Minecraft - Infrastructure

Digging a lot of holes in the ground, that's what it's been. I've been working on getting Minecraft infrastructure in place to support building operations, and things are proceeding nicely. If you recall I set some rules for building and goals to achieve when I started this build. I've made some progress on this and refined rule three, here are the results.

Homicide: Mommy Knows

The next turn in my ongoing Mythic GM solo game begins as Evan and Jeff wrap up their interview with Mike Lewis, property manager at College Place Apartments (yeah I just made that up, who's going to argue in a solo game?) We were left with two likely courses of action:

• Find out more about the mystery person in the rental office, who popped up as an altered scene element in the last turn.
• With Lewis's permission, look around Michelle Allen's apartment, since she is the owner of the actual murder scene (her car).

The current context looks like this (after a few tweaks post-session):

Minecraft: Build Again!

So it begins, my second Minecraft let's play build. I've done a bit of work on this in the background, and have a few pictures to show off where things are headed:

Minecraft: A New Beginning

I've been figuring out what to do with my next Minecraft project. My last build started pretty solid, but I lost steam before I was really done, and ended up walking away from the project before it was really complete. For the next project, I'm putting together some rules and goals, both to provide an increased challenge, and to give me a bit more focus. I'm also going to go for a more modern build, something I haven't really done before.

Homicide: Fill the Blanks

This is another in the series of ongoing posts of my solo RPG using the Mythic GM Emulator, starring Evan Stacy as a police detective investigating a murder. I've started adding the pages to the site index here. I'll try to update each post in the series with links to previous and next posts as I go.

When we left our investigator, he and his partner had just discovered signs of hasty flight in Michelle Allen's apartment. She owns the car that appears to have been the actual murder scene, so her fleeing seems suspicious at best. Here's the current game context, per Mythic GM rules. Things are getting a little more complex so I've added some notes to help track things. I've also split out our detective's personal characters / threads from the main list so we can keep things moving on the investigation when choosing characters at random. Focus!



Chaos: 6
Evan's Personal Characters
Jeff Long, Evan's partner on the force
Evan's Rabbi on the force
Evan's family
Evan's estranged wife
Evan's professional contact

Jeff's Personal Characters
Jeff's relative in trouble

Characters
The victim, an adult male
- Found in a very clean garden apartment
- Dead approximately two days
- The apartment was not the crime scene
The anonymous tipster
The forensics team
The shooter
The rental office staff
Michelle Allen, a person of interest in the murder investigation
- Owner of the damaged SUV found near the crime scene
- Car has blood and a gun in the passenger compartment
- Appears to have been the scene of the actual murder
- Allen's apartment shows signs of a hasty departure

Personal Threads
Jeff has a relative in trouble
Evan is on the road to divorce

Threads
Who killed the victim
Rental records for the murder scene are missing
Who owns the murder weapon
Where is Michelle Allen

That's a Lot of Blogs

I routinely poke through SEO data for this blog and other sites I run. Today I discovered The Dark Dungeons Vaults, run by Jaap de Goede. There are over 1500 blogs linked there, including quite a few non-English sites. Definitely worth a look and a bookmark!

Minecraft: The End

Between the Torchlight 2 beta and Island Forge, I haven't had much time to play Minecraft lately. I went back in to take a look at the build so far, and I've found myself not very inspired to continue for two main reasons. The area I'm in is absolutely riddled with caves, including two huge ravines that criss-cross beneath my build site. Digging has become more a chore than fun, as everywhere I go there are vast empty spaces leading to gravity induced death. The other problem is I decided to change up how / what I was doing about half-way through the process, and it's taking more rebuilding than I anticipated to get something interesting going. At this point I've decided to shutter this build and start on a new project with a little more planning. I thought I'd share a few images from what I ended up with, as it doesn't totally suck.

Homicide: Who is John Doe?

This is part two of a solo play RPG I'm doing using the Mythic GM Emulator. The first part can be found here.

