The premise was rather simple: Within two days, we had to construct a drinking (yes, indeed) game, test it (no further details were given of the nature of that, but we did it the only right way – with beer) and present it for the rest of the class. Challenge accepted!

I find it quite amazing that I never thought about posting it until now, because it was (or rather: is) a very nice drinking game. It has certainly done its part in delivering as a proper drinking-game should. The only negative part you could say about it, is that it might be a bit tricky to find 9 cups and a coaster – but at the very least you do not need any cards or any number of dice.

Anyway, onward to the important part – the rules:

THE SETUP AND WHAT YOU NEED:

• 3 to 6 players (more or less is possible, but not recommended).
• 9 glasses for the board (5×5) placed in a square (3×3).
• A middle-marker (a coaster is perfect for the job), placed under the middle cup. This only serves to make it easy to see where the middle is.

The below drawing shows the outer square-positions with the x’s, the initial glass-positions with circles, and the coaster as the square.

Every participant buys an amount of beer (it doesn’t have to be beer, the crowd just have to buy the same kind of drink), best done in a pitcher or likewise. The glasses are then filled up to 2-3 fingers (or more, depending on how hardcore you’re playing). Shot-glasses are excellent at this, as they can limit the maximum contents, while removing the need to check your pouring.

A TURN IS PERFORMED AS:
The first player takes a filled glass and jumps (vertically/horizontally) over any amount of cups (similar to the game “Checkers”). The outcome depends on whether or not the glasses which has been jumped over is empty or full.

• Each jump is one cup maximum, but you can take several jumps in one turn.
• You can jump over both types of glasses in a given turn.
• You may not end up outside the 5×5 board.
• You may not jump over the same glass twice during a turn.
• You may not use the same glass, as the previous player used, to jump with.

The outcome of a given turn depends on the amount of each of either full or empty cups. If a glass is full the next player drinks it, else the current player fills it from his pitcher. If 3 or more empty glasses are filled during a turn, you can fill extra in filled glasses – if you jumped over any of those.

Another choice is, instead of moving a cup, is to move a filled glass from the outer circle to an empty spot in the inner circle. By doing that, the player must drink it, then fill it. This does NOT have to follow the jumping rules.

In case there’s no moves left, the given player drinks all full glasses, fills all of them, and reset the board to the starting position (The 3×3 square).

END OF THE ROUND:
When all players’ pitchers are empty, and there’s no more beer to fill in the glasses, the players will eventually end up having no more possible moves, and the board is reset to the original initial 3×3 view, with a new round of beer – if possible.

The game was created along with Julian Møller, Mads Johansen and Steen Nordsmark Pedersen. Looking forward to the next game, sooner rather than later.

However, what I wanted to revisit is something even older – the post titled “the soul in search of answers”, from the ancient times of July, 2008 (yeah, that’s 3.5 years ago), where I sat down and tried to plot out various ideas and stuff coming in Diablo III. The reason for that, is that I spent the start of this year blazing through the “Book of Cain”, which fleshes out a ton of lore to prepare for the release of Diablo III.

So, what new revelations did we learn? At least a very interesting point regarding Leah, which was – while being nothing more than a very good guess at the time – now solid and canon lore. Let me quote what I wrote back then:

Adria the Witch:
Shortly put, she was a mysterious witch, that appeared in the first Diablo game. She was somehow a riddle to most of the townsfolk, as she seemingly first settled down when the troubles of the Cathedral started. Her fate is unknown, but believed by many to be dead, as most of the townsfolk of Tristram were.

This is going to be a bit different from the other entries, as she doesn’t really connect with the other points I’m going to be making. However, I instantly came to think of her when watching the released cinematic. The reason is the young girl, but naturally it can’t be her, mainly because of her age. Adria, if still alive, should be atleast 40 years old. She does, however, seem to know about the art of a witch. Could this young girl perhaps be the daughter of Adria? If Adria had given birth not long after the events of Diablo I, then her age matches pretty well. Someone named Leah is also mentioned in the gameplay trailer, when Cain is leaving by Town Portal. Curious, if you ask me.

Now, just to clear out the few obvious things first. The cinematic I mentioned is naturally the teaser cinematic (link). We know for certain now, that this is the girl Leah that Cain later mentions in the gameplay teaser (link). As far as I remember, the connection was not officially confirmed at this point. Not even that the girl was Leah.

Time passed, theories arose. A lot more time passed, and more details about her identity was revealed – she referred to Cain as uncle. This is best experienced in the Intro Cinematic (link) revealed during last years BlizzCon. Now, we all thought that this was who she was – Cain’s niece. But, it did seem that something was amiss.

Book of Cain confirms that something was amiss. Cain is not her uncle – she was adopted by him. However, it also mentions that Cain knew her actual identity – and both her parents. Her mother was/is (as it is not completely certain what her current state is) Adria. That explains the similarity between the two women, and confirms that my (and possibly many others’) guess was correct.

