Gaming Bees

Message to video game sequels: Quit fucking up your games!

2010-07-14T20:12:00.000-07:00

It's important, I would imagine, when creating a sequel to a game, that you want to stick with your strengths. Presumably the game sold well enough on some of its merits. So it's probably a good idea to figure out what those merits actually were.

Case in point, Disciples.

The first 2 Disciples were put out by Strategy First (I believe). They were pretty excellent turn based strategy games. What made them different was the combat system.

Combat was set on a grid of 6 squares (per side so 12 squares total). Your had your Hero occupy one of those squares and they had a leadership value (3 to start) that would allow them to command up to three troops. In most cases a single troop took up one square but some of the big beasties would take up 2 squares (and count as 2 troops).

It's not genius but it worked damn well. As you leveled up your hero you would be able to increase their leadership (slowly). It was a big deal to reach a 4 leadership because a new troop would accompany you. Sweet. And 5 leadership meant that you were maxed out and could fill all 6 squares.

The other important thing to know about the squares is that you had a front row and a back row.

The troops themselves were quite balanced.

Soldier-types (the majority) could only attack to the closest row (which is to say they would typically be in the front row and attacked into the front row of their enemy).
Archer types could attack any of the 6 enemy squares but their damage was most often lower than a soldier type
Wizard types (and big beasties like Dragons) could attack all 6 enemy squares. But their damage was usually even lower and their initiative was total shit
Finally you had esoteric magic types - The Banshee could frighten enemies and the Succubus could polymorph enemies. The dwarves on the other hand could 'buff' the damage of their allies. The humans could have priests to heal their allies.

The combat system worked and damn well. Each unit was clear on its role and what it could do. Attacks typically had an 80% chance to hit and it listed it right there. An experienced hero could have an 88%. So there ya go. No difficult math, just what you need. Damage was straight up. Starter troops could do 30 damage a hit. Experienced troops could do 50 - 100 or even higher.

Troops had an interesting leveling trick to them. You had to buy the correct building before you could level them up. But buildings had a path, however. You could generally only choose between two paths. Your Warrior could become a Knight or an Inquisitor. The former has more HP, the later has a Ward against some types of damage. The choice is yours and only in a few rare cases the the choice hurt. And that would only last for that scenario (everything but your Hero resets with each scenario).

So the new Disciples 3 came out. I was very excited. The graphics are awesome. The lands are lush. The environments are 3D. The combat...is...

To be fair, the combat is not bad. It's just that it's completely revamped to be pretty much Heroes of Might and Magic. If you're not familiar, it's basically run your people around a board and attack each other. Much like HoM&M, you now have way more 'stats', which are much harder to decipher. Before, if you had a Healer the game was very clear on how much that healer could heal and...you know...that she IS a healer.

The new game isn't clear at all. You have an attack value, which I finally figured out to be your damage output. The problem is, even healers appear to have an attack value. Only...it isn't an attack value...it's their healing value. You have to translate that if your damage type is Divine, that means you only heal with that troop.

That's fine, I can figure that all out, but I shouldn't have to. The original game was very clear on this. And clarity is better.

The elements are similar but the effect is completely lost. The 6 square grid was different and fun. It was like the Final Fantasy games only you had a second line behind to protect your archers and support troops. Troop placement was simplistic but the game was still tactically very fun. The goal of every fight was to figure out how best to eliminate the enemy troops and minimize the damage taken. It hardly seems like there would be much tactics but there were. Generally your front lines would bash each other but your back line was reserved for archers and mages. And so was your enemy. Can you somehow take out a key support of your enemies back lines through your archers? If so, you could win an otherwise up-hill battle.

What the game did not need was the re-vamped combat. What made it unique was it's combat. You merely improve that, not trash it and give it a entirely different type of combat system. One thing lacking in the original combat was being able to shift your troops around, if say you had a very badly wounded front line warrior, the idea of shifting him to the back row might have been very interesting. Criticals add a nice random element (which the new Disciples has). But having some options for your troops would have added a lot (different types of attacks, for example).

What's funny is that the company that made this (some Russian company) decided that the building and troops were sacred and so...they are all practically the same. They look new and great but they function the same. I for one was hoping that instead of say 2 branches for most units you could have 3 branches. But no, none of that was touched. It's the exact same units as the previous game.

Sadly, what's done is done. The new game is out. There is nothing really wrong with the game, but it's not as good as what came before.

Oh and the voice acting is absolutely terrible. I mean...this is the worst voice acting I remember in a game ever.

Clearly, not mistaken

2010-06-14T19:05:00.000-07:00

What a flurry of larping. I think 5 games in 3 days (one of which I ran) counts officially as a metric butt-load of games.

