Video Game Review: Among the Sleep

While there are a lot of scary games in existence, few things can capture the fear of what really scared you when you were a child.  The world was big and scary, monsters still existed around every corner and the only thing that could protect you was your parents.  Krillbite Studio has taken on an enormous endeavor in an attempt to recapture that period of your life with their newest Kickstarter funded game Among the Sleep.

In this game, you play as a two year old child.  The opening of the game takes place on your birthday where you learn the controls of the game in your nursery by playing with your new present:  a teddy bear who comes to life when your mother leaves the room. After 'playing' with the teddy bear, you are put in your crib to sleep sweet dreams, only to wake up to find your mother gone and your teddy bear urging you to find her.  An exploration of the house leads you to a strange world, seemingly made from the young child's memories.  While there, you must collect the fond memories you have of your mother in order to open up new paths and eventually reach her.

This game is similar to Slender in that you have no way of defending yourself from any danger.  However, while this made arguably little sense in Slender, a two year old child would have no way of defending itself in real life. As such, the game is purely about exploration, mainly solving puzzles that involve finding items and putting them in a specific spot.  At the point I'm at in the game, the puzzles have not been extremely challenging, the hardest part being actually finding the items in order to advance.  Finding said items requires you to explore the strange world in Among the Sleep.  It truly looks like a child's nightmare: playgrounds stand in dark, creepy atmospheric environments.  Strange, nightmarish swamplands are populated with seemingly oversized chairs and furniture, making you feel small and helpless as you try to find your mother.

This is where Among the Sleep truly excels: in atmosphere and immersion.  As I played the game, I truly felt like I was taking a step inside a child's nightmare.  I felt like the young child I was playing as, trying to make sense of a world I didn't understand.  I felt scared to death every time a tiny sound was heard just outside my field of vision or when the game's monster (I've only seen one monster thus far, and I have yet to tell if it's the same monster over and over or multiple creatures that look the same) stalks by and I'm forced to hide in a closet clutching my teddy bear (the flashlight mechanic in this game) so I have just enough light to see that I'm not in danger.  You fear for yourself and you fear for the child you are playing as, and you can never be sure if the perceived scary thing is just atmospheric or if it is an actual danger, which makes you feel all the more like a young child.  And because you are experiencing the game from the eyes of a two year old child, there is a pretty deep mystery towards the actual goings on in the game.  Is the creature just something out of your nightmares, or were those nightmares inspired by something out of the baby's short life?  Are these just creepy environments, or are they how the baby perceives the world around him?  I have yet to finish the game (I'll probably do a follow up to this review once I do), but the unknown elements of this game are enough to compel me to keep going even when it gets scary enough that you're digging through your old stuff trying to find your own stuffed animal to clutch out of sheer terror.

If you are not a fan of horror games where the protagonist is completely defenseless to the dangers around him like Outlast, Slender and Amnesia: The Dark Descent, I doubt Among the Sleep is going to change your mind about the subject.  However, if you can get over the element of being helpless in a strange world, then this game might be one of your games of the year (At this pont for me, it's easily in my Top Ten of 2014).  It's immersive in ways most Triple-A games can only dream of and it proves that the horror genre in video games is fully alive and well.  Do not miss this game.  It has set a new standard for horror games.

No Review, just Promoting a Friend

As a writer, I know how difficult it is to get your stuff seen on the internet.  Therefore, I always try to promote and help out my internet buddies as much as possible.  Hence I'm pointing all my readers (however many there might be right now) to The Hungry Reader's new video.

I've been buddies with The Hungry Reader for a while now, and he really is pretty great at this.  I've been enjoying watching him mature as a critic as he becomes the internet critic version of "Reading Rainbow".  He is passionate for this, is almost always working at it and recently submitted his videos in order to become part of Channel Awesome.  You should all check out his channel and give him your full support, constructive criticism and anything you think would help him......Please.

