Browsed by
Category: Games

Goth Chick News Reviews: The Room VR: A Dark Matter by Fireproof Games

Goth Chick News Reviews: The Room VR: A Dark Matter by Fireproof Games

Comments 2 comments

A couple years back I did something I have always wanted to do: commission an ultimate gaming computer. As I work in the industry, I only had to ask a couple of my team members if they were interested in building a “sky’s the limit” device. A month and several written checks later, I had a computer I was sure could hack NASA, containing a liquid-cooled, AMD Ryzen 1800x 8-core processor, an MSI AX370 motherboard, an AMD Vega 64 8GB video card, and 11TB of storage. I named it “Winston” and my designers lit it from the inside with a red pulse light that looks like a heartbeat.

When it was delivered, I felt like Victor Frankenstein, screaming “It’s aliiiiiivvvee!”

So, what’s the point? I had my heart set on an HTC Vive virtual reality gaming system and I did not want the word “latency” to ever cross my lips. It took quite an engine to power the first generation Vive, so though I mostly wanted computer bragging rights around the Black Gate offices, I also wanted to turn my home office into my own personal holo-deck. And that’s what I did.

…

Read More Read More

Jump Back! Quatro-Decadal Review, Looking Ahead to November 1989

Jump Back! Quatro-Decadal Review, Looking Ahead to November 1989

Comments 7 comments

The Holy Trinity

With the 1969 and 1979 magazines behind me I prepare to delve into 1989.  A problem with the decadal review is that, well, it comes in decade intervals. I was 10 years old in 1979, but in 1989 I was a well-seasoned 20.  The answers?  I had them.   In the intervening decade I had gotten a car, a job, started taekwondo, finished high school, and was deep into college.

Unlike 10-year-old me, 20-year-old me had a full handle on SF/F in popular culture.  In fact, the 80s were a watershed decade for SF/F — the promise of green screen special effects and the progress of practical effects really come to fruition in the 80s. Television was more hit and miss, but the decade that started with The Phoenix, progressed through V and  Knight Rider and ended with Star Trek:  The Next Generation. What started with Adventure Atari 2600 ended with Wizardry and The Bard’s Tale. I discovered Dungeons and Dragons in 1982 and never looked back.  My awareness of SF/F books started with Asimov’s juveniles Lucky Starr through Andre Norton and C.J. Cherryh and into Tolkien, Joel Rosenberg’s Guardians of the Flame and the discovery of REH, Fritz Lieber, Richard and Wendy Pini (which ties into the first round of graphic novels into the public imagination). 

…

Read More Read More

The Many Worlds of Dungeons & Dragons (Fifth Edition, that is)

The Many Worlds of Dungeons & Dragons (Fifth Edition, that is)

Comments 1 comment

When I began playing Dungeons & Dragons as a teen in the early 1990’s, my initial few games were played in homebrew worlds of the Dungeonmaster’s creation. And, while this has always been a popular part of Dungeons & Dragons, it wasn’t long until I became enamored with the established worlds that were officially sanctioned and supported by setting materials, nor was I the only one. These worlds have been the setting of countless adventures throughout the decades.

For me, the first D&D world I fell in love with was Krynn, the world that is the basis of the Dragonlance storyline. The first trilogy of novels that introduce the world, Chronicles, is a solid adventure, but I could at times almost feel the dice rolling in the background of the combat encounters. The follow-up trilogy, Legends, has a completely different feel, with a much deeper and personal storyline, time travel, complex morality, and an overall that I was surprised to find in novels that were in a tie-in series. I’ve since read some great tie-in literature (see, for example, my reviews of the Pathfinder Tales novels by James L. Sutter, Death’s Heretic and The Redemption Engine), but Legends continues to stand out. And, in terms of adventure, the unusual Dark Sun setting made for some of the most memorable adventures of my teenage years.

These settings were released in AD&D 2nd Edition in the form of setting boxes, with adventures and rulebooks that gave the specific information needed to design characters and campaigns. The current edition of Dungeons & Dragons hasn’t begun releasing similar setting boxes, but they have released supplements spanning a variety of gaming worlds … though not spanning all of their traditional worlds (yet!).

…

Read More Read More

Traveling the Imperium: Agent of the Imperium by Marc Miller

Traveling the Imperium: Agent of the Imperium by Marc Miller

Comments 2 comments

Agent of the Imperium (Baen Books, November 3, 2020). Cover by Alan Pollack

For having been created and played since 1977, the Traveller roleplaying game (RPG) has very little in the way of official fiction. Nothing like the Dragonlance or Drizzt series for Dungeons & Dragons or the Warhammer 40,000 line of novels. Those series have spent decades fleshing out stories and setting, acted as entry points into their respective RPGs, or stood alone for those not interested in the gaming stuff.

