So, the design contest is over. My game has been "finished", and it's getting some looks. I'm pretty happy with how things turned out. I've also been all primed up and ready to write some more stuff.... which is great.

Of course, I've only got two weeks or so to do this, because I start my Paramedic-Level first aid at the end of the month - and once that starts, writing will be on the backburner for a while. Which is too bad.

This contest gave me so much confidence in getting things done. I'm finding myself wanting to write something, and getting it published. Just some small PDF, you know? I wonder how many 4e publishers there are out there - I have an idea, and I'm working on it as we speak... er... type.

In other news, I've decided that I should stick to RPGs. I just lost around 50 bucks on internet poker in the last two hours, and I lost another 25 last night. I was up around 30 bucks before I started this slide, so I'm really only down 45 bucks. But, considering how a bad month for RPG purchases is around 45-50 bucks, that really puts things in perspective.

Also, here's an idea for all you budding designers out there - Unearthed Arcana. For fourth edition. I know people have mentioned something like it, but trust me. If one were to write a good one, it'd sell like hot cakes. Actually, scratch that. I don't even know what "hot cakes" really are, so they can't be selling that well.

It'd sell like a good celebrity sex tape.

throw in some rules that "fix" rituals, healing surges, skills, craft skills, and all those other "faults" that people gripe about. Try to find a system that would house-rule out powers. And just have a field day with all the other minor tweaks. It'd be a great book.

Wik

I love NHL 09. Especially the "Be a Pro" mode, where I control just one player on the ice. I get to improve this character as I wish, and worry about his placement on the team.

And I have to play position! It's nice to actually worry about being in a team, in a game that's all about team play! For example, in 08 (When I controlled the whole team), if I had the puck, I'd always do the same thing - try to set up a one-timer, or push the puck back to the blue line and hope a defenceman got a lucky shot. In Be a Pro, I have to really watch where my teammates are. If someone else has the puck, I slide behind the net to catch any missed shots, or I move near the goalie in the slot to catch a rebound.

I haven't played it on Live!, because I don't have Live (yet), but I think you could make a damned good game based around Be A Pro. Imagine a game where every player on the ice was played by a person. Imagine if the game had two lines only, so that you would spend roughly half the game off the ice, watching your teammates play. I don't know if this sort of game would appeal to everyone, but I know it gives me the shivers just thinking about it.

So, what does this have to do with gaming? Well, not a whole lot, really. Except it has me thinking about character roles in an RPG. In NHL 09, you play a position (Forward, Defence, Goalie...) as well as a role pertinent to that position (so, if I'm a forward, I could be a power forward, a grinder, a playmaker). Each role has different skills, and a different approach to that position - I play a playmaker left winger, meaning my goal is to pass the puck to teammates, and keep the puck in our possession. A guy I work with is a power forward right winger... his goal is to score goals, and to stay close to the net.

The point here is that each position has a use in the game, but also that each position has many different "flavours" of play. Two right-wingers can play the game in entirely different ways, and have entirely different goals.

This really jives well with 4e's "roles" system. Roles in 4e are much like position in NHL 09 - you're a striker (Forward), while I'm a defender (Goalie). Classes are more like the approaches available to different positions - you could be a playmaker foward (a sort of striker with leader-like abilities), while I could be a butterfly-style goalie (a focused defender, like the fighter).

One thing I love about hockey is the role of assists. Basically, in hockey, helping someone get a goal is just as important as getting the goal, in terms of "Player points". If you get three goals, and I get three assists, we both have three points - you're not really considered a better player than me. In fact, even if you don't get any assists at all, you can still be seen as a good player in terms of the +/- ranking (every time your team scores a goal and you're on the ice, you get a +1; every time your team has a goal scored against it and you're on the ice, you get a -1. If you have a high rating, it shows that you're really helping your team get goals, and stopping goals from being scored against you).

I love that the game encourages team play, as opposed to individual glory hogs. The best hockey players are those that work well in a team, as opposed to the big roles in other sports (the Quarterback in Football springs to mind).

But I'm rambling now. I think I have hockey on the brain today.

Wik

So, while I'm here, I figure I should reveal the specifics of my experience system.

Characters in The Awakening grow organically. Skills that they use during play will improve, while skills that they ignore will not.

All skills begin play at a base rating of 20 (this rating ignores a character's training or base attributes, so even if you focus on a skill, your base score will begin play at 20). When they reach a rating of 30 and 50, (and 40, if the character has declared that skill his expert skill), they grant a special ability, similar to a feat in D&D.

