LoTRO and the 2017 license speculation

Recently at Dadi's Lotro Guides, Cordovan, the community manager for Lord of the Ring Online (LOTRO) commented in an interview on the subject of the much speculated end of licence for the game, purported to be 2017.

"Cordovan:  I would like to chime in on the licensing thing too, it is something that comes up on the forums quite a bit.  What we do with LOTRO is not particularly different from other video games that operate under a licensing agreement for intellectual property (ex. super hero games, etc.).  They all have license holders and LOTRO is no different.  Typically these kind of agreements are pieces of business that are not really disclosed to the public.  As part of the corporate business decision making that is involved with the creation [and maintenance -ed.] of a game like LOTRO.  The LOTRO community has historically had some particular sensitivity over the licensing agreement, but the agreement itself has basically always been a routine piece of business from the very start.  So while we can understand that some folks like to talk about it on the forums and as you said; “doom say”, the reality is that it is just a private piece of business that has been routine (lawyers getting together).  Ultimately if there was a major issue with the license you guys would probably find out about it because the game would no longer be operating after a certain point.  This is not a reality show “are they going to get kicked off the island” thing worth speculating month after month, year after year.  It is basically just a routine piece of business and we have no reason to think this won’t be a continuation of that."

Now as much as Turbine may view this as "a routine piece of business" they need to realise that speculation from the community without any input from the company will have a severely negative impact on the business and the game in general, after all, who wants to invest time and money into a game with what could potentially shut down with 12 months. 

I was a die hard fan of LOTRO for seven years, though 6 months ago I started to lose heart. The game became too grindy with less and less content and to add to that, the constant speculation of the game's license ending made me step away and after close to 7 years of constant subscription, I unsubscribed. Now I can't be the only one driven from the game in that way.

So rather than ignoring the speculation, Turbine need to deal with it, openly and honestly and encourage those they have lost to return to this great game and give hope that there is a long term plan for the world they have lovingly created.

Blaugust 2016 Day 22 Blaugust Wrap up

And so that's the end of another Blaugust!

As mentioned at the beginning of the month, this was described as the 'Super Relaxed Edition' and the pressure to get a post out every single day was reduced leading to far less of a feeling of burnout with blogging that I felt last year. Having said that, I feel that pressure of previous years forced me to be more creative, finding topics I wouldn't otherwise cover. This year I managed 22 posts including this one out of a possible 31 so better than I thought I'd be capable of..

This year I approached things a little differently and invited guest bloggers, all authors that either write and game or their writing has connections with gaming. Not only did this take the pressure off me but gave some cracking articles from some far more talented writers than myself, so I'd like to thank Nick, Chris, Forbes, KC and Jason for their contributions. If you haven't seen them yet there's a link to guest posts at the top of the blog or if your lazy, you could also click here..

I hope to continue this collection of articles beyond Blaugust with more authors potentially lined up already so stay tuned and if you are an author and would like to contribute, drop me a line! If you're a reader and not familiar with these authors, buy a book or two. They are all outstanding (and you'll be supporting their gaming habits, always a worthy cause!)

So all in all, Blaugust was as fun as ever and I look forward to participating again next year. Congratulations to all the other bloggers that worked to put out as much content as they were able and I've enjoyed reading more blogs than I normally would too.

Happy Gaming!

This post is part of Blaugust 2016, an initiative to Blog throughout August. For more information visit the Tales of the Aggronaut Blog

Blaugust 2016 Day 21 - Mass Effect and writing - Guest Post by Author KC Alexander

For my 200th post, I'm honoured to welcome guest blogger K.C. Alexander, Author of Necrotech from Angry Robot Books, oh and she's played the occasional game.

Mass Effect & Writing

I think it’s no secret that I love Bioware games. With the exception of one—okay, two notable abominations, I have been a Bioware fanatic since Knights of the Old Republic (please, we will not speak of The Unfortunate Sequel). To date, I have over 500 hours clocked in to the Mass Effect franchise, creeping up on 400 in Dragon Age, and prepping for more as Mass Effect: Andromeda nears its release date.

Anyone who has read my books and played the games probably realize exactly how much playing these games flavors my writing.

First of all, Bioware has made a fucking art out of turning a protagonist into A Protagonist™. Of course it’s always about the player in a single-player RPG, but Bioware takes it a step farther. 

