Monte Carlo

I think the key to getting people like me to play online RPGs is to vet all the people you let in, not unlike the snobby resident's committee of a swish upper Manhattan apartment building. OK, so my online realm would only turn over a hundred bucks a month, and there would only be about four people on it with an interest in hex-based wargames, Cuban cigars, sniper rifles and beer but at least we'd all be on the same page.

In the background on itunes is, usually (in no particular order): The Barenaked Ladies The Pretenders The Killers KT Tunstall The Manic Street Preachers Lloyd Cole and the Commotions The Rolling Stones The best of Lenny Kravitz Paolo Nutini Evanesence (I have a mid-life crisis crush on Amy)

Hello. Have just finished watching England's first game versus the USA. Some thoughts. 1. Our forwards are too old. Experienced, yes, but the Eagles clearly had a more dynamic team up front. The score really didn't reflect the performance (not uncommon in Rugby I think). England won because we have been doing this longer than the Americans, nothing more and nothing less. Vickery's foul was disgraceful, he deserved ten minutes in the Sin Bin and the Eagles deserved a try. 2. Our backs are our strength. The US has the right idea, but need more discipline and technique. It will come, bejaysus they have some big players. Not surprising from the land of American Football and Ice Hockey. Ditch those pads and hockey sticks! 3. My beloved England, who I have supported man and boy for thirty years (I am nearly forty) will get their arses handed to them on Friday by the South Africans if they don't buck their ideas up. It will be a grisly grudge match and I commend it to you all. We are not playing like the world champions, the English curse across our team sports is teams relying heavily on one player's exceptional talent (I remember Rob Andrew playing a similar role to Wilkinson in the 80's / early 90's). Look at football... Rooney and before him Beckham (etc). 4. I don't really follow American rugby, but my friends who are still operational tell me that it has a cult following, not surprisingly in the military. The Eagles clearly have the potential to be a world-class team who could (eventually) seriously challenge southern hemisphere hegemony in the game. They should rise to the challenge and I implore Americans to adopt the game and see it as another way to forge relations with Europe and beyond. Your team did you proud today, despite losing. I know that might seem strange to Americans, but losing with honour is possible. 5. Usually, Italy is my 'second team' after England. After today's performance, The Eagles will vie for that place. Good luck, USA! Cheers MC

^ The way forward there is to goad them into attacking you. Or kick off rebellions in their more fractious cities using assassinations of family members (using spy / assassin combos to take out morale-boosting / public order keeping buildings like races, barracks, government facilities and taverns is a good start for the very patient). Park massive fleets near their key ports hampering movement, march dirty great armies up and down their borders and near geographic choke points. Take any rebel provinces they hold dear, bribing or attacking them. Hopefully the Pope will then excommunicate them. Start paying the Papacy big bribes every turn, declare war on the Pope's enemies and basically suck up to him as much as you can. Build churches, hire lots of clergy, initiate Crusades. Most of the MTW2 gameplay triggers are very much "under the hood" and finding out what they are is all part of the fun. Cheers MC

^ Sorry to teach you to suck eggs if you already know, but start reducing troop numbers (in MTW2 quality always trumps quantity) and convert some of those fortresses that aren't on your front lines into more profitable towns. Ports / Markets / Roads are the way forward.

^ I haven't found it yet if there is one, and I'm too macho to read games manuals.

The TOEE combat engine rocks, it really does. And there it is, stranded in that awful game, doomed forever like bars of gold in the Titanic's cargo hold. Somebody should build a D&D Tactics game using that engine, they really should. It's the best TB combat engine I've ever played. Cheers MC

Spent a few hours pottering away with the Americas and am pleasantly surprised. Initially, because the historical setting is of little interest to me, I was a bit "meh" about this campaign and thought I'd suffer it for the other three. Actually, it's great. Lots of exploration and strategic and tactical challenges (i.e. it's all very well having good cavalry and firearms units but when the enemy outnumber you twenty-to-one you have to start thinking). You can build up interesting alliances with the Mesoamericans and then get them fighting amongst one another whilst you are plundering their natural resources like tobacco, gold and chocolate. The Aztec and Mayan units are crazy-looking. It's like getting attacked by endless waves of multi-coloured clowns, scarecrows and fancy-dress dudes! Cheers MC

Whoah, brother! D&D is a broad church. Personally, I love mindless dungeon crawls. Absolutely love them. You need something to break up the meaningful NPC dialogue and intense plots you lot seem so obsessed by I will happily meet you halfway, though. Mindless dungeon crawls (or MDC if we want a new three-letter-acronym) should be optional and not critical path. You can avoid them, I will POWAGAEME my way through them. Cheers MC