For example, and these are just quick notes that could change later, if you can get your Firearms skill up to 30, all firearms you use will deal one more point of damage. If you get it to 40 (possible only if you made firearms your expert skill), you can fire a weapon three times per round, instead of two.

Of course, you use firearms more than you'll use Barter. Because of this, skills that are very commonly used give less of a bonus than rarely-used skills (Barter, for example, gives you some great discounts on gear, and lets you spend an adrenaline point to just happen to have a piece of gear "on hand").

Each psychic power relies on one of four psychic skills. As your psychic skill improves, it unlocks new uses of your psychic power - sort of like different "levels" of a related spell. In D&D, this would be something like starting with Burning Hands, building it up to Flaming Sphere, and then unlocking a Fireball.

Now, how does the actual process of improving a skill work? Basically, whenever you roll a "0" in the ones column of a percentile roll, whether you succeed or fail, you make an immediate "levelling check".

If that result is HIGHER than your base rating in the skill (again, this base rating ignores any bonuses you may have from training or a high attribute; if you allocate points to them in Character Creation, your chances of improving a skill will not be affected), it improves by 1%.

This results in a slow rate of progression, but players will feel a definite sense of reward as their skills improve. Of course, there will be variants (each increase is by 2%, or maybe if you roll a "0" on either the tens or ones column will trigger a possible levelling chance, or maybe something else).

Wik

As sort of a related post to my last one, I decided to dig through a couple of my RPGs and figure out the average chance of success in an RPG. I'm trying to figure out how likely a starting PC will succeed on a task of average difficulty. Here's my observations:

1. Dungeons and Dragons: 3rd Edition

The average DC in 3E is 10. An untrained character with no attribute bonuses will have a 50% chance of success. Since, however, 3e assumes PCs are above average, most PCs will have at least a +1 on the d20 roll - a 55% chance of success.

A trained character (one who has taken 4 ranks in a skill) with a +1 attribute modifier will have a 75% chance of success, while a character who has really specialized (a +3 or +4 attribute, a +2 skill bonus, as well as the 4 ranks in the skill) will only fail 5% of the time on an average difficulty task.

2. Dungeons and Dragons: 4th Edition

The average DC for a 1st level character is 15. Your untrained character with no attribute bonuses will have a 25% chance of success. A 1st level character with a +1 attribute will have a 30% chance of success.

If that character gets a skill bonus (+2) from race or a class feature, that chance goes up to 40%. If a character had a +1 attribute bonus and was trained in the skill, the chance of success is 55%, or 65% if he had a +2 bonus from race or a feat.

In any case, it is harder for a 4th Ed. character to get really good at a skill at low levels, and since difficulties scale with your level, these odds never really improve. That being said, 4e is a game that was written with teamwork in mind, so this isn't really a problem - higher difficulty numbers fit the goal of giving everyone a chance to shine.

3. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: 2nd Edition

This one is especially handy because it uses a percentile skill system much like myself. In it, an untrained average human using a skill he is untrained in will have a very low rate of success (an average of 30% in the base attribute, plus the attribue is halved if you are untrained) - 15% on an average difficulty task. However, if he is trained in the skill, his chance of success is... 30%.

A PC has the option of increasing a stat by 5% at creation, upping that success chance to 35%. Needless to say, it is hard to succeed in WFRP - even high-level PCs don't get skill scores all that high (it is possible, for example, to get a skill up to 90-95%, but I imagine it'd take a long time).

This fits in well with the dark nature of the setting - a great example of mechanics reinforcing the nature of the setting.

***

I'd post more, but I dont' want to.

Wik

So, I was playtesting out a monster I created - the Terror of the Black Hills. It was a very close fight, with the PCs initially dealing a huge amount of damage (using their encounter powers and their dailies, as well as action points), before the Terror got bloodied and activated his Feral Roar attack that healed him 30 hit points and dazed most of the group.

Then, when his special ability kept activating (a massive damage drop that sent enemies backwards), he really plowed through the PCs. They would be knocked unconscious, only to be healed by the paladin, before rejoining the fight. It was pretty close.

In fact, the beast only had 2 hp left at the end. The rogue was down, and it hit the kobold fighter with one claw attack, and the dragonborn paladin with another.

All three PCs down for the count. It had to eat one of them... random chance said it went for the paladin.

And the other two bled out and died.

Granted, it would've been a tough fight in any case. 3 PCs against one solo monster is going to be tough, no doubt. But they had terrain advantage, if they had chosen to use it, and their daily powers. They had healing potions to use, and they could have outrun it if things had gone bad.

