by Stone Marshall | Sep 16, 2018 | Awesome Book News, Free, Intro, Minecraft News, Minecraft questions, news, parent-news, State of Stone, Stone Marshall Book News, Stone Marshall Books, Stone Marshall Club, Stone Marshall Minecraft Adventures, Uncategorized |
Players looking to bring an innovative encounter to their next session of Dungeons & Dragons should look no further than one of the most popular video games out today.
At first glance, Dungeons & Dragons and Fortnite couldn't be any further apart. One is a venerable tabletop RPG enjoying a renaissance due to the appeal of shared storytelling and streamlined rules. The other is a manic video game that combines crazy free-for-all action and combat with an addicting comic irreverence. However, I recently crafted an encounter in our home game that benefited from adding some Fortnite-esque rules into the mix.
A popular staple in Dungeons & Dragons is gladiatorial combat – either against rival teams of adventurers or against monsters. Gladiator matches are a good way for bruisers to test their might and also win some gold or fame along the way.
So – how does one turn a gladiator match into a Fortnite-esque battle royale? Well, the chances are that your D&D group already has the irreverent “destroy everything and laugh along the way” mindset needed to succeed in Fortnite, so you just need to bring in the shrinking battlefield into the encounter.
For my D&D/Fortnite mashup, I used a pretty typical coliseum type setup with only a handful of rules. There was only one winner (thus forcing all alliances to be temporary) and players couldn't use divine magic, thus keeping clerics and druids from preventing bloody violence up with their healing spells or ability to transform into fire elementals.
The combat area itself was split into three rings, each of which had a handful of terrain options to provide cover and add a little bit of strategy to the mix. Participants could use the entire stadium at the start of the fight, but once about half of the participants were eliminated, the remaining warriors had a few seconds to enter the inner two rings or get hit with some nasty lightning damage – courtesy of some arcane runes around the edge of the coliseum. Eventually, players are forced into a small area of combat, forcing them to duke it out (or to try to push their opponents into the deadly lightning circling the ring.)
You can also spice up the encounter by introducing rivals or setting up future encounters. My home game's battle royale had been teased via town criers and idle gossip for months, and the players recognized many of the other participants, including some old friends and the monk's friendly rival…who was created just to incentivize the players into entering.
I kept my Fortnite encounter rather simple and wrapped it up in a single night, but adventurous DMs can turn it into an extended storyline. Maybe players are stripped of their magic items and dropped onto a remote island, where they have to rely on their scavenging and tracking skills to survive. Or maybe players can form small teams, thus preventing a PvP battle (and hurt feelings) at the end of the battle royale. There's plenty of ways to port Fortnite into Dungeons & Dragons, and chances are you'll get a few laughs when players realize what's happening.
How have you used video games to enhance your D&D game? Let us know in the comment section or shoot me a tweet at @CHofferCBus on Twitter!
by Stone Marshall | Sep 16, 2018 | Awesome Book News, Free, Intro, Minecraft News, Minecraft questions, news, parent-news, State of Stone, Stone Marshall Book News, Stone Marshall Books, Stone Marshall Club, Stone Marshall Minecraft Adventures, Uncategorized |
A new Marvel's Spider-Man trailer just dropped, giving us our first look at Black Cat (Felicia Hardy). Black Cat will serve as the main focus of part one of The City That Never Sleeps DLC. This chapter is called “The Heist,” and for those of you who know Black Cat, you know exactly why. Check out the teaser above!
Spider-Man and Black Cat have a long and complicated history, and presently we're not sure exactly where they stand in this new canon that Insomniac has created. She is apparently still the anti-hero that we all know and love, but what does Spider-Man think of her? Do they still have any kind of romantic tension between them? Could that serve as a point of conflict between Peter and Mary Jane?
And just what is Black Cat after? The title of this DLC chapter is “The Heist,” so we know that Black Cat will be stealing something, we just don't know what. There are plenty of major powers at play in this game world. Fisk is a hyper-powerful jailbird with a chip on his shoulder, and plenty of power at his disposal. Osborn is a power-hungry politician willing to do whatever it takes to secure a third term. Martin Li is a dangerous man leading an impossible double-life. They all have their motives, and they all have things that are precious to them. What, or who, is Black Cat after?
These are all questions that will be answered before long. Marvel's Spider-Man swings onto PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 4 Pro on September 7, which will give you guys a little over a month to power through the main story and prepare for all of this delicious extra content. The Heist is set to drop on October 23, and two more DLC chapters will be launching in November and December to complete The City That Never Sleeps.
