Leverage RPG Rocks!

Leverage was a cool TV show about a bunch of thieves of various types - Mastermind, Grifter, Hacker, Hitter, and Thief - who joined up to use their skill-sets to do a little good for those who needed help and to bring some justice to those in power who had wronged them.  It was a fun show interspersed with humor and wit...and was canceled at the end of 2012.  As much as I'd wanted to see more, the series probably ran its course and it was given the opportunity for closure with an epic ending.

I was glad to see it made into an RPG by Margaret Weis Productions, using their Cortex system (in the case of this game, Cortex Lite, if you will).  It's a pretty simple and straightforward system that has enough structure to it to make sessions run well and make them interesting, while at the same time giving some serious leeway and generality to make the game what you need it to be.

Instead of highlighting the minute details of the system, I'm going to share with you my favorite parts of it - the things that make it unique and fun to me.

First, is the fact that in this game when you start off gaming you're already at pretty much the top of your profession.  Instead of the challenge in other RPGs of starting at level 1 and working your way up, the challenge of this game is how to best use the awesome skills that you do have to be a part of the team and make the jobs happen.  It's a completely different feel than you may be used to and I think it's a refreshing one.

Even when you roll 1s on your rolls - complications - while you may not succeed at what you were doing and give an extra die to the bad guys to roll at some point, you are still rewarded.  What?  Yes, really.  Whenever you roll a complication you are rewarded with a Plot Point...and Plot Points make the world go around!

Happy B-Day, Felicia Day!

I first saw her on Buffy the Vampire Slayer as one of the potentials (if you don't know what that means, you didn't watch the show to the end and that's okay, just keep reading) and didn't really think anything of it.  Sure, she was a cute actress - kind of mousy but strong in her own way - but there are a whole bunch of those in Hollywood.

The next time that I saw Felicia Day was on The Guild - a web-sitcom about a guild of MMO players and how they relate to each other in-game and in real-life.  For those who haven't seen the series - and if you haven't, why not? - real-life is the hard part.  Little surprise!  Not only is she the creator, writer, and co-producer, but she also stars in the show.  This is where I really took notice of her.  If you've seen even a single episode, much less a full season, you'll see that there is a LOT of talent there.  Some of my heartiest laughs have come from watching The Guild.

And then, if I wasn't already enraptured by her talent, I later found out that she is a really big geek in real-life.  She loves all things geek, is an actual gamer of many genres, and helps make geeks cool.  If you spot any of her videos going through one of the gamer/geek/tech conventions, they're definitely worth the watch.

She's also made the rounds to all forms of geek-style media.  She's voiced and made live-action shorts for games like Dragon Age 2 and Guild Wars 2.  She's been on shows like Dollhouse, Eureka, and Supernatural.

THEN she takes it to the next level and creates the Geek & Sundry channel on YouTube, producing a whole plethora of awesome shows.  That my most favorite geek in the entire multiverse, Wil Wheaton (who was also on The Guild), is involved in G&S is just icing on the cake.

So here's to you, Felicia (I can only assume that she'd let me call her Felicia) - have the best birthday ever and I wish you many, many more.  Please keep creating and showing the world that geeks are cool!  I know that you are!

YouTube Careers A Thing of the Past?

I just read some pretty significant news from Gamespot.  Basically, Nintendo is enforcing their copyright on YouTube gameplays of their games.  They aren't having the content taken down, but they are having ads put on the content and claiming the revenue from them.  Check out the full article HERE.

This is big news to a degree that I'd call a potential paradigm shift.  You may ask why I'm making a big deal out of this.

Well, up until now the video game industry hasn't really enforced its copyrights to the point of blocking content which, in my opinion, was a great idea.  When a gamer creates a video with a game's footage in it, it becomes free advertising for the game company.  I can't tell you how many times I myself have watched game videos and have either been lured back to playing it or bought it when I hadn't planned to do so.  No game trailer can give you the insight into a game that seeing actual gameplay can.  Renting a game and trying it out is even better, but that costs money and can't be done at your whim.  You also don't get the opportunity to see very far into the game, generally speaking, and that's a factor in a purchase.

Seeing that gamers enjoyed watching gameplay videos, a community was born that put them up...and eventually started making money in the form of ad revenue and/or from joining companies like Machinima that also sprouted up to take advantage of the same niche.

Now there are YouTube partners like me who won't really care.  I'll be honest with you and say that I had originally intended to try to make some cash from my hobby - most of my videos were monetized - but that brought in the tiniest of trickles of money and in the end I saw myself worrying more about what to put out there to attract the viewers for cash than having a good time putting out content that shared with my viewers what I loved.  You'll notice my videos aren't monetized anymore, that I've continued on, and even expanded my hobby with this blog and am much happier for it.  So if my video viewers can stand the possible ads that may be placed there by the gaming companies sometime in the future, I'll be happy and will continue to put out videos and other content.

There are others out there, though, that put their heart, soul, and pretty much all of their time into turning out videos that are largely made up of gameplay for their large audiences.  And views of those videos (or more importantly views of the ad content) pay their bills, at least to a point.  Add that income to a partnership with one of the bigger gaming news companies out there and that's their living we're talking about.  If game companies start claiming ad revenue from any video that has their game's gameplay in it, these individuals and companies have little reason to expend the effort and resources to put out their content.  They'll likely cease to exist for the most part.

So a great part of this community and the businesses thereof may just fade away IF other game companies follow suit and start enforcing their copyrights and claim ad revenue from videos.