Continuing his explorations of the world of Dragast, Umang finds that discovering the tetrahedron of Dragast is only the first half of what he needs to do here. To finish, he has to visit a blacksmith who forges batteries from fire and steel, manipulates a puzzle composed entirely of red herrings, solves puzzles just to call an elevator and wonders why no one besides him has ever heard of handrails. Yes, another exciting adventure in Aura: Fate of the Ages
[Read More...]-
Let’s Play! – Aura: Fate of the Ages – Part 3
-
Welcome Aboard
Ian and I were working on the irrigation units on the north wall when we saw the trader pass overhead. Just the contrail of re-entry, but we knew it meant they would be landing soon. We left the pump half-disassembled and headed down and across the Gash. We knew the rest of the town would be heading for the pad as well. It would be several days before things returned to their routine so no one would be paying attention to the lower water pressure for a while. The lifts were already up so we had to take the Thousand Steps to the top of the south rim and by the time we finished the climb the trader had already settled onto the flat expanse of compacted dirt that served as our starport, though the only real way to distinguish it from the rest of the plain was the array of antenna and sensor domes surrounding it. Most of the population was already there, watching as the automs brought the scheduled cargoes out of the hold and carried them to the lifts that would lower them to the valley floor. Then came the market goods, the things that everyone had come to see and trade for. I watched the crowd as they moved among the tables the trader’s crew had put out. We mostly had items of glass to trade; when you live on a world of sand your manufacturing options are limited. The crew took what we had, carefully
[Read More...] -
The Secret World – All Faction Recruitments
This is a complete compilation of the recruitment and introductory cinematics for all three of the factions of The Secret World as of the final Beta weekend. The Templar, Illuminati and Dragon recruitments, how they introduce themselves, how they send you to the “Tokyo Flashback”, their weapons trainers, your meeting with their leaders where they send you on your first assignment to Solomon Island, your first arrival in Agartha, the Hollow Earth, and your welcome and first mission in Kingsmouth. Every introduction, all in one place. Enjoy.
[Read More...] -
The Secret World – It’s an Adventure!
The latest beta weekend for The Secret World has just ended and while I’m still quite excited for the game I’m starting to have some worries as well. Specifically, while the game is close to what I’ve been looking for I’m not sure that most people playing are looking for the same thing I am. The Secret World is a game based on exploration, investigation and discovery. Yes, there are combat missions. Yes, there are missions where you have to “go to location x and kill y of critter z”. But the main story missions require thought and investigation. Based on what I saw rolling past in the chat window, I’m not sure most players realize that. I easily saw hundreds of requests for “What is the solution to (some mission)?” It isn’t clear if the players in question had tried to solve it on their own and failed, but a number of them were rejecting hints and demanding the solution. They are trying to power through the content just to get their characters leveled up. They’re looking for end-game content. The problem is that in this game the game isn’t about the end-game. As the cliché says; it’s about the journey, not the destination. The beauty of the investigation missions is that the solutions to them aren’t in the game! You have to do real research yourself to solve them. While some players will welcome this challenge I think it is frustrating a far greater number. This isn’t an
[Read More...] -
After Action Report – Cthulhu: Now – Light of Darkness (Part 2)
The players move around a bit and see that the light is now moving away from them along the fence line. They take the opportunity to go back inside the building. The hallway is now empty and they continue on down it. They find another lab and quickly search it, finding nothing. The next door is locked. Surprsingly, no one has Locksmith and they can’t open it. They discuss breaking it down but someone thinks to check the receptionist’s desk in the lobby and find a set of keys in a drawer, one of which opens the door. Inside they find another body, another student identified by her id as Alicia Fowler. She has a box of candles and matches and a spiral notebook lies beside her. Most of the notebook contains lecture and lab notes but the last page shows the following. Dawson wants to “investigate the scene” and makes a Spot Hidden. He finds a waxy, scorched spot near the body which could have come from a candle burning down. The Keeper also points out that the storage room was locked from the inside. After asking about timing the players realize that the candle shouldn’t have burned completely down in the time since their cars stopped and figure things started going wrong at the facility much earlier. They decide to go see if they can find out what happened to Gabe. The southern part of the area is a relatively recently plowed field. Dawson and Neyland are able
[Read More...] -
Ruins
