1459: What the Person in That Car is Trying to Say

During particularly long and boring drives — down a particularly tedious stretch of motorway, for example — I often find my mind wandering in various ways, pondering various subjects.

One of the things that occasionally pops into my head is a sort of "what if?" scenario about how communication between vehicles could work. If you've ever played a '90s or '00s space sim, you'll know that it's implied that most spacecraft have an always-open communication channel allowing them to be hailed by other pilots and installations, and it always feels fairly natural.

Were we to have an equivalent for our roadgoing vehicles today, the results would be anything but natural, since it would provide those with road rage with the ability to directly yell at people without having to stop and get out of their car, and it would also open the real world up to griefing and trolling. Of course, it might also facilitate helpful communication, but, well, the Internet has taught me to be something of a pessimist when it comes to forms of communication.

But if we consider the way that people in cars communicate with each other now, it's clear that there's something of a problem. Allow me to elaborate.

What is happening: The brake lights on the car in front of you are flickering.
What it means: The car in front is being driven by an old person.
Or: The car in front is suffering from a loose connection to its brake lights.
Or: The driver of the car in front isn't quite comfortable with exactly how hard you need to press the brake pedal to keep it under control.
Or: The driver of the car in front is trying to send you some sort of message using Morse code.

What is happening: The car in front is continuing to drive forwards, but it has put its hazard warning flashers on.
What it means: There is a hazard.
Or: The car in front has broken down and is coasting to a smooth stop.
Or: "Thank you."
Or: "Fuck you."
Or: If the car in front is of German origin and costs more than £10,000, this also means "I am parking here," regardless of whether parking is permitted here.

What is happening: The car in front is approaching a junction and its indicators are not flashing.
What it means: The car in front is going straight on.
Or: If the car in front is of German origin and costs more than £10,000, this may mean "I am turning left" or "I am turning right".

What is happening: The car behind you is flashing its headlights.
What it means: "Hello!"
Or: "You're going too slowly."
Or: "You're going too fast."
Or: "Thank you."
Or: "Fuck you."
Or: "Look at my headlights, I bought them at Halfords, aren't they bright?"
Or: "You should probably turn on your headlights, it is dark after all and I nearly ran into the back of you, you cretin."

What is happening: The driver of the car in front is making a gesture that looks like he is tenderly stroking two invisible, curved penises.
What it means: I have no fucking idea, but I saw this once and it's haunted me ever since.

1458: Wonderful!

I was fortunate enough to catch a pricing error on Nintendo's Web store yesterday — I didn't even know they had a Web store until yesterday, incidentally — that enabled me to score copies of The Wonderful 101 and Pikmin 3 for Wii U for just £8.95 each. It was touch-and-go as to whether Nintendo would honour these low prices, as it is any time a pricing error such as this comes up, but fortunately they honoured my purchase and I'm now the proud owner of digital copies of both of the aforementioned games. (I'd normally prefer physical, but my Wii U isn't exactly heaving with other downloads, so I can live with these two being boxless.)

You may ask why I didn't already own these two games, given that many Wii U owners regard one, the other or both as among the best games on the console. Well, the simple answer is that I wasn't sure if I'd like either of them — and certainly not enough to drop £50 on them. £8.95, while a relatively high price compared to what you can pick up in a Steam sale, is well within "impulse purchase" territory, however, and I was happy to give them both a go for that price.

I tried The Wonderful 101 tonight. I have enjoyed the Platinum games I've played to date — particularly Bayonetta, which in retrospect is probably one of my favourite games of the console generation just gone — but had heard that this was somewhat challenging and tough to get to grips with. As such, I approached it with a certain degree of trepidation.

It is somewhat challenging and tough to get to grips with, but much like Bayonetta rewarded you spending some time with it and getting to know how everything worked, so too does this game — and it doesn't take all that long to get your head around what's going on enough to improve your end-level ranking by a considerable degree.