This ended up being one of the most enjoyable Slarpas. Every game was fun. That in and of itself is an achievement because, being perfectly honest, not every game is a complete success.

I like to look at systems of course. They can add or subtract from my enjoyment of the game. Sad but true. I make no secrets about this. Maybe it's a flaw. I've no idea.

KC was the most rules heavy system of the weekend, and that makes me a little sad. Don't get me wrong, I do like my own system. But it suffers from trying to accommodate both good and bad gamers (or as Houses of the Blooded puts it: Wankers). Wankers will min-max the shit outta something and find the flaws. Vampire was as complicated as it was to try to fight the wankers, but it just wasn't a good enough system to do it. I designed KC in respond to Vampire and that was my first mistake.

What KC does well, I think, is dramatic combat. It is fair and relatively quick and (hopefully) exciting. This was important to me because KC is, in my head, an action movie. I like combat and I like it to flow smoothly.

My game showed me that it does work, but Fray combat is still a bit painful. Will I fix it? I dunno at this point.

Anyway, the other systems were all more on the rules lite systems. And most of them were more Conflict resolution vs. Task Resolution, meaning one challenge determines the results of the fight rather than a blow by blow (which KC does).

So we had two Cthulhu games this weekend, one using a slightly toned down system and the other using a normal Cthulhu live system. Now the first one was a light hearted Cthulhu game so in that, the system was 'just right'.

However, that being said, I have to say it (sorry Jill) but I fucking hate the Cthulhu Live system. In fact, I happen to feel it is one of the absolutely worst larp systems out there.

Now I know that I am terrible with algebra, but larp system should NOT make me have to every do STAT times Skill. What's 14 x 3...it's irrelevant...why the fuck am I doing math in a HORROR GAME. You know what is not scary? Math!!!!

The combat system is garbage. It's most often extremely one sided and very boring. One character gets to go first and murder you before you can act. Good times...good times. In fact, the combat system is so terrible because it does the opposite of what the world is trying to do, which is scare the players. The combat system forces you to stop, break character, stand around, resolve it slowly, then role play the results. Any tension or fear caused by the sight of the monster is utterly ruined when you have to resolve a fight with it. Of course, I've also played it Cthulhu games where there was no resolution...if a monster got close to you...you automatically died. Again...good times...good times.

Some might say that's appropriate to the Cthulhu world but I have two problems with that. First, this should be a game...and as presented, it's not a fun game. Second, I will go out here and say it...Cthulhu is not a very great world. It's imaginative but it's one that works far better in books than in as a game. In fact, I've played Cthulhu games for something like 15 years now I seriously, most of them are kinda the same.

I'm not saying that the Cthulhu games I've played in are 'bad'. All the games often have great fucking style. Like 4 or 5 out of 5 for style consistently. From Randy and Amy's giant fucking glowing worm, to Adam's giant steam-punk machine that you step into, to something as simple as Jill's beautifully acted Asylum game, these are games that are so cool to be a part of.

However, where virtually all Cthulhu games fall apart is the story itself. I do not blame or attack an organizer here. Cthulhu is just a bad world to run a game in because in the end, the main characters cannot fucking win. Hell, even breaking even is usually unlikely.

Now, not winning is really not a problem for a larp or a story. It's just that...I've played 15 years of not winning Cthulhu games. They all end up being the same. In fact, the world is pretty much designed for the main characters to be nothing more than observers of the plot. In most cases, they cannot affect the plot in any way. The plot (translated text, experiment gone wrong, etc) is in motion, often before the game itself. And it cannot be stopped. Like...at all. MAYBE, in the rare game, there is a ritual that can stop the big bad IF you can find it filed in the sub-basement C past the horde of guards and fish monsters.

Again, not an attack on the organizers of these games. They are technically doing what the world was designed for, but after 15 years of playing the same sort of plot, it does get a little tiring.

See the thing is, how do most Cthulhu games end? During the wrap up, the organizer will state: "So...do you want to know what was going on?" 90% of the players are completely and utterly clueless so of course they want to know what the hell the plot was. I mean they did play the game but finding out what was going on is really difficult.

None of this means you cannot enjoy a Cthulhu game. But you have to really accept that you're more of an observer to the game and not there to actually interact with the plot. Look but don't touch.

The other systems were more along the lines of a token transfer system. A resource system. The supervillain game was tons of fun but the system didn't wow me. It was slightly convoluted in one way but pretty much amounted to the standard token transfer game. Who wants the 'win' more in a situation? That player ends up bidding more tokens and giving them to the other player. What ends up happening here, whether intentional or unintentional is that you can rack up a TON of tokens. Case in point, I was defeated 3 times in succession and all that failure filled me with tokens so I was nigh-unstoppable by the end of the game.

