Month: March 2022

I wish I had gotten into MMOs in the ’90s

Bio Break

I don’t live my life in a perpetual state of regret, but my propensity to reroll characters in games to try to play them better this time around trickles into the odd daydream that I have about doing the same in life. And what’s bounced around my head lately is the thought that I really should’ve gotten into the online RPG community much earlier than I did.

I know what you’re thinking — of course I’d say that because I love these games now and feel like I missed out on some formative years. But that’s not where my head is going with this thought experiment.

Rather, I think back to how life used to be and remember about a half-decade of soul-crushing loneliness. In college, I had a lot of great friends and what I felt was a fulfilling social life. But that all came to an end when…

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Boss Rush Banter: Should Games Withhold Release Dates Until Development is Complete?

Games and other media take a long time to develop, leading to many obstacles that may cut content or delay the project. The recent news of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s sequel has caused disappointment for fans of the series, though many anticipated another delay. Having a delay to a game is completely acceptable, especially when a timeframe has been presented prior. So this leads me to the question: should game developers normalize withholding a release date until development nears completion? No, that should not be the case.

I remember fondly waiting for any sliver of news for new Zelda, then referred to as Zelda WiiU, once it was first expected to release in 2015. Ultimately the game did not release until 2017 which gave fans plenty of time to speculate and theorize every minor detail that was made available. I discovered this speculation through YouTube content…

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Top 10 Favorite Video Game Ladies (Part 2)

Real Women of Gaming

And now for my favorite female protagonists; some playable and some not, but all wonderful in their own ways.

5. Brigid Tenenbaum (Bioshock)

Brigid Tenenbaum has a complicated and painful backstory. Her audio diaries reveal that she was once a prisoner of the Nazis who ended up working for them just to survive. After World War II, she ended up becoming one of the unlucky people to join Andrew Ryan in his venture to create an underwater city. Ryan set up Rapture to have no limits for the people who lived there. No laws and no morals. This goes about as well as you’d expect.

As a scientist, Tenenbaum could perform all kinds of unethical experiments with no regard for consequences. But her conscience catches up to her and she ends up rescuing the children who have been transformed into Little Sisters. Tenenbaum becomes a mother figure to…

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How To Remap Your Xbox Controller Buttons

One of the great things Microsoft does with its Xbox family of systems is offer a slew of accessibility features, like the Xbox Adaptive Controller, a controller with features and functions that can allow gamers with limited mobility the ability to play video games. Another little known fact with Xbox is that you can currently remap ALL of your controller buttons and triggers to fit your needs, and also the needs of others in your household who utilize your Xbox system, and create multiple profiles. All within the system settings of your Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Series S.

Be aware that when you make these changes, this will default ALL button functions for all games, apps, and UI menu functions. So if the screen tell you to “Press A”, it may not be accurate to your new settings. The options to swap profiles is easy however. With…

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Rise of the Runelords #74: HOT DAM!

Pathfinders' Guild of Berkeley

The party is finally freed from the troll leader’s prison, and meets new adventurers, the internationally-renowned chef Gustav Gustav, and his loyal pet (who magical things keep happening around), Bark Thorson! They encounter a guardian from ancient Thassilon… -GM

23rd of Kuthona, 4707 AR

We continue our fight with the bone scorpion, and we are going to call it Scull. Scull grabs Jail and tries to choke her. Scull fails to kill her, and she stabs, it hurting it a little. Then Bark hits it, almost killing it. Then Scull gets killed.

Behind its body, the party heals their fallen teammates and notices a little model dam and walks over to it, trying to open, it thinking it might open the real one. After many failed attempts, the team runs to the door hidden by the skulls. The party digs them away from the door, then open it.

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Sony Unveils PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium, Coming This June

Sony announced Tuesday morning on the official PlayStation Blog that they are updating their popular PlayStation Plus service, largely by combining it with PlayStation Now, as well as making other additions.

PlayStation Plus launched in 2010. The subscription service allowed gamers to download free monthly titles; gain discounts on the PlayStation Store; claim exclusive themes, profile pictures, and other extras; have online access for multiplayer games; and utilize cloud storage for saved games.

Likewise, PlayStation Now is a separate subscription service which launched in 2014, and provides players to play games from a huge library of titles via the cloud.

The new model launching in June will offer three tiers of PlayStation Plus service. The current PlayStation Plus format will continue as “PlayStation Plus Essential,” and will remain at the same price of $9.99 USD monthly, or $59.99 USD yearly.

A second tier, labeled PlayStation Plus Extra, gives access to…

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Handing Over The Club

Roleplay Rescue’s Blog

“The D&D Club is the best thing at school for me. I look forward to it.”

The student who said this was talking to my colleague, Mr Marks, who has agreed to support and run the Dungeons & Dragons Club at the school I am about to leave. Evidently, these words were what persuaded him that, on top of all the other responsibilities we bear as teachers, keeping the club alive is worth it.

This is the second time I have moved on from a school and left a roleplaying games club running the in the background. The first group was independent enough to survive without a knowledgeable teacher to sponsor and support it. This club has a committed roleplayer as the supporter and for this I am hugely grateful.

Just a few of the things RPR as a community provided for the club – thank you!

Giving students –…

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Top 10 Favorite Video Game Ladies (Part 1)

Real Women of Gaming

In honor of Women’s History Month, I put together a list of my favorite female characters in video games: five villains and five heroines.

Now, please keep in mind, this is my personal list of favorites. I apologize in advance if your fave didn’t make the cut or didn’t rank as high as another character. These are just the characters that I happen to love best, and there were plenty more that I wanted to include but ended up cutting to keep to the “Top Ten” limit. So, here we go…

Top 5 Villains

5. Lady Dimitrescu (Resident Evil: Village)

Why, you ask, is Lady Dimitrescu is at the bottom of this list? Well, because I haven’t actually played Village and only became acquainted with this character through watching my friend stream the game. That- and the abundance of memes. But would any female villain list be complete…

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Temple of Kuvartma & the Demon Apes

Dyson's Dodecahedron

All the maps this month on the Dodecahedron will be focused on the theme of ruins (and sometimes the dungeons within & under). Even the maps list for the Release the Kraken this month has been curated exclusively from old maps of ruins around the blog.

Temple of Kuvartma & the Demon Apes
Temple of Kuvartma & the Demon Apes (300 dpi promo)

Of the ruins explored this month on the blog, the Temple of Kuvartma and the surrounding shrines to the various demon apes in his entourage are in the best repair. A small tribe of awakened apes does their best to maintain the structures along the shore here, primarily focusing on the smaller shrines of the demon-apes and generally ignoring the main temple structure and the ancient 20 x 20 pillars in the water.

Temple of Kuvartma & the Demon Apes
Temple of Kuvartma & the Demon Apes (1200 dpi)

The main temple is dedicated to Kuvartma – a giant winged ape…

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DDO: Off on a wild hunt (or two)

Bio Break

Since I was already in the neighborhood of the Feywild, DDOCentral recommended that I pop over to the Court of the Wild Hunt to do the two new quests that came with Update 53. Why not? Gotta do them all at some point!

“Through the Tulgey Wood” sends me on my first hunt — to track down Hyrsam’s owl advisor. Said owl lies in the middle of a maze of hedgerows that can only be gradually unlocked by finding various levers and jumping through a series of portals. DDO really, really, really likes its levers. You’ll be clicking on more levers in this game than killing, sometimes.

To be honest, I wasn’t a fan of what was a quest clearly designed to waste my time through this method. I never had to resort to a map, so I guess that’s a good sign, but it’s the very definition of tedious.

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