Last issue I mentioned that I'm now working at Sierra On-Line, and that I'd been playing a lot of Betrayal at Krondor (a computer fantasy role playing game based on Raymond Feist's Riftwar novels). Although the game was lots of fun, I wasn't just playing it for kicks— it was work. Y'see, I'm writing the sequel.
Actually, that's not entirely true— it's not really a sequel. Feist is working with another company now, so we won't be using any of the characters or settings from Betrayal at Krondor. Which makes the new game a follow-up, not a sequel. We're also doing it in Windows rather than DOS, so we're going to be writing it from scratch. But it will be heavily based on the game system created for BAK.
I find myself in the somewhat enviable position of being charged with the creation of an entirely new game world. Enviable, but daunting. I used to play D&D and Champions and like most role-players took a spin or two at running a game myself. I've done this kind of thing before. But it's not the same.
For one thing, that was a long time ago. To be honest, our standards were much lower then. The games were going to be played with friends, and just about any world would have sufficed for our real goal of just getting together to have a good time. But I'm not just B.S.ing with friends now— my world has to stand up to the scrutiny of thousands of players.
This world has to be incredibly detailed and planned out. When designing a paper-and-pencil RPG world, I could always kind of sketch out an area and make a note to myself like "small farming village here." If the players wanted to explore the village, I could wing it as we went and go with the flow. You can't do that with a computer game. If I want a village somewhere, it's got to be completely designed from the outset. How many buildings are there? How are they positioned relative to each other? What's in them? Who lives there? Do they have anything interesting to say? All of these questions have to be answered before the game ever begins. A computer game can't adlib, it can only be programmed to seem that way.
So I've been a major stress-puppy lately, and don't see much respite on the horizon. Before all this is through, I'll have created an entirely new game world, designed a few dozen different characters and scripted thousands of lines of dialogue, invented dozens of objects, places, and spells, and spent a depressing number of weekends at the office. I apologize in advance if The Game Report slips behind schedule along the way, but there's only so much time in a day, and most of my waking thoughts are spent on this game.
I've gotten to the point with Magic that I've got way too many cards to be able to use them effectively. Constructing a deck has become a monumental undertaking. I don't even know what some of my cards do. I think it's definitely time to consider selling off everything and then just picking up a few new decks to play with. Of course, I've been saying this for months. I've picked up a bunch of Illuminati: New World Order cards in the interim. Despite the flaws in the game, I really enjoy it. The cards themselves are funny and of dynamite quality. I think I still prefer the original game, but the new collectible version is fun in its own right. However, I think I'll be swearing off collectible card games for a while. Enough is too much.
On a different note, there have been a rash of new science fiction shows cropping up on television lately. Unsurprisingly, not all of them are good.
By far the best of the lot is the latest peek into Gene Roddenberry's pet universe, Star Trek: Voyager. The folks at Paramount have learned a lot from their last two shots at this. By the end of the pilot episode I already cared more about the Voyager crew than I do about the folks on Deep Space Nine after three years. I'm disappointed with the speed with which they've assimilated the Maquis crew in with the Starfleet folk. There was potential for some real dramatic tension there, but they quickly swept that under the rug. Likewise, I'm not terribly thrilled with the two main Maquis crewmembers, Chakotay and Torres. Harry Kim is fantastic, though, and Paris is also well-handled. The holographic doctor has gotten all the best lines, and I like the development they've done with him in just a few episodes. Kes had the potential to be amazingly annoying, but much to my delight they've dodged the Wesley bullet. And Neelix is just a hoot.
I'm still undecided about Kate Mulgrew's Janeway. Her performance seems too forced and calculated. She's working too hard at it. In time, hopefully she'll grow into the role and relax.
