A Useful Spreadsheet for Fear Itself 1st edition

While waiting for my friends to be available for us to play a game of Fear Itself  I ended up making a couple of resources for the game. One of the things I made was a spreadsheet that had all the general and investigation abilities listed and add up the totals for each player. I mostly made it out of boredom but it ended up being useful when one of my friends got mixed up on the math. It can also be useful to keep track of what abilities your players have as well. It's simple but useful, anyway the Spreadsheet is a Google doc that can be found here. To use it you have to go to file, download as, and then choose one of the download options. If anyone knows if there is a way for me to publish the spreadsheet and let people use it on the web let me know.


UPDATE (November 3, 2016): So Fear Itself came out with a 2nd Edition that updated the abilities list (added new ones and got rid of others). And well I don't think I'll update this for the 2nd edition, mostly because I'm lazy and also because they changed the math on the fleeing ability that I'm not sure how to incorporate it in a spreadsheet.

Top 3 Cooperative Games

John and I continue our top 3 lists with cooperative games we have played. While listening to this while editing I'm surprised we didn't put Resident Evil 5 on the list or even an honorable mention. Oh well I'll still stand by the list we made up. anyway enjoy the video and if you have your own list or stories for cooperative games we would love to read them.

Top 3 Competitive Multiplayer Shooters

John and I sat down and recorded a couple of top 3 lists. We came up with the topics off the top of our heads, which to me is more fun than having to spend hours looking back at our personal gaming history and instead we thought up our most memorable games. The first video is our top 3 Competitive Multiplayer Shooters, and the next list will be our top 3 cooperative games.

Our Top 3 Games of All Time

About a Year ago I got Steve, Arthel and I to sit down and record our favorite games of all time. I finally got around to editing it and making a video out of it (nothing fancy just a slideshow of box art). While its been a year I can say my list has not changed, I can't say if Steve's and Arthel's lists are still the same but if they really want to, they can update this post with a more recent opinion.

For those that don't have the time to watch the video our top 3 games are:

Steve:
3. God of War 3 (PS3)
2. Super Smash Bros. Melee (GameCube)
1. Uncharted (The Series) (PS3)

Arthel:

3. Demon's Souls (PS3)
2. Pokemon Gold (Game Boy Color)
1. Uncharted 2 (PS3)

James:

3. Dwarf Fortress (PC)
2. Harvest Moon Back to Nature (PS1)
1. Tales of Symphonia (GameCube)

Actual Play #1 Our First Time and Boy Does It Show

My friends, John and Arthel, and I finally got the chance to do something that I've been wanting to do for months,we played a tabletop role playing game. The first game I chose to play, was Fear Itself. Even though I'm not into the horror genre, the game is fairly rules-light; I figure it would be a good starting game. The story we ran was something that I came up with.

(Sorry for the inconvenience of my dogs in the background)



Before I begin to discuss some of the flaws in the video, I just want to go on the record that I was nervous. It's a little intimidating using my concept for the recording.

Things I could improve upon as Game Master:

- Prior to recording, I asked how my friends wanted to approach the house (i.e: Were their characters teenagers in town breaking in? Ghost hunters? etc.). They decided that they wanted to be college kids and broke down in front of the house to investigate. Now, the confusion between what I thought they wanted and what they had meant, was in stead of breaking down in front of the house, they wanted to break down in the town and then learned about the house from the locals. Obviously, a lack of communication on my part. Granted, even if they had wanted to start at the house, I should have made them stop in town just to create a back story (college students on a road trip learning about the house).
-I railroaded them. Honestly, this was simply due to the fact I'm an inexperience GM and the setting of the story.
-I should have made a lot more stability checks.

Things I accomplished as Game Master:

-I created a fun game and we agreed to play another game soon.

Next game will be Monsterhearts.

My Dwarf Fortress Story

The video below contains my Dwarf Fortress story. It's the story that I tell my friends when explaining why I play Dwarf Fortress and why they should give it a second glance.



If you're wondering what's up with the screenshots being a bit out of place, it's because I took enough screenshots to fill 5 minutes out of 8.5 and I didn't have any other ideas of shots to take without spending a couple hours with the game.


If you want to learn more about Dwarf Fortress check out it's website:
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/

and it's wiki:
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Main_Page

If your interested in playing or learning to play, check out the Lazy Newb Pack which comes with tilesets to make the game more graphic friendly and utilities to make Dwarf Fortress more user friendly. It helped me get into the game.
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=59026.0

Tactics Ogre Let Us Cling Together First Fifteen Minutes

I play Tactic Ogre Let Us Cling Together for fifteen Minutes.... I fail at talking, I take a quiz, I answer my cell phone, and I learned to walk. 


I also play the tutorial battle where everyone talks casually about items and how to walk, as they kill people... oh and I get to throw rocks at the enemy!