RPG review of Savage Worlds

Everyone who's ever gotten into tabletop RPGs has started playing Dungeons and Dragons (if that's not the case for you, stop nitpicking my blog hypothetical reader!).  Some people never make it past that rightfully classic game, but some people occasionally take those tentative steps out of heavily Tolkien inspired fantasy and into games involving undead struggling with their immortality, extremely popular space opera films or heavily Tolkien inspired cyberpunk

Vampire the Requiem, Star Wars and Shadowrun; if you were wondering.

Today I'd like to tell you about my first trip outside of D&D with a game called Savage Worlds, made by Pinnacle Entertainment Group.  First published in 2003, Savage Worlds is a system designed to be easy to play and quick to start.  At that, it is extremely successful.  You can probably get an entire party of characters rolled up in under a half hour.  As for gameplay, all you need to know is that your character needs to roll a 4 or higher (with bonuses or penalties applied to make the roll harder or easier).  If you know that much, you've pretty much got half of the game under your belt.

Savage Worlds is unique in that your skills and attributes are not measured by numbers, but what dice you roll.  When you first buy a skill, for example, it is considered a d4 skill, meaning that when you use it you roll a d4.  As you advance your skills, the die you roll will go up a step (a d4 becomes a d6 becomes a d8 and so on and so forth).  I'm sure someone more educated in statistics could tell you that this can be easily exploited, but I never saw any trouble with this way of doing things.  Another way Savage Worlds change things up from the usual RPG rules is how they do the order of combat.  At the start of every round, every character is dealt a card from a standard deck of playing cards.  The GM then counts backwards from Ace, and the player take their turn when their card is called.  Again, this is an interesting way to change things up, and I found it extremely fun when I played Savage Worlds with my friends.

However, my favorite part about this game is the story (or rather stories).  You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned the genre, plot or any story point of Savage Worlds thus far.  That's because the system is actually versatile enough to offer numerous different settings.  Pinnacle Entertainment actually sells books devoted solely to offering new worlds for Savage Worlds players to explore and create in.  These books usually have a few extra rules that go with the setting, extra skills and advantages and a built-in campaign for you to run if you so desired.

Some of the settings Savage Worlds offers include:

Rippers: The players are part of a world-spanning monster hunter organization in Victorian Age.  Led by Van Helsing, you can explore the world, fight off famous monsters (Mr. Hyde, Frankenstien, his Monster and Dracula to name a few) and even ally yourself with famous characters from Victorian literature.

50 Fathoms:  The fantasy world of Caribdus has been drowned in a huge flood caused by three vicious and powerful witches.  The world is still threatened by these witches, so a mysterious force has brought new heroes to the land:  humans who were lost at sea during the Golden Age of Piracy.

Evernight:  A fantasy world has been invaded by a spider-like alien race.  Quickly taking over, the aliens blot out the sun with their smog spewing buildings.  You play as heroes who must stop these aliens, destroy their smog spires and bring the sun back to the land!

Necessary Evil:  Aliens have conquered the planet, wiping out all of Earth's superheroes in one fell swoop.  With all the heroes gone, the only defenders left are Earth's supervillains, who have formed a team dedicated to wiping out the alien menace.


These are just a few of the amazing settings that Savage Worlds bring to the table, and I'll most likely be reviewing these settings and more in the near future.

If you do not like simple games that focus more on cinematic styles than actual technical rules, then Savage Worlds is not the game for you.  However, if you want an RPG that you can easily pick up and play with unique and interesting settings for your players to play in, then I highly recommend you pick up Savage Worlds today.

One of my New Favorite Tabletop RPGs (that no one else seems to be talking about)

Yeah, I know.  Three posts into this blog and I'm finally talking about gaming.  Crazy, right?

I have been playing tabletop RPGs for about half my life.  I started with Dungeons and Dragons, which is still the most prominent and most well known tabletop RPG in existence.  However, as I grew older I found myself caring less for Dungeons and Dragons and more for other RPGs.  Sometimes it was because the rules were easier to follow, other times I wasn't in the mood for a Tolkien-esque fantasy, but my main reason for seeking out other RPGs can be summed up simply:  I like it when game creators do something new.  This could be a twist on an established setting (such as Savage World's fantastic take on the superhero genre Necessary Evil), a setting where you're playing as something beyond common sellswords (seen White Wolf's epic fantasy Exalted) or just a completely unique world (as seen in the alternate history game Deadlands).