Also the common problem is 'token dumping' in which a player just dumps all their tokens into a challenge right near the end of the game cuz...well...there isn't anything more than the end of the game so why the hell not.

But then we come to Houses of the Blooded (Houses hereafter). I had come across this game a year ago. They had some neat stuff but the core book was a little too pricey and I couldn't see myself running it so I didn't get it (this was the tabletop).

I had told Wade (the organizer) that I had all but hit the historic fantasy wall and if he could just pick me a character. I knew that this was the last game of Slarpa. Everybody would be tired. I could 'phone it in'.

I had heard it was a nice and simple token transfer system.

How delightful that it was that but so much more. What a simple and excellent way to use something simple but oh so excellent.

Houses uses the token transfer idea but with a very neat twist. When you want to challenge somebody (we'll not include combat here) you start with, "If I'm not mistaken..." and offer up 1 (or more) tokens.

"If I'm not mistaken, weren't we lovers before your husband died."
"If I'm not mistaken, didn't you murder my mistress a year ago."
"If I'm not mistaken, are you not my uncle."

You might read this and wonder how this is different from other token transfer systems. Well the devil is in the details, my friend.

See immediately, there is more role playing here. You deliver your 'stakes' in a role playing fashion. That's really neat. The challenge (and tokens) can be accepted or declined. If that happens you can insist (in which case it turns more into a standard try to outbid your opponent but that's neither here nor there).

But there is a fundamental difference here that I loved. In other systems you immediately break character to do something called 'setting the stakes'. This can be one sided (only the aggressor sets the stakes) or mutual (both characters set the stakes). Setting the stakes has always felt clumsy and artificial. They also often feel irrelevant. Because setting the stakes sorts of games have 'clauses' to say that you can't kill another character or cause anything permanent to them. So generally you slightly inconvenience another character for a few seconds to a few minutes.

KC may have a rules glut but it's a harsh but fair system, compared to these 'polite' setting stakes games. For stakes to have any meaning they really need to have some consequence. I really didn't care that I was virused, knocked out and then dragged off by imps, in the supervillain game. None of it had any real consequence. I mean it was fun (and funny) but it ends up feeling entirely irrelevant. It's more like a larping exercise than playing a larp itself.

So "If I'm not mistaken..." differs because, pretty much the only way you can deliver that statement is to have your 'stakes' introduce plot. Yes, you can say "If I'm not mistaken, didn't I just punch you in the gut and take your sword." but hey...punching you and taking your sword will have consequences actually (especially given the setting).

The statement used generates plot. It is somewhat of a permission/bribe based system, however if you really want to, you can Insist, and go to a more aggressive 'cutthroat' bidding system. I really like that if you accept he bribe you take the tokens but if you go to the cutthroat system all the tokens are lost. That's a really neat way to differentiate between the polite and cutthroat.

My main challenge in Houses was to Cindy. In game I had killed her husband ten years ago.

"If I'm not mistaken, didn't we sleep together before I killed your husband."

Good lord if that didn't change the entire dynamic between us. Why did we sleep together? Were we in love? Why then, did I kill her husband? Was I the jilted lover? Did she cheat on him?

None of these questions were answered and it was better for it. Because the story was being developed by us, the players AND it was incredible organic. It created tension between us, but at the same time, it created so many more unanswered questions.

I realized, that you could totally run a Lost game based on these rules. Because that's exactly what it was. Stay tuned and find out more between Cindy's character and I. We (the actors and audience) don't know and in a future episode it will be revealed. And what is brilliant about it all, is that we can transfer back and forth, who is the good and bad person.

"If I'm not mistaken, YOU seduced me in a moment of weakness." Immediately the dynamic is changed. One of us is a manipulator.

"If I'm not mistaken, while I did use that opportunity to seduce you, I loved you from the moment I met you." and suddenly the seducer is redeemed in the eyes of the audience.

Simply brilliant. It's one of those systems that makes a game designer super jealous...cuz I didn't think of anything as cool as that. ;)

Houses has a great core system. I didn't much care for the combat rules or much of it outside the core rules but I would have to try them again before I could fully decide. The core rules were brilliant and the extended rules feel a bit tacked on.

Houses is a system that must be played with a mature audience. Wankers could fuck with the system and the book completely accepts that and pretty much says, don't be wankers.

That's all well and good but then technically Cindy is a wanker. And seriously anybody who knows Cindy knows she's she's a girl who loves the story and isn't out to ruin another person's game (outside of Catan that is). But she did end up feeding tokens to an ally, which by the system does make her a wanker. She would never do it again naturally and even she realized what she was doing after the game. So calling a player a wanker because they did something that breaks the system doesn't always mean that that player intended to break the system.