In the meantime, you guys have our review to look forward to. We've played and beaten Marvel's Spider-Man, and we'll be telling you everything you need to know about it tomorrow as part of our review. Make sure you bookmark ComicBook.com/gaming, and check back tomorrow to read our full review. We have so much to say about this game, and you're going to want to read it all before you jump in at the end of the week. Stay tuned!
by Stone Marshall | Sep 15, 2018 | Awesome Book News, Free, Intro, Minecraft News, Minecraft questions, news, parent-news, State of Stone, Stone Marshall Book News, Stone Marshall Books, Stone Marshall Club, Stone Marshall Minecraft Adventures, Uncategorized |
Minecraft, despite having been out for almost a decade now, continues to prove that the creatively driven title has a lot of life left it. The community is strong and never ceases to amaze with their amazing creations in-game. From epic crossovers, to just incredible innovation – the sky is the limit for these block creators and this recent Reddit post proves just that.
The building mechanics in this game are really limitless. For those that bypass the Survival mode and go right into the Creative one, it is a nice outlet for letting that inner artist shine. With the easy to use building mechanics and the incredibly soothing soundtrack, it's really no wonder that so many still tank an impressive amount of hours into this game.
Posts like this always make me incredibly happy because you can just imagine the level of pride the creators are feeling with it. I can't even seem to build a one-level house with four solid walls, so seeing entire realities coming to life is absolutely astounding to me.
Now that the “Build It Together” update is live, it's even easier to create entire worlds. Excited to squad up with friends and family? Here's what you can experience together with this expansive update:
“Explore randomly generated worlds and build amazing things from the simplest of homes to the grandest of castles. Play in creative mode with unlimited resources or mine deep into the world in survival mode, crafting weapons and armor to fend off the dangerous mobs.”
Minecraft Marketplace
For the first time, skins, textures, and worlds designed by the community are available in the store. Buy once and enjoy across Xbox, Windows 10 and mobile devices!* (and soon, the Switch)
Endless exploration
Create and explore your very own world where the only limit is what you can imagine.
Build almost anything
Crafting has never been faster, easier or more fun!
Co-op play
Play with up to four players in split screen for free, or invite hundreds of friends to a massive gameplay server or your own private Realm!
by Stone Marshall | Sep 15, 2018 | Awesome Book News, Free, Intro, Minecraft News, Minecraft questions, news, parent-news, State of Stone, Stone Marshall Book News, Stone Marshall Books, Stone Marshall Club, Stone Marshall Minecraft Adventures, Uncategorized |
A “Minecraft” add-on, or game mod, added climate-change weather effects to show gamers negative impacts similar to the real world.
The aptly named “GlobalWarming” game mod, made by developer Nick Porillo, attempts to simulate the real-world effects of climate change into “Minecraft” as a way to educate gamers about caring for the environment, reports Motherboard.
The game mod added several concepts into “Minecraft” such as the idea of rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the game’s atmosphere. Things like smoke from burning, cooking or smelting ores would increase CO2 levels and trigger various weather phenomena. Some of these weather changes can also be observed in the real world.
Porillo got inspiration from a course on climate-change science, technology and policy last spring at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
“[The course] really educated me on the topics at hand. Last week I was just playing the new Minecraft 1.13 update after a multi-year hiatus from Minecraft. I was shocked at how much things have changed, and the ocean biomes updates really introduced the ability to make this idea happen,” said Porillo.
He added, “The (Minecraft) community believes there is potential educational benefit, so I’ve been working on developing cool ideas to make the gameplay fun and informational.”
Not all is doom and gloom for the game add-on. Players who install the “GlobalWarming” may also practice saving the environment by planting trees and other activities to offset in-game emissions. This in turn will help stop environmental damage on a large scale.
by Stone Marshall | Sep 14, 2018 | Awesome Book News, Free, Intro, Minecraft News, Minecraft questions, news, parent-news, State of Stone, Stone Marshall Book News, Stone Marshall Books, Stone Marshall Club, Stone Marshall Minecraft Adventures, Uncategorized |
Google dominates US classrooms with its affordable laptops and free apps like Google Docs. Now Apple appears to be getting serious about recovering some share of the education market.
Apple executives announced their latest education products at a Chicago high-school auditorium today (March 27) to an audience of journalists, analysts, educators, and students. The hour-long event had little new hardware on show. “We believe iPad is best at engaging students,” a company representative said onstage. But it’s not clear that its latest offerings would put a serious damper on Google and its partners’ education sales.
Here’s a quick rundown of everything Apple announced.
A new iPad
Apple revamped its 9.7-inch iPad that supports Apple’s stylus, the Pencil. It features just about everything you’d expect on a tablet of its ilk, including a Retina HD display, an 8-megapixel camera, Apple’s A10 processor, which was first seen in the iPhone 7, a TouchID fingerprint scanner (no FaceID sensors like on the new iPhone X), and a front-facing camera for selfie-taking and Skyping.
