5 things meme
Feb. 18th, 2009 06:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
king_pellinorPhilmophlegm asked about:
1. Mount & Blade
2. Ring mail (and I do mean _ring_ mail)
3. King Pellinor (the Arthurian character, not you)
4. A Song of Ice and Fire
5. Fools and Heroes
1. Mount & Blade
This is a First-Person Slasher computer game, which I've been playing on and off for several years: it had an open beta, and was finalised a few months ago.
It could be called a descendant of Elite, after inter-marriage with Morrowind and Battlezone. Instead of starting at Lave with a Cobra Mk III and a universe full of star systems to trade between and fight over, you begin in a field with a sword and a broken-down nag, with a country-full of towns, villages and castles to, er, trade between and fight over.
The game proper is a complete sandbox - there's no plot to follow, the closest you get is that people will ask you do do stuff: find them some wheat or cows, shift cargo, deliver a message, start or stop a war, that sort of thing, but you can always say no. You gradually accrue money, experience points, equipment, henchmen and land. You can be a trader, a mercenary, a brigand, a loyal vassal - anything short of King :-)
The core of it is the fighting. This is first-person, you sitting on a horse with a sword in hand, with up to 100 men on the field at once - of which hopefully you will have more than half under your control - and all you need to do is defeat the enemy. Although you fight a *lot* of battles, they never seem to be the same twice: the terrain might be different, or the mix of forces, or just your luck.
Unlike most computer games, leveling up doesn't make you a lot tougher: although experience means you dish out more damage, you start on around 45HP and would really have to make an effort to get up to 60. That means that having decent armour is really important, but even with solid armour, a good horse and a host of men behind you, you can still go down to a single lucky blow. That in turn means that combat is very much edge of the seat stuff...
I could go on for ages about it, but generally the system really strikes a chord with me and the mods available for it effectively make it into a dozen games in one. You can fight the Hundred Years War, or try to defeat Rohan and Gondor for Saruman before tackling Mordor itself, and so on. There's nothing quite like leading your Eored in a crashing charge into a mob of Uruk-hai :-D Excellent stuff.
2. Ring mail (and I do mean _ring_ mail)
Annoying stuff to work with. I don't think it's as elegant as mail, and I keep getting lost while making it, probably because there's no grain to it to orient oneself on.
I think I quite like the term, though, as there isn't really a historical one for it (it not being used much in the West).
3. King Pellinor (the Arthurian character, not you)
I like Pellinor. In Malory he's the best knight around (although so is everyone ;-) ), with a hopeless quest that he nevertheless sticks to, which I think is the epitome of chivalry. In White, he's a misunderstood, somewhat incompetent, but good-hearted chap who does what he thinks is right no matter what, which I think makes for another epitome of chivalry. I endorse those messages.
4. A Song of Ice and Fire
I like these books quite a bit, though not nearly so much as some LJ friends do. I fear that Martin is starting to ramble a bit, and may be writing himself into corners. He might have done better to be less ambitious to start with, and had each book a little more self-contained.
The world is good, though, and the willingness to kill off characters is refreshing. It makes a good RPG setting, too :-)
5. Fools and Heroes
This is a Live Role-Playing system, of which I've been Treasurer for the last few years. I seem to get an awful lot of kudos for not actually doing very much in that role, which I find interesting :-)
I first played in Oxford in 1990-1, and in fact found a file full of stuff from then a few days ago (Louise had a fun time doing the newsletters!), but only got back into it again in about 2002, partly as a reason to make some mail :-) I'm not sure what prompted me to make mail, though. A lot of the 1990 rules seem to have stuck, oddly enough, and I keep getting surprised by changes since then even if they're 15 years old. I really ought to have stayed with F&H rather than the OTC, I'd have had more fun and kept more friends, but hindsight's a wonderful thing :-)
I find it a good fun way to spend a Sunday or a weekend, even though I don't really take it very seriously. Basically, I pretend to be a knight and hit people :-) All my characters have been knights, apart from when I was learning the system. I tend to let plot pass me by, it's too complicated keeping track of it and there's always someone else who'll do it anyway :-D
One thing I find interesting is that nearly everyone wants to play a special character, something unusual, almost to the point that it sometimes seems that there aren't very many vanilla characters around :-) This confuses me: with dozens of options built in to the system for playing mages, priests, fighters, scouts and so on, enough to keep you going for years without getting to the limits, why do so many people want to reject them and do something different? I've found more than enough different ways of playing a knight so far...
Having said that, of course, they often tend to be different in the same way. We seem to have a glut of cheap tarts in the system at the moment... in character, I mean, of course... ;-)
1. Mount & Blade
2. Ring mail (and I do mean _ring_ mail)
3. King Pellinor (the Arthurian character, not you)
4. A Song of Ice and Fire
5. Fools and Heroes
1. Mount & Blade
This is a First-Person Slasher computer game, which I've been playing on and off for several years: it had an open beta, and was finalised a few months ago.
It could be called a descendant of Elite, after inter-marriage with Morrowind and Battlezone. Instead of starting at Lave with a Cobra Mk III and a universe full of star systems to trade between and fight over, you begin in a field with a sword and a broken-down nag, with a country-full of towns, villages and castles to, er, trade between and fight over.