For the uninitiated, The Wonderful 101 is a bizarre game in which you play a small army of superheroes as they attempt to fend off an alien invasion. The entire band moves as a group following whichever character is currently marked as the "leader", and various button presses can cause their formation to expand or contract.

The key mechanic in combat is making use of the "Wonder Line", which allows you to do various things with your small army of minions. By drawing shapes on the touchscreen of the Wii U GamePad or twiddling the right stick in various ways, you can perform "Unite" attacks — drawing a circle causes a number of the party to form a giant fist, for example, while drawing a straight line allows them to form a sword. You can also stretch your line of heroes over gaps and up walls to make bridges and ladders, too, and in order to snag some of the levels' secrets it's entirely necessary to do this.

The game is obviously very different to Bayonetta, which focused on a single character with a diverse variety of skills, but it also has a number of things in common with its spiritual precursor. For starters, all the enemies have distinctive "tells" to show when they're about to attack, and by learning these you'll know when to dodge and when to make use of the hilarious "Unite Guts" move, in which the entire party morphs into a giant pudding and shields against an attack. In Bayonetta, dodging attacks was key to the experience as it allowed you to trigger "Witch Time" in which time slowed down and you could send your score into orbit; in The Wonderful 101 it's a much more practical affair — it simply prevents you from taking damage, though in some cases, successfully blocking can rebound projectiles back at enemies or flip armoured vehicles onto their rooves.

I've only played two levels so far — both of them twice — but having got a handle on how everything works relatively quickly I now feel I "get" what the game is doing and look forward to trying more. I don't know if I'll end up obsessing over it quite as much as I did with Bayonetta when that first came out, but it's certainly got a lot of the same ingredients — and if you're a Wii U owner who has enjoyed Platinum's other work, I'd say you probably can't go all that far wrong with this.

1457: Escape, Again

Enjoyed our bi-weekly board gaming session with some of my local friends tonight, and it was the first opportunity to get a number of games to our communal table — though sadly we didn't quite have time to get to play all of them.

I was particularly curious to see how Escape: The Curse of the Temple played with more than two people, though, and as predicted, it's incredibly chaotic — at least initially. After a while, you start to realise you don't necessarily have to be as quick as possible, you simply have to be methodical and careful.

For those unfamiliar with Escape and/or those who didn't read my original post on the subject, it's a real-time cooperative board game in which the group of players has ten minutes of real time to escape from a collapsing temple. In order to do so, they need to activate a certain number of "magic gems" along the way — and, of course, find the exit, which is somewhere among the randomly generated complex of rooms.

Gameplay in Escape is initially bewildering if you're not ready for it. Being a real-time game, you don't take "turns" as such; everyone is doing their thing at the same time — primarily rolling dice. In order to reveal new rooms, for example, you need to roll two "adventurer" symbols; in order to move into a room, you need to roll a specific combination of two symbols. Rolling black masks temporarily puts dice out of commission, and rolling golden masks "heals" up to two black masks, and other players in the same room as you are able to use their golden masks to heal you.

Given the seemingly short span of time in which you have to escape the temple, it's easy to run around in a blind panic and lose track of what everyone else is doing. But success in Escape is more contingent on cooperation than the initially chaotic-seeming premise may lead you to believe. It rewards teamwork and communication, with the most efficient route to success appearing to be to split into teams and work together to discover the rooms that allow you to acquire the greatest number of magic gems as efficiently as possible.

Despite its heavily random nature — it's all about rolling dice as quickly as possible — there's a surprising amount of depth to this fast-paced game. The ability to "hold" dice you haven't used to perform an action allows you to reduce your chances of rolling symbols you might need to achieve something in the name of being prepared for something else. And if you play with the optional "Curses and Treasures" modules included in the base set, there's even greater depth — curses provide distractions from your main task, while treasures offer you alternative means of achieving your goals.

