Welcome to this edition of the Parchment Bonfire! This is a segment in which I offer an inept and lackluster review of a gaming product, and then come to a conclusion as to whether all existing copies of that product should be consumed in a fiery inferno. This week's segment is focused on the Ultimate Gaming Table. Quite an epic piece of equipment, if you ask me. In fact, it is so great that its creator actually got a dot-org domain name to show it off, because the average dot-com simply wouldn't do.
Look through the site at your leisure, but don't get ahead of yourself now. Because I'm going to tell you what the two greatest features of this table are, besides being very large and including a text messaging system. I love text messaging. Also, you should never start a sentence with the word 'because,' unless it feels right.
The two things that make the Ultimate Gaming Table so ultimate are (drum rolls welcomed, but not mandatory):
1.) cup holders
2.) trays for players to put their junk [on]
I cannot tell you how much it pisses me off when people keep their opened drinks on the gaming table. It even pisses me off when I do it, and I do it all the fucking time! Sooner or later, someone is going to put their character sheet down onto a nice coke can-sized ring of sticky water, or wave their arms menacingly and knock somebody's tasty, ice cold beverage onto my precious books. At that point I'm going to unleash my berserker powers and some shit will go down in my house that's going to resemble arma-fucking-geddon.
The other thing that sucks about human interaction... ahem... is when people have to stack forty dungeon books in eight different piles around the table, leaving three and 1/2 squares for miniatures to move around on. That shit sucks ass, and the dude who invented this table knows it sucks ass. So he installed pull-out drawers for people to hide their stuff underneath the table. Then he went one step further and pimped out the entire top surface with plexiglass and square one-inchers for a bigger playing area than you could possibly imagine. An 8'x4' playing area; that's right.
The Death Star plans are only 11 bucks, last time I checked, so you too can make this awesome table to spec at your humble abode. I'm planning to do something similar, but I need more time... so while a bunch of these tables with the plex would make fuel of the most excellent and toxic quality for a huge bonfire, I really think it's a great idea, so the table will be spared from the inferno.
Showing posts with label parchment bonfire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label parchment bonfire. Show all posts
10.23.2008
Parchment Bonfire: D&D 4th Edition
The Parchment Bonfire is a segment in which I provide an inept and lackluster review of a book, aid, software program, or other gaming product, and then decide whether every copy of it in existence should be burned in a gigantic bonfire (or not). Since a lacking review of the world's most popular role-playing game's latest spine-tingling version is such a rarity among all of the thorough and well-thought out reviews out there, I felt it my duty to toss the following around as a riposte.
There's this phenomenon that happens when you're playing 4th Edition. I call it the 'Same Thing Over and Over Effect,' and it's where your character does the same goddamn thing infinity times. Your At-Will Powers (otherwise known as your O-and-O Powers) are things like the Wizard's Magic Missle, where your Wizard zaps some blithering fuck every round until it dies. In gameplay terms, it's quick and easy to do, makes combat more balanced and streamlined, and cuts down on complicated spellbooks. It also gets real boring, real quick.
To date I've been involved in two different 4E campaigns, one with each of my two gaming groups. Being a lazy gamer, I did not go to the trouble of choosing two characters of differing roles in the party. I did roll up two, but they are both male Elf Rangers in the most wicked way. I think I chose maybe one power differently between them, so besides their attribute scores being roughly dissimilar they are pretty much the same guy. So while I own the three rulebooks in the basic set and a copy of Thunderspire Labyrinth, and I have perused the books to a large extent, my actual play experience is limited to the heroic tier (a.k.a. the first few levels).
Let me tell you an adventure story. In the first session I ever played of 4E, we're strolling through the quintessential kobold-laden 1st-level dungeon, minding our own party business, when all of a sudden my Ranger gets slaughtered by a pack of lizard-y dog beasts. That's the dramatic and condensed version of the story, but my character did take it. Hard. The ranged Ranger (sic) is quite the beast himself, but his Prime Shot ability is a deathtrap. I'm not sure who thought that it would be a good idea for a distance-oriented fighter to have a power that requires him to be the closest dude to the enemy, but I'm not gonna lie: even the measly to-hit bonus seemed well worth it, especially at first level.
