Software Review - Pool of Radiance (1988)

Title: Pool of Radiance
Rule Set: AD&D
Designers: Jim Ward, David Cook, Steve Winter, and Mike Breault
Year: 1989
Publisher: SSI
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars 

Pool of Radiance by SSI was the first AD&D released on computer. SSI brought to Macintoshh in 1989. It was a great and faithful rendition of AD&D as it was at the time and used the Forgotten Realms setting. 

Game play involves running a custom built party of 6 PCs. Your goal is to drive off the monsters inhabiting the ruins around the city of Phlan. It will take some hacking, slashing and puzzle solving to complete. One of the features of the overworld is open game play, meaning you aren't on the clock and can goof around for a good long time before actually tackling the problems at hand. 

To complete the game, you need to complete a couple of quests. On the way you'll knock out a few (ok, a lot) of creatures in combat. 

One of the oddities of this game is the mix of color and black and white graphics. The black and white graphics are great while most of color graphics are ugly. The layout is your standard 80s RPG layout: Picture in the upper left, info on the right and text/controls at the bottom. 

Clicking a character pulls up their character sheet. Characters are created on the fly as the user selects options. One word of caution, the rules are exactly as they are in AD&D with level limits for demi-humans in full effect. Having said that, this software is a great way to quickly create characters for AD&D. 

The combat window, a place you will be a lot is pushed perspective. Your party is arrayed in the order you selected previously. 

What order? You didn't pick an order? Me, too. You can have multiple saves, so you can go back and fix this if you saved. 

Melee attacks are initiated by selecting MOVE and moving into an enemy. Missile attacks have their own AIM button. One important thing to never... NEVER! do is allow the computer to automatically control your characters. The AI is not bright. And the screaming 25 mHz processor is about 9 million times faster than you can hit "stop" with the mouse. It's not fun. 

The other thing that should be avoided is moving away from melee. Every creature in contact with you gets a free attack. It is an efficient way to die. 

The system is so faithful to AD&D, there should be some sort of warning on things that can happen. AD&D doesn't have clear healing rules, so in Pools, the only way to heal is camp and burn healing spells. If you want more spells, you have to spend hours studying. Characters are generated by the computer but actually use the ruleset for allowable scores. 

One thing to keep in mind is encumbrance. It controls how many moves you get in combat. If you are loaded with coins, you will have problems. 

Another thing to keep in mind is death can be permanent. Once a character goes down, you can bandage them before they reach -10 HP. This allows you to get them back with only healing spells.

The instruction manual is in three ingenious documents, a manual which explains the rules of AD&D, a journal to be read and a translation wheel which is the copy protection. The wheel is used to start the game, you compare two symbols to translate them to English. This "code" is entered to activate the game at every start up. As annoying as this is, I've brought the wheel to my game table to create puzzles for the players to solve. 

After 33 years, the game shows it age but is an excellent reminder for what AD&D and Forgotten Realms is like. I give it 4 of 5 stars. 

Postscipt: The game does have a couple of cheats. Why else would you read a review of a 33 year old game? 

First, you can mug players for cash and prizes. The most basic iteration of this is to create 7 characters, one you keep and 6 you delete. Load the party and transfer off everything you want from the sacrificial characters, save then delete them. This covers money and items, so it is two cheats in one. 

The second cheat is a classic duplication of items, say a +5 vorpal sword. This one takes a little effort. Once you have a desirable item, save and quit the game. Duplucate the entire party folder. Twice! Name one folder "Delete" the second "Back Up". Move them elsewhere on your hard drive. DO NOT LEAVE THEM IN THE PARTY FOLDER! 

You will be working with the Delete folder and the regular party folder. Launch the game and move the desired item from one player to another. Save and quit. Now move that player from the "Delete" folder and overwrite the character file in the party folder. Relauch the game and two characters will have that item. You can repeat this over and over again. 

A third cheat is a variation on the first two. You actually have slots for up to 8 characters, the two extra are for NPCs. It's pretty rare to have one NPC and extremely rare to have two. You cannot simply move an item from an NPC to a PC. But if the NPC dies, you can take their stuff. In order to do this cheat, you have to ensure the NPC dies but also ensure that you have a save where they are still alive.

