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East Is West: How Two Classic RPGs Prove the Stereotypes False
This is a weekly column focusing on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. "Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet," - Rudyard KiplingConventional wisdom holds that role-playing games are easily divided into two categories: Japanese and Western, or, before the technical lines got blurred a decade ago, console and computer games. We can name the stereotypes easily. JRPGs are story-based, WRPGs are system-based. JRPGs are action-based, fast, and simple, whereas WRPGs are strategic, slow, and complex. JRPGs have bright, cartoonish graphics and catchy music, WRPGs have realistic graphics and darker music. JRPGs linear, WRPGs open. In JRPGs, your characters are given to you, in WRPGS you create your characters. And so on.It's not true, though. What's more, it never was.
GOG sale: Krondorian betrayals, masquerades, steamworks and magick obscura
GOG's weekend sale caters to those who appreciate substantial, fantastic heft -- enough to sustain a novelization or two. The download service is offering a 30 percent discount on four Activision-published RPGs, including Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura (pictured) at $4.19, and the Feist-fueled Betrayal at Krondor Pack, which includes an additional betrayal in Antara for $4.19. The same discounted price also applies to Return to Krondor, a divisive sequel that spent years in tumultuous development, and Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption, Nihilistic Software's flawed take on the pen-and-paper RPG of the same name. The connection between Arcanum and Vampire? Arcanum's now-defunct developer Troika went on to finish Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines in 2004, notably becoming one of the first developers to utilize Valve's Source engine. (Unfortunately, the vampires weren't nearly as draining as the bugs.)