Yes, just had a couple of hours playing Kingdom of Jerusalem. I'd say that as a campaign it has (a) the most intriguing unit roster (specifically the levies and warrior orders of crusader knights, including Constable of Jerusalem heavy cavalry) and (B) probably the largest campaign map. Factions are; KoJ, Kingdom of Antioch, Turkey, Byzantium and Egypt. King Baldwin the Leper is I suppose my hero unit but he's basically a very good general (starts with two stars short of maximum). I'm a few turns off of Richard the Lionheart rocking up, which should happen by 1212 or thereabouts I suppose. The AI seems better, but then again it might be the sharper distinction in unit types, i.e. Franks v. heavy units and Muslim factions light skirmishers / mounted archers. Seems even more noticable than in the vanilla game. There are more trade options, spying is significantly tougher, you get jihads thrown at you from Turn 2. I'm playing Hard / Hard. The music is great, same as the original but I love the Muslim faction battle music. The lighting seems different in this campaign, almost a golden light filtering through the battle scenes. Dunno if it's tweaked but it looks nice. Like I said, this game does what vanilla MTW2 can't do which is focus in on historically specfic scenarios that might not pan out in the campaign game. It's apples and oranges as to which is better, but I'm enjoying myself so far. I just wish I had more time to play! Cheers MC

I'm a bit annoyed that the improvements for Kingdoms do not port over into the Grand Campaign and that you have to mod it instead (as above). Anyway, I have tinkered with the Teutonic and Britannia campaigns and they are very good. The strategic challenges on the main map are quite tough if you are, for example, the Teutonic Order. This part of the game is much stronger than the combat which is very much like the vanilla version but with more, newer units. Basically I am paying five pounds per very large, polished, strategically challenging mod. So I am quite happy, there are many hours of Total War gaming in this XP. Incidentally, like others here, I think they should be remaking Shogun, not TW: Empires. Naval battles and the 18th Century leave me completely cold. It's a shame that the rumoured Tolkien-themed TW game that was murmured of years ago came to nothing, that would have rocked (anybody remember the SPI tabletop wargames based on LotR?). Will add a review of the Britannia mod this weekend, but my initial feelings are that if you love Medieval then there is no reason not to love this XP... it's main strength is developing the strategic aspect of the game, really providing circumstances and choices that are much more period and faction specific. Cheers MC

One cool feature is that you can install any of the campaigns independently with their own desktop icons. Each campaign has it's own quirks, i.e. the English face the possibility of organised internal revolt (a bit like in the original MTW) the Teutons cannot build massive cities but can attract the Hanseatic League to earn big bucks, Aztecs can sacrifice captured armies to increase loyalty in their cities (etc). I'm a bit nervous about the "Hero Units" (i.e. historical commanders), I associate hero units with crappy cartoony Warcraft-type games. We'll see how they pan out here. Cheers MC

Some of the Mercs (A) hate each other (B) develop mutual fan clubs (B) something inbetween. Vultures eat corpses, mercs barf, you can marry female mercs off to hillbillies, you can commandeer an ice cream truck, buy guns in an adult movie store, get involved in prize-fighting, use mortars, make hundred yard headshots, sit on a rooftop with a Barratt light fifty, make things using springs, duct tape and stuff in an open-ended game world that feels like an agreeably schlocky straight-to-video Steven Seagal movie. Any game that has a "Tons of Guns" option at the startup screen has got to be a winner. Never played a game like it before or since, love it to bits. Cheers MC

Jagged Alliance 2, like wot they said ^

Medieval Total War 2: Kingdoms (Creative Assembly / Sega) Price UK

Hmm. I said Northern Irish, different accent really. Harsher, more guttural. Very expressive, can be whimsical or sinister or both at the same time. Liam Neeson is Northern Irish but has a much softer accent. Am trying to think of somebody with a Northern Irish accent who American posters will know of.

If I hear another dwarf with a Scottish accent I swear I will scream. It's not that I don't like Scottish accents, I really do, but what is it with the Scottish dwarf thing FFS? Dwarves with Scandinavian accents I could dig. Or Northern Irish accents. That would be cool. Cheers MC

As a gamer with no dog in this fight, it's highly amusing to see the Fallout Taleban reacting precisely as their dogma demanded and Bethseda getting hosed down for taking the franchise on in the first place. Fallout 3 should have been a niche-undergroundy, niche community thing done using that funky FIFE engine thingy. We could all have bought into that. Me? Boot up Tactics, best game of the series. Ho ho ho! MC

