…everyone gives to their mistakes. –Oscar Wilde

So the Bachen Family went on an adventure tonight. Actually, several. I’ve been looking for an excuse to try out Chore Wars, and finally decided to do it tonight. Chore Wars is an online game which allows you to earn experience and treasure for your character by doing chores. Make work fun!As I explained to Jean, it’s like gold stars for gaming geeks.

It was a raging success! Both kids completed the adventure ‘Telling Mom and Dad about School” (15xp), and “Eating All my Lunch” (25xp). Alia’s lunch quest was uneventful, while Connor had to fight off a hungry dog. They each earned some gold coins and a golden tiger.

Alia ate all of her dinner, and completed the adventure ‘Eating All my Dinner – NonCombat”. (50xp) She earned some more gold coins and silver spoon. She traded in her silver spoon for dessert, and got some yummy vanilla pudding.

Connor didn’t want to eat his dinner tonight, but he kept wanting to go on another adventure.

We told him no. You only get to go on an adventure and fight the bad guys if you eat your dinner like Alia did. He pouted for about 10 minutes, and then decided he really wanted to try it again. So he ate his dinner! Then we went on his adventure and completed “Eating all my dinner – Combat” (50xp). This time the Monster Dog was no match for his swift sword. He vanquished the monster and found some gold coins and silver spoon – which he promptly turned in for some Jello.

It was getting late, and I wanted to take them upstairs for a bath. They wanted to watch the silly cat video again. Mom made them turn in their golden tigers that they had earned to stay up a little later and watch the video. They wanted to watch it a second time, but had no tigers left!

Oh, and everyone in the family completed the special adventure “Trying Something New with My Family”. We each earned 100 XP, and got a ruby! Who knows what you can turn THAT in for. Its so special you can only carry 1 at a time!

—-

I’m not sure how we’re going to create the rest of the quests. For now, to get them involved, I made sure they were able to complete 1 immediately (lunch, which I knew they ate), 1 that required little effort (tell me about school), and 1 which took effort (eating dinner).

I made sure that they earned a treasure for dinner, by setting it to 100%. We really want them to eat dinner, and it’s the biggest fight in terms of meals. Tentatively, 1 silver spoon = dessert. Maybe you can save up for 3 and get ice cream at the mall, or have mom make a cake! Who knows.

I created two quests for meals, with (100% chance) and without (0%) combat.. That way I can ask them ahead of time, do they want to fight or not.. it doesn’t really matter as you can’t die, but it lets them have a choice.

I’ll work on the other quests later.. “Being nice to your brother/sister” and “Picking up toys”.

Plus, I have to add the adult chores.. I think taking out the trash is worth at least 30XP!

For now, I was just happy to see that a little bribery for dinner worked. Let’s hope it sticks with him, and I can get them thinking about doing things to earn xp and treasure.. obviously I’ll have to tone down the treasure at that point, but I gotta hook them in first! Rules of being a DM – make the first fight easy.

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Last night I completed Gears of Wars 2 (Xbox 360). I had picked the game up sometime last week, but I’ve been pretty diligent about playing nightly until I completed the single player campaign (Normal Mode).

One of things that I really like about GOW2 was the same thing I liked about GOW.

Pacing.

It’s a shooter, but the Gears team does a very good job of mixing up the content. Gears really puts you on the edge of your seat. I find myself getting stressed in the high stress situations, just like the character would. That’s the mark of an immersive game.

So you need some downtime. You can’t always be in the high stress mode, but you need the story to progress. They handle this with two well presented means of pacing.

The first is within the chapters themselves. They design the maps and encounters to take you logically through the story, but the down time between fights isn’t obvious filler. You start to come down between one encounter and the next. There are a few exceptions, where there is wave after wave, but these are culminating events. Those are kinds of challenges the game needs, but can’t occur *all* the time.

Even some of the ‘boss’ fights in GOW2 are easier than some of these progressive waves. At the time the boss fight is happening, it’s more important to progress the story, and you’ve already come off a ‘stress’ fight. This isn’t a ‘press A and win’ kind of fight, but you can feel like you’re winning and have control, rather than being overwhelmed.

The second major element of pacing is the per chapter maps. Gears of War 2 does a good job of intermixing  ‘vehicle maps’. This might take the form of riding in a tank, or handling a turret on the back of the transport.

What makes these work is twofold. First, you aren’t worried about ammo and precision. In all cases, it’s about clearing the path and progressing forward. You are doing bulk damage and covering lots of ground. This gives your mind a chance to ‘relax’ from the focus needed to zoom in with a sniper rifle, for example.

These vehicle maps in GOW2 each offer a similar but unique experience. Riding backwards on a Reaver while escaping, is much different than guiding a Brumak through the rubble.

Overall, I really enjoyed the game and would definitely recommend it. I’m going to start playing the multiplayer now, and go back and pick up some of the achievements that I missed.

