Midnight is my new favourite setting for D&D. It stands above all others for it’s sheer level of gritty and grim flavour.
I’ve used the term, it’s like Lord of the Rings, when describing it to other players, only that the bad guy has won. And that’s not an entirely untruthful statement.
In Midnight you have a god of evil, Izrador, who was kicked out of Heaven. He fell to earth (Aryth) and in doing so, he trapped the world in a shell. There is no planar travel in Midnight because of this. And this has all sorts of ramifications.
First, there are no clerics, so quick healing is a thing of the past. Well, that’s not true. See there IS one god who is still listening to the prayers of the faithful. Only problem is, he’s the big bad guy who’s enslaved the world.
Second, did I just mention the enslaving the world? Because the terrible god has WON. Well, almost won. His victory is a sure bet. He’s beaten the humans and is mopping up the dwarves and is trying to figure out a way into the defences of the elves. The world is pretty much in dire straights. The humans are ‘occupied’ but they give a hidden token resistance. But the armies of the Shadow (Izrador) aren’t stupid. Well the orcs might be. But the clerics, called Legates, are cunning. Killing the people who act against you makes them a martyr. So you kill all the innocent people around that rebel. You outlaw weapons and travel and all sorts of regular things that other D&D groups take for granted.
Third: Since you’ve revamped how clerics work, you might as well revamp Wizards/Sorcerers. They are know called Channelers and they summon spell energy, mostly from themselves but sometimes from a magic rich area. They use that spell energy to fuel their spells. Quite simply really. But they also greatly limited combat spells. Does that make Channelers useless? Not really. Since magic is so rare, there are few defences against it, other than a lucky saving throw. But now trivial spells like Obscuring Mist and Ghost Sound become huge because the common man (good or evil) doesn’t really know how to deal with arcane things like that.
Fourth: Since there is no planar travel, they could cut out a lot of weird things and spells that circumvent adventures, such as teleporting and the like.
Fifth: Since there is no planar travel, death becomes quite the problem. No where for spirits to go you see. Thus…the dead will often rise. These dead are well constructed, remaining human at first, but quickly devolving into…well…zombie horror. Called the Fell, a GM can use this to great effect. Friends who are ‘wounded’ in combat who hide that they were killed. A zombie apocalypse style game. A lot is possible here.
There are other retooling to how the world works. The main book is quite detailed and gives you lots to work with, although a new campaign can be a little daunting.
But a player recently mentioned, it’s not like Lord of the Rings. It’s much darker. I hadn’t considered that but I realized, that he’s correct. Lord of the Rings, more so, in my opinion, is like the Aliens of the fantasy story. It’s an intense, we’re all gonna die around that next corner, how are we gonna get out of this story. The heroes are up against insurmountable odds. Sauron, if they ever met him, would be unstoppable (which technically he isn’t cuz if you read some of the other works, he started as a 2nd rate chump and he did technically get ‘pwned’ by a human in one of his first outings). Still Sauron is given the appearance that he is pure and inevitable evil.
But as much as LotR’s is about the grim struggle against evil, it’s also about great hope. There are huge stirring speeches, the heroes are some of the toughest beings on the planet and they have many allies.
Midnight, therefore, is like LotR’s but without the hope. It’s a world of despair. It’s much easier to lie down and let the forces of Shadow just abuse your life and those around you. You rise up for your own reasons, but a good GM will not make your life easy.
Since it’s become my favourite D&D setting, I’m very disappointed that the company that created it, Fantasy Flight Games, has seemingly ditched it. There is no mention of it on their new website and no more forum. I think that they still try to sell the books.
I get it. Midnight was no longer selling. It hadn’t sold well in general, I suspect, but it did manage to get FFG’s foot in the door. But it gave them a name. People who read it must have at least been impressed with it and would consider other games from FFG.
It’s a shame but I guess these things happen. Settings only have so much time to be profitable it seems. You either have to keep the setting alive with lots of supplements to keep it fresh or ditch it. But I guess to no longer even mention it on their website or not to give it a shrine, I guess it just hits me, as a hopeful game designer. That all things will come to pass. It’s like trying to watch Babylon 5 again. It was a great show in it’s day. But all things have an energy to them. A life that we as the consumer/audience gives it. Therefore, when it’s current, there is a level of excitement that is palpable. When it’s old, very rarely is there anybody around to discuss it and few are eager to marvel over it again. So sadly, I must concede that Midnight has lost its newness. I guess it’s just odd because I only just discovered it and started running it. But there are no nerds with which to ‘get my nerd on’ with.
Maybe, I’ll have to start up the Dead Role Playing Society. We can dress up, gather once a month eating finger food and bring a game of the past that is dear to our heart for discussion. Maybe…
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Android - Living up to the hype...
