This is why online accounts suck

Years ago a game came out by the name of Spore.  It was hugely hyped and the early videos looked so interesting.

Sadly the game that EA released bore only a passing resemblance to what was described.  It's still fun but it's not the game build around evolution more intelligent design.

There is a great feature where your creatures can be shared and appear in other peoples games and indeed when you try to start the game it will nag you to log in as well as pointing out how much better it is to be online.

Now this game has draconian DRM which thankfully didn't prevent me from installing and playing offline.  As crap as that is, this is a different problem.

Patches are delivered by the EA download manager which has now been replaced by Origin.  It's like a poor version of Steam.  Again poor but not the issue in question as I can get patches from slightly more roundabout ways.

No today's problem is what happens with your email address linked to an account no longer exists.  A while back MyRealBox used to provide free POP3 email but over a year ago they discontinued the service.  So I have an account for EA linked to a dead email address neither of which have been used in about 3 years.

I think you can see where this is going.

There is no way to find out my EA account password without the email account.  I can't transfer a game I own to an account I do have access to.  All I can do is create yet another email account somewhere else and get the customer service to change the email address on the account.

Why is this?  Surely I own the license to use the software not the fictional persona that exists only on EA's servers.

Table Top Gaming

So I've been playing table top RPG's of the likes of DnD since some time around 1991.  It was when I set off to senior school and discovered the joys of the war-games club.  Really by that point it was the table top RPG club and war games never really got a look in.

I perhaps came at the hobby backwards because before then I did live action role-playing since some time in the mid-late 80's.

I had quite a dry spell going through university because I couldn't find a game but after that I've played and run more games than I can really track.

What does all this have to do with tonight's post?

Well I wanted to talk a little about my plans for an up coming game.

This is being run for a group I used to work with (mostly) who either have never played, have played in the dim and distant past, or have never played GURPS.

This adventure they will be running through is tried and tested over many many years.  There used to be a role playing club called The Portly Pixie.  They had a complex that could be rearranged quickly to form new passages and could be set up for different adventures.  Sadly they no longer operate their fantasy adventures but they have published the adventure portfolio as well as the original rules for the live action game.

This means that I can use those adventures for this group who never had a chance to experience them originally.

This map is the first part showing the village of Sham and it's surroundings.

Sepia for that genuine 1800's look on a pseudo medieval world...