Once you have the NPC in the party, save the game twice under two different slots, A and B. Quit and reload slot B. Get the NPC killed in combat. You can attack them yourself in case you are having trouble killing them. They can run off, so make sure you attack with everything you have at the start of the round. Take their stuff at the end of combat and save as B. Now go back to the duplication trick and copy the item a couple of times. Reload the game under save A. The NPC will be back in your party alive while a PC has the duplicated item. 

The next cheat is the J training cheat. When you are in the training hall, if you press J, the selected character gains a level. And ages. You can serious destroy your fun with this cheat. This cheat is always active in the Mac version of the game. To use it under DOS, you need to launch the game as "start STING" or "st STING"

One final cheat monkeys around with the death mechanics. If you have a character die in combat, meaning they dropped to -10 HP or below, you normally need a resurection or raise dead spell after combat. This can permanently kill your character. In the case of Elves, neither spell works. 

To get around this, let the character die in combat, but don't leave the combat window. Target the dead character with a spell that does less than 10 points of damage and hit them. A dead character is treated by the system to have 0 HP and the damage you do restarts the death process so you can bandage them before quitting combat. This only works with spells like cause light wounds or burning hands, and never works with swords or arrows. 

I hope you enjoyed this review. 

Software Review - Townscaper

Title: Townscaper 

Year: 2020

Developer: Oskar Stålberg

Publisher: Raw Fury

Platforms: Android, iOS, Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, Macintosh operating systems and Steam.

Rating: 2 of 5 Stars

Townscaper isn't much of a game to be honest. You can design a town on an oceanscape. You can manipulate the colors of buildings, camera angles, and lighting. That is pretty much all there is to it. It's more of a toy than a game at this point which is important as the author still seems to be in the process of development. 

It is relaxing. 

Townscaper features an audio track of wind and waves. It also has a simple yet pleasing color pallet which is key to creating coherent images. Sound provides feedback for the changes you make.  

There are only three actions the user can take: place a structure, remove a structure or rotate the image. Technically, there are a few other actions having to do with light levels and sun angle, but those are tweaks to the main process of design.

Given that you can only add or remove structures, the process is very complex and creatively implemented. Shorelines rebuild themselves as you work. So do the actual buildings. The action is enhanced by "the grid", an invisible guide for dropping pieces onto the scene. The grid is not orthogonal, it is irregular. But an irregular plan that adds to the organic feel of your town. 

As you play, you'll notice some of these additions cause dynamic reactions. Drop a building next to another and birds appear on the rooftops. Drop the third building and the birds fly away. After a while, they come back. Towels and laundry lines appear from the windows.

Simple structures become more complex as you add and remove height with the addition of stairs and pylon supports. It's easy to create cute plazas and bridges, which are detailed with moving water, shadows, and even tiny sandy shores. By ringing a plaza with buildings, a green space forms complete with trees and bushes. 

None of these "dynamic features" are documented. They are there for you to discover. And that is the charm of this game. Townscaper is strangely addictive. 

By zooming in and out, you can add drama to the Townscape scene. It has a screenshot and save feature for your town so you explore more without losing what has been done. Intriguingly, there is a special update to output your town as a .obj for 3d printing, which seems to work well as demonstrated by other reviewers. 

The game retails for $5.99. I kind of feel bad for the low rating but this software is only as exciting as blank canvas. If you're the kind that loves a blank canvas, 2 of 5 stars is more than enough, while if you hate that sort of thing, it won't be enough. 

The Lost Room - Mini Series Review

Ah... 2006's The Lost Room, a Sci-Fi Channel 6 hour mini-series starring Peter Krause. Worldbuilding and magic objects make this show go. "It opens every door," and then some. 

Krause stars as a divorced dad and Pittsburg police detective, Joe Miller. This is exactly the point where most but not all of the police procedural ends and the crazy begins. The series opens with a series of murders at a pawnshop with the number one suspect missing. Finding this guy is the key to The Lost Room. Joe finds his man dying from unknown causes and with his last breath, he places a key in Joe's hand. 

From there, Joe's world spins out of control. You can try the trailer to try to get a sense of what's happening, but it doesn't quite cover it. 

Joe finds every door opens with the key, yet returning to the door he entered doesn't work as it should. He hops from a sun-drenched hotel room off of Route 66... circa 1960 to many different points around the world. Through trial and error, he makes his way home. Joe's daughter , Anna disappears into the room sending Joe on an insane quest to learn the secrets of the room to bring his child back. And to clear his name of Anna's murder. 