It's a really interesting game and all the more notable for unfolding in just ten minutes. We got two games of it in tonight, and I'm really keen to play it again soon.

1456: The Bigger...

There are certain types of people in this world for whom the bigger the audience they have, the more of a colossal tool they become.

It happens in all walks of life and all occupations, and conveniently explains the existence of Piers Morgan, though it by no means excuses it.

In my own personal experience, I've encountered this phenomenon in several disparate environments.

Firstly, when I was a teacher, we have "the problem child". Rare is the class that doesn't have at least one of these little horrors; unfortunate is the teacher who has to deal with more than one simultaneously.

The "problem child" is often an interesting case because his or her dickish behaviour is usually a ploy to get attention, whether positive or negative. If this is disruptive to what other people are doing, they don't care. It is consequently easy to assume that this type of child in a classroom simply wants to be a dick and annoy everyone as much as possible, when in fact all they want is everyone to pay attention to them. This is amply proven by the fact that if you get one of these children by themselves to talk about their behaviour, they'll often appear to be completely reasonable and open to your requests. But as soon as there's a class full of other children in front of them, off they go again, and so the whole hideous cycle continues again and again and again.

Secondly, it happens in the workplace. The more power and prominence certain types of individual have, the more dickish they become, flaunting their new-found power over you and pissing everyone else off in the process. Grab them one-on-one and, again, they'll often appear to be reasonable, only to undermine you at the next opportunity when they have an audience.

I suffered the effects of not one but several of these types during a job a few years back. They all seemed to feel like they had something to prove, and I — and several other members of the staff who generally did nothing but keep our heads down and got on with our jobs as best we could — were caught in the firing line as they attempted to prove… whatever it was they were trying to prove.

Thirdly, of course, you have certain people in the media, such as the aforementioned Piers Morgan, but also people who specialise in comedy of various types. Certain comedians deliberately favour the "being a dick" approach to comedy, and it works for them, so fair enough; again, though, take that supportive audience away, and they crumble.

Fourthly, it happens in online games, and this is the reason I bring this up at all this evening thanks to reliable old blog topic Final Fantasy XIV.

Simply put, the more people you're together with at once in an online game, the greater the chance that one or two "alpha" types will try and fight it out to determine who has the biggest e-peen of them all.

Compare and contrast, if you will, the experience of running a 4-player dungeon in Final Fantasy XIV with the 24-player Labyrinth of the Ancients raid added in the most recent patch. I did both this evening: true to form, Labyrinth of the Ancients provided the rest of the group with a few loudmouths who liked nothing more than swearing at one another and passing blame for things that went wrong; conversely, when I ran Pharos Sirius — regarded as probably the hardest four-player dungeon in the game — with a group of three randomly-matched players from the Duty Finder, I had a very pleasant experience in which everyone was helpful, communicated well and was polite to one another.

In this instance, I wonder how much of it is due to the fact that managing communication between 24 people who are supposed to be working together is a lot more challenging than managing communication between just 4 people. Someone has to take the lead when there are that many people milling around, and it just so happens that those with the loudest voices often seem to become the de facto leaders — or at least think they're in charge anyway.

There are exceptions to all of the above, of course; the second time I ran Labyrinth of the Ancients this evening, it was a perfectly smooth run with no disagreements, yelling or willy-waving, for example — and for every "problem child" in a class, there are usually 29 kids who are quite-to-very nice.

It's just a shame that the few dicks out there have to spoil things, isn't it?

1455: LF FLGS

I often see board game enthusiasts talking online about their "Friendly Local Game Store" (FLGS) for short, and I can't help feeling a bit annoyed that for all the stuff Southampton does have, an FLGS is one of the things that is distinctly lacking.

We have a Forbidden Planet, of course, which is a pretty neat geek superstore — though very expensive for things like anime DVDs and the like — and shops like bookseller Waterstones have now started selling board games as well as books. But we're still short of an absolutely dedicated FLGS, and I feel like it's something that's sorely lacking from the city centre — or even one of the areas a little further out, such as studentsville Portswood.