Between Bioware’s steadfast refusal to canonize Shepard, for example, and their loud and proud public line of validating the player’s choices, they make clear that whatever your Shepard did, it was their choice, the right choice for Shepard, and that’s that.

If it meant your Shepard was a stonecold bastard who Renegaded every chance he got and slept around with everyone he could before the romances tangled? Then that’s Shepard.

If your Shepard was a hardcore diplomat with a heart of gold, cozied up to Liara in the first game but fell for Thane’s “gonna die” zen in the second? That’s Shepard!

Did he die?

Did she live?

Did he make the choice to finish the mission?

Did she decide to play god?

Any option, all options, specifically chosen by the player in the moment, combined to create a powerful, solid, thought-filled (if not thoughtful) character. Was she woman? Who cares! Was he a man? Who cares! Did he sleep with other men? Who cares! Did she sleep with eeeerreone? Who cares!

You, as they say, got to do you, boo. And Bioware didn’t flinch.

Mass Effect inspired generations of gamers to believe that their choices, their character, their dialogue mattered, and they only got better with time.

So I thought to myself… Who says I have to stay in a lane designated by some old white guys back in the day? With all due respect to them, I am neither old (yet) or a guy (mostly), but I am white, and as a white female-presenting author, I was tired of being told that my protagonists had to be “heroes”. That they had to be “redeemed”. That they couldn’t have flaws that would make them “unlikable”—and counted among them, I felt, were protagonists of color. Of sexuality different than what the stereotypical “men can sleep around for virility and women can’t because chastity” trope demands.

My Shepard is a badass woman who talked a good Paragon game and pulled a fast Renegade hand. She’s a woman who fell for a crewmate and made a hard fucking choice, only to be betrayed by that same crewmate. She’s pansexual, hard-assed, with a sense of humor and a fierce protectiveness for her crew.

But she ain’t afraid to hit ‘em if they come at her. Or get punched for her troubles.

My Shepard has never been sexually harassed.

I took these choices—this right to make these choices—and I wrote Necrotech without bowing to the establishment. Riko is a thug: angry, loud and crass. She’s a multi-racial balls-to-the-wall woman—shit-talking, sex-loving, aggressively flawed and incredibly skilled. The kind of ambulatory tech-sporting bundle of energy and sinew you hope to god you never meet on the thrashdance floor because she’ll take you out at the knees and leave you with the trash when last call rolls up.

Shepard made choices that no one else can take away from her. So does Riko. As The Protagonist™, her story is her own. Maybe readers will see their playstyle or themselves in her, in her swag or her mistakes, but I never bend to someone else’s demand that my characters be something else. I didn’t start in Dragon Age, when that bastard noble interrupted my wedding, I didn’t start when those old white dudes in SF/F told me women weren’t supposed to act “like men”, and I ain’t starting to bend now.

So thanks, Bioware. Thanks for showing me that I could tell the story I wanted to tell, and that it could be epic and heartwrenching and badass and never even bother to take beauty, gender or tired old limitations into account.

Riko is what she is. She makes the decisions she does because of who she is. I stand by them.

Any good RPG would, too.

About the Author

About K C Alexander

K C Alexander is the mostly human, occasional Outer God, and author of Necrotech – a transhumanist sci-fi called “a violent thrillride” by award-nominated noir urban fantasy author Stephen Blackmoore. Previous writing credits include a critically acclaimed stint as Karina Cooper, where she won an RT Reviewer’s Choice Award for her steampunk urban fantasy series and contributed to well-received collections such as Fireside Fiction Magazine, Protectors 2: Heroes, and Last Night, a Superhero Saved My Life.

After peeling off sixteen layers of outer chitin and hiding the evidence across dimensional planes, K. C. Alexander is now indistinguishable from the rest of the human species. She intends to make the most of this by writing transhumanist sci-fi, epic fantasy, and speculative fiction of all stripes.You can find K C online at her website and on Twitter as @kacealexander

About Necrotech

Street thug Riko has some serious issues — memories wiped, reputation tanked, girlfriend turned into a tech-fueled zombie. And the only people who can help are the mercenaries who think she screwed them over.

In an apathetic society devoid of ethics or regulation, where fusing tech and flesh can mean a killing edge or a killer conversion, a massive conspiracy is unfolding that will alter the course of the human condition forever. With corporate meatheads on her ass and a necro-tech blight between her and salvation, Riko is going to have to fight meaner, work smarter, and push harder than she’s ever had to. And that’s just to make it through the day.