It is also a system that I couldn't just accept as the One Ring. I mean, it's excellent, do not get me wrong. I would love to play it, I would love to run it, I would love to re-write KC with it. However, it is a permission based system and I think it does not fit EVERY world out there. A horror game wouldn't make for a great match for such a system. So I loved it and feel a mental sigh of relief that I would not want to adopt this system for every game world out there.

So anyway, that's my thoughts of Slarpa. An excellent weekend, baring the stupid fucking beer festival at the hotel. Seriously, Pilsner can go fuck themselves if they think that feeding non-stop beer to people at a bar and stuffing them into a hotel follows their BS ad requirements of "please drink responsibly".

Summoning up a damn fine game

2010-05-28T13:20:00.000-07:00

I promote clean rules over ‘messy’ rules any day. However, even when presented with a set of clean rules, even I have to do a double take sometimes.

Take Summoner Wars, a fantastic card game by Plaid Hat Games.

The rules are so clean, that only because people are so used to messy rules, is there any confusion.

In a game like Magic, you have so many timing issues and rules that it becomes somewhat confusing when a card can be played or whether one action triggers another card. In fact, I daresay, so many players have gotten use to multiple rule interpretation (i.e. how multiple people can interpret a rule differently) that it’s practically become the norm.

Summoner Wars has a lot of clean rules. They have very few exception based rules so it presents an odd challenge to a new player who reads an effect and is curious about how it works.

For example, several card effects say: At Any Time. We have been conditioned, by so many other games, that those three little words can often mean, at any time….during your activation…during your magic phase…during your butt scratching phase…whatever. But At Any Time can mean so many different things in so many different games.

Not so in Summoner Wars. At Any Time does mean just that. You can pretty much interrupt anything you want, except perhaps a dice roll itself, to use an ability or effect that says, At Any Time.

One figure says when touching ‘a wall’ they get a bonus. Does that mean any wall? My opponent’s walls? YES! The effect is very clear, but we are so used to mistakes, typos and other messy rules that we need clarification on really simple things.

Now then, Summoner Wars is a fantastic game, as I said. Why? In large part because it’s clean mechanics, but it’s also a smart mechanic.

In Summoner Wars (SW) you take the role of a Summoner who can…well…summon soldiers to fight and attack your opponent (who is also a Summoner). This isn’t Shakespeare here, but it’s un-similar to say, Magic: The Gathering (in which you play a ‘planeswalker’ who can summon monsters to kill other planeswalker).

In SW, however, you have a simple map, a grid, where your cards go. This adds a chess like aspect to the game as you move around the board. You get to Draw cards, Summon units, play Effect cards, Move up to 3 units, Attack with up to 3 units and then Build your Magic.

Now that last part is the trick to the game strategy. See you have a limited deck of cards. Your cards are either units (common troops or champions) OR effect cards (like spells from Magic: TG). You have maybe 25 unit cards and 9 effect cards. And that’s your deck for the entire game.

Once your deck is exhausted you cannot draw more cards. You play with what you got on the board.

The key here is that Summoning…well it ain’t free. You need Magic (Mana if you will) to summon. Where does this Magic come from? Well, at the end of your round (in the Build Magic phase) you can discard any number of cards from your hand to build your Magic pool. Additionally when you kill an enemy unit you get to take that card and put it in your Magic pool. Then, in the following turn(s), you can spend that Magic to summon your units. Spending Magic puts it into the dicard pile and once there, it’s out of the game.

So your strategy is clear: What cards are you willing to put into your Magic pool? Throw away a cheap unit is fine, but once it’s in the Magic pool it’ll never be available for you to summon in that game. Do that too many times and you’ll run out of valuable units.

In this way the game features a Risk vs. Reward in which cards do you sacrifice to build your Magic. Throwing away too many units to allow you to summon an expensive Champion might be a good idea, but it might bite you in the ass if your opponent rolls over you (or butchers your champion).

The summoning of units leads to some interesting features itself. First, you have to summon next to a Wall. You get one Wall for free and there are three more in your deck available. Walls can be destroyed but in my experience, they are rarely worth the effort (except for the dwarves who have increased damage vs. Walls). Walls block movement and line of sight so they are highly useful both aggressively (so you can summon onto different parts of the board) and defensively.

Units do not suffer summoning sickness so they can be summoned, then move and attack. It can be quite disconcerting to wipe your opponent’s units from the board only to have new ones appear and do the same to you.

Combat is nice and simple. Units have attack values (ranging from 1 to 5) and you throw that many dice. On a 3+ you hit. That’s a 66% chance of success and a 33% chance of failure. I like that the odds favour success in this game. I consider that controlled luck.