Traveller, on the other hand, with its rich setting and incredible scope has only seen a few (compared to the other cited series) official fiction releases. A few novels in the 1990s supporting the Traveller: New Era edition, one supporting the Marc Miller’s Traveller (the fourth edition), and few others (for example, Fate of the Kinunir and Shadow of the Storm) were published. Recently, Mongoose Publishing published as series of Traveller short stories, mostly set in the Trojan Reach that they mined and developed so excellently in the Pirates of Drinax campaign.

Perhaps the relative lack of fiction (again, compared to the hundreds of novels in the D&D and Warhammer settings) is because so many excellent science fiction novels already exist and function as surrogates for Traveller fiction. Though Traveller’s setting is unique to that RPG, it is a universe that has its roots in the science fiction of the 60s and early 70s.

…

Read More Read More

Cyberpunk Red: Style and Substance

Cyberpunk Red: Style and Substance

Comments 0 Comment

IMG_0957

In 1990, R. Talsorian released Cyberpunk 2020, a revision to the original game from the 1980s. This was followed by many supplements and the gaming world had a tabletop RPG that enabled players to engage with a world with elements they saw and read in Blade Runner, Hardwired, Neuromancer, and Strange Days. The game proved so popular that many still play it today. When a third edition was released, it proved so unpopular that it is basically forgotten.

A few years ago the creators of The Witcher video game series, CD Projekt Red, reached out to R. Talsorian. See, they had played Cyberpunk 2020, and they wanted to create a new video game and thought it might be fun to use Cyberpunk 2020 as the basis. Thus, Cyberpunk 2077 — a much anticipated video game — was born.

…

Read More Read More

The Season of Gaming: Pathfinder

The Season of Gaming: Pathfinder

Comments 0 Comment

Since its release at 2019 GenCon, the RPG Pathfinder Second Edition has been growing in popularity. With a character creation system that allows for immense character customization, it has won over many converts among the scores of existing fans of the game’s first edition, even with all of the difficulties involved in getting those fans together to play the game during a global pandemic.

It’s worth a quick recap of what Paizo has put out to support and expand this game in just a little over a year:

You can get the harcopies of these gaming resources through pretty much any game shop, but digital copies (as well as the hardcopies) are available directly through Paizo.com. If ordering Paizo products – including First Edition Pathfinder, Pathfinder Adventure Card, or Starfinder products – through their website, there’s a one-time promotional code of “holiday21” good through January 17, 2021.

…

Read More Read More

The Season of Gaming: Star Trek

The Season of Gaming: Star Trek

Comments 3 comments

There has been something of a Star Trek television renaissance in recent years. Ranging from the all-too-near future (first contact with the Vulcans is slated to take place in 2063, after all) to the far distant future, the ever-growing setting provides ample fodder not only for new episodes and storylines, but for gamers who want to experience the universe by diving into the setting, there are a variety of different games that offer different levels of engagement with the themes of the show. And ones which, if you’re looking for a game to play while in lockdown with family over the holidays, might do the trick … particularly if your family consists of Trek fans.

One of the more curious Star Trek games I’ve run across was the Ferengi-themed sales game Star Trek: Galactic Enterprises, a card game where you spend bars of gold-pressed latinum in an effort to corner the market on a given product. There are of course the various games that are just re-skins of existing games that incorporate elements from the setting, like Star Trek Monopoly, various editions of Star Trek Fluxx, Star Trek Risk, and even Star Trek Catan.

But beyond those games, there are some which delve much more deeply into the concepts, alien species, and lore of the Star Trek universe to provide a more immersive gaming experience, boldly going where no game has gone before.

…

Read More Read More

A Maelstrom of Fun for Horror Adventure Fans: Deep Madness: Shattered Seas by Byron Leavitt

A Maelstrom of Fun for Horror Adventure Fans: Deep Madness: Shattered Seas by Byron Leavitt

Comments 1 comment

BG_SS_cover
Cover art by Christopher Shy / Cover design by Byron Leavitt.

Shattered Seas is a toxic dose of Lovecraftian mythos, psychedelic team-exploration (reminiscent of Star Trek voyages), and survival-horror melee (mutant creatures replacing zombies). It’s a maelstrom of fun if you enjoy horror adventure, losing your mind, and drowning.

