Miscellaneous – Page 141

The RPG Critic (Shining Forth history part 2)

September 25, 2014

It was more than three years ago that I presented part one of the history of my game fanzine. Read it here if you missed it. At the time I suggested a followup article would be forthcoming, and here it is!

To summarize (and to bridge the gap a bit): I printed a fanzine for about two years, and had no trouble selling every copy. But it was hard work, time consuming, and in 1996 I shifted my focus to a webpage. The website was quite popular, but it lacked a forum (which were somewhat rare in those days) and I was becoming swamped with emails from my readers (I used to run a letters page).

During the years I had worked on the ‘zine I had made a couple of contacts in the industry (at Atlus, FCI and Sega particularly) but none better than Victor Ireland, the president and owner of the company Working Designs. In late 1998, wanting to drive readers to his company website, he suggested buying all my content (my reviews, basically) and hiring me to continue reviewing games for his site.

At first I was resistant since I feared I’d lose editorial control, but he assured me I wouldn’t (a promise he never broke) and given the amount of work the website had become I eventually agreed. In early 1999 the Working Designs website was spruced up, and the ‘RPG Critic’ section added. That was me 🙂

Vic had the above commissioned in 2003, and it was intended for a website revamp (he had similar pictures made of all his staff). I had red hair in those days! You’ll note the review I’m writing starts with the line “This game sucks…” because by then – some four years after I had started – I had become somewhat infamous on the site for my occasionally scathing reviews…

But I jump ahead! Let’s go back a few years. When the RPG Critic launched all my old fanzine reviews immediately went live, as well as a dozen or so I had written but withheld from my website. There was some press in magazines about this, which was notable because US-based game magazines in those days mostly ignored the RPG genre. Online review sites were almost nonexistent in those days and Working Designs almost overnight became one of the web’s foremost sites hosting reviews of console RPGs.

My arrangement with Vic was simple: I would be reimbursed the cost of any game I reviewed for his site. This ended up essentially meaning I could get the sorts of games I liked for free, but very quickly I developed a near-obsession with reviewing anything that was an RPG and my game collection ballooned. Vic was occasionally slow with payment, but it always came eventually, and in addition I received a good amount of freebies from his company. In time I started testing games for them as well (not bug testing, more like system testing). The pinnacle of this was probably the extensive suggestions I gave him about endgame content in the Arc The Lad collection which led to my name in the credits 🙂

My reviews were out of 11, and as I mentioned Vic very rarely had any sort of comment on them. I’d write them, send them to him, and they’d be posted without edits. The only request he had was that I detail why I didn’t like games I gave bad reviews to, which was probably a reference to my sometimes too-short dismissals of bad games in the fanzine. I reviewed games from his company as well, and he never once suggested I change my scores (which was once as low as a 3). He was good to his word that the content of the reviews was 100% up to me.

That’s a shot of the site (obtained via the Wayback Machine) from 2003. By then it had become quite popular, and you can see Vic ran contests, posted fanart and had a very busy forum as well. The forum was particularly interesting, since everyone has an opinion, and often those opinions included critiques of my reviews. I recall Vic loved this, because it meant readers! During the five years I wrote for the site I very rarely posted to the forums except to answer direct questions, and I was amused to see that a sort of ‘supporter base’ had built for me, and whenever anyone would pop in to criticize one of my reviews (or me in general) they’d all chime in on my behalf!

Even my detractors though were impressed by the sheer content of my work, since by the time I ended writing for the site I had personally reviewed over 250 games (which meant I had played them all) and had become a sort of walking encyclopedia/expert on localized console RPGs. I recall most of the forum posts I ever made were to give information about particular rare or unknown games that people had questions about.

Here’s the first 11 I ever gave, to a game I still consider one of the greatest ever made:

And yes, I still own all those games…

One unusual issue that arose during my years writing reviews was people plagiarizing my work. I was usually informed about this via a forum post, and i can recall in particular the website rpgamer.com (which still exists today) ‘lifting’ the text from a few of my reviews and posting them under a different name. I contacted them and the reviews were taken down, but some time afterwards they went right back up! Even worse, a magazine (published by Viz communications) devoted to anime/manga/games stole one of my reviews as well and printed it essentially verbatim. I was actually a subscriber (!), and wrote them a letter to which I never received a reply…

Working Designs was very successful for many years, but ran into trouble during the transition into the PS3/X360 generation. I ended my association with them in late 2003. While I was still enjoying the work, I knew I had to devote more time to my graduate school work and couldn’t keep playing (essentially) every RPG released. Rather than pick-and-choose games to review, my intention was to pass the mantle onto a new ‘RPG Critic’. As it turns out, none eventuated, and with my departure the reviews simply stopped. The website stopped updating in early 2005 (no new reviews being posted for almost 18 months) and Working Designs themselves went out of business later that year.

By those days – some 6 years after I started writing for the site and 11 years after I printed my first fanzine – the internet had matured and game review sites were (too!) common. The niche that the WD website had once filled didn’t exist any more, and the RPG Critic was needed no longer. I remain proud of the work I did in those days – and the fact I played and beat so many, many games, but not for a second do I still wish I was doing it now 🙂

Khans of Tarkir Prerelease Report

September 21, 2014

I went to another Magic prerelease yesterday, for the new set Khans of Tarkir. I don’t think I’ve ever gone into one of these less prepared: I didn’t even know the correct name of the set until 3 days before, when I signed up. I had no idea what cards were in it, or what sort of deck I would play!