The gameplay is is more of the same from GOW. However, overall I felt that the story and progression was tighter. I often felt the need to play ‘one more chapter’, because of how smoothly things progressed and kept me involved.

The visuals are great. Granted, I’m finally enjoying this game on 1080i, where I played GOW on my old 28” non-HD screen. That being said, there are lots of little details that bring the world together. Like wall hangings, or insects buzzing, or the huge variety of textures. My favorite though was the during the Riftworm chapter (aka Chainsaw glory). The armor of Delta force slowly starts turning red from the feet up as they get covered in blood. It’s really obvious by the end of the chapter, but it had been there all along. The subtle addition, early on, added an element that you didn’t even know you were missing.

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Midnight Madness (1980)

For a while now, I’ve been planning on developing a road rally/puzzle rally for my friends and extended friends. Finally, I’m pulling it together.

There are a couple of different kinds of road rallies. They go by different names and variations, but these are the core ideas

One is known as a TSD (time/speed/distance).  In this kind of rally, a team (typically two people -a driver and a navigator) is given a set of route directions to follow, and the speeds at which they should travel the route. The route will generally consist of rural and quieter back roads. The goal of a TSD Road Rally is to travel the correct route at the correct speeds, and arrive at “checkpoints’” precisely on time. You are scored on how closely to the correct time you arrive. A Road Rally is not a race, and no rally will ever require you to drive in a reckless or illegal fashion. Arriving too early at a checkpoint hurts your score, as does arriving too late.

The second is a puzzle rally. In this case, a team is given a set of clues and puzzles which will lead them from one location to another. At each location they must answer questions to earn points and then end in a final destination.

This kind of rally can easily be explained by this clip from Midnight Madness. More details can be found at nayrium.com. Their second video link isn’t working correctly, so I’ve copied both videos here for review.

Explanation:

Example clue solving:

My plan is to combine the best of both. I’m going to have puzzles as well as driving clues.

When I was about 10 years old, my mom used to participate in, and design road rallys, that were hybrids as well. I was always too young to participate (as they wound up at bars in the end), but I’ve always wanted to do it myself.

My rally will be family friendly. The end location will be a place we can all hang out at and enjoy ourselves and eat and drink.

I’ll need to pick a weekend that is free from SCA events and (hopefully) on an odd week to make it accessible to my law enforcement friends.

This is the kind of thing where you enjoy the company of your team while you are solving. Enjoy the drive and the competition against the other teams. Then, kick back, relax, and tell stories of getting lost etc. at the restaurant.

I’m going to design and put together the whole thing and then send out some invitations. I really hope to get a good group of folks together, as these are really alot of fun, so I encourage you to invite your friends along as well. I’ll just need to get a final RSVP count of teams so I know how many packets to put together. My goal is have this ready by the end of the year, but we’ll see how that fits into the schedule.

Technorati Tags: road rally, midnight madness, puzzle, fun

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Want a little ARGish fun? There is roughly a 10-minute interactive experience available at http://eagleeyefreefall.com/, for the upcoming movie Eagle Eye (09.26.08).

Watch the trailer and get an idea about the movie, then have some fun.. make sure you are somewhere with access to a phone and a few minutes of free time.

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Since you enjoying playing the 3D version of Portal so much (and if you didn’t play it, stop reading this entry right now and go play it), I wanted to make sure you knew that there was a 2D flash version as well, compliments of an article at Evil Avatar.

I haven’t played more than the first level, so I can’t attest to the overall experience, but sometimes you gotta trust in fanboys (the designers, not me).

What’s even more exciting though, is that the developers of the Flash game have released a mappack with  40 levels for the original Portal game, based on the flash games’ levels. How’s that for circular design? This gives almost 3 and and half hours of new Portal content.

I’ve gotta delve into playing the custom Portal maps that are all available now.

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You’re a fan of LOLCats are you? Well, they’ve got nothing on LOLGrues.

I’m sorry… say what you want… I’d rather have a Grue than a kitten anyday.

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I was going to leave an entry discussing an upcoming labyrinth training event that I’m running in Deptford, NJ, but rather than write my own, I thought I’d quote a good amount from Jane McGonigal who is also going to an event, and did a wonderful Q&A for that one:

You should note that the flash animation training link that she posted was done by me. /me does a little jig.

I’ve been talking it up and hoping to get some of you involved. Now might be a great opportunity.

You don’t have to know anything.
You don’t have to bring anything.
Just show up, alone or with everyone you know.

And prepare to have an amazing adventure as you learn how to play The Lost Sport of Olympia.

Playing the lost sport is pretty much the most fun I’ve ever had. That’s all you need to know. But if want to know more, some FAQ are below.

