I think I could be sued for putting this logo here. Really! Click the picture if you don't believe me.

Today’s post is going to be less composed of material cribbed from other sites and more of me directing you to visit John Vanderhoef’s excellent, excellent blog Press Start to Drink, where he approaches issues in the games industry from an academic perspective and generally presents extremely interesting reading material. 

The post I’m concerned with today is his entry Cease and Desist: Games Culture and Copyright Laws, in which Vanderhoef examines the rocky relationship that has developed between fans and developers in our age of game mods and vicious copyright law.  The post illustrates its point by examining three separate reactions game developers took to fans interacting with and expanding upon their products–one consisting of putting together a make-it-yourself toy of Marcus Fenix of Gear of War, one a game mod of SNES classic Chrono Trigger, and the last recreating the entirety of the original Half-Life with Valve’s publicly available Source engine. 

The only one of these not to end with the threat of a lawsuit looming over the offending fan was, perhaps predictably, the one involving Valve, the same company sensitive enough to its fans to make community-generated memes part of the gameplay in Team Fortress 2 (to say nothing of the phenomenon of Counter-Strike). The tragedy of the situation, as cited by Vanderhoef, is the fact that creativity is stifled in an environment where inventiveness has to be looked over by lawyers. 

There’s a reason why gamers get angry when they read stories about the actions of companies like Square-Enix and Epic Games–it seems like there’s a betrayal in arbitrarily limiting the enjoyment of the people who bought their product. My personal favorite game of all time is Baldur’s Gate II, which is approaching its ten-year birthday and is woefully out of date by modern standards.  It remains my favorite title because of the massive modding community behind it that remains active to this day. While the “vanilla” storyline is incredibly expansive and the choices offered within varied enough to encourage multiple playthroughs, the modding community only broadens the title’s horizons with new gameplay options, companions, and entire campaigns.

I *have* to take Minsc with me every time, though. Not because it's necessary, but because he's awesome.

Neverwinter Nights, meanwhile, took a route similar to Valve and was packaged with modding tools, effectively encouraging players to play with the game itself and increasing the title’s shelf life dramatically. The resulting examples of user-generated content was often hailed as being superior to the original campaign. Unsurprisingly, both of my examples are based off of Dungeons and Dragons, a series of products where users only ever need to buy the basic rulebooks and derive the rest of the fun by creating antagonists and adventures themselves. 

At the same time, it seems like these companies are only allowing their customers to play with their product on their own terms. Valve and BioWare explicitly released the tools used to tamper with their product to their audience. And as for Baldur’s Gate II, while it’s certainly possible that large mods existed during the height of the franchise’s popularity, most of what you can find out there today was created after Black Isle (the title’s developing company) was disbanded, likely making legal action tricky.

I saw this amazing mod video on youtube earlier today that lets you drive in the “Back to the Future” movie’s time machine.  It’s honestly just a pretty short video but it really showcases the detail that went into the mod.

I for one would love a full on back to the future game mod, story and all.

Newest version can be found by cicking here.

This is my first publically distrubuted mod, so please leave me comments and suggestions! Thanks!

– Required to Work –
OSR Poses

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=18437

– 1) What This Mod Does –
Translates the menus of the OSR poses mod to make it easier to find what you need.

I love OSR poses, but I found having to navigate menus full of numbers and Japanese words to be just confusing. It also make trying to find the same pose again a nightmare. As a result, I have renamed all the animations so they are easier to find and understand.

This mod does not change any of the animations or add new ones. It purely makes things a bit easier to find.

~ Important Note
I have renamed the animations based on my own interpretations. For some, I have directly translated the Japanese and there are others I have completely retitled with words that made more sense to me.

– 2) Known Issues –
None.

This mod should not be incompatible with any others. See the original OSR poses readme for any compatibility issues that might arise there.

– 3) Legal Stuff –
OSR Poses was completely made by Pizz and and Lera. I do not claim ownership to the original mod in any way, shape or form. All copyrights stay with the original authors.

Vill du kunna spela AoE III på hamachi ladda då ner denna fil =)
http://www.fileplanet.com/files/200000/206047.shtml

Grand Theft Auto:

Black male player: Wanted Meter starts at two stars. When the player is on foot, all white NPCs within eyeshot will cross to the opposite side of the street. Game can only be played on Very Hard difficulty level (does GTA have one?).

Asian female player: Wanted Meter starts at one star. When on foot, all white male NPCs within 20′ radius will run to player and proposition her (dialogue takes about half an hour to click through). Add one to Wanted Meter each time she rejects advances. If player has short hair, rejected NPCs will call her a lesbian.

Resident Evil series

Black male player: when other friendly characters are present, the game will not progress until the player is the first to open door/turn corner/walk down hallway/other situation which places him in mortal danger. also includes new Second Person Perspective camera, which remains fixed on white NPCs for duration of game. Game ends when player is killed, zombified, and killed again.

Latino male/female player: Game ends when player is killed, zombified, and killed again. (Game duration: five minutes.)

Asian female player: see Ada Wong.

Ico

Black male player: Player character has Afro instead of horns. Also, mysterious black shadows trying to separate Black male PC from white female NPC are now mysterious figures in white robes and hoods.

Madden 2010

Asian female player: No penalties are called on opposing team.

Phoenix Wright

Young white female player: Opposing attorney is Kanye West.

Okay, so i tried rolling up a weapon to see just how viable the tables were.  Here’s what I got:

Table A: 40, so it’s a slicing weapon.

Table B: 95, so it’s a powered weapon, by a chemical battery (it just keeps going and going…)

Table C: 02 – so the main skeleton of the thing is a plumbing pipe.  At this point, the whole thing seems buggered: a powered slicing weapon based on a pipe?  Don’t despair!  Just use your imagination.

Table D: 63 (+3 for the pipe) so 66 — it does a fair amount of damage: 3d6.

Table E: 67 — so it has a +1 to hit with its targeting chip (ok, maybe a little unbelievable with this weapon, but hey, we’re roleplaying here!)

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the “Slace”, swung like a mace with blades mounted on dual rotating heads to “weed wack” some wasteland scum!

— this fits very well with my general rpg philosophy that the randomness should support and inspire the GM, not dictate what he should do.

So, I haven’t found very much info in the MF book about NPC reactions to characters, so I’ve come up with this little table for rolling when the PCs talk to people in town, barter, etc.

The reaction rolls I make are:

• When the party first enters the town, I roll on a d6, total all their reaction adjustments and add the total to the roll (for instance, the party members have -2, +1, 0, -1, so I total them: -2 and add it to the dice roll: 4, so they end up with 2).
• When a pc interacts directly with a NPC, I have them roll a d6 and add their reaction adjustment.

Then I consult the table below:

I’ve tried to make each particular thing a possible story hook.  For example, being adored may not be all that it’s cooked up to be; maybe one of the women in the village claim her bastard child is theirs…etc.

Cover for Zombies Vs. Robots Vs. Amazons

Here’s a table set to create weapons from various junk for MF.  This is a beta version, so if anybody uses this please reply and let me know how well it works or share some modifications you think it should have. Roll Table A – D (and E if told to).

Table A: Type of Weapon
D100 Roll

Table B: Power Source
D100 Roll

Table C: Main Skeleton
D100 Roll

Table C: Effectiveness
D100 Roll

Table D: Goodies
D100 Roll – only roll on this table if prompted in Table B.