The funny thing was, no one was upset. The paladin felt it was a good thing - "I feel like I know we can die, now". So, they made a new group tonight... and felt like the campaign was worthwhile for the first time. They like 4e, and it only took a TPK to make them realize it.

The monster, by the way, will appear in Creative Newt #2, which is pretty much done (I just wanna playtest out one more monster before I hit the "publish" button... plus, I need to set up a website to host the PDFs, as they are now too big for ENWorld).

Wik

So, we had a game today. We started off the campaign, with three rather interesting characters:

Thordar, a Dragonborn Paladin that belongs to the order of the Flaming Tree, where he has achieved the rank of "First Lance" (a Sergeant). The order is dedicated to the protection of the innocent, and in it's current incarnation is involved in the raising of funds. The goal is to use this money as a gift to the local king, Derek of Ravenglass (yeah, I stole the name) so he can use the funds as an alternate to the levy he must pay to a nearby Tiefling Kingdom. If Derek cannot pay money, he must pay in slaves - which he has done all too willingly. Thordar has a distrust of autocratic rulers (partially due to his natural hatred for Tieflings, who exemplify Autocratic behaviour), and seeks to turn the kingdom of Ravenglass into a democracy of sorts - with the church at the core.

Vanessa a Doppleganger Rogue. Dopplegangers used to be highly magical beings, which proved to be their downfall. With bodies charged with magical energy, they were highly prized as spell components. As such, they cast a powerful ritual that gave them the ability to change shapes, though this stripped them of much of that latent energy. Vanessa is lonely, searching for others of her kind. She grew up in a halfling circus, travelling the Shattered Isles as a gypsy and knife-thrower.

Skizz, a kobold fighter. The lookout for a kobold racial gang in the slums of Ravenglass, Skizz found he enjoyed the scraps he eventually found himself in. Enjoying combat in all forms, the spear fighter is highly mobile on the battlefield, and throws himself in the thick of any fight. He has served with Vanessa for awhile, the two pickign through ancient Eladrin ruins for whatever they may sell. Skizz is fascinated by Thordar's draconic nature.

***

The PCs are sent by Kezin, the paunchy elder commander of the local chapter of the Flaming Tree, to the island of Rouk Thazon. Their goal - to find the ruins of the Eladrin city of Theresial, in the hopes of capturing the mystical Horn of the Five Winds. Not knowing much about this horn, they still hope to make their way to the ruins - the horn will be sold to the king, who will promise the safety of over thirty slaves in the upcoming levy payments, six months hence.

Finding a ship that will take the PCs into the middle of "Orc Country" will be tough, as the Orcs are perhaps the best sailors in the world, barring the possible exemption of the Halfling Catamariners - and even the halflings cannot outrun the Orcs over short distances.

The PCs first seek to bribe Gor, a dwarven captain in the military, in the hopes of commissioning a ship. They fail this skill challenge dramatically, when Thordar fails a diplomacy check, and Skizz insists on Intimidating the dwarf with the eloquent "Give us a ship and I'll let you live" approach. The PCs are chased out of the barracks with many oaths, and threatened with making up a part of the upcoming levy payments.

The second chance involves visiting the nearby halfling gypsies in a coastal camp. When the PCs fail to give a little girl 1 silver for acting as a guide, they are pickpocketed mercilessly as they travel throughout the village, getting hopelessly lost in their search for a working ship. After many encounters with pickpockets, the PCs give up in disgust, and make their way to the docks.

Here, they encounter an orcish Drakkar crewed by a mixed orc, half-orc, and human crew, led by an Orc hero named Kachar. The first mate is a miserable dwarf named Drelb, who is determined to fleece the PCs for all they are worth. But, an agreement is made to penetrate the orc islands under the cover of night, and to pick the PCs up 48 hours later - provided they bring 10 light stones as part of their payment for passage. And if they're not there at the pickup time, the PCs will be left behind on a hostile orc island.

12 days of travel pass en route to the island, and the PCs fight a horde of giant rats while resting on an island stop. This encounter is begun by a search of a dead elk, pierced with poisoned orc arrows. When they are surrounded by numerous feral rats, they put up a masterful fight, though all but Vanessa are eventually bitten by the bites of two dire rats.

After making their way back to the Drakkar, Thordar is able to use his natural healing skills to purge the poison from a sick Skizz; the paladin was able to fight off the effects of the disease easily, without healing.