Taken for what it is, Android is a powerful and at times, moving game. And for that, it lives up to the hype that Fantasy Flight Games suggests and my own anticipation.
It's a long game, but...you've got time to play it. Most games give you one or two things you can do during your turn, but Android allows you several actions on your turn. So while you have to plot your turn out, you don't feel entirely rushed. You think up a strategy and try to get it done.
Players need to divide their actions between focusing on the 'main plot' which is trying to determine who is the killer and/or the conspiracy, or focus on their own personal plots, which are often intense life dramas, such as dealing with being owned by a company, being on the take from the mafia or your clone sisters being threatened. Strangely enough, your final focus can be to make others fail in their personal plots, which was largely overlooked.
The first game played out very well. The single design flaw is that the personal plots are so important (*) that a player will fight tooth and nail to try to get them to be completed in a positive fashion. * When I said 'important' I meant in a two fold fashion. One they are important to get victory points. Getting your personal plots can be as rich in VPs as figuring out who was the murderer. But they are also important because very quickly, you get very attached to the character you're playing. The stories are very well written and the 'story penalty' stings. For example, I was playing an actual Android. A human priest was kidnapped by human terrorists who hate Androids. My plots gave me an option (not everybody gets these, most players are forced to deal with the good or bad due to how much attention they give them). I could go and murder the human terrorists, but that breaks my duty to why I was created (Thou Shalt Not Kill) or I can let the priest die and obey the company. The good ending is to try to save the priest but it's not that easy. After killing the human terrorists, the plot can end VERY badly because I've broken one of my prime directives. So it's a very important question. The easy road was to let the priest die and deal with that.
The flaw, as I said, is that players will fight tooth and nail to make positive things happen to their characters, typically in a role playing game. Thus, as you quickly grow attached to these board game characters, you want them to all have happy endings. And because these happy endings are worth VP's, unless other players make it a strategy to fuck you over, I think that 90% of the personal plots will end well for the players. I think that if one player focuses on trying to ruin the other player's lives, they'll only ruin one other player (it's very hard to try to ruin everybody). Therefore the perfect balance would be if everybody focused 1/3 of their time to their personal plots, 1/3 of their time to solving the crime and 1/3 of their time to ruining the another player's personal plots, then you would have a perfect game whose outcome would be truly unpredictable and exciting.
Still, the flaw is extremely minor. As we played the game, we found our niche. Jackie tried to solve the conspiracy. Cori and I focused on the crime. Rob focused at first on the crime and conspiracy but wanted a happy ending for his 2nd personal plot of the game, he focused greatly on that for the 2nd half of the game and all but abandoned the 'main plot'.
By the end of it, we all had our personal stories to tell. Cori was the only one who had a bad ending (technically it was still a Happy Ending but it was a low level Happy Ending). Jackie has solved the Conspiracy and gotten a lot of VP's for that but I squeaked out a 'win' (*) by getting my happy endings, solving the murder and getting enough favor tokens from the company that I was built from. * The first board game with inexperienced players is ALWAYS a muligan!
What was also fascinating about the game, is that even after the game, it held out imaginations. The murderered man was some rich 'dude'. The murderer was the rich son of the company that I worked for. Cori surmissed that this rich son, Thomas Haas, was obviously gay. But that Mr. Willians, his lover, was going to out him. Being the son of a massive company who is trying to patent Androids (like me) that just wouldn't do. So Haas killed his lover. Take it further, one of the Androids, Eve (a pleasure model) is in the NAPD at the start of the game. So clearly Haas tried to immediately place the blame on a pleasure 'droid'. However during the course of the game, Jackie proved that Jinteki (the big opposed corp) was part of the conspiracy. So clearly Haas was running independent of his mother, murdering Mr. Williams and allowing his own mother's company to take the blame via the pleasure 'droid'. And he must have had contacts with Jinteki because they somehow manipulated Human's First to kidnap the Father (as part of my above plot), because I was closing in on Thomas Haas. They figured by kidnapping and killing the father, I would be affected enough to give up. Little did they anticipate that I would be willing to cast aside my programming and kill to save the Father, which spurned me to return to my work and find the evidence against Thomas Haas. I can only imagine the Haas-Bioriod company's reaction to my discovering that the the son of the CEO was responsible. In one case, the company has been shamed by the actions of their human spawn. On the other, the company has been redemned due to the actions of their created Android. Financial success over personal disgrace. How appropriate to the dark future.
That's just the story that Cori started and I finished in my head. But tell me of another board game that lets us, as players, weave that story. Things just fell so well into place. It's kinda eerie.
Android is definitely a game I must play again. And again. It's hard to explain well and it takes a LONG time to play, but it's one of the more rewarding games I've played in a long, long time.