Units can take from 1 to 9 points of damage but the bulk of units can take only 1 (maybe 2) so most common units are ‘johnny-born-to-die’). When you kill a unit you get to take that card and put it on your Magic pool (as mentioned before). This means you kinda need to play an aggressive game, because if you feed your opponent your own troops, you’re also giving him more Magic.

Now I’m mixed about the 3 Movement and 3 Attacks per round. It’s a solid rule and it’s simple, but I played a LOT of Wizkid’s stuff and was really (really) tired of the limited number of Actions in a round. It felt entirely artificial in that game and as the years rolled on, all Wizkid’s games just felt like chess games rather than wargames.

Having a limited number of Movement and Attacks in a round does at least allow the weaker player to have a continued chance. If an opponent has tons of units on the board, they will only be able to activate so many of them. It’s a balancing rule and I get that. But it will then always feel like a bit more abstract to me. More like you are playing a game rather than simulating summoners trying to kill each other. Therefore, clearly, this is a game first and not really a ‘simulation’.

There are four factions (currently) and each faction does in fact play differently from the others. Also each of the 4 factions is elemental based, however they do not come out and state that anywhere. But it’s a neat subtle touch.

• The dwarves (Earth) are tough (of course) and good at breaking down walls (of course).

• The elves (Fire) are good at forgoing the die rolls and causing automatic damage.

• The goblins (Air) are very cheap (like 0 cost) and have lots of extra movement and attack cards. Given a chance, they will swarm all over you.

• The orcs (Water albeit frozen) are the most luck based group with lots of units who get big bonuses IF they roll well. They also can put up weak Ice Wall and Freeze their opponents.

Each faction just ends up having different strategy to them and not just one strategy. I personally see how the Elves are the strongest faction and the Dwarves are the weakest and yet, on the forums, I can read how somebody has the opponent opinion. That’s not just two players being difficult – that’s us both seeing different strategies on how to play the game. I think even the game designer is surprised at how varied his game is.

Soon, there will be two new factions. Eventually, there will be merc cards to incorporate in your deck. Eventually, there might be more cards for each deck to allow for some deck building opportunities (currently you play with the starter deck and that’s it). This game has a LOT of potential. A couple of releases a year could allow for some real healthy re-playability.

To read about it will not do the game justice. It really needs to be played.

I’m very impressed with this game so far. My only problem with card games like this is the buy-in. While it’s very helpful to have set, limited decks, I find it hard to get other people that I know to play it enough times to challenge me. That statement isn’t as arrogant as you might first presume: If I teach 10 people to play it once, I’ve played the game 10 times and they’ve each played it once. I’ve likely played through all 4 decks while they’ve just played one. I know all their cards while they do not know mine. Regardless of my infamous luck, the advantage will be mine, until I can get other people to play it enough times to even our skill out.

Design Flaws

2010-05-18T18:57:00.000-07:00

If you're a gamer then you're forced to use rules to govern your game. At some point, you've probably come across a rule that was just a mistake on the part of the game designer. I'm not talking about a typo or a See Page XX. I'm talking that the game designer clearly made a mistake with something that takes away from your enjoyment of a product.

For my own part, I've found this only when a game based their product off of a license, such as Battlestar Galactica and Lord of the Rings.

Say, speaking of which, those are my two recent beefs. Funny how life works, huh?

The Cortex system got ahold of BSG the RPG and in it they have a blatant disregard for everybody's favorite Cylon: Model 6.
If you've watched the show (trivial spoiler alert) # 6 can hold her own in a fight. In fact, she actually tends to win every hand to hand fight we see her in. In particular she beats the hell outta Starbuck who is awesomesauce at everything she does (heck she somehow manages to fight Apollo to a standstill...le sigh...ignoring that his bicep is as big as the actress' head...whatever that's another rant).

Yet in Cortex, #6 is giving average human Strength, Agility and the near lowest Unarmed Fighting skill you can get (d2 being the lowest, she has d4). WTF? She barely lost a fight but she's absolute horribly by the game rules.

Weak!

LotR put out a much beloved but now failed miniatures games. Sabertooth games made it (god rest their gaming souls) and did a near perfect job on it. It was one of my favorite minis games. It did have a oddity (not a flaw) in that your forces would crash together...and after a blender of blood and hacking, you would wipe the board with tons of figures, leaving a handful of heroes.

The game suffered a few other flaws but the one that truly killed me, like hurt my soul, was the Balrog. Here was an awesome miniature (heh...it's like freaking huge!).

Now the game is governed by d6's. You get X number of attack dice and if you roll equal to or higher than the Toughness of the opponent, you score a wound! So Toughness scores range from 1 (hurt by everything) to a 6 (hurt by very little) Nice and simple.