And it just so happens that I found an RPG that uses all of those elements:  Hellas: Worlds of Sun and Stone.

The Premise: The best way I can describe this RPG to you is to imagine Star Wars blended with 300, Clash of the Titans and Greek mythology in general.  Hopefully you're like me and heard that description and yelled "Shut up and take my money!!".  However, if you are still unconvinced, let me continue.

Hellas takes place in a universe that's essentially a space opera version of ancient Greece with the planets representing the city-states of the country (both real and fictitious).  The galaxy is mainly ruled by the Hellenes, essentially humans (specifically Greeks) who were raised to the status of spacefaring race by the gods known as 'The Twelve' (pretty blatant allegories for the gods of ancient Greece/ancient alien versions of the gods) and are still worshiped in the Hellas universe.

Rather than using traditional hyperspace, the spaceships of Hellas travel at faster-than-light speed using an alternate dimension of violet skies, dark clouds and floating islands called Slipspace.  Slipspace has it's own flora, fauna and oxygen, essentially allowing for epic sea battles involving boarding other ships and adventures involving deserted islands.

Who you play as:  Rather than playing as simple adventurers/mercenaries like in D&D, Hellas has you take on the roles of Heroes.  The sourcebook specifically states that the PCs are the movers and shakers in the universe, if it isn't happening to the PCs than it's not important to the story.
Along with the Hellenes, there are seven other playable races in Hellas, among which include the female warrior race of the Amazorans, the savage reptillian Goregons, the mysterious three-eyed Kyklopes, the angelic Nephelai, and the druidic seductive Nymphas.  My favorites are the Myrmidons: a race that consists of a colony of insects which form into a walking, talking 'person', and the Zintar: a race of squidlike beings that operate on land by piloting four legged robotic suits (Zintar, Centaur.  Get it?).

Character Creation: This is arguably the most fun aspect of Hellas.  With your choice of race, you get your base attributes and skills.  You also pick a profession (pilot, warrior, oracle, etc.), of which each race has at least two that are exclusive to them.  Everything else is decided by the roll of the dice, including the planet your character was born on, his family, how his childhood was, the status of his parents and any adventures he may have been a part of before the actual start of the campaign. It is also where the GM finds out each character's Fate (which I will discuss later) While this may seem that it would make for unbalanced characters (which the sourcebook acknowledges), I haven't found any problems with it, and it's balanced out by the 40 'freebie' points you get to spend at the end.  Making characters with your friends who you play with is super fun, especially if you do it together and put together how the PCs know each other via their random backgrounds.

The system used:  Hellas uses a very simple gaming mechanic known as the Omni System.  Basically, you roll a d20, apply any bonuses/penalties and the result will determine if the action succeeded, failed, failed miserably or worked way better than expected.  There really isn't that much to it besides that.

Other Fun Stuff:  Perhaps the most interesting aspect of a Hellas campaign is how it is meant to be played.  The book explains that a campaign should last decades (perhaps centuries), and as the game goes on your character accumulates Fate Points in various ways.  As you gain Fate Points, your character gets closer to his Fate: the way he is destined to die.  It is possible to dodge Fate for a long while, but if you accumulate ten Fate Points, your character must meet his glorious end.  However, your player need not go home, for he/she can roll up a descendant/friend/relative of the character who just died.  By the end of the campaign, it is possible to be playing your original character's great great grandson.  Some people may find this system unfair to the PCs, but I feel it makes for fantastic storytelling tied to the Greek myths that inspired Hellas.

Final Thoughts:  I love this game.  I love the system. I love the races. I love the huge option for characters, the setting, the scale of storytelling.  I love Hellas so much....and yet it doesn't seem to be getting much love on the internet.  It has thus far had four successful Kickstarters for the core rulebook and various supplements, but I can't find any stories of people playing it, online PbP games or anything.  The lack of talk about this game is one of the reasons I wanted to write this post.  Hopefully one day this game will get all the love it deserves from tabletop gamers everywhere.