FAQ

Q: What’s the Lost Sport of Olympia?
A: According to legend, this blindfolded sport was played and then banned by the ancient Greeks, who attempted to destroy all evidence that the game ever existed. It was completely forgotten by history — until 2008. That’s when a small online community began investigating the lost sport. The community got bigger and bigger, and recently they actually pieced together the rules of the game — simply by analyzing clues found in ancient artifacts. They’re still working out some of the kinks of the game, but so far, lost sport training events have have happened all over the world, from Canada to Brazil to Spain to New Zealand!

Q: Is the lost sport hard to play?
A: Like any great game, it’s incredibly easy to learn and extremely challenging to master. But, you don’t need to be traditionally athletic to excel at this sport. Instead, you’ll need trust, courage, memory, and teamwork.

Q: Is it fun to play?
A: I’ve only played it once before, but it was unforgettably awesome. You will almost certainly laugh until it hurts. Watch this recent training video from some aspiring Lost Sport champions in Kitchener, Ontario — my favorite part is the referee yelling repeatedly (to no avail), “No laughing! No laughing!”

Q: So can I just show up, or do I have to learn how to play it first?

A: Just show up! You don’t need to know anything about it, just show up. Your friends don’t need to know anything about it either, so bring them. Plenty of people there will be able to explain it, but most of the people who show up will also be playing the lost sport for the very first time.

Q: How’s it work, exactly?
A: It’s a blindfolded team sport, with 1 runner and 10 – 100 teammates who form a human labyrinth around the runner. Just like the Minotaur, the runner must escape from the center of the labyrinth as fast as possible!
Runners can’t see, and they can’t use their hands to feel their way. So they must draw on courage, their spatial memory of the labyrinth pattern, and the sound of the walls humming to guide them.
Meanwhile, the walls run ahead of the runner to keep him or her safely penned in at all times. It’s total collaboration. (The walls and the runner are on the same team.)

You can catch on faster by watching this flash animation of the gameplay.

Q: What’s the legend, exactly?
A: If you’ve never heard of the Lost Sport, you can learn about it in this podcast about ancient mysteries and forgotten secrets of the Ancient Games.

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So I’ve mentioned several times about my anticipation and roleout of the new ARG, Find the Lost Ring. Well it’s in full swing now. The main meta site has released two trailers (You Tube mirrors 1, 2) as well as some well placed banner ads on You Tube and Live Journal. Those kinds of things are going to constantly bring new people into the game.

The thing is, I don’t think I’ve explained to alot of you what an ARG even is. A great resource for an explanation and quickstart can be found here at Giant Mice. After reading that, you can read our wiki’s Beginner’s Guide.

Here’s what’s been going on so far, and hopefully it’ll pique your interest even further.

Current Nutshell

Six individuals woke up in late February – all in various Olympic attire, in a labyrinth, with amnesia (and a name given by whoever found them), blindfolded, and with a tattoo on their arms saying Trovu la ringon perditan, or “Find the lost ring” in Esperanto. Then we found Eli Hunt, who studies ancient Olympic mysteries. He’s studied the “lost ring”, and has decided to share his secret – a mysterious system not run by him. The six amnesiacs have been the keys to discovering omphaloi, which appear to be pointing towards hidden artifacts. Ariadne found the first in Cardiff, UK. A package containing two pages of a document believed to called the Codex of the Lost Ring. There are 27 chapters to find. Help us find them

Each of the primary 6 characters has an in-game blog, in their own language, as well as in-game forums to help coordinate the community that speaks that same language. One of the (in the beginning) protagonists has released 4 video podcasts of excellent quality detailing the lost history of the Olympics and providing alot of true facts about the games, while interweaving some plot devices for the game.

The game is still in its infancy, and I encourage you to check it out. It’s fun to be part of a community and to solve puzzles and do research. Plus, you’ll learn lots of things along the way. Right now I’m learning about Rhumb Lines and Great Circles as well as how to calculate the distance in km between two known coordinates at a constant bearing.

Sounds a bit geeky doesn’t it? It doesn’t *have* to be. That’s the cool part about joining up with a ARG, is that you can lurk, or get actively involved. When you get involved you speculate, learn, or even provide answers to the stuff you really do know. For example, we spent about 2 days trying to figure out why our coordinates were off when looking for the second location, until a GIS specialist explaining in great detail why the calculations were wrong, and provided the right ones for us — as well as online tools to use in the future. The next location was nailed within hours.

That led us to another part of the game, which is real-world retrieval. We’re trying to reassemble the chapters of the The Codex of the Lost Ring. So far, we’ve found chapter 1 in Cardiff, Wales, and chapter 2 in Austin, Texas!

As a community, we’re coordinating discoveries and discussion on Unfiction Forums, and Ariadne’s ingame community (English), as well as using IRC Chat, Twitter, Flickr, and plenty of other tools.

I’d love to have you join up with us. Who knows what obscure knowledge you can bring to the community! If this isn’t the right ARG for you, then there will always be others.

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