I think back to my time in Toronto and the few visits we had to the board game café Snakes and Lattes and I wonder if such a venture could work in a place like this. I know that Southampton has a reasonably active board gaming scene — enough to support a regular meetup at a pub in the centre that I've not yet had the courage to go along to, for one thing, and I believe my friend Tim also goes to a regular meetup one night a week elsewhere — so is it much of a stretch to wonder if players in the area would respond well to a dedicated space for buying, talking about and possibly even playing board and card games?

I wonder if it's a cultural thing. Near where my brother lives in California, there's an excellent board game shop called Gamescape that has tons of the latest releases in the front, an ample collection of "classics" further back, plus roleplaying sourcebooks, miniatures, supplies and all manner of other things — plus tables with ample space for playing games at the back of the store. There's always plenty of people in there on the few occasions I've been lucky enough to pay it a visit, and I'd imagine it makes a fair amount of money from enthusiasts. So why don't we seem to see more places like that here, in built-up areas like Southampton?

If I knew anything about business, I'd contemplate opening one myself. Unfortunately I don't, so I won't. Which is sort of a shame, really, because I can't help thinking that something like this is the kind of project that needs as much passion as it needs business acumen. And I certainly have one of those two things; it's a pity it doesn't really go hand-in-hand with the other.

Perhaps I should play more games about business. Who fancies a game of, uhh, Power Grid or something?

1454: Disciple of Magic

I've now spent a decent amount of time with all three of Final Fantasy XIV's "Disciples of Magic" classes, and it's abundantly and pleasingly clear that all three of them play markedly differently from one another. Which is great! In a game where you can switch your class pretty much whenever you want to, having something to distinguish between all of them is extremely important. And while they all follow the same basic "hotbar and cooldowns" procedure as one another, their application is very different.

Thaumaturgist, which later becomes Black Mage, is the class I've spent the longest with, and I also find it one of the most fun to play. The core of playing this class involves managing your pool of magic points carefully, but not in the same way as mages typically work in RPGs — no, here Black Mages don't have a single stock of magic points and then they're done; by alternating casting ice spells and fire spells, Black Mages have a potentially limitless stock of magic points. Casting ice spells provides you with the "Umbral Ice" buff, which causes your magic points to regenerate quickly but your damage to be less; casting fire spells first cancels out Umbral Ice and then provides you with the "Astral Fire" buff, which increases your damage and the MP cost of your fire spells, but prevents your MP from regenerating altogether. Consequently, your "rotation" — the set of skills you cycle around by default — tends to involve casting Fire spells until you're low on MP, then casting Ice spells to regenerate, maybe throwing in a Thunder spell (which causes damage over time) while those precious MP are coming back.

Conjurer, which later becomes White Mage, meanwhile, is very different. For starters, it's primarily a healing class rather than a damage dealer, though it does have a number of offensive spells that can be surprisingly effective. Unlike Black Mage, White Mage has no means of quickly regenerating magic points, but to make up for this, its spells are a fraction of the cost to cast. This means that playing a White Mage skilfully involves again managing your stock of magic points — but this time around, bearing in mind that you only get one barful of them for a single fight. As a result, you often need to weigh up what your priorities are — can you afford to throw in a few offensive spells to support your damage dealers? Should you use lots of smaller Cure spells or a more powerful, more expensive higher level spell? Getting better at playing White Mage involves quickly understanding the overall party situation — you spend most of your time looking at the party information box in the corner of the screen rather than what's actually happening — and then responding to it appropriately. So far — up to level 30 — it's been reasonably straightforward, but I'm intrigued to see how different it is in the harder dungeons.