Many thanks for your thoughts, you skate across the surface of the NDA quite elegantly in my humble. Obsidian are lucky to have a community member of your integrity. Now I've blown enough smoke up your arse... My thoughts: 1. I'm a bit sad that performance optimization is still an issue; a lot of people here aren't graphics junkies, they just want a solid gaming experience (note: am still an avid X-Com fan and love the retro graphics). I run a two-year old Dell XPS gaming rig that is starting to feel it's age... I struggle to get NWN2 going all out. 2. I like Thay / Rashemen although I'm not a big FR fan.... Thay are the Nazis and Rashemen is the Eastern Front, dig my bizarre comparison and it makes a bit more sense, it's attrition baby. 3. For me the most encouraging thing is the curse / influence / well-rounded NPC thing. I am one of those people who criticized PS:T for the reasons you describe but think that good writers can always do less with more when it comes to words. This is what I'm expecting from this game. 4. I'm playing a Chaotic Neutral Tielfing Ftr/Thf/Duellist through NWN2 at the moment. I think it's safe to say my style is the polar opposite to yours which illustrates the challenge the designers have! Cheers, MC

Weighted point buy: paper-scissor-stone, cookie cutter characters. Corporacy in D&D? FFS. I once went to a game and created a character where the DM used a strict 4d6 discard the lowest, roll seven times, drop the lowest stat and arrange as you see fit system.* That's great, it's how I more or less always ran my games too. Except when he said, "You can't have any stat at 18." When I asked why he said that it was "power-gaming." My arse. I'm playing a fantasy game, mate. I want to be a 20 STR half-orc carrying an axe as big as he is. Sue me. I don't want to talk fakespeare and read about basket-weaving crafting skills in your painfully researched home-brew. It clearly wasn't going to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship so I walked. * Just did it using a dice rolling programme, here's my half-orc fighter using the racial mods on top of my natural rolls: STR 19 DEX 12 CON 14 INT 7 WIS 9 CHA 7 Wow, what a munchkin character! Don't tell me I could have done it with WPB because (a) where's the fun in that and (b) if I'd have got better scores I'd have used them! Cheers MC

Many years ago a friend brought a little RPG box set around called "The Arduin Adventure" which was clearly a sort of bizarro tribute to the original "Grey Box" D&D set. They were written by Dave Hargrave (who is now sadly dead) and they were the sort of mad stuff your brilliant but strange friend might write whilst experimenting with mind-altering substances. To give you an idea of just how cool it was, check out the artwork here, courtesty of the extremely informative Wiki entry. Arduin was crammed with strange ideas, classes, tables and house rules clearly meant to be shoe-horned into a D&D game. It was a strange, niche product then and almost completely forgotten now but I think Hargrave influenced lots of RPG designers. I remember reading the books and spending hours working out what rule would fit in where whilst I created the coolest insectoid assassin character (Phraints, which still have a starring role in my homebrew campaign world along with lots of other little Arduin bits and pieces). Of course, being Arduin, you might just be as likely to come across a +3 Magnum revolver as a magical sword. Hackmaster captures the anything-can-happen fun spirit of RPG'ing back then. The po-faced FR canon you come across now was alien to the game, and Greyhawk was just a campaign map you filled in as you went along. Anyway, check out the Arduin homepage and this, the coolest dungeon map EVAR drawn by Hargrave for a friend shortly before his death. Lancer's Rest. Cheers MC

Thanks, Foamhead, you don't like the game. It doesn't really help me though does it, as I actually do. I wasn't aware that the NWN2 toolset was that different from the NWN version, though.

I am lucky in that a guy on my team at work is a fanatical gamer. He has taken a week off for when this game is released.

I don't actually play WoW, or any MMORPG for that matter, but I've lots of friends that do and love it. There is this whole WoW social scene going on, I know somebody who had a thirty-strong party at their place recently with all their WoW buddies from across the UK. And there was only a 10% geek quotient, which I find especially amazing. It makes the Bridge Evening at the Schloss Monte seem quite tame, even with the absinthe an' all.

Hmmm. D&D Lite for the console generation. It had to happen. Just be a happy grognard and stick with what you are playing now. Hey, I think it all went horribly wrong with 2E, it's nice out here in the gamer's version of a survivalist camp with your old rulebooks and tinned food, waiting for the gaming apocalypse. I am keeping my 1st Edition rulebooks to show my grandkids, my favourite bit being the DMG "Wandering Prostitute" table for urban encounters. Let us also not forget the incredibly sexist strength limits for female characters (18/50 IIRC). Ah, multi-class half-orc fighter / assassins, demi-human level caps, tables for everything, obtuse diktats from Lake Geneva by Mr. Gygax... they were happy days.