Helping row the ship the next night, the PCs nearly exhaust themselves (losing several healing surges in hard rowing) moving the drakkar quickly towards the shore, and then a few surges more as they pull their shore boat the rest of the way - moving fast to avoid being spotted by orc sentries.

Hiding their vessel in some bushes, they hide in some rocks, and rest - they have 48 hours on the island.

they start moving towards the central hills, having no idea which hill the fabled city of Theresial lay - they'll have to guess. However, knowing nothing of Nature and lacking Endurance, the trek through the forest is draining for them.

(at this point, we run a modified "Getting lost" skill challenge, with only one PC having to make an endurance check a round - with failure only draining a healing surge from the whole group, and a failed nature check not draining healing surges)

Thordar tries to lead the group through the brush, assisted by Vanessa - and they perform admirably. A task that could take many, many hours is completed in only eight, with Thorday getting lost only near the end when he decides to take a "shortcut" to the spotted hill. However, Skizz fails to act well as the guide, leading the PCs through every thorn bush, rocky enclave, and poor trail possible. By the end of the travel, all PCs are exhausted, having drained many of their healing surges.

On the hill, they fan out and search, and find something curious - a smooth outcropping of rock (in a place where all rocky terrain is rugged and torn), covered in light moss. In the centre of this bowl-shaped rock is the torso, arms, and head of what seems to be an orc. Gold coins are scattered about - sixty of them, in total. It almost seems as if the orc were buried in the rock, but that can't be possible...

***

Today's session was fun. While we didn't really accomplish much, we did become very comfortbale with the system. The player of Thordar feels much more confident with his PC now, and the whole group is working better together. the fight with the Rats was an easier one, though they didn't like the disease aspect - I personally love how diseases work, as they can be an ongoing threat in the game. Especially in this case, where there is a time limit on how long the PCs have.

I don't see where the complaints about skill challenges come from. By applying some basic modifiers that make sense, the Pcs were able to complete the "getting lost" challenge, almost as written, with little trouble - though it did cost them a lot of healing surges to do so. they seem fun to play, except for social skill challenges. Not a fan of those, so far.

Wik

The other day, I was digging through some old boxes that haven't been unpacked since the move in, two years ago. I found an old DM binder, dating back to years and years earlier - I'm guessing about ten years ago, at least.

In it are adventure notes for a second edition game, and it brought back memories. Things like "Goblins (6) AC - 7, THAC0 20, hp 4 each" written down... all I needed to run the combat. Basic maps, a listing of NPC names (god knows who they were... I have no recollection of this adventure), and scrawled notes that are equally cryptic (For example - "Glamdring - Sword? Golems hate").

Just by guessing, I'm dating these at 1998, meaning I was around fifteen or sixteen when I last used this binder. And, flipping through it, there are other signs of my own personal "golden age".

Homework shuffled amongst character notes and adventure outlines, most of the time incomplete. Photocopied pages from various books, as well as stuff printed off from online sources. Whole articles taken from DRAGON magazine (back when they used to publish old back issue material on their website for free!), and edited at school by myself to fit as many words as possible on a single page - two columns, 8 pt. font, and all.

And character sheets. Lots and lots of character sheets.

Now, I never really thought of myself as one of those guys who would create characters just for the "fun" of doing it. I actually had a friend in high school who would spend HOURS making characters, filling entire encyclopedias with the damned things. But me? Never.

This binder has proven me wrong. There are so many created, unplayed, first level PCs in this binder. I have halfling druids with weird kits. Human paladins that use katanas. Half-elven Ranger/Thieves. The only PC that seems to have been played is one I dimly remember - Arion Thistledown, a half-elven Druid/Enchanter that played in my aforementioned friend's short-lived campaign.

Somewhere, in the past ten years, I've changed. I dropped the habit of creating characters "Just for fun". Now, the only time I do it is when I'm: a) making an NPC; b) trying to learn the game system (a "trial run"), or c) Getting ready to play (rare!).

But, I know we've all been there. Making characters, knowing full well they'll never be played. Filling binders, just like mine, up with the silly things - saying "maybe I'll play him next week" but knowing full well it's never going to happen. Really, just making the character because you liked that kit in the newest splatbook, and you just HAD to give it a try.

I wonder, though, if the "Kids of today" will have that in 4e. I know it existed in third edition (my brother being famous for building characters for laughs), but in fourth? Can it truly happen? I'm sure it will, but it almost seems... different... creating a character nowadays. Perhaps I'm just being an alarmist.

