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Last Minute Gift Ideas for your Game Geek or Webcomics Lover

Last Minute Gift Ideas for your Game Geek or Webcomics Lover

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It is the time of year for presents. If you celebrate Hanukkah, I’m late on giving you any gift ideas, but for people rushing to get gifts for friends in the next few days, here are a few last minute gift ideas. Do you know someone who loves interactive fiction? Someone who digs webcomics? If you’re shopping for someone who would rather have a digital gift than a package to open, you might encounter some gifting hurdles — but it can be done!

Happy holidays! Play a game!
Happy holidays! Play a game!

Games

I’ve already mentioned some games I like in this column, so anything I’ve already spotlighted is something I recommend. Here are a few games I’m planning to cover in upcoming posts:

  • Today’s just released Choice of Deathless by fantasy author Max Gladstone is an awesome mix of corporate espionage and demon fighting. I got to playtest this one (disclosure: Max is in my fiction critique group, Substrate) and I’ve already played it probably five times. I can’t wait to play it again. (Max is also the author of two amazing fantasy novels, Three Parts Dead and Two Serpents Rise, which you can pick up at your local bookstore or use the expedited shipping option from your favorite online bookseller to get them in time for Christmas.
  • Choice of Ninja is exactly what you’d expect: lots of martial arts, magic, and stealth, and your choices help decide the fate of two warring shoguns. I’m still playing this one (so author Katherine Buffington may have some surprises!), but I’m really enjoying it so far.
  • I had so much fun playing a real-estate agent for a haunted house in Gavin Inglis‘s short game Eerie Estate Agent that I bought his novel Crap Ghosts. The book is downloadable without DRM via Kobo, which means if your friend is local, you can buy it and load it to your friend’s device (or send it via e-mail) rather than muck about with online gifting.
  • Failbetter Games (of Fallen London) is releasing a tie-in 2D adventure game, Sunless Sea, available now for pre-order. Best thing about this one is it comes with a “gift” option right from the order page.

Purchasing

So how do you send someone a digital game as a gift? It depends on the device, but here are a few tips:

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Prologomenon to Fantasy

Prologomenon to Fantasy

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bullfinchOne of the things that I frequently blather about is that, when I was growing up in the 1970s, “fantasy,” as it’s understood today didn’t really exist, at least not as a mainstream, popular genre.

Don’t get me wrong: the ’70s were a decade of fantasy par excellence, especially literary fantasy, from reprintings of earlier works, such as the Lancer Books Conan series (begun in 1966) and the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series (begun in 1969), to the Tolkien imitators, like Terry Brooks’s The Sword of Shannara (1977) and Stephen R. Donaldson’s Lord Foul’s Bane (1977) – not to mention Tolkien’s own The Silmarillion (1977 once again!) – to modern classics like Fritz Leiber’s Our Lady of Darkness (guess what year?). The ’70s also saw fantasy rise to prominence in other media, like comic books, where Roy Thomas’s Savage Sword of Conan cultivated an entire generation of artists, and movies, where special effects artists continued to acquire the skills and technology to bring fantasy to life on the silver screen. And, of course, the decade also saw the appearance and flourishing of fantasy roleplaying games, beginning with Dungeons & Dragons in 1974.

Despite these strides, spearheaded by the faddish popularity of D&D and its imitators, I’d argue that fantasy didn’t really come into its own as a pop cultural phenomenon until much later. Consequently, when I first encountered Dungeons & Dragons very late in 1979, I had almost no direct experience of what we’d nowadays call fantasy. Indeed, I wouldn’t read a word of The Lord of the Rings or the tales of Conan until after I’d begun rolling polyhedral dice. For that matter, I don’t think I’d even heard of J.R.R. Tolkien or Robert E. Howard until I encountered both their names in the pages of the J. Eric Holmes-edited D&D rulebook that was my introduction to the game. The same goes for Lovecraft, come to think of it, and most of the other authors whom we typically regard as the “founders” of fantasy. In that respect, my youth is very different than that of 21st century fantasy aficionados, almost all of whom I’d bet didn’t make it to the age of 10 without at least being familiar with the characters and ideas these authors birthed.

However, this isn’t to say I had no experience with fantasy before I discovered Dungeons & Dragons, only that my introduction to it was of a different sort, one I expect I shared with many kids of my generation.

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New Treasures: The House of R’lyeh: Five Scenarios Based on Tales by H.P. Lovecraft

New Treasures: The House of R’lyeh: Five Scenarios Based on Tales by H.P. Lovecraft

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The House of R'lyeh-smallI feel like I’m in the middle of H.P. Lovecraft week.