Only 24 players turned up, which is the lowest I’ve seen at a prerelease in some time. The veterans (am I one?) explained to me that interest in the set seems low compared to previous blocks, and that there wasn’t a high number of ‘money cards’ available. I didn’t care about any of this; I just liked the smaller number of players translating into a higher win chance. As it turned out the event would be five rounds with no playoff, and prizes would be awarded to the top 8. An approximately 1/3rd chance of winning gave me a bit of hope!

I soon learned KoT was a multicoloured set, with five different clans each of three colours. We were all able to choose a box specific to a single clan, which included 5 boosters, a special pack containing cards of only the colours of the clan and other goodies (a pin, sticker, die etc.). I chose the white/black/green clan called Abzan. My choice was based on a few factors:
1) No one had chosen it when it was my turn
2) I didn’t want to play blue
3) I did want to play white

As it turns out I got a middling bunch of cards, with few rares on-colour. I assembled a 40 card white/black deck that contained only the following two rares:

My first opponent was only 9 years old. He was one of a sizeable crowd of very young players who all seemed to know each other and were factioned by their parents. I’d say about a third of the players in total were about his age. I beat him with ease (2-0), which was unsurprising since his deck was terrible and he (clearly a beginner) was overly protective of his monsters. After the win, I spent the rest of the first round helping him improve his deck and going over a few tips that would hopefully help him do better in the following rounds.

While I was pleased with the win, since my opponent had been almost no challenge I still had no idea if my deck was any good!

I beat my next two opponents 2-0 as well. I was starting to realise my deck, while lacking in ‘bombs’, was focused enough to win more often than lose. In particular, I had 7 removal spells and 7 flyers, and two of them (the rares above) were good enough that if I got them off I almost always won. Despite playing Abzan I had almost zero ‘outlast’ cards (one of the new mechanics of the set) and of course no green. It was a weird deck.

After the third round I was in the top 4! In fact there were only 4 people undefeated at that point and I was matched against one of them in round four. To my amusement he played a deck very similar to mine but better in every way, and beat me handily. Although to be honest he was an extremely skilled player and simply outplayed me, and I feel he may have won even had we swapped decks. Afterwards he told me stories of pro-tours he had played in, showed me some extremely rare cards in his collection (prize cards for winning tournaments mostly) and even this striking alter:

He would end up winning the tournament, and he deserved it!

So after four rounds I was 3-1. In my last round I was pitted against the only other guy at 3-1 and beat him handily. I had played only ten games in the tourney, and won 8 of them. My only defeats were to the overall winner! This put me in third place overall, for which I obtained a prize of six boosters. Hooray! I also won a deck box as a door prize. It was a good haul 🙂

While I enjoyed playing, and was happy for the win, I have to say I can understand the (apparent) lack of enthusiasm for the set as a whole. The cards are complex, interactions are common and this is far from a beginners set. Games tended to be long and involved, and as a player it was often irritating not being able to predict the board even as far away as your opponents turn. I’m not sure I’d want to play in a limited environment with these cards.

My Very Own Opera House

September 16, 2014

That’s the Sydney Opera House. It’s world famous. You all know it. Everyone knows it!

Thanks to the support of JBF and JAF, it was time to build my own. Here’s what it looked like in the box:

And what was inside:

The real Opera House is constructed of millions of kilograms of steel and glass and concrete, not to mention (exactly) 1,056,006 ceramic tiles. My version is a bit smaller, composed of only 2989 pieces of plastic. It won’t be less grand though!

The original Opera House was built in three distinct stages: The base/podium, then the roof, then the interiors. My version was build in four stages: Stage 1, 2, 3 and 4. Here’s a shot of the beginning of construction of Stage 1:

Here’s what Stage 1 looked like upon completion:

It may look simple enough, but there is some radical and unprecedented construction innovations in that piece of the podium, much like in the version in Sydney.

Here’s some in-progress shots:

Construction of the real Opera House took 15 years and ended up horribly behind schedule (by ten years in fact) and over budget (by more than 14x the original estimate of $7 million). Construction of my opera house had it’s ups and downs as well, not the least of which being a lack of necessary parts. A quick call to a supplier (otherwise known as ‘LEGO customer service’) remedied that problem but resulted in a delay of over two weeks inserted into the middle of construction. All told, I’d estimate about 20-25 hours were needed to finish it.

The original Opera House is 180 meters long and 65 meters high. My version is about 60 cm long and 25 cm high! In fact, it’s about as long and tall as Yossie and weighs about as much as well!

I loved making this kit, probably the most of any Lego kit I have ever made. Given my love for the original building, I can’t imagine how Lego may top this one. Unless they make the Sydney Harbour Bridge!

So how do I display such a massive piece? Well for now, like this:

Robot Claw

Category: Miscellaneous

The RPG Critic (Shining Forth history part 2)

Khans of Tarkir Prerelease Report

My Very Own Opera House