Then finally there's Arcanist, which I've just started playing, because I need to level it to 15 in order to turn Conjurer into White Mage. Arcanist is an interesting one because unlike the other classes in their current form, it can branch of in two different directions at high level — the healing-centric Scholar, or the more offensively-oriented Summoner. All have one thing in common, though; the ability to summon various creatures to support them in combat. As well as siccing your pet on enemies, you also have access to both offensive and defensive spells, including healing, buffs and debuffs. It looks like it has potential to be a complicated but rewarding class to play — and again, very distinct from what Black Mage and White Mage offer.

I haven't really done that much with the melee-based Disciple of War classes as yet, but I have little doubt that they'll be a similar way; I spent a bit of time with Pugilist (which later becomes Monk) in the beta test period, and this played a little like Thief/Rogue does in some other games — positioning becomes important, as you do better damage if you're hitting the enemy in the back rather than taking them head-on. I haven't tried Lancer/Dragoon at all yet, but I'm sure it's in my future.

My priorities in the game are kitting out my Black Mage as well as possible — it's the first class I levelled to 50, so it will probably always feel like my "main" — then get White Mage to 50, then experiment with Arcanist some more. I don't know how confident I'll be with high-level healing, but with supportive guildmates who have helped me through a lot of the game so far, I feel confident and safe giving it a go. But there's a way to go before I have to worry about that; 20 whole levels, in fact, and while they should shoot by more quickly than they did for Black Mage — FFXIV's "Armoury Bonus" system, whereby you gain more experience when you're levelling a new class, sees to that — it'll still be a while before endgame White Mage.

Listen to me. I had a feeling I was going to like Final Fantasy XIV when I first considered playing it, but I never thought I'd be as into it as I am. Great job, Square Enix.

1453: Winding Down

And so we come to the end of another week, with the prospect of a nice relaxing weekend sprawling out in front of me.

This week feels like it's been quite a long one. Not really for any particular reason; things have just dragged a little, and I've been quite busy. Still, better that than be twiddling my thumbs or wallowing in a black puddle of depression, right?

Not sure how I'm going to spend the weekend as yet. I'm almost certain there will be some Final Fantasy XIV involved, and probably some Danganronpa — which I'm previewing next week for USgamer — too.

I can't say a lot about Danganronpa at present due to content embargoes and whatnot — though it's the kind of embargo that says I can't talk about content in the game after a certain point in the story, not the kind that gags me until a specific date — but I will say that it's utterly fantastic. If you have enjoyed any combination of Corpse Party, Ace Attorney, 999, Virtue's Last Reward and adventure games or visual novels in general, you're going to have an absolute blast with this one — though bring a strong stomach, because you're going to need it.

Other than that — well, even with all that, really — not a lot of great import or interest has happened this week. I mean, I received my gigantic fabric wall scroll poster of Nepgear from Hyperdimension Neptunia and hung it on my wall having successfully remembered how to use picture hooks after initially forgetting, but that's not all that fascinating, really. (It is a great poster, though.) And I reached level 50 in Weaver on Final Fantasy XIV the other night by discovering an extremely easy repeatable quest and then simply making forty-seven pairs of woolen tights in order to complete it multiple times in rapid succession — I must have looked funny running back and forth between the Levemete and the quest's "target" over and over, with the distinctive "level up" flash surrounding me every few minutes. But again, of all the things I've done in that game to date, that's not one of the more interesting things I've done.

I'm looking forward to next week, though, since Tuesday is our first official board gaming night of the new year, and it's my turn to pick what we get to play. Since I've received a pleasantly large selection of new games through a combination of Christmas presents and Christmas money, I'm taking along a nice taster selection for us to enjoy — and with many of them clocking in at half an hour or less to play through, we should hopefully have time to get plenty of gaming in over the course of the evening. I wonder which of the games will go down the best — or if we'll get time to squeeze them all in? We'll see. I'm particularly looking forward to experimenting with the insanity that is ten-minute real-time dice-rolling game Escape.