On Sunday I talked extensively about Lovecraft, a propos of his inclusion in the latest round of Advanced Readings in D&D. This morning I invoked his name while discussing Robert Bloch’s Nightmares collection. Now here we are again, with the latest collection on adventures for one of my favorite role-playing games, Call of Cthulhu, based on the work of H.P. Lovecraft.

I bought my first CoC adventure — the classic Shadows of Yog-Sothoth — over 30 years ago (yes, I’m aware that’s longer than most of you have been alive. Shut up), and the most recent, Cthulhu By Gaslight, last April. I haven’t played CoC in years (decades, probably), but the adventures are marvelously inventive and always a pleasure to read for a veteran game master like me. But The House of R’lyeh has extra appeal for Lovecraft fans of all kinds, not just CoC players, I think: it draws directly from five of the Master’s short stories. I’m looking forward to digging in and seeing how successful it is.

The House of R’lyeh contains five Call of Cthulhu scenarios that follow or expand upon events in five of H.P. Lovecraft’s stories: “Pickman’s Model,” “The Haunter of the Dark,” “The Hound,” “Arthur Jermyn,” and “The Nameless City.” Set in Boston, Providence, the British Isles, continental Europe, and the Middle East, none of the scenarios need be played at set dates or in a set order, but they could be run in the order presented to form a loose campaign using optional link between scenarios to draw investigators from one to the other.

Alternatively, the scenarios may be used to supplement classic Call of Cthulhu campaigns such as The Shadows of Yog-Sothoth which suggests that its component scenarios should be interspersed with others.

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H.P. Lovecraft, A. Merritt, and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D

H.P. Lovecraft, A. Merritt, and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D

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The Lurking Fear HP Lovecraft-smallWe’re drawing closer to the end of Gygax’s famous Appendix N, the list of influences and recommended reading he included at the back of the D&D Dungeon Masters Guide.

Over at Tor.com, Tim Callahan and Mordicai Knode continue their tireless trek through the entire list, sampling a little bit of each writer and generously sharing their impressions with us, while here at Black Gate we continue to appreciate and critique their columns. Since that’s a heck of a lot easier than actually trying to read along with such a massive project. Makes me tired just to think about it. Seriously, I need a bit of a lie down.

In the last few weeks they covered one of the most popular fantasy writers of the 20th Century — indeed, one of the most popular writers to pick up a pen, period — and a relatively obscure short story writer who was ignored for virtually his entire life, until a tiny press in Sauk City, Wisconsin, decided to make it their mission to return all of his works to print shortly after his death. Yes, we’re here today to discuss A. Merritt and H.P. Lovecraft, respectively.

Let’s start with Lovecraft. Mordicai kicks things off in fine fashion:

The guy basically invented contemporary horror — besides splatter and slasher, I suppose — and you can’t really talk about him without a sort of gleeful enthusiasm. Or at least, I can’t.

Uncaring alien godthings and cults of fishpeople get all the attention, but the stories that stick with me are the ones that get a little more surreal. Don’t get me wrong: At the Mountains of Madness, Call of Cthulhu, The Dunwich Horror, The Shadow Over Innsmouth… there are a reason that these stories are at the forefront, as the juxtaposition of modern man with truly unknowable forces is a ripe category…the ensuing cosmic creepfest and insanity in response to a nihilistic and uncaring universe might be seen as Lovecraft’s thesis.

That said, for me it is the odder tales, like The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, that kick it up a notch. Hordes of cats, friendly conversations with cannibal ghouls, trips to the moon, evil ticklers, and terrifying plateaus that only exist in dreams? Yes please! I’m going to go on a limb and say that I see a little Randolph Carter in some of my favorite protagonists. Dale Cooper from Twin Peaks, I’m looking at you…

While I’m a devoted fan of Lovecraft’s longer and most famous works — I consider “The Shadow out of Time” to be one of the finest pieces of fantastic fiction ever written — there’s no question that his Dream-Quest tales are equally worthy of attention. A tip of the hat to Mordicai for not taking the easy route.

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The Rebirth of Ares Magazine

The Rebirth of Ares Magazine

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Ares Magazine 2014-smallIn the early ’80’s, Simulation Publications, Inc. (aka SPI) published a magazine named Ares. It included science fiction and fantasy along with articles and a complete game in every issue. It was short-lived, lasting only 19 issues, and Dragon revived it briefly within its own pages as an Ares section (see our review of issue #3 of the original magazine, featuring the game Barbarian Kings). And so it remained as an intriguing concept that simply ceased publication.