-Hellas: Worlds of Sun and Stone and all of it's supplements can be found at hellasrpg.com

Please Shut Up About a Show You Haven't Watched: A Response to a Recent Vice Article

As someone who greatly enjoys many aspects of what is considered 'nerd culture',  I'll admit that we have a bit of an image problem on the whole.  We tend to be elitist about the things we like, which causes disinterest among other people who show an interest in Dungeons and Dragons, video games or comic books.  I can't speak for everyone who owns a twenty-sided die, but I personally have done my best to try and stop this stereotype.  Which is why I held back with my knee-jerk reaction to Clive Martin's recent article about why he will not be enjoying the popular HBO television series Game of Thrones.  After all, not everyone enjoys every single popular thing (I personally have no interest in watching The Walking Dead) and if Clive Martin had a good reason to ignore the show, I would do my best to read his article with an unbiased opinion.

Then I actually read the article, and discovered that the article was less a critique of Game of Thrones and more of an ignorant dismissal on all aspects of the fantasy genre.

Martin states in his article that his dismissal of the genre is due to a belief that it's stories "come from a very conservative, dated world view."  While this is hard to argue (a majority of fantasy novels do take place in medieval-esque world), I also fail to see how this is a reason to dismiss the entire genre.  I agree that it's important to have a progressive world view in the real world.  And while a fictional story can influence your view on the world (George Orwell and Issac Asimov come to mind), it's primary objective is to tell a compelling story.  Part of that compelling story

One could make the same argument against historical fiction.  Books written about a certain time period also have a dated world view, since at the time they literally were the current world view.  But that fact doesn't keep films like Braveheart or Kingdom of Heaven from being fantastic, because ultimately the important thing is a compelling story and characters.  Whether the character is someone who can actually exist in this world shouldn't matter.

This is why I feel that Game of Thrones is so successful outside of the "fantasy nerd" audience:  Because it focuses heavily on the characters rather than Tolkien-esque world building.  Rather than having the viewer (or reader) learn more about the fantasy world by exploring it as they do in LoTR, George RR Martin focuses on the strife of his characters with laser like precision.  And while there are fantastic elements seen with the Dragons and the White Walkers, they take a back seat to Tyrion's complex affair with Shae, Arya Stark's transformation from an innocent girl into a merciless killer obsessed with revenge or the internal power struggle going on behind the walls of King's Landing.  Westeros is a relatively grounded in reality universe, and any "fantasy elements" that would be strange to the reader are equally peculiar to everyone in the story.

Which is a shame, Clive Martin.  Because had you watched (or read) Game of Thrones, I think you might have liked it.  Your complaints about the genre (as ridiculous as they are) are things that are remedied in George RR Martin's writing.

Too bad you'll never know, since you're compelled to hate something which you haven't even made an attempt to experience.



PS: I'd also like to take a moment to talk about the whole "Why are there no (insert ethnicity here) in LoTR?" argument. Not because racial representation in fantasy  The reason is because they are books based on Slavic myth written by an Oxford professor in the thirties.  Asking why LoTR only has white people is like asking why a story about the American Revolution has no Asians.

But again, had Clive Martin experienced Game of Thrones for himself, he would have discovered that the show is filled with diversity.  One of the more important characters of Season 2 and one of the most powerful men in Essos was an African American.  Khal Drogo was played by a Native Hawaiian.  Hell, the show is one of the first times (in my knowledge) where an interesting, compelling and important character was played by a midget!

Again, all important things to consider before writing an article about a show you haven't even attempted to watch.

I'M GONNA RUN AWAY AND JOIN A MOTORCYCLE GANG AND YOU CAN'T STOP ME (Or: How a Republican responds to Losing)

I created this blog in order to talk nerdy things.  Video games, tabletop RPGs, science fiction/fantasy movies, all that stuff.   But in light of the recent election I feel my first blog post here should involve just that.

