Saturday was kind of my D&D day. We fronted up at 9am for Tracy Hickman’s Killer Breakfast, which has to be one of the best large-group RPG events ever. Tracy and Laura Hickman got the whole audience to get on stage, six at a time, to play first-level characters and survive as long as possible. The only real rules were be creative, funny and entertaining while collectively improvising with Tracy Hickman.
First of all, my congratulations to the Gencon Oz team. They managed to bring a huge crowd (certainly larger than I could have predicted given their overall lack of advertising to the Sydney gaming community) on the first day. It got even bigger as the con went on.
Gencon Oz is now only three sleeps away (well, four if you’re like me and not starting until Friday). So far my experience has been less than stellar. It’s like they don’t actually want me to come. Nevertheless, I aim to go to Brisbane this weekend and have an awesome time.
Case in point is Yahtzee’s review of Mass Effect. Now, I loved that game enough to start playing it a second time, and when I get through Conan I will download the expansion and give that a shot.
That being said, Yahtzee gives it a pounding like nothing else. He levels some pretty good criticism regarding the stuff that Bioware carried over “for good or for ill” from KOTOR, and the way characters “will tell you their life story at the drop of a hat as if you have a documentary crew over your shoulder”.
Anyway, I thoroughly recommend the review series, and have added its RSS feed to my list of regular views.
I just ran into a Slashdot post pointing to Orson Scott Card’s commentary on J.K. Rowling’s attempt to ban an unauthorised encyclopaedia of the Harry Potter books.
I won’t summarise either of the articles; you’re capable of reading and evaluating them yourselves. However, it got me thinking about my general opposition to fanfic (and *shudders* slashfic), and how this case differs from that.