You wouldn’t know it from their site… or their eBook application… or from any of their advertising really, but Borders is trying to entice people over to their eBook store by giving away free eBooks. The first few, all classics, automatically come with the desktop application when you download it:

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll
• Dracula, by Bram Stoker
• Grimms’ Fairy Tales, by the Brothers Grimm
• The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Unfortunately, unlike other books in the bookstore, these don’t show up in your library when you access the store in your browser, meaning you can’t download them in ePub format.

However, they are also giving out free eBooks for the next week (starting today, July 9th and running through July 14th) that you can access from your library, but getting them is a bit trickier. For one, at the time that I wrote this post, when I searched the store within the application, only one of the listed books showed up as free, while the others showed up at full price. Another quirk is that if you try to buy the free books from within the application, you still have to enter your credit card information, but if you get them from the Borders site, it only takes a single click to “purchase” them. These books are (link to the page on the Borders store included):

[EDIT: After I put this list together, I discovered there's also a section in the store labeled "Free for a Limited Time" that has all of these listed, making it much easier.]

• Frankenstein: Prodigal Son, by Dean Koontz
• One Shot, by Lee Child
• The Alchemyst, by Michael Scott
• Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom, by Julia Child
• Master Your Metabolism, by Jillian Michaels

In addition there’s a Free eBooks section, although you can’t add these to your library, just download them in PDF or ePub form (in addition, these are mostly scans of varying quality, some of them pretty bad).

The greatest part is that you can download these in ePub format, which is supported by nearly every eBook reader except for the Kindle. Granted, that’s one big gaping hole in support, but for everyone else you can put it on your eReader even if you don’t have one of the Borders-endorsed ones.

It seems like the goal of Season 3 of Sam and Max is to give us a new gameplay experience each month. The first episode eased us into it by acclimating us to Max’s new psychic powers. Last month, in “The Tomb of Sammun-Mak”, we had to navigate the story out of order before we could understand how it all played out. Now, Telltale gives us a new look at Sam’s investigation skills – noir-style – in the new episode, “They Stole Max’s Brain!” (inspired by the similarly-titled Jane Austen novel).

Now there are three major things I want to talk about this review – the game, the season so far, and the Mac port – so you’ll forgive me if this is even more rambly than my reviews normally are. Let’s start with the game.

As the name implies, this episode picks up right where the last one ended up – Sam coming back after a bathroom break to find that his little buddy’s brain has been stolen. Sam does not take kindly to this revelation.

What follows is the most pitch-perfect noir parody that it’s been my honor to witness. Sam narrates the entire first act, peppering his dialogue with Purple Prose as he interrogates some of the suspicious folk around the neighborhood. There’s even a “Noir” option in the dialogue menu that, when clicked, makes Sam spout off more nonsense narration.

It’s not just the style of this act that mixes things up a bit, but the interrogation itself has new gameplay, reminiscent of the Ace Attorney series. By pressing the suspects at the right time and uncovering their lies, you can eventually find out where Max’s brain was taken.

This gameplay is short-lived – after the first act, it returns to normal – which is probably good, since it was fairly restrictive and would have gotten old if it had gone on for much longer. But it was nice to see them mix it up a bit, and more so, it was pretty entertaining.

The rest of the episode plays out like any other Sam and Max episode. The story is, as always, good, but I thought it was weaker than last month’s story – mainly because of the fact that there are at least two abrupt transitions in the story. And the season continues to move forward with it’s overall story as more powers interested in the Toys of Yog-Soggoth begin to show up.

As I’ve mentioned before, this is my first time playing through an entire season as it’s happening, and I’m really beginning to find my groove with the series. The sense of humor is hitting the spot more, and I’m beginning to understand the puzzles more. There’s a style to the puzzles in Sam and Max, and even in incredibly different scenarios they have a similar setup. Playing the season together really helps teach you that; it’s only a question of whether it’ll get too easy by the end.