When we left, our main character Evan Stacy and his partner Jeff Long were just leaving the crime scene, but with no statement of intent as to where they were headed next (the next scene). The game context looked like this:

Chaos: 6
Characters

• Jeff Long, Evan's partner on the force
• Jeff's troubled relative in Indianapolis
• Evan's Rabbi on the force
• Evan's family
• Evan's wife
• Evan's professional contact
• The victim, an adult male
• The anonymous tipster
• The forensics team
• The shooter
• The rental office staff

Threads

• Who killed the victim
• Jeff has a relative in trouble
• Evan is on the road to divorce
• Rental records for the murder scene are missing

You may notice I added three entries, a thread for resolving who actually shot the victim, Jeff's troubled relative, and a character entry for the rental office staff. The first was so obvious I just forgot to write it down. The second I overlooked, and the third wasn't explicitly mentioned, but it was implied by the facts we uncovered last time. I also expanded the forensics team to include all the police at crime scene, Now, on with the show!

Homicide: Life on the Blog

As promised, back to the tabletop for some RPG goodness. I've been toying with the Mythic GM Emulator off and on for several years as a tool for solo play, a mechanic for throwing curve balls at players during play, and as a creative aid for world-building. I've decided to run a solo game here both to demonstrate how Mythic works, and to scratch an itch to play a solo game. This is the setup post.

Torchlight 2 - A Wrap

A final post concerning the Torchlight 2 beta experience. There's nothing new here, just a wrap-up with all the links in the right order for easy reference:

• My first impressions
• A review of the beta
• Final thoughts

That's it! Now that the beta is over I can fixate on something else, at least for now.

Final Impressions: Torchlight 2 Beta

The Torchlight 2 beta winds down today at 4 PM Pacific time. I've been spending too much time playing, so it's probably a good thing it's over. I've already wrote a couple things about the game:

• First Impressions
• Beta Review

Here are a few more thoughts based on the last couple days of play.

Torchlight 2 - Beta Review

This is a more detailed look at the Torchlight 2 beta experience. I've already posted a brief first impression, but now I've spent more time with the game. I've completed the beta with the Outlander and the Engineer, and have spent some time with both the Berserker and Embermage.

Island Forge: An Update

Nyhm, the developer of Island Forge, was kind enough to give me a heads up on a change to core game he's pushed out today.

Torchlight 2 Beta - First Impression

This game wins. I knew it within the first few minutes, but after a couple hours, I can confirm it. Even though I'm trying to judge Torchlight 2 based on its own merits, it's hard to avoid comparison to Diablo 3, a game I was less than impressed with. Here's why Torchlight 2 is better than Diablo 3:

Island Forge: Island Forging

Island Forge is an indie developed MMO adventure game / editor. I've already written an article focused on initial impressions and the game side of things, this time I'm going to talk more about the editor. After logging in to Island Forge, one of your options is the Islands tab. Through this interface you can create an island of your own and start the editor. The initial editor window looks like this:

Basic editor - click to embiggen

Playing With Island Forge

Island Forge is an indie-developed MMORPG that allows players to travel across player-created islands slaying monsters and pursuing quests and stories. The game is currently in beta test mode and the developer is looking for feedback, so I spent some time this weekend playing. Here are the results.

Dice Rollers and Other Things

Nothing like getting up at 2 AM with a fresh pot of coffee to get some productive time at the keyboard. As you may or may not know I have a web site with a bunch of dice rollers, random tables and assorted other RPG-related stuff. Since I used to run a couple of computer moderated strategy games (Eldritch, Monsters!, and Iron Kings), most of the stuff is email-oriented. The last week or so I've been working on a new dice roller that's web-based and backed by a server database. It's now up and running in beta mode right here.

The premise is pretty simple. Create an account, create a dice session, share the session info with whomever you want to allow access, and you're off. And yes, I know, it's a pain to have yet another login, but no login is not an option because of bots and spammers, and I don't have the cycles right now to integrate a global sign-in with Facebook, Google or the like.

I'm eager to hear any and all feedback, either in comments here, using the comment form on the web site, or via whatever social media you happen to see this on. Thanks for reading and (hopefully) checking out the dice roller.