This post is part of Blaugust 2016, an initiative to Blog throughout August. For more information visit the Tales of the Aggronaut Blog

Blaugust 2016 Day 20 Red Markets

I've just signed up to play in a new Play by Post game over at Gamer's Plane in the newly Kickstarted Red Markets, described as "a game of economic horror where the world has ended and the rent is still due."

Set in a Zombie apocolypse, the characters play Takers, essentially hired scavengers in the wasteland called The Loss to earn their way into the safe zone, known as The Recession.

My character, Jimmy "Home Run" Larsson is a former Major-League Baseball star, or was about to be. After being headhunted for the Boston Red Sox, and a multi million Dollar contract, the world turned to hell. Now he is obsessed with money, looking for that big payday, with his only possession in the world, his trusty bat.

The One Shot podcast recently featured the game and the creator, Caleb Stokes gives and overview of the system at about 9:15

I'm really looking forward to trying out a new system and I can never pass by a good Zombie Apoc and this one looks pretty profitable!

Blaugust 2016 Day 19 Return to Mass Effect 2 and a little pbp update

I've had an incredibly busy few days, with lots of work and no time to game. I got in a little No Man's Sky here and there but no major progress. Last night however I managed to carve out of a whole hour and decided it was time to tackle something from my list of RPGs from my Gaming Goals post.

Mass Effect 2 always comes to mind when I want to get a game finished so I dived in. I managed to get plenty in during that short time. I completed a mission I had been in the middle of retrieving a new member of my crew, Mordin Solus, the Doctor with a shady past in the Special Task Force, a great character with a very pleasing clipped way of speaking.

I also tracked the original Normandy and visited where it crashed, placing a monument to remember it by and finding a few dog tags from the lost crew.

It served as a good reminder how good the game is and I look forward to dipping back in.

Not much time for gaming tonight, I've been working on my Play By Post games. The Warhammer game is about to kick off with a new adventure and Call of Cthulhu: A Time for Harvest is heating up as the players approach the end of part one of the campaign and uncover something long hidden.

Blaugust 2016 Day 18 Dialogue and Tabletop Games - Guest Post by Jason Anspach

I was going for a hike during my lunch on a nearby trail. There’s a wonderful park with a stunning view of Mount Rainier just a block away from my office. The exercise is nice and the scenery is beautiful. It makes me feel like I’m travelling along a tree canopied path in a Tolkien forest, breathing in the warm scent of pine needles, blackberries, and leaves baked by the summer sun.

These walks also provide an opportunity to try out new dialogue.

The way I write, it’s rare for me to just sit down and—whoops—out comes pages of dialog. No. I spend hours thinking about a scene, playing it back and forth in my head like a movie so that when I go to my keyboard, I’m just transcribing what I’ve witnessed. Like a really thorough court stenographer who mixes their OCD with LSD.

Testing my dialogue is a part of my process. Is it something the character would say? In that situation? Is it something the reader would believe? I constantly mutter phrases and retorts to myself, listening for authenticity.

When I’m alone, I deliver the lines with the same intensity I see my characters using, like how I imagine Robert DeNiro reads his lines in a Hollywood trailer. I’m totally absorbed. Only, for me, it’s just going over a single line. Like a method actor cast as an extra, pouring over the deeper meaning of, “The mayor is on line one.”

So I’m walking along in Lothlórien, and the line is from my novel, ‘til Death. The scene involves Frank Rockwell coming home to break the news to his wife that he’s been murdered. She tells him that she wasn’t expecting him to die for at least another five years. I channel Frank—a hothead—and respond, “I’m only fifty-one and in my prime. I had plenty more than five years left. My great-grandfather Sherman lived to eighty-nine!”

Cut. Print. Perfect.

I nailed the delivery. The dialogue was pitch perfect for the scene and if the Academy had heard it, there’d be a golden statue waiting for me after that performance.

Only, the Academy didn’t hear it. But I could tell by the subdued laugh from around the bend that someone had. At first I was exhilarated. Yes! Confirmation. An unbiased listener heard my line and laughed.

That gave way to embarrassment as the couple turned the corner and saw a man in his mid-thirties walking by himself, shouting about being fifty-one in the past tense. My finger was even pointed up in the air like Jackie Gleason. They gave me a wiiiiide berth and I had to cut my walk short and get back to my office, hiding inside with blinds closed as a pair of orderlies in white uniforms looked for me, commitment papers in hand.