But that wasn’t the last hope for Ares. As Yoda would say, “No, there is another.” One Small Step Games, under Michael Anderson, decided to venture into remaking the old magazine. “The big idea is to fill a void,” says Anderson, “a new magazine that combines a standalone, unique, playable board game in every issue with a collection of spectacular, new fiction.”

With pay rates of five cents per word, Ares is serious about finding great fiction. Their preferred genres include fantasy, science fiction, horror, and pulp adventure.

They plan on publishing bi-monthly, and each issue will include 80 pages of fiction and other content, wrapped around the playable game. The first game will be War of the Worlds by independent game designer Bill Banks.

On January 1, Ares will launch a Kickstarter campaign to raise funding for this endeavor. If successful, the target delivery date for the first issue is May 1, 2014.

A magazine of speculative fiction AND a playable game? That sounds like a great combination to me.

Check out their website for more information: Ares Magazine.

Vintage Bits: BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk’s Inception

Vintage Bits: BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk’s Inception

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Battletech The Crescent Hawk's Inception-smallInfocom is one of the most revered names in computer gaming history. In fact, for serious collectors of PC games, there’s probably no other company that commands the respect of (or is as collectible as) Infocom.

Their heyday was the early 80s, when they released the most famous text adventure ever written, Zork (1980), alongside other classics like Enchanter (1983), Steve Meretzky’s Planetfall (1983), Brian Moriarty’s Wishbringer (1985), and Dave Lebling’s fabulously creepy Lovecraftian scarefest The Lurking Horror (1987).

But my favorite Infocom game came late in their history — indeed, after the company very nearly collapsed following the failure of their ambitious DOS database, Cornerstone, in 1986. By that time, over half of the employees had been laid off and the remnants of the company sold to Activision in a fire sale. For the first time in their history, Infocom turned to outside developers to help fill their production schedule.

It was a desperate move. Infocom had a nearly flawless reputation in the gaming industry, even as late as 1988, and expecting an untested development shop to deliver product that would meet the public’s exceedingly high expectations for an Infocom title was an exceptionally risky bet.

Fortunately, the outside developer they chose was Westwood Studios, who would later go on to develop some of the most successful games of the 90s, including Dungeons & Dragons: Eye of the Beholder (1990), Command & Conquer (1995), Blade Runner (1997) — and who virtually created the real-time strategy (RTS) genre with their groundbreaking Dune II (1992). Their first game for Infocom, and the one that really put them on the map, was one of the best titles Infocom ever released: BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk’s Inception (1988).

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Christmas in the Dungeon

Christmas in the Dungeon

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dungeongame1975Whenever Christmas looms, my thoughts turn not to decorations, carols, and presents; but to dungeons. Actually, that’s not entirely true. My thoughts do turn to presents – or, rather, a single, very specific present, albeit one received not by myself, but by a good friend of mine in 1979.

Among my childhood friends, it was traditional that, during the Christmas break from school, we’d all take turns visiting one another’s homes to marvel at our respective holiday hauls. Together, we’d then play with whatever we deemed the most interesting presents. In the dying days of the 1970s, that typically meant Star Wars action figures (or perhaps Micronauts) and so it was that year. I believe that was the year that I received the much-coveted Imperial Troop Transport vehicle and so became the envy of my friends. But, cool as it was to be able to push a button on the Troop Transport and hear sound effects from my favorite movie, that wasn’t the Christmas gift that most interested me.

That honor fell instead to a strange little board game my friend Mike received. I say “strange,” because the “board” wasn’t really a board at all, but rather a folded up piece of thick paper that didn’t lay very flat on the table unless you held down the corners with books or other heavy objects. This board depicted a bunch of colored boxes connected by meandering yellow spaces, with a few larger spaces here and there. These larger spaces were all given rather evocative names like “King’s Library” and “Queen’s Treasure Room” and “Torture Chamber.” Flimsy though it might have been, the board nevertheless caught our attentions – and fired our imaginations.

The game, of course, was David R. Megarry’s Dungeon!, which was first published in 1975 by TSR Hobbies.

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Deck-Building Battles with Warmachine: High Command

Deck-Building Battles with Warmachine: High Command

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WM High Command_3DFor me, a good game is really a window into another world. It’s like a miniature story that is told with a set of pre-defined rules. The war games I play are rarely just games, like tic-tac-toe or chess, but instead a single battle in a larger war, which in turn is part of the story of the rise and fall of nations and the struggles of the people within them.