Anyway. That is that for now. My working week is over, so I'm going to go and flop on the sofa with a coffee now. Have a pleasant weekend!

1452: What Can You Use Bovril For?

[Note: This was written last night, but for some reason didn't publish. My apologies!]

Inspired by someone who found my blog today by searching for "what can you use Bovril for?" I proudly present to you the Definitive List of Things You Can Use Bovril For.

You can make it into a drink. This is supposedly its primary purpose. Essentially you put a dollop of it in a cup and add hot water. The result is a jet-black drink that is somewhat salty, and which is supposed to taste of beef but doesn't really. I'm not really sure what it tastes of. It actually doesn't really taste of Bovril any more, oddly, because I associate the taste of non-drink Bovril with being somewhat… pungent, for want of a better word; the kind of thing that feels like it's stripping the lining of the roof of your mouth off. Bovril as a drink doesn't have that effect, really; it just tastes of salt and disappointment.
You can put it in sandwiches. Growing up, this was a mainstay of my school lunchbox, but I genuinely don't think I've had a Bovril sandwich since I was at school. If the idea of putting a thick, sticky, vaguely beef-flavoured salty black paste in a sandwich as its sole ingredient doesn't sound massively appealing, you can also use it as a sort of condiment; cheese and Bovril works quite well, for example.
You can put it on toast. This is, for me, the second-most optimum use of Bovril, because toast's relative solidity compared to regular bread ensures that the Bovril remains largely in its natural state and gives your toast a strong, vaguely spicy flavour that is not altogether unpleasant. In fact, it's actually quite nice — but again, be careful with the quantities, since applying too much Bovril to your toast will cause your mouth to feel rather strange for the rest of the day. As a guideline, when looking at your toast, it shouldn't be a solid mass of Bovril; it should instead be smeared across it relatively lightly.
You can put it on toast, then dip it in Heinz Cream of Tomato Soup. This is the absolute best use of Bovril, and the discovery of which is one of the very few good things I look back with fondness on from my relationship with an ex-girlfriend. It sounds like it should be disgusting, but trust me on this one; you absolutely won't regret it. Unless, of course, you don't like Bovril, in which case why are you reading this post anyway?
It makes a not very effective adhesive. In other words, you probably wouldn't want to stick anything together using Bovril, but in the process of opening a jar that's a few months old you will almost inevitably end up accidentally doing so — usually your fingers to each other, or the spoon to a wall, or your face to a cat. Wash hands thoroughly after preparing any sort of Bovril-based dish.
It makes a not very effective fake tan. Again, in the process of opening a jar that has been in your cupboard for perhaps a little longer than it should have — though trust me, unless you leave toast crumbs in it, a jar of Bovril will happily survive the apocalypse — you will almost certainly end up staining yourself with it. For fair-skinned individuals, a light smearing of Bovril over your entire body will equip you with the uneven tan typically sported by Britons returning from a holiday on the continent.
It makes for excellent scatological practical jokes. A light smearing of Bovril in the victim's underpants — probably best to do while they aren't wearing them — will make them look like they've shat themselves. Be sure to scoop out any excess Bovril before secreting your victim's underpants back in the drawer, because seeing black sludge that has apparently emanated from their rectum will probably make them want to call the doctor rather than just throw the pants in the bin and/or washing machine.
Apparently if you hit Marmite repeatedly with a spoon it turns white. I don't know if the same is true for Bovril, but if you are bored of an evening, the attempts to prove or disprove the theory may prove to be adequate entertainment if the television is showing nothing but reality shows.

I hope you have found this list helpful, mystery reader. Be sure to enjoy your Bovril safely and responsibly, and always remember your safe word.

1451: Learning to be a Better Virtual Person

Contemplating my time in the virtual realm of Eorzea so far, I feel that Final Fantasy XIV has had something of a positive effect on my mental wellbeing in a number of ways. I also acknowledge that it brings with it its own problems and considerations — primarily the fact that what is one of its best qualities — its inherently social nature — is also something that makes it compelling and addictive, and consequently distracts from other things. As with anything, it's all about finding a good balance.