So the whole thing happens like this: as I advance into a room chock full of kobolds chucking rocks down on us from a parapet above, a pair of double doors open and these lizard-thing-beasts run out and devour my character. It doesn't take them long to drop my precious elf, and then the DM allows them - and in fact, directly causes them - to continue eating his tasty elf flesh until death occurs. I'm not sure why our DM is so unrelenting; maybe it's because I have been texting for half the game session and I'm not really paying attention. Allow me to explain.
As I lay dying, I'm wondering to myself what the hell having more hit points means if I'm going to die just as quickly. In 4th Edition I get 25 hit points instead of 8 to start out, but instead of doing 3 damage per hit, 1st-level monsters do 9 damage per. That's fantastic. Of course I'm exaggerating, and my complaints come from the fact that I am bitter because I'm such a horrible D&D player that I couldn't even make my character survive a single gaming session before taking the shaft.
My full review, as you can see, and my overall opinion of the game, is that it's quicker and more simplified than 3.5, but I'm also more bored by it when we play rules-heavy. As a skeletal system, it does the trick to balance the game out, but I think in this case balance has reduced variety in a significant way. I will end with this; my thoughts on 4th Edition, as well as my opinions thereof, are inconclusive! So for now, I'm going to spare this game from the Bonfire. Keep it secret, keep it safe!
There's this phenomenon that happens when you're playing 4th Edition. I call it the 'Same Thing Over and Over Effect,' and it's where your character does the same goddamn thing infinity times. Your At-Will Powers (otherwise known as your O-and-O Powers) are things like the Wizard's Magic Missle, where your Wizard zaps some blithering fuck every round until it dies. In gameplay terms, it's quick and easy to do, makes combat more balanced and streamlined, and cuts down on complicated spellbooks. It also gets real boring, real quick.
To date I've been involved in two different 4E campaigns, one with each of my two gaming groups. Being a lazy gamer, I did not go to the trouble of choosing two characters of differing roles in the party. I did roll up two, but they are both male Elf Rangers in the most wicked way. I think I chose maybe one power differently between them, so besides their attribute scores being roughly dissimilar they are pretty much the same guy. So while I own the three rulebooks in the basic set and a copy of Thunderspire Labyrinth, and I have perused the books to a large extent, my actual play experience is limited to the heroic tier (a.k.a. the first few levels).
Let me tell you an adventure story. In the first session I ever played of 4E, we're strolling through the quintessential kobold-laden 1st-level dungeon, minding our own party business, when all of a sudden my Ranger gets slaughtered by a pack of lizard-y dog beasts. That's the dramatic and condensed version of the story, but my character did take it. Hard. The ranged Ranger (sic) is quite the beast himself, but his Prime Shot ability is a deathtrap. I'm not sure who thought that it would be a good idea for a distance-oriented fighter to have a power that requires him to be the closest dude to the enemy, but I'm not gonna lie: even the measly to-hit bonus seemed well worth it, especially at first level.
So the whole thing happens like this: as I advance into a room chock full of kobolds chucking rocks down on us from a parapet above, a pair of double doors open and these lizard-thing-beasts run out and devour my character. It doesn't take them long to drop my precious elf, and then the DM allows them - and in fact, directly causes them - to continue eating his tasty elf flesh until death occurs. I'm not sure why our DM is so unrelenting; maybe it's because I have been texting for half the game session and I'm not really paying attention. Allow me to explain.
As I lay dying, I'm wondering to myself what the hell having more hit points means if I'm going to die just as quickly. In 4th Edition I get 25 hit points instead of 8 to start out, but instead of doing 3 damage per hit, 1st-level monsters do 9 damage per. That's fantastic. Of course I'm exaggerating, and my complaints come from the fact that I am bitter because I'm such a horrible D&D player that I couldn't even make my character survive a single gaming session before taking the shaft.
My full review, as you can see, and my overall opinion of the game, is that it's quicker and more simplified than 3.5, but I'm also more bored by it when we play rules-heavy. As a skeletal system, it does the trick to balance the game out, but I think in this case balance has reduced variety in a significant way. I will end with this; my thoughts on 4th Edition, as well as my opinions thereof, are inconclusive! So for now, I'm going to spare this game from the Bonfire. Keep it secret, keep it safe!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
