05.10.2012 - Terrence Marks:
What have I been up to lately? Among other things, playing Dungeons of Dredmor. It's a Roguelike I got from a Humble Indie Bundle a little while back. Now, the humble bundles are a thing where they've got five or so games. You decide how much you want to pay for them, and what portion of that amount should go to charity.
Roguelikes are some of the earliest computer games. They're a form of old-school High Geek that I'd heard about for the longest time but never played. You are an adventurer in a randomly-generated dungeon. You need to get to the lowest level and kill the boss. It's turn-based. You level up. You have attributes and hit points and an inventory. They've still got a very enthusiastic following that made them sound appealing except, well, they look like this.

So I never figured I'd be able to read the glyphs. I have no idea what's actually going on in the screen there. The games are complex and full of easter eggs, which is very old-school High Geek. They're also unforgiving with a very steep learning curve, which is also very old-school High Geek. So I always wanted to play it and be one of the cool geeks, but not enough to actually devote the time to figure it out.
So I was pleasantly surprised by Dungeons of Dredmor. It's got graphics. It's got random dungeons full of random stuff that may or may not prove helpful. You can see screenshots here. Note the character sheet with six primary attributes and eighteen secondary attributes. It's complex. You'll get a lot further if you pay attention to them. But you can get away with taking a large sword and hitting things with it, at least on easy mode.

Anyhow, I've spent a while playing it and I've enjoyed it. If you missed the bundle last year, it's available for $5.

Who's your favorite vampire?

Alucard	204 (38%)
Barnabas Collins	33 (6%)
Bill Compton	6 (1%)
Blade	61 (11%)
Count Strahd	7 (1%)
Duckula	46 (9%)
Grandpa Munster	85 (16%)
Hsien-Ko	30 (6%)
Miyu	41 (8%)
Vampire Darkwing	27 (5%)

We'll catch up on the older polls as things go along, but for now, part two of the vampire poll. Alucard is the clear winner here. In Castlevania, at least, he's the half-vampire son of Dracula. That makes him a Dhampyr according to some traditions. I think that Alucard should be considerd an Eripmav, but that seems to be the minority opinion.
Bill Compton is from True Blood, which was adapted from the Sookie Stackhouse books - I figured that he was the symbol of the modern resurgence of vampires and would've done better than 1%. He even lost to Count Strahd, who was a major part of the Ravenloft setting in D&D.
Barnabas Collins was the lead in Dark Shadows, which I'm led to believe was a soap opera with monsters. They're making a movie based on it, and if it got fewer votes than Hsien-Ko (a hopping vampire, from Darkstalkers) that may be a bad sign.
In retrospect, Duckula and Vampire Darkwing may have split the comedic vampire duck vote.
Vampire Princess Miyu is a manga and anime. I've got a few of the comics but haven't gotten around to reading them. I've had them since, well, back when they printed manga in comic books instead of just collections.

Previous News |