Because Chuck demands it:1
I WANNA DO LASER…
…beak.
I WANNA DO LASER...beak
This might seem like it’s related to my recent post about ending Whitechapel prematurely, but it’s largely unrelated – it’s something I’ve actually been thinking about for a few weeks. Let me give some context.
I tossed out Marvelous Superheroes about six months ago. I expected maybe one or two people might find it interesting, but it’s gotten a strange little bit of notoriety in the Fudge scene. Some have even emailed me with suggestions, praise, and ideas for the project. People have gravitated to my quirky little mash-up, and I’ve been poking and tweaking it for a while since then. I never expected to do much with it (and I certainly didn’t imply any kind of regular work on it), but people are enjoying it more than I anticipated, even running games with it!
Then I got a copy of Steve Kenson’s game Icons. Now, I knew we were coming at this from a similar perspective – they’re both Fudge/Marvel Super Heroes blends, and some of my groundwork came from Steve’s original notes on what he then called the “Superlative System.” But I was blown away at how similar they are in many ways. Not only were there similar systems in place in both games, but things that I had notes to update in future versions of Marvelous were in Icons. It’s like Steve and I shared a brain, and he just spent more time developing his project than I did. There are some differences, but most of them are pretty minor.
Now, Icons is under an Open Game License, just like Marvelous Superheroes. I could, theoretically, pull the interesting bits of Icons and cram it into Marvelous. However, at the moment I don’t see much point in that – I’d rather point people who are interested in Marvelous Superheroes at Icons, and see what happens. I’m running a game in Icons, in fact.
Over time, I might find things I want to change in Icons, and use Marvelous as that bed. Or I might recompile bits of Marvelous into an Icons book. Or something. But I don’t want to take cash out of the pocket of Adamant unless I can make sure that Marvelous offers something different than Icons.
So, this isn’t a case of my dropping a project because I don’t have the time. This isn’t even a case of my dropping a project because Adamant asked me to – Gareth was very gracious about the whole thing when I brought it to his attention. This is me being respectful of a game that I think is really cool, because honestly it’s really close to the game I made anyway.
Although I haven’t had much free time lately, when I do have some I try to sneak in a few games here and there (both for work research and because I like playing games to relax). I haven’t posted an update on what I’m playing in a while, so here’s what I’ve been playing over the past several months.
Torchlight: I didn’t play this for a long time, because I was getting a bit tired of the grind and long loading times on my netbook, but with the new computer I picked it up again and tried a new character class (Destroyer). It’s still fun for a spot of hack and slash when I don’t have the time for a more involved game, but I’m not playing it terribly much at the moment.
D&D 4e: Still playing in two different games of this. Still enjoying it. Still finding people online surprised at the fact that I’m playing and enjoying it.
Icons: I’m actually getting together a game of this starting in July, a gritty take on superheroes called “Needs Must.” There’s a wiki for Needs Must up on Obsidian Portal, although it’s still pretty rough at the moment. I haven’t run a game in a while, and Icons looks to be a good balance of entertaining fun and low-prep that I need at the moment. I’m curious how the idea of putting all dice-rolling into the player’s hands will work in practice, though.
Loom: I picked up the LucasFilm Adventure Pack on Steam a few months ago, and have been slowly making my way through them. The first I played was Loom, which is a great, short little adventure that was indie long before indie was cool. The gimmick of having to do most things through the interface of musical notes was a little frustrating, but the charm overrode the annoyance for me, and I appreciated the deep focus on just the gameplay that mattered to tell the story. It’s disappointing that it was set up for a sequel that never happened, but still worth a few bucks.
![Sprint-HTC-EVO-4G[1]](http://eddyfate.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/SprintHTCEVO4G1.jpg "Sprint-HTC-EVO-4G[1]")
Recently, I found myself nearing the end of my contract with AT&T and my 3G iPhone. I loved my iPhone, but I wanted to try something new. I anticipated not being impressed with the new iPhone, but I was willing to wait and see until AT&T changed their policies. Without getting into the merits and flaws of AT&T’s decision, the upshot is that I decided I wanted to go with another company, which meant going with another phone. Which, since I couldn’t get an iPhone, realistically meant an Android phone.
After careful consideration,1 I started playing with my new Evo phone on Monday. A few people were very interested in my thoughts, so I played with it for a few days, trying to get a sense of how this new phone will fit into my life. Like my Alienware review, I won’t go into detail. Instead, I’ll just list what I love about the Evo, and what I miss about the iPhone.
My new laptop
So, after a really frustrating several weeks, I’m finally starting to settle back into things a little bit. A big piece of that was the early arrival of my new laptop – the Alienware M11x.
Let me diverge the conversation for a moment into nomenclature. The M11x (officially dubbed “Shockwave”)1 is only slightly bigger than my old netbook. Even the netbook was pretty high-end. There isn’t a clear line between “netbook” and “small laptop,” but as Ravage was based more on battery life and portability over performance, it felt more like a netbook – an extension of my larger laptop. The M11x, though, is actually more powerful than my old laptop. So, I feel that Shockwave is a laptop, rather than a netbook.2
Anyhow, this thing is fucking amazing. I won’t go into a full review of it (you can find plenty of those on your own, if you’re interested), but there are a lot of pros and cons to my original set-up of living off of two laptops.