It was this perspective on gaming that first drew me to Privateer Press’s Warmachine line of miniature games. Though I loved the physical look of the figures, the fact is that I’m not an artist or a visually-compelled person as a rule, so it was really the setting that drew me in, the possibility to, in some small part, take part in the stories set in this world. And the giant warjacks didn’t hurt.

In fact, the first article I wrote for Black Gate was a review of Privateer Press’s Iron Kingdom roleplaying supplements, exploring their magically infused steampunk-style world of giant mechanical behemoths. Soon after, though, my involvement in Warmachine died off. I got married, became a father, and the disposable income to buy metal miniatures and disposable time to sit painting them went by the wayside (and there was a vast increase in anxiety, as little two-year-old fingers would inevitably seek to play with “Daddy’s dolls,” as they became known in my house).

Fast forward to the present, and it’s as if Privateer Press has found a solution to getting me back involved in one of my favorite gaming worlds. In addition to a whole new Iron Kingdoms line of RPG supplements (Amazon, Privateer Press) and digital fiction set in the Iron Kingdoms (Amazon), they have released a new deck-building game, Warmachine High Command (Amazon).

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Vintage Treasures: Pirates and Plunder

Vintage Treasures: Pirates and Plunder

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Pirates and Plunder box-smallBack in the early 80s, publishers were still exploring the boundless possibilities of role playing.

It occurred to more than one designer that sword & sorcery — the tiny genre Gygax and Arneson had chosen to build their fabulously successful Dungeons & Dragons upon — was a niche market at best, with very limited widespread appeal.

Yet if D&D had managed to come so far with source material of such limited public familiarity, what might a game with much broader appeal accomplish?

And so the early 80s was a time when we had an astounding array of new role playing games promoted by a host of hopeful publishers, in a wide range of genres — science fiction, action, spy thrillers, mystery, superhero, and many others. There were gangster games (Gangbusters), Arthurian games (Pendragon), games based on popular action films (Indiana Jones, James Bond), and westerns (Boot Hill). There were horror games (Chill, Beyond the Supernatural), post-apocalyptic survival games (Twilight 2000, Gamma World), games based on prime time soap operas (SPI’s infamous Dallas), and bestsellers like Richard Adams’ Watership Down (Bunnies & Burrows).

Virtually all of them failed. Turns out that D&D didn’t succeed in spite of the fact that it drew inspiration from the classic heroic fantasy listed in the famous Appendix N, but in fact because of it. Sword & sorcery offered the kind of larger-than-life heroes players wanted to play — and more importantly, no other genre came so readily pre-packaged with a catalog of terrific opponents, from orcs to vampires to dragons.

But while most of those games are long forgotten today, a handful are still fondly remembered. Pirates and Plunder, a role playing game set in the golden age of piracy, is one of the latter. At least, it’s fondly remembered by me.

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Spotlight on Interactive Fiction: Fallen London

Spotlight on Interactive Fiction: Fallen London

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The Wolfstack Docks icon for Fallen London
The Wolfstack Docks icon for Fallen London

There are several styles of interactive fiction games that can be found on the Internet, and while I’ve spent quite a bit more time with the Choice of Games catalog of adventures (my bias as one of their writers), I’ve also dabbled in a number of other games. Some of them are a bit more like CRPGs (computer/console role playing games) than storytelling, and combine words, pictures, and strategy games with the plot — they’re story heavy, but you as a player don’t really drive what happens next. Others, however, are quite a bit more open-ended, and Fallen London is one of those. In fact, Fallen London‘s greatest strength — the sheer quantity of it’s material and its open-ended paths — is also its greatest challenge.

In Fallen London, you begin as an escapee from new Newgate prison in a Victorian-feeling England that is populated by devils, rubbery men (reminiscent of Lovecraftian horrors or illithids from Dungeons and Dragons), people who have died but haven’t quite given up on moving about, and other strange things. You are, of course, a criminal, but it’s up to you to decide just how much you’ll continue to be one. You choose tasks, in text accompanied by small illustrations, that challenge and improve your basic statistics: watchful, shadowy, dangerous, and persuasive. The punishments for failure can be madness, death (though that’s not as permanent as you’d think), being the center of scandal to such a degree that you have to flee to a “tomb colony,” and suspicion to the point where the police arrest you. Thankfully, it takes quite awhile to build up enough failures to face any of these consequences, and sometimes being in prison or in a tomb colony — or even going mad or dying — can be just as interesting as the rest of the game. The “storylets” (as the folks at Failbetter Games, the company that makes Fallen London and other interactive worlds) help you both explore the world and build your skills, until you become a Person of Consequence (having raised one of your stats to over 100).

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