As a bit of a sidebar to the rest of the review, this episode was also my first experience with Sam and Max (or any Telltale Game) on the Mac. While most of the porting job is fairly solid, there’s one issue I want to talk about – the start menu.

This is what a lot of Mac users’ first impressions of Telltale will be, and it’s not just an issue with the advanced copy of “They Stole Max’s Brain!”. I’ve gone back and checked the other episodes in this season, too, and they all have the same problem. I haven’t had the opportunity to test it on other machines, so this could be isolated to my computer, but I doubt that my Mac is the only one with this issue. I hope that Telltale can fix this for any future releases.

Since adventure gaming is such a formulaic genre (not that that’s a bad thing), it’s good to see that Telltale isn’t afraid of mixing it up once in a while. This variety will hopefully keep the season from getting stale as it goes on.

Hits: New modes spice up the gameplay, humor remains pitch perfect.
Misses: Abrupt transitions in storytelling are jarring.

They Stole Max’s Brain! continues to prove that Telltale is not afraid to mix up the gameplay to avoid staleness.

Follow @onetwitsopinion for reviews in 140 characters or less

FULL DISCLOSURE: Telltale Games gave me a review code for The Penal Zone to write this review.

This contribution from Nameless Kingdom Games takes a look at gaming without a GM when you don’t have enough people to play.

Thanks again for everyone that contributed!

Now, while easy and instant access to TV Tropes may not seem like a way of enhancing your productivity, that doesn’t mean there aren’t useful things you can do with it. And adding your own is pretty easy. Here are some of the ones I’ve set up, and the Search URL that I input for it:

• PREVIEW.fm, which lets you listen to 30 second samples of an entire CD without opening up iTunes. Great for when I’ve discovered a band I think I like and want to hear more of their music.
  Search URL: http://preview.fm/?q={query}
• Tweetie. This is one of the more clever custom searches – whatever you type is then sent to the Tweetie Twitter client as a tweet. I don’t know of a whole lot of them, but there are other similarly formatted URLs you can use to access other applications installed on your computer.
  Search URL: tweetie:{query}
• TARDIS Wiki, for when I need to quickly look up a recent episode of Doctor Who. The same format can be used for any Wikia hosted Wiki, as well; just replace “tardis” in the url with the correct subdomain
  Search URL: http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Special:Search?search={query}
• And finally, TV Tropes, for when you want to find a trope to reference in your current discussion, like TV Tropes Ruined My Life, or when you want to find a way to waste hours of your free time. The built-in search doesn’t work properly at this point, so you have to use their Google Custom Search instead.
  Search URL:  http://www.google.com/cse?cx=partner-pub-6610802604051523%3A2szln92pqym&safe=off&ie=ISO-8859-1&q={query}&sa=Search

The point is that pretty much every website you can search, you can add to your list of Alfred custom searches, and use only a couple of characters to quickly pull it up when searching (like “tv” in the picture above for TV Tropes). It’s fast and easy, and speeds up whatever you want to do.

It was pretty exciting to know that someone thought my game was good enough to use at their own tabletop, and he added his own unique, dramatic flourish to the game that made it a lot more interesting. If I use it again somewhere, I’ll definitely steal some of the ideas he added into it. Check it out at his Obsidian Portal page – just scroll down to the comments.

This post is part of the RPG Blog Carnival for June 2010 – What inspires your games? – hosted by Campaign Mastery.

If you’ve looked at my blog or Twitter stream more than once, it should come as no surprise to you that I am a fan of Doctor Who. And since I got into Doctor Who at around the same time as I got into gaming (give or take six months to a year), it also should come as no surprise that I take inspiration from the way the new series of Doctor Who plots their seasonal arcs.

See, each season, there is a repeated meme throughout the episodes – for example, “Bad Wolf” or “Torchwood”. These phrases follow the Doctor and his companion(s) throughout time and space, until they finally build up to a grand finale at the end of the season.

