Monthly Archives: September 2012

Cool Things: Dungeons of Dredmor

Posted by natechen on

Okay, it’s time for one of the traditional abrupt subject changes! Traditional for me, at least, this may be a new thing for you. Every Wednesday is Cool Thing Day! If you’re not familiar with the original cool thing, it looks kind of like this:

Isn’t it shiney?

That’s Largo from MegaTokyo, by the by, which probably counts as a cool thing all by itself. Unfortunately, no one’s ever figured out what said cool thing is supposed to do, so it’s not the best subject for this spot.

While I hope to share a lot of my favorite cool things with you over time, I also welcome recommendations for things you think are cool, and want to share as well. Just post them in a comment on Wednesdays as you think of them, or e-mail them once I have my contact info up on the About page.

Some cool things pop up and fade quickly, and some of them stick around for a long, long time. Compare the hula-hoop to Axis and Allies. Of course, some things want to be cool but really don’t have what it takes, like talk radio.

Fortunately, what I’ve got for you today is a cool thing that’s proven to have more than a little staying power.

Straight from the indie game developer Gaslamp Games comes Dungeons of Dredmor. DoD is what is known as a roguelike RPG. Like most RPGs, the player character in DoD grows and develops over time, developing skills and abilities at the direction of the player. Unlike most RPGs, the obstacles he can expect to face are randomly generated every time a new game is started.

Roguelikes have a long history, going back to Rogue, their progenitor. Dredmor observes some of the biggest conventions of the genre, including a large number of mysterious items that will never be fully explained to you, ambiguity in describing pretty much everything you find, and extremely difficult gameplay. Actually clearing the game, even on the easiest difficulty, is an accomplishment.

Another convention of the roguelike, “permadeath”, where the game deletes savefiles associated with a character when he or she dies, is optional in DoD.

Fortunately, the game has an excellent sense of humor that makes all the reading and work spent in each character worthwhile even if he gets gibbed on the first floor of  the dungeon. After all, what other RPG gives you the chance to learn Necronomiceconomics, study the mysteries of the Fungal Arts or arm yourself with the weapons of Communism? And let’s not even get started on the Emomancers…

Oh, and it has the Best Game Over screen ever.

DoD is a little over a year old and has three expansions to its name, but will still cost you around 10 dollars for the complete package, assuming you can’t grab it on sale, which happens from time to time but never when I’m buying.

Once you’ve gotten started you can introduce all of your friends to wonderful concepts like Diggles.

He Hates You So Much!

But that will come later. Don’t expect to have the time to do that for a few weeks. Or months. This game can eat time like no one’s business. Fortunately, even the time it takes to play can be customized to a degree.

To insure the game’s longevity, Gaslamp has equipped it to be fully mod ready, and many fan created add-ons exist. In fact, the second expansion pack, You Have To Name The Expansion Pack, consists of fan made work reskinned with Gaslamp art assests (which is a major reason why that DLC is free).

Whether you play games for entertainment, to scratch your problem solving itch or even just for the player communities, Gaslamp Games and Dungeons of Dredmor have a lot to offer you, and I highly encourage you to check it out.

Terminology

Posted by natechen on

Authors tend to eschew the terms “hero” and “villain” for a variety of reasons, some of them technical and some of them emotional. We tend to use the terms “protagonist” and “antagonist”. These terms give us a lot of flexibility. For example, a story can be told from the perspective of a person with no heroic, or even admirable characteristics, someone who we wouldn’t want to call a hero, and we don’t have to change our terminology.

On the other hand, these terms also embody a more realistic perspective. People are not all one thing or the other, and stories need to reflect that. This is what’s called verisimilitude by authors, and it’s so important that we try to include it in every aspect of the story, even in how we talk about that story.

At the same time, authors, just like everyone else, have a problem with antagonists. If you look at them closely, you tend to find that you have a lot in common with them. Sometimes, the antagonist is much more beloved than the protagonist of a story. And we don’t like to call them villains, because who wants to be a villain? Much better to go with terms lacking any kind of moral overtones. Then, there’s no need to loose any sleep over who you sympathize with more.

Now even protagonists who are meant to be heroic tend to have something wrong with them. Once again, that’s verisimilitude. People have issues. And since I am the protagonist I am most familiar with, as I’m sure you are the protagonist you are most familiar with, and I have issues, I expect the protagonists I read about to have issues as well. I suspect you are much the same.

In fact, if you look at it closely, you’ll find that protagonists and antagonists are very similar. They tend to be flawed people driven into conflict with one another by decisions they have made. And sometimes you’ll look at a story and find hero and villain very hard to parse.

There’s been a lot of ink spilled over that. We want people we can understand to be good people, so all kinds of things have been proposed. Morality has been dismissed, good and evil called constructs, and, of course, terms have been changed. The intelligentsia of the modern age have a thousand and one reasons for why you should stop worrying about good and evil and just get on with protagonizing* your own story.

But when we come face to face with life, when it beats us over the head until we’re ready to run screaming for the hills, or at least to mommy, when we’re tired of the grind and we just don’t want to get up any more and we know there has to be something more than this, we find the lie in that stance.

We realize that we don’t want to be protagonists. We want to be heroes.

Everyone wants to be a hero.

And everyone is corrupt. No matter how hard we try, we can’t seem to be the heroes we want to be. Are actions are tainted and leave us unsatisfied.

What does it take to get rid of the corruption? In olden times, flawed metal had to be melted down and the slag either burned away or siphoned off in order to be purified. Are we the same? Is it all the melting and pounding worth it?

There’s a heat wave coming. Are we ready?

 

 

*Protagonize (proh – tag – uh– nize)

verb

1 – To present your story in the most philosophically and existentially correct way possible, thus causing unimaginable agony to those reading it. Not recommended for parties.