Wik

Where once there was a week of plenty, now there is a week of famine. No gaming this week, I'm sad to report.

Tomorrow, usually game night, happens to fall on Canada Day. Now, while I will usually take throwing waves of goblins at the PCs over the consumption of alcohol, Canada Day is an exception. I plan on celebrating my lovely nation, by drinking every ounce of spirits it has ever produced.

There will be laughing. There will be screaming. There will be frequent urination.

Wednesday, the day I have this other game going on, I plan on being quite hungover. But I can GM with a hangover... PCs just die more frequently. But, this wednesday is going to be particularly brutal - an hour-long busride (in this heat!) to Sidney, to spend the day with the significant other.

No gaming, but if I'm lucky, I might be able to score some sugar free candy. Always a plus.

About the only "gaming" concession I'm making this week, it seems, is by playing NHL 08. I've said it before, and I'll say it again - Patrick Marleau is amazing. Someone told me at work that he'd been traded to Ottawa... I almost cried, until I realized he was messing with me.

(for those that don't get the clip, yeah, Marleau got hit. Hard. But the way he took that hit, and lead his team, is friggin' amazing.

Wik

So, I've decided to join the packs of others, and try out this new "blog" feature. I've been meaning to start up a gaming-related blog for some time - probably through Circus Maximus, I suppose - but never got around to doing it. But, with ENWorld 2 coming to light, and the fact that I'm starting up two new 4e campaigns... well, the timing just seems right.

Like many other blogs, this one will have game-related info, but it is mostly just a random collection of thoughts from a gamer that is hardcore, but not *that* hardcore.

***

So, this week has been a fun one. Definately illuminating on game theory, at least.

Tuesday was the game with the "regular" group, consisting mostly of people I've known since high school, at least. There's my brother, who I've known considerably LONGER than high school, as well as my best friend Squee (name taken from the comic book), his brother Russ, Russ's girlfriend Carla, my age-old friend Shelley, and whoever else can drag their sorry butts down for a tuesday night game.

Lately, we've been playing a homebrewed system designed by Russ, which he calls the QUEST system. This system is really an amalgamation of second edition D&D, mussed in with a whole slew of "improvements" that slow down gameplay and don't add a whole helluva lot. I'm not much of a fan of the system, but a game is a game - and Russ is a fun Gm who makes the world work.

One of the imbalances of the system is in how combat works out - essentially, each class has seperate powers that can be used in the game, and some classes are more focused towards combat than others. This would be fine, were noncombat skills really useful outside of a game... but in reality, they are not. If you are supposed to get the macguffin item, it doesn't matter what skills you have - you'll get it.

After much gentle mentioning of this, Russ got my point and modded the classes, to give my rogue and my brother's wizard some neat stuff to do in combat (until this point, my rogue could only deal 1d4-1 in combat, and my brother fared even worse, being able only to summon gusts of wind and to lift creatures very slowly into the air). However, while I got a slight damage boost when making sneak attacks and some two-weapon fighting skills that made my darkling able to at least kill a cat in a fair fight, the neat abilities I got were, well... useless.

Most of them fit in the category of "instead of dealing damage, inflict a -2 penalty on your opponent". Or, "instead of dealing damage, opponent cannot do Y". The second was by far the worst of the abilities, since "Y" was usually something optional in combat, like grapple in 2e. Imagine blowing your action (currency, in tactical games) on negating your foe's ability to potentially do something. It's like saying "I've just wasted my whole turn to deny one of twelve equally viable options available to you! Ha ha... hey, stop hitting me with that stick!"

the -2 penalty idea would seem much better, and it could even be something that would work in other games. But the nature of this game is based around many "mook" fights (minions, to use the 4e parlance). In any case, even against 'boss" fights, combat rarely lasts more than four rounds. And herein lies Wik's First Gaming Discovery.

Wik's Gaming Discoveries, #1:
Any Ability that applies a penalty to an opponent's actions becomes less useful the shorter the encounter is.

Essentially, if I fight a foe for two rounds, and waste an action to hit him with this ability, I'm really only applying a -4 penalty in total. But if I hit him with that ability in a combat that lasts ten rounds, the net effect of the ability is much higher: -20. It may seem an obvious rule, but it is one that really crystalized in my mind when I was picking out abilities for Cestis, my Darkling Rogue, to pick out.

Now, in fourth edition D&D, most abilities that apply a -2 have a save that can end the effect at the end of the round - a good thing, because that -2 penalty that is so weak in a two round fight can change the tide of the combat if the fight lasts on for twenty rounds (just ask the player of two resurrected 4e characters who had to vie with a -1 on all d20 rolls wednesday night!)