The only complexity is that if you roll a 1, you can spend an Action Point to convert that into a 6 (which again, will hurt everything in the game).

So Tough figures like Aragon might have a 4 or 5. The original version of Gimli was giving a 6.

The Balrog? The Balrog was given a 5. Okay, for you math 'wiz's that means you have a 33% chance on any die of wounding the Balrog. I mean a dude with an arrow who rolls 2 dice...on each die you have a 33% chance of wounding this ultimate beast.

...No wait...didn't I just say if you roll a 1 you can convert it into a 6. Yes. Yes I did. And...it's the motherfracking Balrog. Why would you NOT convert your 1's into 6's?!?

So on a 1 (converted to a 6) and a natural 5 or 6 you wound the Balrog. That's 50% of the dice thrown will wound the Balrog. But not Gimli. Remember he's tougher with a 6 (allowing only 16% of the hits to wound him or 33% if they are converted from a 1).

Is this the sissy version of the Balrog? The Balrog in the back who didn't want to fight, who just wants to pick flowers and discuss women's fashion during bridge with its friends? I'm pretty sure he's got a flaming sword and a whip and breaths fire...but the Balrog who does that is certainly not this uber expensive miniature who can get its ass handed to it but a bunch of Gondorians with steel blades and elves with wooden arrows.

Anyway, I'll just end my rant with: Greatest. Tragedy. Evar. (In. A. Miniatures. Game.)

Top Ten Games

2010-04-19T12:51:00.001-07:00

Ignoring games of my own creation, which would be obvious choices for me (I liked them cuz I wrote them), I thought I would list my top ten games. Of course, this a lot harder than one would think. What do you base your favourite game on?

For me I guess it’s a mix. The system has to be at least functional and the setting has to be good. However, more and more, I realize that I like the mechanics of many of my favourite games less. I mean, they were functional back in the day. But every game has it’s flaws.

#11 - Tunnels and Trolls

Rules: ???

Setting: ???

Fun Factor: 5/5

I place T&T here only because it was my first. You never forget your first, do you.

T&T wasn’t a great system. I barely remember it, but it was made magical by my father who drew out the dungeon map onto a very large card stock paper and then hid it with sheets of paper. As we progressed into the dungeon, he would reveal sections of it, as much as our torches could reveal.

I was ten and played with my two sisters and one of my dad’s friends. And so, the obsession began.

#10 Cyberpunk 2013 & 2020

Rules: 2/5

Setting: 3/5

Fun Factor: 3/5

I had a lot of fun with Cyberpunk, despite its rules. The rule system was a little drab. Combat was supposed to be fast and deadly but it suffered from the Too Much Armour syndrome, which allows a player to pack way too much armour to make themselves bullet proof.

Still, I ran it for years, so it has to make the list for nostalgias sake. It wasn’t much more than D&D but in the future. Most of the game (and cyberwear) revolved around combat. What would have made this game great (instead of good) would be attention to the stress and pain of the dystopian future that they presented. There was a vague humanity system but it was just an ON/OFF switch. You were either fine (albeit crappy at social rolls) or insane (Cyberpsychosis). Where they really should have focused was the dirty and gritty nature of life on the streets. They talks a lot about chop shops putting on an arm but never really gave you rules that governed low grade cyberwear or that dirty filthy doctor who infects your wounds. Instead, cyberwear was shiny and guns were big and you killed anybody who looked at you wrong and there wasn’t much that the cops could do about it.

#9 Vampire

Rules: 3/5

Setting: 5/5

Fun Factor: 4/5

The original Vampire does hold a special place in my heart. It was one of the first games that I experience where you didn’t really dish out XP for killin’ monsters but for the story.

I ran quite a few stories with this game and they really were stories, more than adventures. The original setting was top notch. Truly brilliant design where you had a lot of vampire ‘class’ that opened up and got better over the years.

The rules were okay and showed their wild randomness over the years (and you can note as the years went by, the default difficulty that started at 6+ on a d10 became 7+ and then 8+, which is funny because they actually should have gone the opposite way, making earning Successes easier, not harder).

This became my true beef with the system. The setting suggested you could do things that you simply could not do with the system, such as a group of Sabbat taking out and destroying a Methuselah (the rules for higher Gens were so ridiculously disproportioned that it would have been impossible to make this true).

As the game progressed, the bloat of setting (including all the other games in the World of Darkness) began to really weigh the system and setting down. Still, showed me that games were about stories and not about home invasion and monster killing.

#8 Shadowrun/Earthdawn

Rules: 3/5

Setting: 5/5

Fun Factor: 3/5

I probably shouldn’t put both games here but they are both special in their own way.

