Joseph Bulock

Ran my first game this weekend. Had a lot of fun, players started to hit their strides after two encounters. I was really surprised by how dangerous level one monsters are. My players didn't start off pressing their tactical advantages too much, and the first two encounters ended with most of the party unconscious. Some of that was my fault though, as I hadn't doubled checked everyone's math to make sure they had calculated all their attack bonuses correctly. All in all though, my players had fun, I had to spend about half the time creating the encounters, which freed me up to make better maps and even develop a decent story. I like D&D 4th edition.

Official DnD 3.xx has at most 3 sources of power. Divine, Arcane, and Psionic. That is it. No more and no less. The only differences between the classes which use these power sources was how they were cast and accessed. If you use Arcana Evolved, best 3.xx variant out there, there is only one source for power. Now with 4e we have Martial power source, Divine power source, Arcane power source, Primal Power source, Psioinc power source, Soul Power source, Shadow Power source, and so forth and so on. I've been very entertained by your argument that some ability flavor text is some how ruining D&D 4.0.

Griddle: agreed there. Immersion blender: Ah. A stick blender. I guess that could be handy. A blender of some sort is on my list of things to get after I sort my kitchen out. Cast iron wok: I'd like cast iron wok, but I'm wondering if it will reallys how its superiority on an electric hob. ELECTRIC HOB I'm gradually sliding towards getting an electric hob. I'm guessing that gas prices will keep increasing indefinitely, but that eletcricity will eventually become cheaper. I'm looking at spending one to two thousand pounds. ALL advice warmly received. A wok really won't work with an electric stovetop. I had to do a lot of searching for my last apartment to make sure I could find a decent gas stove. I have a regular blender as well, but only use it when cooking for a bunch of people. When making food for myself or maybe one other person, the stick blender does the job and cleans up much faster, which means I'm likely to actually use it pretty often. Really great for protein shakes or just regular ice cream shakes.

I cook a lot, and there are a few things I'd hate to be without... My griddle with removable plates is great. Makes breakfast stuff, sammiches, grills vegetables and my fake meats very fast, and works well with all of the various mexican and south american stuff I cook. My immersion blender does the same stuff that a normal blender would without making a bunch of dishes and what not. Finally, it's low tech, but I can't imagine cooking without my wok. It's a heavy duty cast iron wok, not the cheapies you get at IKEA or whatever, but it cooks with very little oil and cleans up in a few seconds while making better Chinese or Thai dishes then what I can get for ten bucks at a restaurant. This is probably related to the fact that I'm pretty picky, but still...

Just to counter all the haterade in here, I wanted to say that I'm really excited about running my 4th edition game, and that the new rules have excited my entire player group, two of which are first timers, and two of which are veteran PnP gamers. I've yet to find anything any major negatives, and there are so many improvements that I can't imagine going back to 3.5 for any of my games. The high points for me are the simplified multi-classing, the simplified races (making it much easier to create my own for a homebrew setting) and the fact that every class has a tactical decision to be made every round.

You forgot to tell us about ninjas, their sekrat schemes and your eternal battle against them. How did you know about that? I thought I'd buried that time in my life...

If our game had so little to offer that unlimited ammo was a big enough turn off that people wouldn't buy it, we'd still have much bigger problems than just having made an unpopular choice on ammo.