While it sounds like a bit from Monsters, Inc., the lost room is even odder than a one-eyed Mike Wazowski, Boo, and Sully dropping acid. 

The world Joe and his daughter disappear into is one of creative storytelling with 100 objects cast minor characters to build a story of consistent insanity. Consistent enough to create a warped police procedural. Every item has a purpose, every purpose leads Joe step by step back to the room and his daughter, with every step, bringing a crazed 60s hip mythology to life through magical items. Items that call to people, items that are collected and killed for, the Objects of desire with a horrible price. 

I wish I could say this mini-series was amazing, but it's really middle of the road. Peter Krauss and Ellie Fanning deliver, the story as wonky and compelling, but somehow the story never really progressed to satisfaction. It could be that Sci-Fi Channels' treatment of the story as a backdoor series pilot is to blame. Or maybe the internal consistency was not meant or able to progress to a regular serialized TV show. I'm not sure. 

It was well written, nicely filmed with interesting locations, and still didn't quite rise to what it could have been. In rewatching in 2021, it is still as intriguing and crazy as it was in 2006. A modern-era Twilight Zone that didn't get the same traction as that other, more sustaining TV show. It has many of the same weird vibes as the X-Files without being locked at the turn of the century. 

I give it a strong 3 of 5 stars. 

You can pick up a DVD with the original 3 episodes parcelled out as 6 one hour episodes plus an 18-minute featurette called "Inside the Lost Room". On the DVD, the episodes have the following titles: 

1. The Key,
2. The Clock,
3. The Comb,
4. The Box,
5. The Eye,
6. The Occupant.

New Books From Todd Leback to Review

Author's Note: Sometimes, life kicks you in the balls. Sometimes it just doesn't stop. If you don't laugh some or all of it off, you'll go nuts. This post is in that laughing spirit. 

It pokes fun at my situation, skewers my reviews and pays homage to a spammer that used my 52 Weeks of Magic series to promote a consignment shop by implying items sold were possibly magical. It also promotes a pair of titles by Todd Leback.  

This morning, I found a package on my porch. I also noticed that it was snowing, which is odd weather before December. This is Buffalo, NY, so we are no strangers to snow, but snow before December is unusual. Typically, we get all 47 feet on one day and it stays no longer than January 2nd. 

Since it was unusually cool today, I knew this package contained a new book from Todd Leback. How do I know that? All of Todd Leback's books are magical. 

In defiance of all FTC rules, I told all of my readers Todd Leback's books are magically protected from fire. In all seriousness, it's totally true that one of his titles, Into the Wild survived a housefire. So clearly, there is some unknown physics happening here, if not out and out magic. 

Snow this early in Buffalo New York is so unusual, I find it hard to believe that a single book could possibly cause it before December. 

Well, it turns out that is correct. 

In order for me to cause it to snow so early in the year, I had to order two books from Todd Leback. I ordered both A Guide to Thieves Guilds and Basilisk Hills Ultimate Hexcrawl. This order was placed back on November 11th and arrived the morning of November 27. I know DriveThruRPG is urging people to order early to allow time for Christmas delivery, so I might have just been lucky. 

Or it was magic. You decide. 

The Minus Faction by Rick Wayne Review

Title: The Minus Faction

Author: Rick Wayne

Year: 2017

Pages: 782 pages

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

I hate superhero novelizations. These types of books try to take a comic book character from a visual form of media and place them in a verbal or textual world. The problem with that is the hero or heroes always escape back to the visual media. It's never good.  

So, why I am reviewing Rick Wayne's The Minus Faction? Because these superheroes were created in the form of a novel from the get-go. John Regent feels like a characterization in the novel. Mr. Wayne managed to fuse the superhero tropes with real-world speculative fiction to create a strong cast of characters in a series of stories. The characters and the threats seem real, the storytelling is as a work of fiction should be. 

The Minus Faction starts with John Regent, a grizzled veteran of many black operations. Disabled, he is pulled out of his former world of adventure and thrust into a wider, wilder world of fantastic threats. John is forced to come to terms with both his abilities and disabilities while fighting against forces he does not understand. 

Along the way, John picks up a collection of misfits that he must forge into a team worthy and able to take on the new arising threats to themselves and the world. Xana, Ian, and Wink join John Regent, each bringing a host of dissimilar powers and problems to the team, which makes John's life more challenging, not less. Xana is seeking her son, Ian is on the lamb from the government and Wink is... just Wink. As individuals, their powers are ill-suited to their personal tasks, but as a team, they can fulfill their goals and desires. Along with John, Xana, Ian, and Wink, a collection of secondary characters join the team to either assist or create new challenges for them. 