Shadowrun came out first and I played the hell outta it. The rules were very complex (by today’s standards) but quite solid. You did have your wildly random rolls every once in a while but this was ameliorated by the fact that you could get very large dice pools. A single shot could take quite a bit of dice rolling. I would never go for this sort of game now, because it’s just too much math.

I found Earthdawn to be a more enjoyable game of the two, rules wise. I used dice steps: Step 1 was a d4, Step 2 was a d6, etc, etc. Beyond D20 you would add another d4. The slight flaw of the system was that it is far better to roll more dice to hit your averages than to roll larger dice, such as the D20. Dice would explode, meaning if you rolled the highest result on the dice, you could roll again. Rolling a d6 then allows a 16% chance to roll again where rolling a d20 allows a 5% chance of rolling again. It seemed unfair to roll the d20 sometimes, especially when you’re like me and roll pretty tepid. It was far better for my orc warrior to hold back some of his strength to get a better combo of dice than the d20+d4. Absurd that holding back would amount to better averages of damage, but that was the system.

That being said, Shadowrun and Earthdawn introduced some amazing stuff for magic.

Shadowrun had a complex but rewarding system. They made sure that magic had as much depth as guns. If you could pimp out your guns and gear, you could pimp out your mage as well. Talismans and spirits could be used to bolster your mage to make them every bit the equal of a street samurai. Another neat feature that Shadowrun brought to the table was Drain. Instead of the D&D X number of spells per day, each spell could just rob you of some of your Endurance. If that theft was too overwhelming the spell could physically harm the mage. Due to the spell pool, you could decide how many extra dice you wanted to throw into your spell and how many you wanted to reserve for fighting off the drain. A smart mage could find a good balance between the two and fling fireballs until the cows came home.

Earthdawn, on the other hand, introduced something called Willforce, a power which created the underlying strength of your spells. Your 1st Circle spells were never useless because you could always increase your Willforce. Earthdawn also introduced the connect that magic was connected and thus you would tie threads to a spell to make it function. This tying of threads carried through to mean that making a magic item required the spell caster to tie a thread to the item permanently. It would mean that they were connected to the item for all time. That allowed magic items to be both rare and more interesting and also to grow over time (because you could make the item more and more powerful of the years). Additionally, the neat thing is that particularly powerful creatures and other wizards could see those threads and use them to launch spells down the line to the original mage. Solid gold.

Like Vampire, the fun in both games was strong but the rules tended to get in the way just a bit. It was less apparent with Earthdawn, but in Shadowrun, there wasn’t always a good balance. Trolls for example were wildly more powerful than humans, at least physically. You could literally shoot a troll in the face and have it do absolutely nothing. Not cool.

I’ve heard a lot of bashing of 3rd edition Shadowrun and I’m not really sure why. The original was pretty complex, which was okay in the hands of a good GM. The new one looks fine to me. *shrugs*

#7 Sla Industries

Rules: 3/5

Setting: 4/5

Fun Factor: ???

Before I start this, I will admit, I’ve never run a Sla Industries game. I’ve wanted to, but the setting is just elusive enough that…well…I wouldn’t know how to do it justice.

Sla Industries presents itself to be nothing more than a gun bunny game. You get the biggest armour you can afford and the biggest gun and you try to make a name for yourself as a corporate shill, known as an Operative (Op for short) for Sla Industries. It’s a world where violence is not just the answer for everything, it’s the worlds biggest entertainment industry. You can compete in gladiatorial games and if you’re good enough, you’ll get a sponsor and go on TV.

Sla Industries (the corporation, not the game) promises that you can have everything you want. The only price for this is not to ask questions.

But…wait…what questions are there to ask? I mean, what is the question to ask about this ultra violent bleak dystopian world? And that was the hook for this game. The company owns absolutely everybody, so what the hell are the secrets behind it that you could be murdered in your sleep by even asking? I mean what is the question to even ask?

The concept is a bit far fetched and after much searching I finally discovered the Truth behind Sla Industries and it is ridiculous to the extreme (it is not uninteresting but it does not share the right theme of Sla Industries and breaks some serious rules of universe building). This is why I’ve only given it a 4/5 for setting.

The problem I’ve always had with Sla Industries is that I have no clue how to run it. I mean, as the GM you kinda have to be a mega douche bag in a number of ways to run it well. The people who are hunting anybody who asks questions are way too powerful and as such, if the GM wants the campaign to last longer than the first character posing a question against Sla Industries, they will have to end up saving the characters with mega powerful allies.

But some part of me is still in love with the style over substance that is presented in Sla Industries. It has a metric ton of potential which I don’t think it fully capitalized on.

