01/29/16

GrogHeads Advanced Research on Projects Advisory #86

An episode of GARPA full of un-funded projects.  Don’t let that stop you 🙂  ~

 

Polyversal (Collins Epic Wargames)
$13k of $80k, ends 27 March 2016

We’ve been following Polyversal for a few years now. Yes, years. Here’s the photographic proof at Origins! (Heck, here’s another from 2013…) It’s 6mm sci-fi warfare, so you can play out a large battle over a medium-sized table. There’s a unique visual representation of the command structures based on hexagonal-shaped unit cards whose layout provides a quick look at the unit relationships.   There’s even an online unit assessment tool that lets you bring your own minis to the game, so all those WH40K epic-scale minis that have been languishing in your garage can now come back to life. Teleport over to their campaign page, NOW!

g86-poly

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01/27/16

GrogHeads Reviews Heroes of Steel

Dungeon Crawling Underground!  But how does it play? ~

By Avery Abernethy

 

Heroes of Steel is a turn based, combat RPG set in an underground world. Your four characters follow the traditional meme of a medieval world. This is a small party, turn based, combat sim. There is a story to string the combat along, but you have no choices in character personality or alignment. You are good. Your enemies are evil. You need to kill all of the evil.

To strike down the evil hordes you have a party composed of a fighter, a cleric, a thief and a wizard. There is one variant for each character type. For example, your cleric can be based more on healing or more on combat. The thief can be a bow equipped sniper who opens chests and detects traps. Or your thief can be more focused on a stealthy hand-to-hand combat while also opening locked chests and detecting traps.

HofSteel-Your fighter

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01/25/16

Tracer Rounds – Writing Sucks

This is hard because…

Why is this so hard?  Seriously – why is it so hard to coordinate the ideas, thoughts, and inspirations I’ve got in my head, and why can it be so hard to herd the cats of our staff into something resembling a similar direction?  Hell, I’d settle for them heading within 180° of each other, just to keep from having to pivot to find them all!

fountain pen

This is hard because, well…  it’s hard.  And the first rule of Tautology club is the first rule of Tautology club.  As a writing column I give my students once noted, “every time you sit down to write you get another chance to demonstrate how perceptive you aren’t.”  Even with a bank of perfect ideas (and my bank is imperfect, I assure you) it still takes a lot of effort to block out everything else and just write.  I don’t know how guys like Matt Forbeck and Jonathan Pembroke do it.  It astounds me how productive they can be given everything that pulls at them.  There are few people in the world I admire more than the professional writer, even if a good many of the ones I know actually have day jobs, or pensions.  And given that I’m (a) older than Pembroke, and (b) he’s pulling in a pension, I’m pretty sure he’s got a sweeter deal than I do.  The bastard.1

Part of the problem, of course, comes from the need to set aside dedicated time to work.  In just the opening paragraphs of this column, for instance, I’ve restarted a video for my daughter twice, helped plunge a shower (long story) and fixed 2 lunches, not to mention the sideways glares I get from the family for “goofing off” when there’s more to be done around the house (like the Christmas tree I mentioned last week that’s still not down).  Finding an hour is easy when you’re stuck at the car dealership getting the brakes worked on.  Finding an hour when everyone’s home and iced in from school is not.

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01/23/16

Shogun 2 – Fall of the Samurai

Gus takes on Fall of the Samurai for your weekend entertainment ~

Lloyd Sabin, 22 January 2016

I love you, Shogun 2: Fall of the Samurai. You are truly the pinnacle of the Total War series as far as AI wilyness, graphical atmosphere, and all around immersion. But oh…how I hate you as well, never having been able to beat you. I am the closest I have ever been right now, with the help of the Radious mod, which adds a giant rice bowl’s worth of features, including a tamping down of the dreaded Realm Divide event that occurs in the late game pitting whatever clans are left against the player.  I presently hold 10 of the required 14 domains needed for a Short Campaign victory by 1882…the year of my last turn is 1870. I am moving on Kyoto, with plans to take Musashi as my final move. The last time I played, a few years ago, I actually ran out of time while besieging Musashi and lost the campaign by samurai’s hair. Not again…not again!

S2-FOTS-1

Early in my campaign, capturing the island prefecture of Tsushima was one of my first victories. Looting was not yet on my mind – I didn’t want all of Japan turning against me so early in the campaign due to bad battlefield behavior.

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