Mr. Wayne wrote this series in an episodic fashion in 7 books, which lent itself the escalation of challenges and the introduction of the four main characters in a believable and enjoyable fashion. In order, the episodes or novels are: 

Breakout

Crossfire

Meltdown

Blackout

Aftershock

Shockwave
Outbreak

This is how I became hooked on the series, through the episodic releases. However, by book three, Meltdown, I cut to the chase and picked up the Omnibus Edition which included all seven stories plus bonus features. Aside from the collection of these bonus features, the individual books are no different than the Omnibus. In fact, some of the bonus features appear in a slightly different form, which is neither intrusive nor disjointed. There is a soundtrack, fan art, and behind-the-scenes information on how this collection came to be plus links to Mr. Wanye's social media outlets. 

Mr. Wayne uses these bonus features to expand the world he has created, taking the reader on a journey that matches the adventures of John, Ian, Wink, and Xana. This is how new heroes are made in the 21st century. 

Review - Lenovo 300e Chromebook

We've got a lot of Chromebooks going on here. This one is my daughter's Lenovo 300e which is ostensibly to be used for school work aSometimes, anyway. Notice the power cord. It typically isn't charged when it needs to be. 

Children...

Here are the stats: 

• Screen Size: 11.6 inches
• Screen Resolution: 1366 x 768
• Processor Model: Intel Celeron 
• Processor Model Number: N4000
• Processor Speed (Base): 1.6 GHz
• Solid State Drive Capacity: 32 gigabytes
• System Memory (RAM):  4 gigabytes
• Graphics: AMD Radeon R4
• Operating System: Chrome
• Battery Life: (up to) 10 hours

This Chromebooks greatest weakness is its strongest feature: the storage space. Being designed for Education, children should not be saving stuff to the hard drive. The machine is meant for the cloud. And as a cloud-based machine, it does very well. The wi-fi is solid, as is the Bluetooth. 

As a sub $300, sometimes sub $200 machine, it has some lacks which make it a true cloud machine. There is no HDMI or Ethernet port. 

The speakers are mildly ok, which is actually desirable in the classroom. It does have a headphone jack which is the preferred method of listening for students. The stereo headphone jack also has microphone capabilities. The screen has the same performance factors as my HP-14dk1000 laptop in a smaller format, locked in at 1366x768. For schoolwork, this is just fine due to the assumed connectivity issue. Students won't plug into their phones and such for images of high enough resolution to make a difference. 

It has 2 USB A and 2 USB C ports, where one of the USB C ports is used for charging. Battery life is great if your child charges it. It also includes a standard camera and microphone, built-in. They are fine for Zoom or Google Classrooms. The lappy is rounded out with a micro-SD card slot. 

Normally I don't mention the frame or case, but the frame is solid with no flex and the case has a variety of textures for easy gripping. 

Performance is nice for basic Google Drive Work. It will run good-sized videos at a decent rate. At least for 1366x786 resolution.

As an educational laptop, it doesn't have guest mode or other features. It is a managed device. If you purchase one of these "refreshed" or used, it should be unassociated with the school district. If it isn't, I would suggest returning it. School districts have a protocol in place to release products for "refreshed" or "renewed" sales, it's worth money to them. If you find your "renewed" Chromebook has an administrator account, it is probably one of the zillion computers lost or misplaced by a child. It probably won't be worth the effort of "fixing" it even if you find such things to be trivial. 

Try a reputable reseller if at all possible. 

Hexes - The Greatest Gift to Gamers

Hexes are great. For gamers, they might be the best tool for maps and other measurements. 

Many of the relationships that can be created with hexagons occur because of a simple formula: Side Length = Perimeter over Number of Sides. If you have two of those numbers, you know the third. From there you can find the apothem, the distance from the center to a corner, and the radius. 

This is true for more than just hexagons, but hexes are nicer looking and more useful than triangles and squares which are the only other two shapes that tesselate*. 

*See comments section below. Many shapes tesselate: they are called regular, semi or demi tesselation. 

Anyway, I want to show you a gift I received from my father. I believe that it was gifted to him at some point back in the 80s or 90s. 