Now, it’s a point of contention in the fandom as to whether or not this is a good method of plotting, since oftentimes the finale comes out of nowhere, despite the repeated word or phrase. This season looks to be putting a twist on that by having the arc actually have an impact – some weeks greater than others – on the plot of each episode. But either way, the lesson is clear – even in an episodic adventure, you can build up to a grand finale.

So this is something that I’ve taken to heart when plotting out campaigns I would like to run. Each “episode” may stand on its own, but together they can form a strong story arc. Whether it’s through a repeated meme or an ever-present threat that follows your players, Doctor Who has taught me that even episodic storytelling can be connected into a grand and epic story.

BUNDLE OPTIONS

I feel like I read these were supposed to come out soon… a year or two ago. I like owning a physical copy of stuff I purchase. I still don’t buy music off of iTunes because I want the actual CD. The difference between music and books is that it’s pretty easy, quick, and inexpensive to then take the CD and put it on my computer in digital form. There’s no way to do that with a book, easily being the keyword. Amazon and Barnes and Noble really have no reason they shouldn’t be offering some kind of bundle (Borders too, but I’m still not sure if they’re the ones running the store or if they’re just rebranding the Kobo store). I would be willing to pay a (reasonable) premium in order to get a physical copy and a digital copy at once. Also wanted (but less plausible) is the ability to port my physical library onto my device in some way.

The problem with this idea is I’m not sure how many people this applies to. If there’s only 2% of the market that’s still interested in owning a physical copy, then the companies aren’t going to go out of their way to make this an option. I might have to cut my losses here.

OPEN(ISH) FORMATS

Ars Technica did a piece on this recently. Obviously, the manufacturers want to lock you on their device. But it’s silly that I can’t buy a book on the Nook and read it on the Kindle and the Sony Reader as well (there’s a slight exception in that there is a Kindle App for the iPad, but that’s still locking you into Amazon’s store). I hate to return to the music industry again, since they are two different industries, but an MP3 is an MP3 is an MP3 (replace with your favorite music format).

The theoretical problem behind this is of course the DRM. Another reason that I used to not purchase from iTunes is because of the DRM. But even there, that’s not relevant anymore. Maybe the reason it’s impossible to avoid comparing the two industries is because eBooks are going through the exact same motions. Kind of funny, considering that in the Ars Technica article I linked to earlier, there was this quote:

She [Penguin Group president Susan Peters Kennedy] staunchly noted that publishers aren’t keen on making the same “mistakes” as the music industry and falling into a battle over piracy.

Pirated eBooks were around before eBook readers, and that’s not going to change anytime soon. So publishers should move past that, and work together to pressure the web distributors into accepting an open format. That would be best for the publishers, anyway, since they could easily gain access to the widest market.

Interestingly enough, after I finished writing this post, I read that the Borders eBook Store coming out later this month will actually be DRM-free and use the open ePub format. But the Kindle, which I otherwise consider to be one of the most viable eBook readers, doesn’t support it, which makes it (according to Wikipedia) the only Reader that doesn’t support ePub.

Additionally, something that isn’t necessary for myself but I think would be good for the industry is a sub-$100 device. Borders recently announced a second eBook Reader that will hit $119, which means we’re getting close to breaking that barrier. Even though eReaders are relatively mainstream thanks to Amazon, this would really push it out there.

These things could easily never come to pass, and I’ll probably eventually cave and buy an eReader anyway. But until these changes happen, I’m going to be holding off for as long as I can. Because right now, I really don’t want one.

Mike of “Late to the Party” started us off with his recollection of his longest dry spell – three years, while he was in college.

Abraham, aka @Dicecreator, the guy behind some really amazing hand-crafted dice, saves his blog for posting about his dice, but commented on the kick-off post with his own story about how he spent his time after an evil GM drove him away from gaming for a while.