After coming home from class today, I took a quick look at my Twitter feed and found that someone posted this article from a Libertarian blog.  I'll put my feelings about the Libertarian party aside for now to discuss the content of Eric Dondero's blog post.  For those of you who don't wanna read the album, Dondero has basically suggested that those upset with this election (i.e: Republicans and Libertarians) take his example and mimic the actions he claims to do.  Some of these included divorcing/breaking up with your liberal wife/girlfriend, quit your job because your boss is a Democrat, take a dump on your Obama loving neighbor's lawn (though to be fair he quickly retracts that statement to let your dog do the business) and to put up unflattering signs in front of and complain loudly inside of businesses that accept food stamps and welfare checks (bear in mind he mentions no plans to actually stop shopping at these businesses.  You know, like a normal boycott.)

I don't claim to be a perfect person, but I doubt I would be this upset if Obama lost.  So on the off-chance that someone reading this wants to take Dondero's suggestions seriously, I'd like to ask them (and Dondero, if he ever finds this) a few questions.

1.  Are things really that bad under Obama?

I get it, you don't want Democrats to be president.  You have a different idea of how this country should be run and I respect that even if I don't necessarily agree with it.  And I get that comparing the president you don't like to Hitler or Stalin or Cobra Commander is just par the course.  I get that, you don't have to apologize for being passionate.

But do you hate the idea of a Democrat in the office that much?  Do you really think that Obama plans to turn America into a Communist country simply because he wants to use welfare to assist those who can't make enough money to get by (that's the majority of welfare recipients, by the way, despite what right wing pundits say)  Do you really think that America has died, even though the American people have just chosen their leader fair and square like the Constitution promises?  Do you really think that Obama will take away all your rights, even though checks and balances would make it impossible to do so (especially with a right leaning Congress)?

I get that you don't like Obama, and that's fine.  But don't treat this like the collapse of a great nation and don't act like we've suddenly elected the Antichrist into office.

2. Divorce your wife for exercising her constitutional right?  Are you fucking nuts?

I'm one of two openly liberal people on my mother's side of the family.  Whenever my family gathers for Christmas, Thanksgiving or any holiday, there's a good chance that politics is going to be brought up.  Yeah, I'm usually ganged up upon and there's a lot of yelling, but each side gets a good look at the others and in the end we still all have a good time despite the fact that we feel this country should be run different ways.

If Romney had won, there is no way in Hell I'd completely cut ties with them.  Why, because they're my family and I love them, and they are much more important to me than whoever is going to be running this country for the next four years.

Take a moment to think about what Mr. Dondero is suggesting here.  He is asking that you do one or all of the following: give up a steady paycheck, dissolve the vows you made with the man/woman you love, separate yourself from one or more of your friends (people who may have known you longer than you've even been able to vote) and spend the rest of your life on a crusade that involves putting insulting signs in front of Wal-Marts and shitting on varioius people's lawns all because they exercised their rights as American citizens.  

This isn't a patriotic action or a crusade for freedom.  This is an adult throwing a temper tantrum and (if he is 100% serious) a prophecy that in ten years, we will see Mr. Dondero shitting on people's lawns and throwing copies of Atlas Shrugged at the men in white coats who eventually come to take them away.

3.  Can't you guys chill the fuck out?

Yes, Obama is going to be President again.  For four more years.  Not a hundred, not fifty, not ten, four more years.  After those four years, you're all going to get another chance to try and vote for a leader again.  This wasn't your last chance to save America (unless of course the Mayans were correct) and you'll get another chance to elect a Republican into office.  Or maybe even a Libertarian if you play your cards right.  I'll of course vote Democrat again, but that's the wonderful thing about this country:  we get to choose our leader, and if we don't like him, he's only around for eight years tops.


In conclusion, let's put it this way.  I am a Democrat and I have a friend who is a Libertarian.  For the past six months, we have been at each other's throats arguing over whether Ron Paul is a good politician, whether Obama will take away all our freedoms or if there's really any difference between the Democratic or Republican party.  The fights got heated and we both got frustrated with the other person a great deal.

Neither of us intend to stop being friends because of this, no matter what the election results were.  Because as our President said when he won the election, "We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions, and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states.  We are and forever will be the United States of America".  In the end, my friend and I aren't just liberals or Libertarians, but Americans.  Hopefully the readers of Eric Dondero's blog will understand this, and will take his blog for what it is: the un-American tantrum of an upset man-child.