Situations like that make me thankful for tabletop gaming.

A good game of Dungeons and Dragons or Sheriff of Nottingham goes perfectly with my need to test out dialogue. The rapport with players is helpful and constructive. Unlike online multiplayer gaming, where most conversation can be summed up in a message I recently received after a strong showing in Star Wars Battlefront: “ur gay.”

But there are no such insults (to my face) when I’m Dungeon Master in a game of D&D! There, improvisation and delivery are an art form. The game improves because of it, and going all-in enriches the experience and encourages the other players to relax and join in the fun.

I can take a quip or joke from a book, season it with BBC accent, and test it with my guinea pigs—er, players—to see what works.

As a writer, this is a HUGE help. Especially when writing humor, as I do. Masterfully.

A comic is only as good as his audience’s response. Comics die a thousand deaths, honing their act by gauging its impact on the audience until it’s…good enough. The same thing goes with writing. You’ve probably heard an anecdote from a storyteller who is sure—SURE!—that a goldmine of belly laughs is coming. And then…lackluster deliver, flat punchline, polite smile, courtesy laugh, awkward silence.

Only it’s far worse with writing because the awkward silence is the kindle being powered down and, unless the reader is looking for a unique way to punish their children—“Now sit there while I read you more of Anspach’s book.” “Daddy, no!”—they’re unlikely to go back. Let alone buy the sequel (available now).

Role playing games give me a tremendous opportunity to test out my writing with real people. One I haven’t had since they threw me out of the retirement home.

Does the party break out laughing? Keep the line. 

Do they repeat it like a catchphrase throughout the session? Put it on the cover.

Do they respond with silence before someone audibly sighs and says, “Soo…”? Send in a Beholder for a total party kill. 

That’ll teach them.

Jason Anspach is the author of the 1950’s Paranormal Noire Comedy Series ‘til Death: The Rockwell Return Files. He’s also a cast member on the hilarious podcast, SciFi Writers Playing Old School D&D.

You can pick up ‘til Death, a book readers have called “Hauntingly Funny,” “a fun romp through a supernatural hard-boiled adventure, with plenty of laughs and adventure along the way,” and “not quite as funny as I was expecting it to be.”

This post is part of Blaugust 2016, an initiative to Blog throughout August. For more information visit the Tales of the Aggronaut Blog

Blaugust 2016 Day 17 - Art Imitating Fun - Guest by Author Chris Pourteau

Art Imitating Fun

When Knifesedge Blogs asked me to write a guest blog about how gaming and writing come together for me, I was stumped. For about ten seconds. Then Eureka! I realized just how much crossover there is between the two for me.

I write post-apocalyptic sci-fi horror fiction (not all at the same time, most of the time), and if you think about some of the more popular visual media products in those genres—Star Wars, The Walking Dead television series, the Left4Dead and Fallout games, to name a few examples—they all have one thing in common for me: great storytelling. (In the case of Star Wars, I’m talking Episodes IV-VII—so go with it.)

In Other News…The Sky Is Blue on a Sunny Day

I know what you’re thinking: Yeah, tell me something else I don’t know. But you’d be surprised how often the fundamental idea of great storytelling gets glossed over. Take DC versus Marvel movies, for example. We can debate the merits of both franchises and how Batman can kick Spiderman’s ass every day of the week and twice on Sunday, but the reality is, Marvel has been much more careful about how they’ve rolled out their multiverse. They’ve taken the time to do it right and aren’t trying to cram ten years’ worth of storytelling into a handful of movies—unlike DC. Turns out: craft matters.

On the other hand, look at DC on TV—specifically, The CW’s Flash, Arrow, Legends of Tomorrow, and now Supergirl series. (Full disclosure: I’m a big fan of these shows, though LoT could use some improvement, IMHO.) Television—as a serial medium, with each episode acting like a chapter in a season-length novel—is a great medium for telling comic-book storyarcs about interesting characters and their problems and how they solve work through them by pummeling bad guys.

If you’re interested in more thoughts comic-book storytelling in different media, check out Episode 15 of Geeks of a Certain Age, a podcast that I co-host with my geek brother from another mother, Hank Garner.

Thanks, Professor. What the Hell Does That Have to Do with Gaming?