It was early afternoon when I got to the ruins. I still come here every now and then, though not as often as I used to. Not much point to it, really. But I still come here to think. To ask myself if there was anything else we could have done. That I could have done. I found the remains of a campfire in what had been the lobby. It bothered me somehow. The building had been consumed by fire all those years ago and there is nothing left for it to harm, but I still didn’t like seeing it there. Or maybe I was upset that someone else was in what I still thought of as my place. It didn’t matter. I scattered the ashes and kicked the half-burned branches out through what had once been the window. Gone now of course. We had been lucky, I suppose. Not many people got to do research even then. Few companies were willing to waste resources on something that didn’t immediately improve their bottom line and of course the taxpayers had gotten tired of the government funding anything that didn’t directly benefit them. Even for us there was pressure to create something. Anything. But the people in charge knew the importance of what we were doing. What we thought we were doing. So they gave us time. Had they known, I wonder if they would have killed the project themselves? It was an idea. An insane idea. An idea that broke
[Read More...] -
After Action Report – Cthulhu: Now – Light of Darkness (Part 1)
This was a group of players who (with one exception) had never played Call of Cthulhu before and in fact had only started role-playing in the past few months (Pathfinder, which had been run by the one experienced player). They had played Arkham Horror and so had at least a grasp of the general concept but that was it. With the one exception I don’t think any of them had even read Lovecraft. I had planned to run Crack’d and Crook’d Manse from Mansions of Madness but the group suddenly decided they wanted to run a modern-day campaign. Literally the only modern thing I had with me that the experienced player hadn’t played was a tournament scenario I had run a couple of years previously. I didn’t consider it to be a good introduction to the game but, despite being warned of that, they decided they wanted to go for it. And so, a playthru of… Light of Darkness A Scenario for Cthulhu: Now Introduction: It is late at night. A group of travellers are proceeding north on I-95 from Jacksonville to Savannah and passing through southern Georgia when they encounter a detour. Road construction. They need to detour along a back road for about 25 miles before it intersects the Interstate again. They quickly leave the Interstate behind and find themselves driving through dark, empty countryside; alternating pine forests and stretches of swamp (the Okefenokee swamp occupies this part of Georgia) with an occasional abandoned and overgrown farmhouse. The
[Read More...] -
Let’s Play! – Aura: Fate of the Ages – Part 2
Continuing the walkthrough for the game Aura: Fate of the Ages, Umang arrives in the world of Dragast and meets a guy too busy working a puzzle to tell him more than to shut the door. And the puzzle is only missing two pieces. He then meets the creator of Dragast who apparently knows everything that isn’t a secret but won’t tell him anything useful, forcing Umang to figure out everything on his own. Along the way he finds the worlds most versatile statue, thinks nothing of letting a random guy out of jail, maybe summons Cthulhu by solving the same puzzle twice, complains about tedious backtracking and finally finds the tetrahedron of Dragast, only to find he has half the world yet to explore. Just another day of adventuring.
[Read More...] -
Welcome to The Secret World
For the past few weekends I’ve been playing in the open beta for The Secret World, a new MMO coming out in a month or so from FunCom. The Secret World is different from most MMOs we have seen so far. It isn’t set in some fantasy world or on a distant planet. Instead, it is set here on Earth in the present day. But this is not the Earth most of us are familiar with. This is a world of secrets that have been hidden from the general population. A world of vast conspiracies and creeping evil. A secret world in which all of the myths and legends, all of the stories and tales you hear, everything is true. You become involved in The Secret World when you swallow a bee. No, really. The bees are representations of Gaia and they are returning because “dark days are coming”. They are finding individuals that they can imbue with “anima”, magical energy, that those individuals can then use to fight the growing darkness. You are one of the individuals that have been chosen. But you have no sooner become aware of and begun to control your newfound powers when you are contacted by one of the three organizations which secretly rule the world. The Templar, The Illuminati and The Dragon have been struggling behind the scenes for control of the Earth for centuries but now the “Filth”, an evil from beyond the world as we know it, has broken through. The
[Read More...] -
The Dreaming City
I stood at the tall windows and looked out upon the towers of glass and steel that made up the city. It was night and the city seemed deserted, the broad streets empty and the pavilions silent and only the occasional lighted window showed where the few inhabitants had gone for the evening. I felt her hand on my shoulder and turned to find her waiting. We embraced without words, though we had been apart for so long, for words were not needed between us. We stood there in the room with the tall windows and the white walls and held each other. Later we continued to hold each other as we lay there in bed. I felt her soft breath and knew that she was asleep but I resisted, lying there in the near darkness. I knew that when I slept I would wander again and it would be long before I returned. So many of us had learned to wander and each night fewer of us returned and so soon the city would fall dark and none would return to look upon its towers of glass and steel. And so I lay there in the darkness of the room with the white walls and the tall windows from which I had been gone for so long and wondered when I would ever return.
[Read More...]