Hats off to Fantasy Flight Games for making Android.
It's a long game, but...you've got time to play it. Most games give you one or two things you can do during your turn, but Android allows you several actions on your turn. So while you have to plot your turn out, you don't feel entirely rushed. You think up a strategy and try to get it done.
Players need to divide their actions between focusing on the 'main plot' which is trying to determine who is the killer and/or the conspiracy, or focus on their own personal plots, which are often intense life dramas, such as dealing with being owned by a company, being on the take from the mafia or your clone sisters being threatened. Strangely enough, your final focus can be to make others fail in their personal plots, which was largely overlooked.
The first game played out very well. The single design flaw is that the personal plots are so important (*) that a player will fight tooth and nail to try to get them to be completed in a positive fashion. * When I said 'important' I meant in a two fold fashion. One they are important to get victory points. Getting your personal plots can be as rich in VPs as figuring out who was the murderer. But they are also important because very quickly, you get very attached to the character you're playing. The stories are very well written and the 'story penalty' stings. For example, I was playing an actual Android. A human priest was kidnapped by human terrorists who hate Androids. My plots gave me an option (not everybody gets these, most players are forced to deal with the good or bad due to how much attention they give them). I could go and murder the human terrorists, but that breaks my duty to why I was created (Thou Shalt Not Kill) or I can let the priest die and obey the company. The good ending is to try to save the priest but it's not that easy. After killing the human terrorists, the plot can end VERY badly because I've broken one of my prime directives. So it's a very important question. The easy road was to let the priest die and deal with that.
The flaw, as I said, is that players will fight tooth and nail to make positive things happen to their characters, typically in a role playing game. Thus, as you quickly grow attached to these board game characters, you want them to all have happy endings. And because these happy endings are worth VP's, unless other players make it a strategy to fuck you over, I think that 90% of the personal plots will end well for the players. I think that if one player focuses on trying to ruin the other player's lives, they'll only ruin one other player (it's very hard to try to ruin everybody). Therefore the perfect balance would be if everybody focused 1/3 of their time to their personal plots, 1/3 of their time to solving the crime and 1/3 of their time to ruining the another player's personal plots, then you would have a perfect game whose outcome would be truly unpredictable and exciting.
Still, the flaw is extremely minor. As we played the game, we found our niche. Jackie tried to solve the conspiracy. Cori and I focused on the crime. Rob focused at first on the crime and conspiracy but wanted a happy ending for his 2nd personal plot of the game, he focused greatly on that for the 2nd half of the game and all but abandoned the 'main plot'.
By the end of it, we all had our personal stories to tell. Cori was the only one who had a bad ending (technically it was still a Happy Ending but it was a low level Happy Ending). Jackie has solved the Conspiracy and gotten a lot of VP's for that but I squeaked out a 'win' (*) by getting my happy endings, solving the murder and getting enough favor tokens from the company that I was built from. * The first board game with inexperienced players is ALWAYS a muligan!
What was also fascinating about the game, is that even after the game, it held out imaginations. The murderered man was some rich 'dude'. The murderer was the rich son of the company that I worked for. Cori surmissed that this rich son, Thomas Haas, was obviously gay. But that Mr. Willians, his lover, was going to out him. Being the son of a massive company who is trying to patent Androids (like me) that just wouldn't do. So Haas killed his lover. Take it further, one of the Androids, Eve (a pleasure model) is in the NAPD at the start of the game. So clearly Haas tried to immediately place the blame on a pleasure 'droid'. However during the course of the game, Jackie proved that Jinteki (the big opposed corp) was part of the conspiracy. So clearly Haas was running independent of his mother, murdering Mr. Williams and allowing his own mother's company to take the blame via the pleasure 'droid'. And he must have had contacts with Jinteki because they somehow manipulated Human's First to kidnap the Father (as part of my above plot), because I was closing in on Thomas Haas. They figured by kidnapping and killing the father, I would be affected enough to give up. Little did they anticipate that I would be willing to cast aside my programming and kill to save the Father, which spurned me to return to my work and find the evidence against Thomas Haas. I can only imagine the Haas-Bioriod company's reaction to my discovering that the the son of the CEO was responsible. In one case, the company has been shamed by the actions of their human spawn. On the other, the company has been redemned due to the actions of their created Android. Financial success over personal disgrace. How appropriate to the dark future.
That's just the story that Cori started and I finished in my head. But tell me of another board game that lets us, as players, weave that story. Things just fell so well into place. It's kinda eerie.
Android is definitely a game I must play again. And again. It's hard to explain well and it takes a LONG time to play, but it's one of the more rewarding games I've played in a long, long time.
Hats off to Fantasy Flight Games for making Android.
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