But I don't want to focus too much on the less positive aspects of the experience because they're all things that can be solved with a degree of self-control and discipline. What I instead want to focus on is, as I mentioned at the beginning, the positive impact it's had on me.

I started playing Final Fantasy XIV's new version A Realm Reborn for several reasons: I'd been curious about it for a while, but had never played the much-maligned version 1.0; I'd enjoyed my time in Final Fantasy XI, but had never got that far; and someone I knew via a combination of Twitter, 1up and possibly some other places around the Web too invited me to come and play with a group of like-minded somewhat casual players who were in it to have fun rather than become the sort of people who run tightly-regimented raids and complain about "noobs".

When I fired up the closed beta version of the game, I was instantly smitten, and my love for the game only continued to deepen as the closed beta became open beta, and open beta became live service — with significant, noticeable improvements along the way. But what keeps me playing day after day is the fact that the people whom my friend invited me to come and play with have turned out to also be extremely pleasant virtual company — and while I don't know very much (or indeed anything) about their real-life selves in many cases, in the land of Eorzea I most certainly consider them to be friends.

The growth of these friendships has not only helped me from the simple perspective of making friends and having a reliable group of people to interact and play with every time I log on, but it's also helped me to build up my own confidence slowly and gradually.

As longtime readers will know, I struggle somewhat with social anxiety, particularly from an assertiveness perspective. Even when I'm among friends, family or other people I trust, I find it difficult to be truly assertive and say what I'm thinking or what I want. And indeed I often find myself acting the same way in online games — I find myself apologising in advance for messing things up, or not knowing how something works, or not being as familiar with the challenges ahead as more experienced players.

Over time with FFXIV, however, I've noticed myself changing somewhat. Whereas a month or two ago I'd respond to a guildmate's request for companions to take on a dungeon or boss fight with an "I'll come if you've got room for me" or "I'll come if you don't mind a newbie coming along" whereas now I feel a lot more confident in stepping forward right away without qualifiers. I've even stepped up and led my own expeditions into particular dungeons, or helped provide the impetus for a group excursion into more challenging content by expressing my desire to see it.

There was still the question of strangers to conquer, though. Final Fantasy XIV features a system called the Duty Finder whereby you can queue up to play the multiplayer content by yourself or with friends, then get matched up with other people to fill the spare slots in your party. For someone with anxiety issues about meeting new people and disappointing them, this is a daunting prospect, but again over time I've noticed myself changing. I've not only been happy to queue for the level 50 dungeons I now know quite well by myself, I've become more confident at stepping into the "Duty Roulette" option to challenge a random dungeon with a group of random strangers.

Not only that, but I've started experimenting with party roles other than my traditionally-held post of black mage — a damage-dealing class that specialises in standing back from the main melee, flinging spells, killing monsters and trying not to draw the attention of the more powerful enemies. No, while I still consider Black Mage to be my "main" class — largely because it's the one I've spent most time with, feel most attached to and have consequently kitted out the best — I've been having a lot of fun with playing as a healer, though I haven't yet got to the dungeons where it's a significant challenge to be the healer, and this evening I tried tanking for the first time.

Tanking is a particularly daunting prospect in a game like this because you become the de facto leader of the party. You're the one who goes up front; you're the one who starts fights; you're the one who's supposed to protect everyone else. The tank has important responsibilities — ensure you maintain the attention of the monsters, and don't die. A tank is generally expected to know what they're doing but, of course, everyone has to begin somewhere.

I'd levelled Final Fantasy XIV's "Gladiator" class to level 15 previously, which is the earliest point at which you can take on the game's multiplayer dungeons. But I'd never yet had the courage to step into a dungeon and lead one like a proper tank. The prospect was scary; I was worried about doing a bad job and getting yelled at by my fellow party members. And as such, I'd put it off.

