Conference Call

GWJ Conference Call Episode 306

Sleeping Dogs, Darksiders 2, Rocksmith Bass, Persona 3, Live Report From Gencon!, Your Emails and more!

This week Shawn, Julian, Justin McElroy and Jonathan Downin talk about Sleeping Dogs and more! We also have a live segment from Gencon!

To contact us, email [email protected]! Send us your thoughts on the show, pressing issues you want to talk about or whatever else is on your mind. You can even send a 30 second audio question or comment (MP3 format please) if you're so inclined.

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Audible

Chairman_Mao's Timestamps
00.02.35 Sleeping Dogs
00.18.40 Julian's gameplay struggles
00.22.13 Rocksmith Bass DLC and an extended riff on Julian's future in music
00.29.28 Persona 3
00.36.22 Darksiders 2
00.38.33 This week's topic: Gencon
01.26.23 Your questions!

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Show credits

Music credits: 

Intro/Outtro Music - Ian Dorsch, Willowtree Audioworks

Crowdpleaser - SGX - http://sgxmusic.com/ - 38:03

St. Gabriel's Mask (Ecco 2 Sega CD) - SGX - http://sgxmusic.com/ - 1:25:59

Comments

Sleeping dogs. At last a game where they drive on the right side of the road. The left!

They drive on the right in China. That must be an interesting border crossing. I imagine it involving an impressive series of loops where you start on the left and end up on the right or visa versa.

IMAGE(http://img.thesun.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01540/stunt_main_1540817a.jpg)

I don't know, I was kind of disappointed with Rocksmith Bass:

Sounds like we forgot to introduce ourselves during the GenCon segment. You might recognize Allen "pyroman" Cook, Erik "wordsmythe" Hanson and me, but that dusky new voice that speaks about Spartacus is Chris "mistermagnus" Magnus.

Links to all the games we talked about, and more, arriving later this week.

Oops, you're right. Sorry about that everyone. It's almost like someone was rocking whiskey at 3 in the afternoon

You guys did great! Whoever you were.

Yay Persona! Got to the half-hour mark before I parked for work. Looking forward to hearing the GenCon segment, so that my seething envy can be stoked for another few days

Roll to HELL the South Pole

IMAGE(http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1211158_md.jpg)

Great show.

Don't know if this has been mentioned elsewhere on the forums, but I know Julian was saying on the Call that he couldn't get into Mann vs Machine.

You can use the server browser instead. Sort by map name, look for one of the three MvM maps and join a game with 4/6 or 5/6 people in it. If you join a server with 6 or more you'll just be a spectator.

Great show as always!

Yay, another person playing Persona 3 Portable on Vita. I'm working on it, and on a recent Playstation Blogcast, Jeff Rubenstein said he was now playing it as well. It's an epidemic.

And Netrunner... Netrunner was a game that I always wanted to play more of back in the day, but could never find anyone locally to play with.

Higgledy wrote:

Sleeping dogs. At last a game where they drive on the right side of the road. The left!

They drive on the right in China. That must be an interesting border crossing. I imagine it involving an impressive series of loops where you start on the left and end up on the right or visa versa.

I think they are building a bridge that basically swaps the lanes on the bridge as you cross.

http://engineeringworks.tamu.edu/201...

IMAGE(http://engineeringworks.tamu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/00-00-10-changing-lanes-in-china.jpg)

Tanglebones wins the internet today. That is all.

As far as Mann vs. Machine goes: the mode is free to play, and paying a dollar gets you into one map (~8 rounds) of the harder mode that gives you more item drops at the end. Paying doesn't have anything to do with jumping spots in the queue. There are separate queues for each type, but they both have servers run by Valve.

The way Persona 3 integrates story and mechanics isn't precisely deriving directly from story-telling and directly into game. As Julian correctly points out, that part of Persona derives from Dating Sims, of which there is a thriving market in Japan. The waning days of the PSP could, without much exaggeration, be characterized by describing it as "Dating Sim Machine," in Japan, at least. It's a legit and powerful genre of game in that market.

So Persona isn't melding story and game so much as it is melding game and game.

Elements of this can be found in Bioware's DA and ME series. You do get mechanical benefits from completing Legion's loyalty mission successfully.

As far as I can understand it, Sakura Wars, So Long My Love takes that to an even greater extreme, by doing away with XP altogether. "Leveling" in this SRPG/Dating Sim mashup is done exclusively through developing relationships and exploring narrative storylines.

Great job talking about GenCon, fellas. Really wish I could have been there to talk about some of that stuff but I was too busy being awesome at DnD 4e and wrangling together seating for 20 people in a bar full of bikers.

One game that got a lot of play this weekend in the hotel room, that you forgot to mention, was High Noon Saloon.