I'm going to have a boring story, because unlike a lot of the folks here, I didn't really have any interesting detours. I've been working towards a games job since I was in high school, which isn't much of a story. I was lucky enough to get an internship the summer I graduated high school at Maxon, who make a modeling and animation program called Cinema4d. I got my introduction to modeling and animation there, and then moved directly into programming in C++. I was lucky enough to have two incredibly talented programmers mentor me there, giving me a very solid introduction to programming and scripting. That fall, I started college as an Information and Computer Science Major. First year went well enough, the intro classes were never very challenging, and the intro level programming was essential a mix between solving logic puzzles (which I love) and searching for missing semicolons (which no one loves). Fast forward to the summer, I got my first QA position with THQ. I was one of the most prolific testers that summer, and even got tester of the week (which apparently hadn't been given out for over a year). While it sounds really minor now, I was incredibly proud of myself, and was very excited that I might be working to a real spot in the games industry. I'd even got to speak to a real developer over the phone, which was another big deal at the time. My second year of programming started to give me some more problems. The classes that were about programming were still a lot of fun, but my second year had me delve into the terrifying art of documentation. I started having night mares about writing printer software for the rest of my life. Multiple whole pots of coffee were consumed every night as I tried to convince myself that I could imagine a life where I wrote documentation for accessor functions. The documentation class for me came down to the final. To pass, I needed a B-. I got the final back and I was a point below the cut-off. The professor was usually fair about partial credit for close answers, so I went to him and asked him for the one point of partial credit for a question that I'd answered incorrectly, but only due to some poor math on the last half of the question. I explained that this would be all I would need to pass the class. He refused to pass me, and that was the beginning of the end of my formal programming education. I finished off the year as an CS major, failing the documentation class one more time, having attended maybe four of the actual lectures. The teacher was even less engaging and by now the printer software nightmares were getting very frequent (I really wish I was joking on this). I was actually waking up in cold sweats from the worst of them. The fear of a mundane existence as a software engineer, separated from the industry that I'd always wanted to be a part of became too much, and when I started school in the fall, I was a film and interactive media major. The next two years flew by. I studied horror, Hong Kong action, pornography, Japanese samurai slashers along with the classics of Hollywood and major cinemas around the world, and a few times, even got to bring video games into the conversations. I loved my film education and was very happy when I finally got to make my short films. I was the atypical director, caring almost nothing about the shots, letting my friend who really loved cameras and shot list take care of that while I handled the choreography and the editing. I lost whole weeks in the editing studio, watching other students finish whole projects in the time I'd take on a two minute scene. I graduated one class short of a programming minor and with more editing experience than some of the grad students, very nervous that I'd get a real game job any time soon. I did manage to snag another testing job at a publisher and started the Monday after my last final. Atlus is a small publisher that handles lots of smaller niche games from Japan. It was a fun job, but was still very much a testing job, and I was back to having next to no contact with developers. Luckily for me I spotted a QA opening at Obsidian and after only five weeks at Atlus, I left to become the third production tester, following Nathanial and Patrick. After NWN2 wrapped up I turned in a design test and amazingly got promoted. From there on in, I've been a junior designer on Alpha Protocol, and have now settled in as the cinematic designer. It's a great time getting to use my film background while working on games, and I'm still shocked that everything has worked out so smoothly. Ok, so I wrote a small novel. Uhg. The moral of this overly long story is that printer software is terrifying. The End.

Easy. Use cheatcodes, gamesharks and trainers even. That's considered as the other choice right? Or have it be a part of the game difficulty slider. This would a lot more than I think you understand. Having an item go from never supplied because you can't run out to having to exist as a pick up, purchaseable item, not to mention now having states for the player who has no ammo for a given weapon is not even close to a trivial amount of work. Also, I just want to echo what Patrick said. The ammo decision has been very good for our game, and I hope everyone can keep an open mind until more info gets released, or maybe even until they get to play it.

Metalocalypse.

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That's called rage and only barbs generally get that. Rage is one way to explain it. You could also call it a burst of arcane power, or a moment of divine strength. The idea that it is too much power to give to the players is a bit silly if the entire game has taken the action points into account. If the designers have built the game around the concept, and have made enemies able to deal with characters who can overwhelm them with large waves of actions, then it should just be another tactical choice given to the player, which is almost always a very good thing. Keep in mind that many classes do less per round now, as characters don't make full round attacks anymore, so one turn equals one swing.

I don't know how the Warlord is any more Mini centric than any other class. While they claim that he's built off the Marshall, he also seems incredibly to similar to the Hunter class of Iron Heroes, which is not surprising considering Mearl's involvement. Action points are gamey, but I don't think they are really that hard to explain diagetically. It's as easy as saying a character has a flash of determination in his eyes, and he bounds forward to cleave his foes or whatever. D&D is gamey in so many ways, pointing out the elements that don't make sense or seems hard to imagine in a real life setting would take a long. They do however sound pretty fun, especially when they start getting buffed up by friends and allies. I'm glad everyone has the base use, but also excited that the optional paths change them up or might give them different tactical value.

We likie the airsoft guns...at least, i do... That's my gun! Yay!

I would win. Enough said. I think it depends on the rules of the game. I think AP has all of the practicing martial artists, not sure how the gun owners are spread out. I also have no idea who would have more people proficient with blades and changes. Alvin would probably lose.

Ha ha!

The team's short guys tonight, I'm coming out of retirement! Due to the fact that my kicking leg is badly injured, it may be less than glorious.

Hopefully it doesn't lead to bugs in the game. Never.

I should point out that greatness is sadly subjective.

They do genetic profiling at birth, and only those predestined for greatness are allowed a name that would result in the initials JB. It's true!

No.

I'm not new, but I'm Joseph and I make the crates talk to each other.

Well at least we know that there is at least one developer on the team that knows how these things are supposed to work. I should point out it was a very particular JB name that I'm very fond of...

I suggested a JB name but they didn't go for it...

Would you say it was worth it?