Monday, October 30, 2017

Live Streaming Games, (and the intersting places you'll go)

Hey Game Fans, it's an early Monday morning the day before Halloween and I hope you are all gearing up for the joy of over indulgence in candy, liquor and scaring the pants off of each other.  I've got a quick look for you today about one of the coolest Live Stream games I've seen in a very, very long time.  I was watching Death From Above on Hyper RPG's Twitch channel (you can find a link to both their twitch channel and their Youtube channel in the links over here on the right -------->).  The current season of that program (Season 3, technically 4) is one of the most entertaining, story driven performance pieces I've seen.  The episode on Friday, the 28th, was one of the best episodes of a live streamed gaming show ever. 

The game being played is a Battletech inspired RPG set during the Clan invasion of the 3050s.  It's not a 100% faithful adaptation of the board game, which I personally think is a good choice because that game is mechanically dense and can be tricky to get through in the format presented by the medium of Twitch.  They get pretty close on 99% of the rules and that's better than I usually do playing at home.  However, the mechanics are not what draw me to this show, it's very much the cast and crew. 

The Zombie Orpheus Entertainment group do a remarkable job of putting on an entertaining show that feels like Battletech.  I've been tinkering with this universe since 1988, and I have covered this era in tabletop games, RPG campaigns, and all of the computer game presentations of this universe.  I've read most of the novels, the sourcebooks, and I even fondly remember the Battletech Cartoon of the 1990s.  Everything that I have seen from the ZOE crew reminds me of the mindset and the feeling of that universe. 

It's comfortably familiar without being over the top, and the characters feel very real in the universe.  The guest stars who've been stepping up as the Jade Falcon invaders (I'll even count Bekker as a Falcon, my favorite Bear) have been absolutely killing it.  All of the characters I've seen from the Op/For side of the table feel like they stepped out of the pages of one of the sourcebooks and they just fit better than I expected anyone to. 

Now for the Episode that broke the GM (Kidding, I'm sure he has a plan, but I don't know exactly what direction I'd take this adventure).  The situation breaks down as basically the Players have to provide enough of a distraction for their transports to load up the rest of their unit.  Once that's accomplished, they have to make it back to friendly lines and run for their lives offworld.  It's a fairly typical situation in Battletech, and retreating under fire is entirely possible. 

However, through the power of "Dice and Sauce," in the closing seconds of the battle, two of the player characters are captured by the enemy forces.  The episode closes with the two player characters inducted into the Jade Falcons while the rest of their friends retreat offworld with the 2nd New Ivaarsen Chasseurs.  When the episode drops on Friday, check it out.  It's one of the best examples of what you can do with a live streamed game, and I honestly can't wait until Friday to see what sort of mischief happens next.  It's been a very long time since I have had that reaction, and that's what I think is extremely cool about the Live Stream aspect of the medium that Twitch provides for gamers. 

We've got some other stuff to cover this week, but Thank you to the crowd of super competent folks at Hyper RPG and Zombie Orpheus Entertainment.  You've taken something I am supremely familiar with and made it interesting to me again, which I wasn't sure was possible.  Game On, Game Fans

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