It's a set of styrofoam hexes. There are 72 full hexes, 14 flat half hexes, 6 pointy half hexes, 10 two-thirds hexes, and 4 quarter hexes. Each full hex is 8 inches flat to flat side and each flat is 4 5/8ths inches. Every part is 3/4 inch thick. 

In addition to these regular shapes, there are dozens of smaller scallop slope-edged pieces that are used to make terrain, like ridges and hills. You could make a hill multiple steps high. By laying down blue cloth or paper, rivers spring to life. 

Each piece has a biscuit cut at each corner, for a cardboard biscuit that holds every piece together. I have a zillion of those. I would imagine that any map could be reproduced by this one set. 

Now would you like to hear the crazy part? 

They're obviously handmade. Every edge is hand-painted brown and the playing surface is faced with railroad-style grass. Every edge is perfectly straight, every corner exactly 60 degrees, every biscuit cut is exactly the same. There is not a bit of waver or imperfection in any of the 100s of pieces. 

Mindblowing!  

Have you ever tried to draw a hex? It's not easy. I know, I created a set of paper hex templates for mapping. Even on a computer, the process can drive you mad until everything just clicks. I cannot imagine a scenario where foam cutting hexes just "clicks". Every cut is perfect. I can't believe the effort that went into this. 

At this point, I don't know what to say. I'll just share some pictures. 

Model is 1:1 scale.

The edge pieces.

I didn't have blue fabric or paper.

Models are 1:72.

If you can't remember which side is which, 
just place models at random. 

A few notes on this series of images. At the start of this post, I knew I wanted to have a map of the UK. After 90 minutes of crawling around on the floor, my desire gave way to the fact that I am out of shape so Great Britain is misshapen and lacks terrain. It could be done, but not in the time given. 

Like the map, I had a list of things to photograph like Battlemechs, tanks, D&D figures, X-wings, etc. After taking a few images, I realized that I would have to spend another session of crawling around on the floor to clean up. My drive gave out at the English Civil War models. Maybe another time. 

Review - Acer CB311-10H Chromebook

I have several Chromebooks to support my websites and my kid's educational needs. I will be looking at the Acer CB311 series of machines, but today I am reviewing the Acer CB311-10H. 

The black CB311 on the left, as compared to another 311 model on the right.

Display size: 11.6 Inches
Screen Resolution: 1366 x 768 Pixels
RAM: 4 GB
Hard Drive: 64 GB SSD
Graphics Coprocessor: Intel UHD Graphics 600
Wireless: ‎802.11a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth

This is a sub-$300 machine, very often coming in at a little over $225 on sale. It's a lightweight machine for basic computing. At 2.42 lbs (1.79 Roman Catholic) the 7.83 x 11.65 x 0.71 inch machine feels solid. It even passes my one-hand carry test, where the machine still responds to the keyboard and trackpad while walking around. It doesn't flex at all. It's a rubberized, bombproof basic. 

The wi-fi is good and it has built-in Bluetooth capabilities. It features two USB ports, a pair of USB C ports, one of which is for charging, a micro-sd card reader, and a headphone jack. There is no large card reader or Ethernet port, which really shouldn't surprise you at this price point. 

The 11.6-inch diagonal screen feels well proportioned to this laptop but is on the small side. The resolution is capped at 1366x786 which isn't horrible on 11.6 inches. It plays video well enough but you can forget about 4k even though the dual processors and graphics card could maybe do it. It is also not a touchscreen, so there is that.  

The standard laptop camera and mic pair are fully functional and work rather well. However, you won't be mixing A/V on this machine without Linux. 

The one kick in the pants right out of the box is the speakers. It has two but they seem very poor on the first boot. Oddly, if you run the update they actually improve. I am not sure why this is, but it was a nice save by Acer. Granted, these are laptop speakers. Don't expect too much. Running Youtube or YouTube Music natively is nice and the machine does an adequate job of audio rendition. It's not like you work in a dance club. 

The other downsides are the lack of a mic jack, HDMI, and the previously mentioned Ethernet port. Well, it was cheap. USB do-dads are an option but I only use an external mic even though the internal mic and camera are nice. 

The CB-311-10H is not a touchscreen unlike other 311 models. 

Additionally, the lappy runs Android Apps and of course has all of the Google Drive features that are standard on modern Chromebooks. I also have Ubuntu 16.04 running in Crouton, so while the 4 GB of memory seems light, it is functional for basic work. 

All and all, this basic sub $300 laptop earns a solid 3 stars.