@jatori from TenLetter talked about the drought he was very recently faced with – and how he solved it with play-by-post gaming.

Jade (@jaderpggm) finds a variety of ways to keep herself entertained when she can’t get a gaming fix, and wrote about all of those on her blog as well.

@creativecomic not only threw his own hat into the ring, but one of his commenters did as well – thanks, James!

And finally, while I didn’t get to contribute as much as I would have liked to either, I did get a chance to write about my one brief respite from the drought, when I forayed into the world of gaming over the internet.

EDIT: A few weeks late, but not any less wanted, is another contribution from Nameless Kingdom Games, looking at how to game without a GM when you don’t have enough people to play.

Thanks again to everyone who participated, and I now direct your attention to @JohnnFour of Campaign Mastery, who’s hosting a blog carnival about what non-gaming media inspires your games. I think I may have a few things to say about that as well.

“So you want to play a game, then?” chuckled the Stranger. “Excellent. Let’s begin – have you ever played Demon Dice?”

DEMON DICE

As the Stranger starts to explain the game, he tells you the legend behind it. Many years ago, it’s said, when the village was just beginning to take shape, a demon from the nearby forest woke up and was angry to find part of his domain torn down to make houses. So he attacked the village for many weeks with his aberrant creations, and though the warriors tried to fight, it wasn’t enough. Soon, the villagers were thinking of moving away and resettling.

Just as they had lost hope, a wizard came, and promised to drive away the demon. As he entered the forest, none of the creatures could hurt him, and he finally made his way to the center of the forest from where the demon commanded his army. And the wizard made a deal – if the demon could beat him at a game of Demon Dice, then the villagers would leave and never come back. But if the wizard won, the demon would have to return to sleep forever.

“Who won?” you ask. The Stranger chuckles, but doesn’t answer your question. Instead, he hands you a die that has been carved out of rock, with scratch marks indicating the number of the die face.

To play Demon Dice, you need 2 six-sided dice. Pick one of these to be the “Wizard” that you roll, and one of them to be the “Demon” that the Stranger rolls. Roll both of them, and each time, give a point to whoever has the higher number. The first person with three points wins the game. However, if the Demon rolls a 6, he curses the Wizard and the Wizard loses a point (but the Demon doesn’t get one). If the Wizard rolls a 1, he charms the Demon and the Demon loses a point (and doesn’t get one for rolling higher).

If you win the game of Demon Dice, click here. [Unclaimed link!]

If you lose the game of Demon Dice, click here. [Unclaimed link!]

Want to help continue the story? Pick out which story thread you want to write about, then let me know in the comments! Then write up the story, including at least two hooks that another blogger can pick up on. Finally, come back here and post the link so that I can linkify my story. Be sure that you include a link to this post and the original post so that people can trace the story back to its start.

If you don’t get the story hook you want, don’t worry! There’ll be many more options to choose from as the project goes on.

[Note: This assumes you've seen the first couple weeks of the new series of Doctor Who. I've put the seed after the jump for the benefit of those who haven't.]

Dorabella

Professor Edwin Bracewell was a Dalek creation, but the Doctor and Amy gave him a new lease on life. He’s decided to use the time to look for a long lost love – Dorabella. But just as he manages to locate her, someone else manages to locate him – the Daleks. Not pleased that their invention had betrayed them, they waited until their army was stronger – and came to EXTERMINATE him, and the rest of the Earth around him while they were at it. With the love of his life in tow, Bracewell must put a stop to the Dalek plot without revealing his shameful secret to Dorabella.

Things to Prepare For: The PC playing Bracewell will likely want to tap into some of his Dalek knowledge to help create something to stop them.
Antagonists: The Daleks, of course – primarily the Orange “Scientist” variety, eager to crack open and reuse the android technology. Possibly Bracewell isn’t the only Dalek android around, as well.
Problems: How will Dorabella and the other PCs stop Bracewell from exploding if the Daleks access the Oblivion Continuum again?