Pretty much

I am just a hardcore D&D nerd, and the Dark Alliance games crap all over everything we D&D nerds hold dear. If you go to any D&D forum, like sorcerers.net for example, you will see tons and tons of nasty posts about the Dark Alliance series.

Dark Alliance raped our childhoods just like the Star Wars prequels did with Jar Jar and midichlorians and all that crap.

I get this. I'm a pretty avid board gamer and play a ton of Eurogames so it is aggravating when someone asks about standard American fare which is on a completely different level.

However, it is about introduction. Taking a complete non-gamer wife and going through simplified versions of role playing things and the like i was able to introduce her to things like D&D (second edition though - never got into the newer stuff), various Eurogames etc. and even convinced her to go to Origins one year and we may hit up PAX East this year.

So to me, many of those things are just gateway games. Tearing into them like you see on the die hard forums are what keep hobbies like that niche hobbies. If broad acceptance and more players are wanted then the simplified things shouldn't be denigrated. It is kind of why it is aggravating when people go on and on about the Wii being bad for gaming... My parents in their 50s own a Wii and play it regularly. They have never played any other gaming systems. That is a good thing for my hobby.

Kind of like D&D Lite games are good for D&D. It lets folks know it isn't devil worshiping like they thought in the 70s and 80s.

Well... just to chime in. Call of Duty WaW and Call of Duty 3 aren't real Call of Duty games. It's a shame when I see them all lumped together.

Guitar Hero III and up are not real Guitar Hero games, either.

Simplifying the product for a more mainstream audience is a double-edged sword. While you are bringing in new players, you are at the same time alienating the old players who want a more hardcore experience. That was kind of the whole debacle over Fallout 3 as well with how it was being simplified as "Oblivion with guns" which a lot of the more hardcore players hated.

I haven't played Dragon Age yet, but from the reviews I have read it sounds like it has implemented a good idea to please both hardcore and casual fans. The reviews make it sound like the PC version is very different from the console version in that the PC version is more tactical for the hardcore audience and the the console version is more focused on hack-n-slash for the casual audience.


Today's fad is that Harry Potter is corrupting the youth by teaching them witchcraft. One of my co-workers is very religious and every time a new Harry Potter book or movie is released, he has to drone on and on about the evils of it.

They are often two separate audiences and you are correct. I never played 3rd edition D&D because the changes from 2nd edition seemed like gross simplifications. Then i suddenly had more folks asking about our gaming group because it was easier to understand and had less complicated charts. Several of those guys became total dice heads and in some of our more complex adventures... but we all also enjoyed the occasional straight up dungeon crawl.

All that being said, i think an American RPG audience wants more action. I know JRPGs irritate me to no end because of the endless cut scenes and story seemingly getting in the way of actual game. Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire though were a perfect balance. I'm just a gaijin like that.

You would be surprised though. D&D still has some of that stereotype among a slightly older crowd. I sponsor a board game club at a school and had students approach me about using the after school club time to play D&D. I had to do a good bit of negotiating with multiple people to explain how it would be a perfectly fine game for the kids to play at the club (this is a high school club). I heard concerns that i hadn't heard since the mid 80s.

Eventually i decided that the hassle wasn't worth it and to date we have had no role playing at my club - which does in fact bum me out a good bit.

D&D talk? Bring back the sports discussion.

So I got in on the Amazon deal with the 360 yesterday and one of my friends wants to buy my Elite without the hard drive. It’s a couple years old and still has a year left on the extended warranty. What’s a fair price?

Is knowing the statistics of Michael Jordan any less nerdy than knowing the statistics of Drizzt Do'Urden?


I was afraid of 3e too at first, but it really isn't that bad at all. It does simplify some things, but not really as much as I expected. Some of the older edition features, like THAC0 for instance, really did need to be simplified. THAC0 was confusing as hell. I can't tell you the number of times I had to explain to a new player why his longsword+1 decreased his THAC0 instead of increasing it like the "plus" sign would seem to indicate. The best thing about 3e is that it allows for more individualized character builds through the use of feats, skills, and a much more diverse multiclassing system. In the older editions, the only individualization you likely had was through whatever equipment you had.

On the other hand, the new 4e does look like it simplifies things too much. I haven't actually read much about it, but a lot of people have described it as a WoW clone. I haven't really read anything positive about 4e at all.

Yes. For example, this is Michael Jordan with his girlfriend.



And this is the World D&D champion, who apparently has no girlfriend:

I'll give you being Michael Jordan is less nerdy. Knowing his stats.... not so much.

<object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/LD6ws2TBOcs&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/LD6ws2TBOcs&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object>

Fun with Halo 3 and Forge. The ending is awesome.

the beginning of that video almost made me hurl.

Endure on ODST is mine. Got it on the first try, thankfully.

Deal of the Week:

Saints Row 2: Ultor Exposed, 560 (53% off), 162MB

There's no such thing as a "World D&D Champion" -- it's not a competitive game.

I just fell into a "Nerd Trap", didn't I?

BINGO! Suffer -3pts Cha. saving throw vs Forum

Okay, you got me. He's the D&D Minis World Champion, according to this article

Wake me up when you are talking about DDs.

I also got an Arcade from Walmart.com and to test drive my new setup I moved my Elite 360 to the bedroom, where the Arcade is going to be. I'm only using one HDMI cable directly to the TV, so everything worked flawless.

My concern, because of limited space I have to put in a vertical position, and it seems to vibrate too much in that position, and that's just in the dashboard. Is that normal?
I played FIFA 10, and it seems the vibration stopped or was less noticeable. I was playing from the hard drive, of course.

Is the Xbox 360 more noisy/vibrates more when in the vertical position?

So I was "cleaning" my hard drive content, not really needed I still had 19 GB free (120 GB HD), but I was bored or so. So I went to Gears of War 2 and decided to delete the game from the hard drive, except that I didn't went into the folder game first I deleted the game only, I deleted the whole folder! That means all game saves, I had 2, DLC, etc. were deleted. I know that I can redownload all the DLC so I guess I'm only worried about my game saves. Or, did I lose something else?
I guess not but, is there any way to get back the lost data?

Wow, that's pretty awful. That sort of thing really shouldn't happen. Call 800 4MY XBOX and tell them, though I doubt there's anything that can be done.

And this is why I'm all paranoid and hardly ever delete anything off my HD. (Which is why I have tons of wasted space on my HD. )

Can you restate this? I'm not exactly sure what happened, and I don't want to do the same thing myself!

When you're looking at your list of games on that particular storage device, you can delete the whole group/folder or you can select (A) it and manage the individual files in that group. He did the former.

If you install a game to the hard drive, and then later want to delete the game but keep your saved games, don't delete the whole game folder. Instead, go into the game folder and delete only the game.