Nostalgia Gaming

Back in the late 90’s, I regularly met with a gaming group and played Torg.   

Torg was a RPG from West End Games.  (Which sadly is no longer in business.) 

Now, I fondly remember the campaign we were on went on for about a year, and we shared many laughs and had a lot of fun.  It was my first introduction to the RPG.  Perhaps that is why I have a special place in my heart for it.

I will explain the setting as it was explained to me, and got me hooked.  Imagine our earth, divided into different “realities”.  For example, the UK is a fantasy setting, The middle east is like a pulp era Indiana Jones setting, Japan is a modern/near future setting.  India is like a Victorian Horror setting.  France is a cyberpunk setting, and North America is a mad max/prehistoric setting.  Each setting is “ruled over” by a “High Lord” and each of the High Lords have their own schemes, and are vying to expand their realms to take over all of earth with their own reality.  Sometimes they ally, most of the time, they are pit against each other.   Sound like fun?  Well, it gets better; you can have a character from any setting!  So in your group of heroes you can have a wizard, a dashing “Shadow” type character, a cyborg, a ninja,  and a half dinosaur- half man character.  The possibilities are endless!

And speaking of possibilities, they are actually a game mechanic.  Characters can manipulate reality.  (The bad guys can do this too if they are powerful)  Think of possibilities like money, you have 3 you can “spend” per chapter, they can be spent to re-roll a dice roll, improve stats, or to reduce damage.  After every chapter, the GM can decide to give one or more possibilities based on performance.  (Particularly good moves, or character actions, or roleplaying.) 

Not only did the system utilize “Possiblities”, it had a unique card based system as well. 

(From the Wikipedia entry on Torg)

In addition, Torg used an unusual card based system to augment gameplay. A hand of cards were dealt to each player at the beginning of the game. The rest were stacked in front of the game master. Cards could be used by both players and game masters to influence play. Whenever a combat encounter began the game master would flip over a card which would dictate certain advantages and disadvantages for the players and the NPCs. Players could also use cards to give themselves advantages or even plotlines which could result in extra points.

But wait there’s more…

The system used a d20 system

A player rolls a d20 and consults a small table (printed on the character sheet) to determine the bonus number.  The bonus number (which can be negative) is then added to the appropriate skill or attribute.  This value is then compared to a difficulty number to determine success.  Some skills or actions need a level of success to be determined, in which case the amount the value exceeds the difficulty number by is used to determine the level of success (the GM has a table he consults).  Characters can use skills that they don't actually have (you can shoot a gun even if you've never done it before) but their chances of success are lower.  Some or the more difficult skills (like Air Vehicles) can only be used by characters with adds in the skill. 

A nice feature of the system is that characters can reroll the die and add to their previous roll in certain situations.  Characters using a skill that they have can reroll and add if they roll a 10, a 20, or spend a "Possibility" on the die roll.

Here is a good website dedicated to Torg.

I wish I could get a group together and play…

Reliving my Youth - The 80's part 1

For the next few weeks, I am going to take you back to the wonderful 80's.  The time of big hair, wood paneling, and techno-pop rock. 

There seems to be a resurgence of 80's remakes and such lately. Hollywood hasn't had an original idea in decades. And the 80's remakes are generally worse and ruin my memories of the subject matter.  Although there are some exceptions to this.  The first Transformers movie was cool, GI Joe was awful.  I would love to see a M.A.S.K. live action movie if it was done well.  (Hoping a Care Bears or Hong Kong Fooey live action/CG project never sees the light of day.)

Well thanks to the power of the Internet I can relive my youth. Saturday mornings watching cartoons can be accomplished through the web. Classics like the Littles, Rubik the Amazing Cube, or Saturday morning Supercade or an episode of the old Pac-Man cartoon.

Or weekday afternoons watching M.A.S.K or G.I. Joe. You can even see some of the many commercials from that era.

This is especially fun to do while eating a bowl of Lucky Charms or another "kid" cereal. And once your breakfast is over, and the cartoons are done, waste some time playing your Atari 2600 just use the pull down menu at the bottom, and play a ton of your old favorites!

Feel like a night out at the movies? Then you can watch such films as Back to the Future, and more at http://www.alluc.org/

Ah if we could only go back to that time. When Regan economics made the gummi bears and money flow like water...

Next week we will take a closer look at the weekday cartoons. 

What's in a name?

I used to eat Ding Dongs when I was a kid and a while back I picked up some of these yummy treats, and they are not how I remembered them.  There is overall less creamy goodness inside, and they seem smaller.  Oh well, they were still somewhat tasty, but not quite the same.

Worse yet, the name changed lots of times from when I was younger…but, to this day, I am not sure why all the name changes.

For example we have...

and

Note that they still have the King mascot…

I used to love the foil wrapping on these things…I remember it being thinner than dollar store toilet paper…

If you lived outside of the mid-west US, you probably had these instead of the King Dons.  (Also known as Big Cheifs)

 

And just for those who are completely lost, look it up…

Anyway, I took some to work, and opened one up for a championship breakfast.  And after taking the “not-foil” wrapping off, I noticed something…my yummy treat was frowning at me!  Here for everyone to see, is the offending cake…

I thought it was a fluke, and so I ate it without much compunction .  But, began to wonder a few things. 1.) That was kinda small, and I am still hungry. And 2.) If I opened another one, would it frown at me as well?  Short answer…yes!

Out of the 12 pastries in the box, only 2 were not frowning.  You would think that they would have accepted their fate within someone’s belly…making others happy.  But, no, they had to go and try to ruin a nostalgia fun filled experience…well I ate them anyways, take that you cakes!