Concrete Chaos
by James Abels, Friday, January 27th, 2012
On Memorial Day of last year, I started a new Dungeons & Dragons campaign, the WAGER campaign.1 I lead a band of newbie players (and a couple of experienced ones) to the world of Treskri. Now you may ask what or where is Treskri? Treskri is a world created in my imagination that I intend on sharing with my friends and, for today, with you. World building is one of my favorite creative endeavors. I can imagine a world as close or as different from Earth as I want with no restrictions. However, I want a world with a certain amount of geological consistency - rivers should flow from mountains down into oceans and islands chains should flow away from a continent. To achieve this level of consistency, I feel it's best to start from a macro level and zoom in.
by James Abels, Monday, October 31st, 2011
In an effort to spur some more posts, I've decided to do a monthly preview post. I'll write about a paragraph on upcoming games, gadgets, books, and other things.
Leadoff
The month of November will start off with a blaze of glory as Nathan Drake returns for another installment of Uncharted. It was the Uncharted series and Heavy Rain that spurred me into purchasing a PlayStation 31 and my expectations for the third game are sky high. Fortunately, I don't see many ways for this game to disappoint. All I'm asking for is great graphics, a good story, crazy gun fights and for Nate to get the girl.2 That's not much right?
by James Abels, Thursday, October 6th, 2011
I love Iceman. I love the X-Men too. I grew up watching the old X-Men cartoon on Saturday mornings. I'm not exactly sure why I latched onto Iceman but I've always loved the color blue and the aspects of air and water. His powers have always just seemed the coolest.1 Walls of ice, ice boarding, freezing people. Even my main City of Heroes character is very closely modeled after Iceman.
Another thing I love is video game RPGs.2 The stories tend to be engrossing, heroic epics. As the player, you mold the character and parts of the story as you see fit. Taking the protagonist from humble beginnings to savior of the world. Meeting interesting characters and aiding others along the way.
by James Abels, Tuesday, September 6th, 2011
At the moment I’m writing (well typing) this piece, I feel a bit like Kathy Nightengale from the Doctor Who episode “Blink”.1 This post (and to a greater extent this column), like that letter, proves difficult to write.
There is something about writing a first post - "The First Post" - that causes some pause. I always find it hard to write the "first" of anything. The dilemma becomes this: how do I write something now that will give people an idea of how I'll write in the future and demonstrate to the people of the future how I've grown since writing this? Perhaps the answer is to do neither, but I find that would be unsatisfying both to you and me.
And so with the best of my ability, I have determined to tackle this milestone by writing about this post that I am writing now.