But, what of her father? Who was he? The Dark Wanderer – the warrior who officially was the hero who defeated Diablo in the first game, and continued to turn into him in Diablo II – had gotten an official identity. King Leoric seemingly had two sons. Prince Albrecht, who was the child kidnapped by Arch-Bishop Lazarus, and later possessed by Diablo, who we already know about – and Aidan, the warrior. Except fleshing out the lore, and marking this warrior as a more detailed character in the lore, another very important detail was added. Before leaving Tristram, he had spent time with Adria… who ended up being pregnant. It’s best explained in the short addendum-script on page 112, as a footnote to when Aidan leaves Tristram. Remember that the whole book is written as being Cain writing to Leah.

Shortly after Aidan’s departure, Adria set out as well. I am, of course, aware of many things now that I did not know then: that Adria took Gillian the barmaid with her to Caldeum; that when Adria left, she was pregnant with you, dear Leah; and that she gave birth to you in Caldeum and left you there in Gillian’s care.

As always, no post without a few predictions and guesses. And, I’ll even make it short: Leah will eventually be Diablo in Diablo III.

But, how? With the focus of Leah’s father being revealed, some of Diablo’s essence could’ve been transfered to Adria’s womb, and lying dormant in Leah all these years, being the reason she has weird nightmares, visions and dreams. So, with calling that, I’ll leave that as the blunt statement it is: Leah will be Diablo. Besides, even if Diablo was completely and utterly annihilated during the end of Diablo II, he still shows up in the trailers, so he’s there somehow – and in a brand new form. The game is a Diablo-game, and it would simply be wrong without having any Diablo at all. I could probably make a few more sweeping guesstimates, but seeing as this has been the focus of this post, I feel that’s better off for a later point. Perhaps looking into Azmodan and Belial would be a good target of some pondering.

Need I say that I’m very excited for Diablo III? Good, because I am. Very much so.

It started with the following link was thrown out at the internal Facebook-page for the Game students at ITU: http://videogamena.me/

As fate would have it, people started posting their favorite hilarious names. Lots of likes and – at least from my part – local giggles and burst-laughs was done. Then, it took a turn, when the idea of having a Game Jam was added, with making up a game based on what the generator spat out.

However, in the end, just when I tweeted the link, I figured a very simple – yet rather hilarious – game could be made from it. The rules are quite simple:

First, gather a few people that wants to play. Not too few, not too many (4-6 would probably be perfect).

The following is then needed:

• A device that can display the Video Game Name Generator.
• A block of paper and a writing device, per player.

A person activates the VGNG, and the resulting name is spoken to the crowd. Each player now has a maximum of 5 minutes to come up with the best game-idea, based purely on the name. The winner is judged by social voting amongst the players. Naturally, you’re not allowed to vote for your own game.

Looking forward to seeing if the idea actually holds. At the very least, I’m going to see what it’ll turn to!

Awesome, yet bad idea: Get Sylar to playtest your game. No matter what, he’ll always know how it works.

See, the joke is – like many other jokes – requires some background knowledge, which at this point is two-fold: “Who/what the hell is Sylar?” and “Why would it be a bad idea?” The latter is probably the less important, but it still adds some depth to it all.

Most people will get the Sylar-part, as many have seen him, Zachary Quinto, in the role of Gabriel Gray, in the Heroes series. The series is basically about various people who gets super powers through the genetic evolution of the human race. Sylar’s super-power is simple – he knows how things work. I guess that’s a given from the tweet itself, but that’s how that is it. Unfortunately, he’s also the perfect super-villain, as he spent that knowledge for his own benefits, and was always scheming on how to achieve more power.

If we ignore the parts of him killing every single one of us to achieve the knowledge we have, being a fictional character, as well as stealing our super-powers, wha- . Yes, super-powers. I have some, you might not, but some of us have them. Carry on, it’s OK, we can’t all be super heroes after all.

Now, disregarding all those bad things, why would it be bad to have a person who knows everything play-testing your game? Obvious – he knows how it works. The best testers is those that tries the product for the first time, and then tries to figure out how the game works, and slowly learns it – as it was intended in the first place. Not only that, but all the little quirks would be hidden until they got told or finds out by accident. Sylar? He would simply know it – even the secret moves that the programmers added in, but didn’t officially finish yet.

After all, the process of game-testing is about figuring out what’s wrong in the game, what can be made better – not playing a game you already know all the little details about. The fitting quote here, is from Samuel Beckett, heard during today’s Game Design lecture:

All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

I guess that’s also why jokes should never really be explained. Unless it wasn’t really a joke, but simply truth in compressed form – and thus, “it’s funny, because it’s true” applies. Success!

But, what I wanted to point the attention at, was the fact that I’ve also been writing a guide on the staff, which initially started out as a “minor article” for Wowhead, but – seeing as I was on the quest – I quickly got interested in adding tons and tons of extra details, lore and what not. In the end, along with the new guide system that Wowhead now provides, I extended it.

So, if you’re up for reading what I wrote about the lovely staff – which, in terms of words should make up for the general lack of posts here – I’d suggest you take a read at the below link:

The Stuff of Legends – An In-depth Guide to “Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa’s Rest”

Enjoy!