The game proper is a complete sandbox - there's no plot to follow, the closest you get is that people will ask you do do stuff: find them some wheat or cows, shift cargo, deliver a message, start or stop a war, that sort of thing, but you can always say no. You gradually accrue money, experience points, equipment, henchmen and land. You can be a trader, a mercenary, a brigand, a loyal vassal - anything short of King :-)
The core of it is the fighting. This is first-person, you sitting on a horse with a sword in hand, with up to 100 men on the field at once - of which hopefully you will have more than half under your control - and all you need to do is defeat the enemy. Although you fight a *lot* of battles, they never seem to be the same twice: the terrain might be different, or the mix of forces, or just your luck.
Unlike most computer games, leveling up doesn't make you a lot tougher: although experience means you dish out more damage, you start on around 45HP and would really have to make an effort to get up to 60. That means that having decent armour is really important, but even with solid armour, a good horse and a host of men behind you, you can still go down to a single lucky blow. That in turn means that combat is very much edge of the seat stuff...
I could go on for ages about it, but generally the system really strikes a chord with me and the mods available for it effectively make it into a dozen games in one. You can fight the Hundred Years War, or try to defeat Rohan and Gondor for Saruman before tackling Mordor itself, and so on. There's nothing quite like leading your Eored in a crashing charge into a mob of Uruk-hai :-D Excellent stuff.
2. Ring mail (and I do mean _ring_ mail)
Annoying stuff to work with. I don't think it's as elegant as mail, and I keep getting lost while making it, probably because there's no grain to it to orient oneself on.
I think I quite like the term, though, as there isn't really a historical one for it (it not being used much in the West).
3. King Pellinor (the Arthurian character, not you)
I like Pellinor. In Malory he's the best knight around (although so is everyone ;-) ), with a hopeless quest that he nevertheless sticks to, which I think is the epitome of chivalry. In White, he's a misunderstood, somewhat incompetent, but good-hearted chap who does what he thinks is right no matter what, which I think makes for another epitome of chivalry. I endorse those messages.
4. A Song of Ice and Fire
I like these books quite a bit, though not nearly so much as some LJ friends do. I fear that Martin is starting to ramble a bit, and may be writing himself into corners. He might have done better to be less ambitious to start with, and had each book a little more self-contained.
The world is good, though, and the willingness to kill off characters is refreshing. It makes a good RPG setting, too :-)
5. Fools and Heroes
This is a Live Role-Playing system, of which I've been Treasurer for the last few years. I seem to get an awful lot of kudos for not actually doing very much in that role, which I find interesting :-)
I first played in Oxford in 1990-1, and in fact found a file full of stuff from then a few days ago (Louise had a fun time doing the newsletters!), but only got back into it again in about 2002, partly as a reason to make some mail :-) I'm not sure what prompted me to make mail, though. A lot of the 1990 rules seem to have stuck, oddly enough, and I keep getting surprised by changes since then even if they're 15 years old. I really ought to have stayed with F&H rather than the OTC, I'd have had more fun and kept more friends, but hindsight's a wonderful thing :-)
I find it a good fun way to spend a Sunday or a weekend, even though I don't really take it very seriously. Basically, I pretend to be a knight and hit people :-) All my characters have been knights, apart from when I was learning the system. I tend to let plot pass me by, it's too complicated keeping track of it and there's always someone else who'll do it anyway :-D
One thing I find interesting is that nearly everyone wants to play a special character, something unusual, almost to the point that it sometimes seems that there aren't very many vanilla characters around :-) This confuses me: with dozens of options built in to the system for playing mages, priests, fighters, scouts and so on, enough to keep you going for years without getting to the limits, why do so many people want to reject them and do something different? I've found more than enough different ways of playing a knight so far...
Having said that, of course, they often tend to be different in the same way. We seem to have a glut of cheap tarts in the system at the moment... in character, I mean, of course... ;-)
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no subject
Date: 2009-02-18 07:32 pm (UTC)Anyway I digress, can I have 5 things please.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-18 08:33 pm (UTC)- Cooking
- Christmas
- Costume
- Complementary medicine
no subject
Date: 2009-02-18 09:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-19 09:56 am (UTC)- Old beer
- Ebay
- The internet generally
- Maths
- Game pie
no subject
Date: 2009-03-07 06:43 pm (UTC)2. A great place to buy and sell - until you run into the few b*stards who spoil it all by leaving unwarranted / inaccurate negative feedback.
3. A great way of keeping in touch, particularly for people like me who are outgoing online but introverted in person.
4. I went to Uni to do electronic engineering, because I thought the career prospects were better; but I also realsied that I wasn't sure about this, so I chose a course that kept my options open. At the end of my first year, I realised that I liked maths better and was better at it, soI switched to that.
5. We rarely have it, as I prefer game casserole in some irrational way (as I prefer rabbit pie). But game is tasty, healthy, and often cheap.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-19 12:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-19 01:38 pm (UTC)I should have started with "Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given."
no subject
Date: 2009-02-19 02:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-19 02:48 pm (UTC)- Fools and Heroes (obvious one to start with!)
- Spreadsheets
- Fanfic
- Roleplaying games
- Del Fallowbrook (I never quite understood her...)
no subject
Date: 2009-02-23 11:12 pm (UTC)