Ever want to crack open the gateway into an Otherworld with a few friends? Perhaps you are ambitious and naively want to gain dominion of cosmic powers. Will you be comfortable with mutating forces transforming you into a tentacled mass? Start the madness by searching for the mystical Sphere buried in the ocean near the submerged Kadath Mining facility. Lucas Kane, a marine biologist, is one of your tour guides. Here he observes Kadath, a mining facility with organic qualities (excerpt):

Kadath lit up below them drew his attention and caught his breath. The facility sprawled across the seabed like a sunken metropolis from another world, its illuminated structures pushing defiantly upward into the inky abyss. The station’s domes and towers seemed like the last bastions of light and reason still standing in an endless Stygian wasteland. It was hypnotic, dreamlike, and yet somehow inexplicably solid. Lucas could make out the shuttle tubes running between the three main domes, as well as to the smaller, squarer outposts and middle structures. He could even see the primary enclosed drilling site not far off from the main facility, connected to Dome Three by long, spacious tubes.

This novel was inspired by Diemension Games’ Deep Madness, a cooperative sci-fi/horror board game. The novel serves as a stand-alone book as much as it does a gateway into the game narrative. Non-gamers will enjoy it all the same since the key protagonists (Lucas Kane and Connor Durham) are freshly introduced, plus the story is a prequel to the story presented in the game. At the end of this article, there is an embedded movie overviewing the board game.

…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: Warhammer 40,000: Nexus & Other Stories

New Treasures: Warhammer 40,000: Nexus & Other Stories

Comments 0 Comment
Nexus & Other Stories-small Nexus & Other Stories-back-small

Nexus and Other Stories (Black Library, October 2020). Cover by Amir Zand

My favorite audiobook of 2020 — and easily one of my favorite books of the year, period — was Dan Abnett’s Warhammer 40,000: The Magos. In addition to reminding me what a good writer Dan Abnett is, it reignited by interest in Warhammer 40,000, and its gorgeously rendered future of superstition, terror, and dark sorcery. I enormously enjoyed the audiobook versions of the first Horus Heresy novels, which helped me cope with a daily 90-minute commute through Chicago traffic back in 2015.

Nexus & Other Stories, which I stumbled on last Saturday on a trip to Barnes & Noble, looks like a great way to dip my toe back in the water. It’s a collection of Warhammer 40K stories by Dan Abnett, Guy Haley, Peter McLean, and many others — including a 120-page novella by Thomas Parrott. Here’s the description at the Black Library website.

Take your first steps into the adrenaline-fuelled fiction of the 41st Millennium with a thrilling collection of tales, including an action-packed novella pitting noble Ultramarines against sinister necrons.

Whether you’re dipping a toe into the galaxy of Warhammer 40,000 or are a hardened veteran of the universe, this anthology is the perfect way to discover the many factions of the games in action-packed tales.

Nexus & Other Stories includes a total of 16 tales; mostly reprints (although they’re all new to me). Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

…

Read More Read More

Steamed – Gaming here at Black Gate

Steamed – Gaming here at Black Gate

Comments 11 comments

Hudsucker_RobinsElevatorEDITEDThe pay phone on the wall by the door into the dungeon…cellar…basement…journalist’s suite below Chicago’s permafrost layer rang at the Black Gate World Headquarters. I vaulted over the wood plank that rested on two sawhorses, which served as my desk. The last person who hadn’t answered before the third ring had been sent downstairs. ‘Downstairs’ was rumored to be the lair of a beast that Conan wouldn’t be able to defeat.

“Black Gate World Headquarters. Home of the world’s preeminent fantasy magazine.”

“Who is this?” barked the voice of John O’Neill, Founder, editor, publisher, CEO, CFO, and overall Grand Poobah of Black Gate. I could think of a three-letter acronym beginning with ‘S.’ “Is that you, Bryne?”

I took a breath. I had been writing for Black Gate for going on seven years now, and he still got my name wrong. I had given up trying to correct him after the second year. I figured, as long as I remained on the payroll, it didn’t really matter. Not that I actually got paid.

“Yes, sahib.”

“What are you doing down there?”

“Just working on a column, sir.”

“What do you mean, man? You’re in the office on a Sunday, working on a column?”

I caught myself. “Working on three columns, sir. I finished two yesterday.”

“That’s better. Thought I was going to have to reassign some stories from that Ted guy. Can’t have you coasting on past accomplishments.” He paused. “Of course, we’re a team here – no individual egos.”

Yours is certainly big enough for the rest of us, I thought.

“What was that, Bryne?”

“I didn’t say anything, sir.”

…

Read More Read More