It really seems like this promising well dried up really quick and not, I suspect, from consumer demand.

After all, there’s plenty of additional products that could be made along these lines. Not only are there tons of consoles that haven’t been touched yet — the N64, Dreamcast, Saturn, GameCube, Jaguar, whatever — but all of the ones mentioned in that second…

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NPC Making Tools

JVC Parry

This article is inspired by work I did forDangerous Destinations, aNord GamesKickstarter that, as well as creating interesting and hazardous environments for characters to explore, provides Antagonist Profiles based on the12 Jungian Archetypes. During the creation of these profiles, I stumbled across a few tools that helped me come up with detailed NPCs.

If you’re anything like me, you might sometimes struggle to come up with NPCs that feel like real people. I often find myself falling back on tired fantasy tropes when improvising, and even when I’m prepping an NPC ahead of time I sometimes need to break my habits. The following tools helped me think outside the box, but also describe NPCs in ways that informed my roleplaying.

Emotion Wheel

An Emotion Wheel is a tool used to help people express how they’re feeling. For many folks, it’s second nature to…

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Blizzard has canceled BlizzCon 2021

Gamer's Outpost LLC

by Igor Bonifacic, Engadget

BlizzCon won’t return in 2021. Blizzard said on Wednesday the ongoing realities of the coronavirus pandemic make it too difficult to pull off the type of convention fans have come to expect from the studio. “Building an in-person BlizzCon is an epic and complex affair that takes many months of preparation… and ultimately we’re now past the point where we’d be able to develop the kind of event we’d want to create for you in November,” BlizzCon Executive Producer Saralyn Smithsaid.

Instead, Blizzard plans to host a “global event” sometime early next year that will include both online and in-person elements. To make up for thecancelation of BlizzCon 2020, Blizzardhosted BlizzConline this past February. The online-only event saw the company revealDiablo II: ResurrectedandWorld of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Classic, as well as share updates on previously announced…

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My introduction to Role-Playing Games and how they became my first love of gaming

Choose your character, and prepare for ultimate adventure

It was the summer of 86′, and our family had just moved from Dallas to Little Rock as my father had been transferred to the Air Force Base here. Up until that time, I had never been exposed to role-playing games, but that was about to change. This is story of my introduction to the world of TTRPGs, their impact on my formative years, and how over three decades later, they continue to be a part of my life.

I remember when my Dad broke the news that we would be moving. Being that our entire extended family lived in the DFW area, 13 year-old me wasn’t happy with the prospect of moving out of state to some place I’d never heard of. I was in middle school, had made a nice group of friends and we had settled in Arlington for…

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