QUARTZ/MIKE MURPHY
Everything the new iPad has on board.
Unlike the more expensive iPad Pro (which starts at $649), this iPad does not support Apple’s Smart Keyboard case. Apple also did not reduce the price of its Pencil stylus (which is still $99), but did announce that Logitech is making a stylus called the Crayon which will work with iPads, and starts at $49.
The new iPads start at $329 for a 32GB model. Apple said that teachers and schools will be able to get them for a discounted rate of $299. It comes in gold, silver, and grey. Sadly, no rose gold.
New software
iWork updates. Apple announced a new suit of iWork apps with tons of updates for schools. It focused mostly on the new version of Pages, where teachers can make textbooks for their students directly on an iPad, as well as mark up documents using an Apple Pencil. Students can collaborate on editing projects together in class over wifi, much like they’ve been able to on Google Docs for years.
QUARTZ/MIKE MURPHY
The new iPad, running Pages.
Minor apps get minor updates. GarageBand, Apple’s music-making app, got minor refreshes, including a royalty-free sound library for class presentations. Clips, Apple’s Snapchat-like video app, got new Apple-designed posters and animations that make it easier for students to make mini-presentations on the fly.
Schoolwork. Apple released a new app for teachers to keep track of their students, and basically make digital handouts for homework as easily as they can write an email. The app also lets teachers assign specific tasks to students within educational apps and see how well they’re progressing. Obliquely referencing issues in the news right now, Apple harped on the fact that the data in this app is private, seen only by the student and teachers involved. The app will launch in June.
More storage. Apple announced that all iCloud accounts associated with a school will now get 200GB free cloud storage, a massive boost over the 5GB it previously offered. It didn’t extend this offer to those who have graduated, and it’s worth noting that Microsoft Office 365 subscribers get 1TB of free data.
Everyone Can Create. Apple said that it will soon launch a new curriculum, focused on how the iPad is a powerful creative tool for the classroom. It builds on the Everyone Can Code curriculum it previously launched to encourage students to learn to code.
Nothing else
Apple did not announce any updates to its low-cost laptops, including the MacBook Air, which many had been hoping for. It didn’t announce availability for AirPower, the wireless-charging mat it previewed back in September. It didn’t even introduce a new version of its Pencil.
There were no surprise reveals at this event, and it was true to its invitation, which said we would “hear creative new ideas for teachers and students.”
Is it enough?
The pricing structure effectively rules out the new iPad from being a true competitor to most Chromebooks. Despite what Apple would like us to believe, it is not that easy to type out a term paper on a touchscreen. The new iPad software (more on that below) will definitely make doing project work and taking notes at school far easier. But doing essays, browsing the web, and chatting with friends is a lot easier to do when you have a proper keyboard to type on, and you can easily type on the device on your lap or a table. What’s more, if you’re buying Apple’s new iPad and a Pencil, even with the school discount, the starting price is $398. Many Chromebooks are the same price or cheaper, and have touchscreens as well as full keyboards.
Then there’s the issue of whether schools that have already invested in Google’s suite of offerings would be willing to switch back for the sake of Apple’s new software and stylus capabilities. Then again, at least iPads have all of Google’s apps on them.
Perhaps there’s hope. While sitting in the school’s cafeteria after the event, one teacher spoke with her colleagues about the new iPad. ”It’s not like, revolutionary, but it’s way more helpful,” she said. “The stuff we’re asking for, they’re listening.”
by Stone Marshall | Sep 14, 2018 | Awesome Book News, Free, Intro, Minecraft News, Minecraft questions, news, parent-news, State of Stone, Stone Marshall Book News, Stone Marshall Books, Stone Marshall Club, Stone Marshall Minecraft Adventures, Uncategorized |
Just before students head back to school, Microsoft is releasing its Minecraft: Education Edition for the iPad. The educational version of the popular block-builder game launched in 2016, and will be available for the iPad starting next month.
In March, Apple announced a cheaper iPad geared specifically toward teachers and students, in an effort to catch up to Google’s dominance of the education market. (Google’s Chromebooks have nearly 60% market share for education hardware in the US.)
The iPad version of Minecraft: Education Edition will also help Microsoft ride on Apple’s coattails into the classroom. Though Microsoft offers other educational software products like Microsoft 365—its productivity suite that includes apps like Powerpoint and Microsoft Word—this new release will help make education software more accessible, especially to younger students for whom Minecraft is already incredibly popular. Microsoft bought Minecraft developer Mojang for $2.5 billion in 2014.
Microsoft says Minecraft: Education Edition already has 35 million users in 115 countries, and given the new iPad version, those numbers will likely grow.