This evening, however, I formed a party with my "real life" friend and board-gaming buddy James, who's recently started playing, and another guildmate who agreed to come along. That only left one slot for strangers, and that helped me feel a bit more confident about using our run through the game's first dungeon as a learning experience.

It didn't start well; I died at the first monster, but that was because James was busy figuring out important healer things like how to target me and how to cast curative magic on me, not himself. As we progressed through the dungeon, I felt myself getting the hang of what was expected of me — still hesitant and keen to get the advice of my comrades, but more confident about being the one standing at the front. By the time we reached the end and successfully beat the boss, I felt like I'd happily take on that challenge again — though I couldn't resist a quick apology to the lone stranger in our party — who was also something of a newbie, as it happened — for my "incompetence".

"It's cool," she said. "We made it through, and that's all that matters."

As any social anxiety sufferer will tell you, the reality of a situation that's been a considerable source of anxiety to you is rarely anything even a little bit like what you've built it up to be in your head. And that's something that Final Fantasy XIV is helping me remember more regularly.

1450: Netrunning

Putting the more formal board game posts on hold for a moment because an idle mention of them during a staff meeting yesterday may have led to us doing a bit more board game coverage over on USgamer in the very near future. So yay for that!

I did want to talk a bit about a tabletop game, though — Android: Netrunner, which I got a copy of for Christmas.

Android: Netrunner is a two-player "living card game" based on the customisable card game of the same name from a few years back. (A "living card game", for those unfamiliar, follows many of the same principles of customisable card games — primarily the ability to build your own deck of cards prior to playing a match — but provides additional cards through static, predictable expansions rather than randomly mixed booster packs) It's a particularly interesting concept in that it's asymmetrical — the two opposing "sides" in the game have very different goals, mechanics and even terminology.

The concept of Android: Netrunner is classic cyberpunk: anarchic, rebellious "runners" are attempting to undermine the powerful "corporations" who run the dystopian future in which the game is set. They go about this through hacking into the corporations' systems to disrupt them from advancing their agendas; meanwhile, the corporation is steadily building up its defences against intrusion.

In gameplay terms, this means that the two sides have very different roles to play. The corporation's role is primarily defensive and involves protecting particularly precious pieces of data from the runner player, setting traps and generally messing with the runner's head. The runner, meanwhile, must build up their resources and equipment to such a degree that they can — hopefully — safely bypass the corporation's security countermeasures and steal the precious "agenda" cards required to win the game.

I tried the game for the first time with my friend Tim this evening. We played several games, all of which were over relatively quickly. In the first case, I, playing the runner, was flatlined on my second turn for attacking what I thought was a safe bet to score some points, only to fall foul of a booby trap, lose all my cards and consequently be eliminated. In a subsequent attempt where we swapped roles, Tim successfully managed to acquire the seven points' worth of "agenda" cards required to win, but it was a close-run thing — the server in which the last agenda card was hidden was heavily protected, and if Tim had played just a little less carefully he would have been obliterated by my security measures.

Obviously it's very early days yet, but I enjoyed the game very much. The cyberpunk theme is much more than window dressing — the cards you play are all very much thematically appropriate, and the initially confusing terminology starts to make a lot more sense when you start thinking about what you're actually representing when you play your various cards to the table.

It's going to be a challenge to learn how to play effectively, though, I feel. It's clear that being reckless can result in swift and merciless defeat very quickly, but this is good — it prevents games from dragging on way too long with a foregone conclusion, and instead allows you to gather everything up, shuffle your decks and try again with minimal fuss. This is exactly what this sort of game needs — not everything needs to come in epic packages of an hour or more.

Tim enjoyed himself, though, as did I, so hopefully we're going to be playing it at least semi-regularly. I'm keen to try it with my other friends, too — I think it's the sort of game that will be very interesting to observe how different people play.