They've also handled the Gilligan's Island Syndrome well. We know they're not going to get home (despite the incredibly annoying teaser ads which apparently think viewers have the intelligence of a dead eggplant— which, I'll grant you, isn't far off for some Trek fans)— the series has only begun. We know that whenever they find something which might take them home, something will go wrong. But to their credit, the two episodes so far involving this false promise have put a different spin on things. In particular, the episode with the wormhole which turns out to go through time as well as space was well-written and acted. Janeway's passionate appeal to the Romulan from her quarters was her best scene to date.
The rest of the episodes have focused on other matters, some related to ship's predicament and others merely interludes along their journey. Personally, I think the whole journey home bit will become tedious before long, and I hope the producers decide to bring the ship home after three or four seasons and then retool the show along the lines of The Next Generation with the Voyager galavanting throughout the known galaxy.
Lower on the quality scale but still entertaining is Sliders, the latest from Fox. Four people, including a college student who happens to be a physics genius and his physics professor (John Rhys Davies), go "sliding" from one alternate reality to another— with no control over what reality they land in. The genius had rigged up a timer to return them to their own reality after 5 hours, but a tornado forced them to change the timer and slide ahead of schedule. Apparently, this was a bad thing. For some reason they don't explain, this slid them to yet another reality rather than zapping them back home. Now, apparently unable to control the length of time they spend in each reality, they slide from one to the next hoping each time that the next leap— er, slide— will be the slide home. Sound familiar?
There's that pesky "journey home" chestnut again. The premise is hastily slapped together and doesn't really hold up under scrutiny. For instance, I don't quite get the deal with the timer, which apparently also doubles as a remote control for the gizmo which is creating the doorways between realities. Amazingly, it functions even though the gizmo is in another reality. Einstein would have a field day with that one.
Of course, I'll watch just about anything with John Rhys Davies, and the genius is rather sympathetic too. We've already seen a Soviet-conquered United States. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before we see an Earth where the South won the Civil War, where JFK wasn't assassinated, and where Spam is a delicacy.
Sure, it plays an awful lot like Quantum Leap, but it is an awfully fun premise to play with. I'm sure the writers are well aware of the cliches in this genre. Whether or not they avoid them is another question entirely, but I look forward to seeing what they come up with.
Third, and at the bottom of the barrel, is another entry from Fox: V.R.5. I forced myself to watch the entire pilot, but I have no intention of torturing myself a second time. Sliders' premise may be flaky, but I it was set up reasonably and I'm willing to buy into it. But check this out. Lori Singer plays a woman whose dad, a computer whiz in the early days of computing, died under mysterious circumstances along with her twin sister in a car accident from which she herself escaped. Ok, no problem. She's now a phone company pole worker and hacker, and has built her own virtual reality gear from parts scrounged from the job. Okaaayyy... One day she accidentally puts her voice telephone handset into her accoustic coupler (accoustic coupler? Does anyone still use those? It must scream along at a blazing 300 baud, tops) and POOF! instead of her normal VR she's suddenly in "real" VR, along with the person on the other end of the phone. What goes on in this VR is apparently shaped by the thoughts of the participants, and to leave the experience Singer has to find the VR equivalent of an Escape key, which of course looks different each time. I'm not making this up. She remembers everything afterward, but the other person only retains a vague feeling. Convenient.
But here's the kicker, the nadir of SF TV writing. When Singer comes out of this experience for the first time, does she act surprised? Does she wonder what happened, how it could be possible, what the hell's going on? Of course not. Her reaction: "Virtual reality is real. I couldn't control it but I think with practice..." Completely nonplussed. As if a psychic data connection via computer over a voice phone line is an everyday occurance. Hell-oo! Reality check, please. If that happened to me, I'd be freaking out. I'd be calling everyone I know and telling them to check it out and make sure I wasn't nuts.
And I won't even talk about the conspiracy which wants Singer's VR tech for their own mysterious purposes— a conspiracy which has something to do with her father's death. It's all just too much to swallow. I gag instead. Virtual reality may be real, but V.R.5 is just real bad.