So, instead of pleasing my developer DM by picking out these "neato" abilities, I instead spent my hard-earned character points on something useful - boosting my dex so I can get a higher initiative total, and deal that all-important first strike that is my only true way of dealing damage in a fight.

Rules analysis aside, the game was pretty good. Cestis had a chance to shine, RP-wise, and was even given a pretty cool Augury-like power that let him see the outcomes of his decisions. I have a pretty good feeling that I'll be using this power to annoy the DM for months to come. Heh heh.

Wednesday worked out probably a bit better, as I was DMing a system I sort of trusted, even if I'm still not too familiar with it (4th edition D&D). I was even playing with a group I'm mostly unfamiliar with - Blargney from ENWorld (Who I've played with a few times before), his lovely girlfriend, and a friend of his who has the coolest guitar amplifier I've seen in years. Blarg would tell you the coolest feature of this guy's house was the plethora of beautifully (as in, award-winning) Warhammer minis, but I'm here to say that the guy's best feature was the shrine to Stoner Rock on his music shelf - albums from High on Fire, Kyuss, even Unida. I was in Stoner Rock heaven, man.

The session involved an Eladrin Warlord (Tongs), a Minotaur Fighter (Hammer), an unnamed Drow Rogue currently known as "Cousin", and an Elven Ranger named Laith. Since Eladrin are Seelie Elves, and Drow are Unseelie Elves (with Elves being "Low-born") in my campaign, it was pretty close to being a one-race party. Which was pretty cool.

The group was up against a series of encounters as the tiefling empire of Kael Turgath invaded the coastal community of Bronze Shore. There were a series of fun fights, including an uphill battle against goblins that was fun (rangers can deal damage, boy!), and a spectacular group against a goblin/hobgoblin contingent on a chain bridge above the mouth to a harbour.

That fight was a good 'un, mostly because the goblin hexer that lead the group really used his powers to mess with the group (blinding the minotaur for several rounds, forcing him to withdraw from the combat, and forcing the Eladrin to teleport away due to the goblin's use of a "Don't Move" effect). The rogue tried to solo two minions, and failed spectacularly at this, and the ranger couldn't decide on a target, waffling between the well-armoured hobgoblin Phalanx soldier and the goblin sharpshooter that was being a real pain in the butt.

To make a long post slightly shorter, we had a lot of fun. It was one of those "skin of your teeth" encounters that I think the group will be talking about for a long time.

However, it isn't in an iteration of D&D that I've had the most fun "gaming" lately; instead, it's been in a video game. And a very "ungamery" game, at that.

I've just picked up a copy of EA's NHL 2008, and I'm thoroughly in love. Let me just say, it's a difficult game, and it actually sort of feels like hockey - as opposed to most hockey video games out there. I started playing almost immediately, playing my beloved San Jose sharks against the lamest team in the NHL - The Nashville Predators.

Seriously, why does nashville even HAVE a hockey team? I think of Nashville, I don't think of hockey players. I think of hillbillies with names like "Cotton" and "Billy Ray Jimbob Crawdad". About the only thing the two groups of people have in common is a lack of teeth. Between one hillbilly and one goalie, you might have enough teeth in there to form a British Smile. But I digress.

I should have seen it coming. First game, the Sharks lost 6-1. In the second, it was 4-0. In the third, 3-1. It wasn't until the fourth game, when I realized that simply setting up one-timers was not going to get any goals, that the Sharks barely won a game - a shootout victory over Nashville, 3-2.

From that moment on, I've been hooked. The players move on the ice in defensive formations like hockey players, and many of the features that have to be manually controlled in most games (like skating backwards) are automatic in this game, so your players actually MOVE like hockey players.

Goalie Saves look amazing, players block opponents fairly accurately, and the announcers actually give fun facts about interesting players (for example, I never knew that Evgeni Nabokov is only the 7th goalie in NHL history to score a goal; he did it on a power play).

I don't know why I'm surprised by this, but I guess after a long time of playing games like NHL 2K7, I was resigned to hockey games feeling more like interesting arcade games more than... you know, hockey. Though, 2K7 has some really cool features that NHL 08 lacks - the ability to "fantasy draft" teams in a regular series, truly customizable penalties and gameplay experiences, and more visceral body checking.

But still, 08 is pretty good by my book. It should at least keep the hockey withdrawal pangs away until - good god - early October.

Wik