IMAGE(https://p.twimg.com/A0d7mQvCUAEN2SW.jpg)

It's by Slugfest Games, makers of Red Dragon Inn. In it you are having western movie style saloon brawls. When I demoed it on the show floor, I got knocked out the window with a bourbon bottle to the face. Upon returning to the bar, I grabbed a chair and broke it across my attacker's back and then proceeded to swing from the chandelier shooting at everyone. I bought it shortly after the demo.

All this takes place on a map that represents areas of the saloon (which is pretty small, sadly). For example, the balcony, the player piano, the bar, a turned over table, etc. Each area has cover which gives you different offensive and defensive bonuses. Combat is carried out by equipping melee weapon or gun cards on the character sheet in front you and attacking someone with those weapons. The attack can be enhanced with cards from your hand. In the same way a player can defend themselves with cards from their hands. Only $30. Definitely worth checking out.

As for Outbreak:Undead, I did end up checking it out after smythe's recommendation, though for the last several years I'd been ignoring any new zombie games, including this one. But I'm sold. Sounds awesome. $50 for a physical copy, $20 for a digital. Can't wait to run this. And I'd have to because I'd be a nightmare for any other GM.

One quick note about DnD. I went to Wizards' keynote. The coolest thing for me was that they will slowly be releasing previous editions digitally. Yay!

Every time I hear more about it, I feel good about my preorder of Mice & Mystics.

kazriko wrote:
Higgledy wrote:

They drive on the right in China. That must be an interesting border crossing. I imagine it involving an impressive series of loops where you start on the left and end up on the right or visa versa.

I think they are building a bridge that basically swaps the lanes on the bridge as you cross.

http://engineeringworks.tamu.edu/201...

IMAGE(http://engineeringworks.tamu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/00-00-10-changing-lanes-in-china.jpg)

That's almost as much fun as the loop system. I approve.

Tanglebones wrote:

Every time I hear more about it, I feel good about my preorder of Mice & Mystics.

I preordered too. Was part of an epicly long demo. Went through an entire chapter. Guy leading it even started wandering a bit since we knew what we were doing well enough as it went on. Demo fail. I had several demos where rather than give us a taste, we played way too long, sometimes even a whole game. I started leaving demos early because of that.

Great show! I always like it when J-Mac is on.

Sounds like Rabbit gets everything five bucks off. I got the Rocksmith DLC for $30, and the extra cable for $25.

Either that or I have no memory for the prices of things.

Lots of love for SlugFest and Red Dragon Inn on this podcast! This pleases me. I am pleased.

I made those engraved RDI boards for them, so I was pretty excited that the boards specifically got a mention on the podcast

BeriAlpha wrote:

Lots of love for SlugFest and Red Dragon Inn on this podcast! This pleases me. I am pleased.

I made those engraved RDI boards for them, so I was pretty excited that the boards specifically got a mention on the podcast :)

That's freaking awesome. Do you do like commissioned boards for games or something? I know a certain Hedgewizard who's addicted to game customization.

rabbit wrote:

That's freaking awesome. Do you do like commissioned boards for games or something? I know a certain Hedgewizard who's addicted to game customization.

Yep, I'm starting a business around it! My Kickstarter is ending Sunday: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...

I got started customizing when I was making some Twilight Imperium player aids at a local hackerspace, and it just advanced from there.

I've got a massive laser cutter on order which will help a lot - it could cut out 10 of those Red Dragon Inn boards in one shot, or an entire Crokinole board in a single pass.

Hedgewizard is also fortunate that I'm local Once I'm done fulfilling some of these Kickstarter orders, we should definitely collaborate on something.

Other than everyone having a Kickstarter this year, the other new thing that was really common was everyone taking credit cards on their smart phones or tablets. Last year only FFG had this from what I saw, but now everyone does and it's pretty great. Not something that's exclusive to GenCon, though. I went to a lot of street fests this summer and vendors there are using them this year too.

Certis wrote:

You guys did great! Whoever you were.

I'm "from the forums."

BeriAlpha wrote:

Lots of love for SlugFest and Red Dragon Inn on this podcast! This pleases me. I am pleased.

I made those engraved RDI boards for them, so I was pretty excited that the boards specifically got a mention on the podcast :)

If you notice me pausing during the recording, it's because I was frantically trying to pull up your name on my phone so that I could give you the plug.

Sorry for failing on that.

McChuck wrote:

Other than everyone having a Kickstarter this year, the other new thing that was really common was everyone taking credit cards on their smart phones or tablets. Last year only FFG had this from what I saw, but now everyone does and it's pretty great. Not something that's exclusive to GenCon, though. I went to a lot of street fests this summer and vendors there are using them this year too.

Next year it'll all be that Google QR-code generating payment thing.