Great games are like great visual media of any kind—they immerse you in a world that doesn’t involve making your mortgage payment and they let you project your fears and hopes and gym-workout-best intentions on buff, smart, funny player characters. Left4Dead (and its sequel) are, boiled down, a redundant, fairly predictable series of FPS games. But they have fun characters who regularly bark at each other (especially when you shoot one of them in the back—oops). From the chapter subtitles (“No Mercy: Curing the Infection…One Bullet at a Time”) to the graffiti on the walls in the safe rooms to the aforementioned PC snarking—the game has great humor. I’m not a big fan of FPSs, but I’m a huge fan of the L4D series. I’ve played all those precious few chapters over and over, again and again. My family and I make a “zombie night out” of it on a regular basis.

When I write—especially darker stuff—I try to connect with readers in the same way. I personally believe that every one of us enjoys gallows humor and dirty jokes. (How much we let others see that side of us depends entirely on how well we know them—right?) Humor is a huge part of my horror fiction; as is helping the reader get to know the characters I’m writing about—even secondary characters and especially bad guys. I do my best to not create one-dimensional placeholders. They’re boring and offer nothing to the reader that reflects back to them a little piece of who they are.

That comes straight out of what I love about roleplaying games. I grew up reading Star Trek novels before ST novels were cool. (Remember Ballantine Books?) I played D&D in the late ’70s and early ’80s (and if you’re interested, you can hear me do it again with some other great gamer-writers on the podcast Sci-Fi Writers Playing Old School D&D). It’s all about character and character experiences in RPGs—or at least it’s mostly about that. Action too, of course. Plot’s important to keep me interested, right? But I couldn’t care less about what’s happening if I don’t care about character, first and foremost.

Similarly, my personal writing philosophy is this: everything derives from character. The plot moves forward not because lightning strikes, but because Sam the Hero chose to go out on a stormy night. If lightning strikes—well, he should’ve made a better choice. Games like Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead—a favorite of mine from the past couple of years—shows this in spades. The gameplay itself is fairly simple (point-and-click combined with branching decisions that influence gameplay and what other characters think of you), but the storytelling is intimate, sometimes harsh, and always engaging (just like the series it’s based on). It’s about relationships between the player character (you) and the non-player characters. It’s about the human connection. And that’s the core ingredient in great storytelling, whether in fiction or gaming or television or movies.

The Play’s the Thing

I’ve rambled on a while, so I’ll sum up. Relatable, complex characters; humor (the darker the better in difficult circumstances); action that gets the heart pumping—all aspects of games I really enjoy (like The Witcher III, which I’m currently playing). Depth, breadth, immersive experiences—a world I can lose myself in (like Total War: Warhammer, which I’ve also spent a couple hundred hours in over the last few months). For me, these are the hallmarks of great gaming and great storytelling. And they’re the same ingredients I stir into my storytelling when I write fiction.

But overlaying all? Fun! Good novels, like great gaming, must be fun. Even when they’re dark. Especially when they’re dark. At the risk of pontificating (further), I’ll finish up with this thought: the closer a great game (and story) can connect to the person experiencing it, the better experience the reader will have. That means both gaming and storytelling have to impact the gamer or reader emotionally—whether that’s a complex family drama novel or the simple emotion of adrenalin-pumping fear you get from your favorite FPS. 

Relatable, complex characters; humor (the darker the better in difficult circumstances); action that gets the heart pumping. Depth, breadth, immersive experiences—a world I can lose myself in. These are the hallmarks of great gaming and great storytelling. And they’re the same ingredients I stir into my storytelling when I write fiction.

Think back on your favorite gaming or reading experiences and drop a comment below—am I right? Am I wrong? What makes a great gaming experience for you? When you finish a novel and go, “Whoa! That was awesome!” why do you react that way? Knifesedge and I are curious…

If you’d like to see if my fiction lives up to my claims in this blog, here are some options for you:

·         The Serenity Strain: Stormbreak. The first novel in a trilogy about the end of the world set in Texas. The sequel, Ironheart, came out recently. The final novel is on the drawing board.

·         Tales of B-Company: The Complete Collection. A collection of novellas set in Michael Bunker’s Amish-Sci-Fi world of PENNSYLVANIA. Pew-pew sci-fi with Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos roots.

·         Unconditional: A Tale of the Zombie Apocalypse (short story). What if The Walking Dead occurred from the perspective of the family dog?

This post is part of Blaugust 2016, an initiative to Blog throughout August. For more information visit the Tales of the Aggronaut Blog