WBCOOP results from tournament 3 + 4

I was out of town and unable to play in the first two events – thus missing the Pot Limit Omaha tournament, which was a bummer. In event 3, I busted out early, but in event 4, after being down to about $250, I finished 55th of 1876, which got me a ticket to the Spring Championship of Online Poker – an entry worth $16.50.

Currently playing in the 8-Game event; I’m 339th of 1405 right now. Two more events after this one.

WBCOOP registration post

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! PokerStars.com is the home of Free Online Poker Games, bloggers can play for free in the exclusive WBCOOP tournament, register here to play: WBCOOP

Registration code: 074486

WBCOOP!

Turns out they are just a little late.  It’s on!  More info soon on the World Blogger Championship of Online Poker.

P.S. Thanks again (uh … I think) to Wil Wheaton for getting me into online poker in the first place.

Alien screenwriter O’Bannon dead at 63

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-dan-obannon19-2009dec19,0,4358785.story

Picking apart “game balance”

I’ve said it before on this blog: I’m not a huge fan of “game balance” as the holy grail of RPG design.  I think designers should pay attention to game balance; but I don’t think that every single thing about a roleplaying game should be balanced within an inch of its life, because I think it leads to boring games.

Here’s an interesting article that talks about some of the reasons I think this is true: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4219/rethinking_the_trinity_of_mmo_.php

Another way to think about how too much attention to game balance is that it makes a roleplaying game too much like a board game and not enough like a real world.

MMORPG thieves

http://www.sophos.com/blogs/gc/g/2009/11/30/man-arrested-robbing-runescape-virtual-characters/

I know of some kids in my library system who at least attempt to do this kind of thing.  I’m surprised, actually, that this is the first time an arrest has been made (at least according to this blogger).

WBCOOP?

Haven’t heard any buzz yet this year about the World Bloggers’ Championship of Online Poker at Pokerstars.  Hope it’s not a victim of the recession …

Google Wave

I’ve been looking at some of the video Google made for its product called Wave. It’s a communication/collaboration tool that works in real time.  I think it will have some interesting implications for gaming. I foresee transferring my online Traveller game to it at some point.  It could also be an interesting thing to figure out how to use in a library setting – both for gaming and non-gaming applications.

My friend who works for Google has sent me an invitation, but he says they’re backed up, so it hasn’t arrived yet.  If you go to the Google Wave page, there’s also a way there to request access to it, but I’m not sure if or how that’s different from being invited.

If anyone has seen it already, I’d be interested in how you think it will work for various games.

If I cared about stats …

… I would be perplexed by the occasional stats spike I get.  Yesterday there was a spike of about 500% of what I usually get.  Of course, what I usually get is “not much”, so 500% of that is also not much.

Old school gaming

Someone recommended the quick start rules for Swords and Wizardry, and I read those, and then looked at their site to see the full rules – which are available for free in PDF format at http://www.swordsandwizardry.com/?page_id=4.  The idea is that they’re essentially reissuing the original D&D rules (with a few edits and some reorganization so it makes a bit more sense).  So now I’m off to read the full rules.

What’s attractive to me about this idea is that clearly, D&D has evolved over the 35 years since its initial release.  The opportunity that’s being presented is to take the original and “re-evolve” it, with someone else making the decisions – you, or your gaming group, or a bunch of interested teens at your library, or whatever.  In a sense, that’s what we did back then when we were playing it the first time around: we made changes that we thought would make the game better.  We introduced additions to the rules or the setting or the way we thought about the game.  In a sense, it’s now possible to do it all again.

Could be an interesting starting point for next year’s Ian’s Awesome RPG …