Savage Sla is a PDF that some fine bloke created which uses the rules of Savage Worlds (see later) and the setting of Sla Industries. And it’s good. I would probably use Savage Sla before restoring to the Sla Industries rules. Not that the actual rules are bad, but they do focus on some trivial details which I, as a GM, no longer care about (such as recoil modifiers for your guns and the like). Also, they don’t try to be balanced, so a Stormer character (giant grey hulk) will pretty much win every close combat fight (but the creature is stupid and I cannot imagine the simplistic role playing that you would be forced into).

#6 Ars Magika

Rules: 2/5

Setting: 4/5

Fun Factor: 4/5

I make it no secret, I love magic systems. Ars Magika does not have a great magic system. Don’t get me wrong, it’s well thought out and has some neat designs to it, but at the end of the day their spontaneous magic system is: Figure out what the player wants to do, go through this list of 400 spells and find one that is comparable. There’s your target number. WTF?

What Ars Magika did well however was introduce a plausible troupe style system and a setting where the characters were encouraged not to go adventuring but to hunker down and create a living breathing home, called a Chantry.

The Chantry was as much a character as the players were and if you could get the players to really buy into their home, it could be quite excellent. Adventures could be to go get some rare books for their library (i.e. increase the value of their library which would in turn allow them to research more powerful spells in the downtime).

Ars Magika was a slow paced game, moving in seasons of time. A very interesting and different approach, made possible, in part, by the troupe style of play.

You see, you didn’t make 1 character but at least 3. One wizard, one companion and at least 1 grog (a servant). The GM had the luxury of running a session for any combination of the group. Maybe there is a dragon that requires all the wizards to come out and play. Or maybe one Wizard has to make a journey and the other players are expected to play their companions or grogs. Maybe you want to see how the grogs do in the village bar one evening. You have a lot of great options with this game.

#5 - Champions

Rules: 1 & 5/5

Setting: 1/5

Fun Factor: 4/5

Ahhh, Champions. The Hero System. One of the best and worst systems out there.

Champions boasted that you could make any superhero, evar. And it gave you a system to do exactly that! I’ve not found a character that I could not re-create with the Champions points buy system.

And is it fair? Well of course it is. Not. Which is why I give it both a 1 and a 5 for Rules. The system is convoluted and it allows some of the most horrific min-maxing known to nerdom. It’s a system that allows you to do advanced math to squeeze points of your ass to build a character who is not unlike a god. At the same time, if you don’t know the system well or desire to design a more down to earth character, you can easily be outclassed.

So it gets a 5 for versatility. You really, truly can build any hero (super or otherwise) with the system. And a 1 because there is no good way to create a check and balance system for it.

It has a terrible setting, the world of Champions. Wooo. With such award winning heroes and Defender and…well that’s the only character I know from the world (it was that memorable). I even played Champions Online and can’t remember any of the characters there.

The world is forgettable and weak. But I don’t know anybody who used it. You use your own world or just put everybody into the DC or Marvel universe and…go!

The fun factor is pretty high because if you CAN get a good group working and your GM knows their stuff (as I once, long ago did) you can make the system sing, dance and strut its stuff. You can knock off superhero fights like there is no tomorrow.

My common complaint about Champions is a simple one: Like most other systems, other than the occasional knock-back there is no reason to move once you’ve engaged in combat with a foe. A superhero system is one that begs to have large amounts of movement, where movement is encouraged by complimenting combat.

#5.1 – Marvel Super Heroes – Saga system

Rules: 5/5

Setting: 5/5

Fun: 5/5

Damn, I’m already cheating (well again). Champions is my classic game, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Marvel Super heroes using the Saga system.

The Saga system appeared for a Dragonlance setting and Marvel Super heroes. It’s fine if you haven’t heard of it: by and large it failed. However, it was, without a doubt, one of the best superhero systems out there.

Basically there are four stats and everything you do has to be linked to one of those stats (the D&D version had 8 stats). There are 5 suites of cards, 4 of which are linked to the stat and one of which is the GM’s suite (in this case the Doom cards).

You would throw down a card and add your stat plus the card value. If you could match your stat with your cards, you could flip the top card over and add that value as well. If that one match you could do it again (and again).

To add some brilliance to the design, when you got hurt you would have to give up cards from your hand. When you did this, you would have to give up a value of cards equal to the damage. Simple but it gets better: When you discard a card for damage, you lower your hand size. So your hand size represents not just your health but your options. Characters like the Hulk were brutally tough (very high damage resistance) but only standard experience level (4 cards) but characters like Captain America had tons of experience and so he would have 6 cards (the highest number of cards you could have).

Losing cards in this fashion limited your options, but it doesn’t make you particularly weaker (you could still have a great card in your hard to hit the baddy with).

Ultimately the Saga system is great for a more lite game. It would be possible, for example, for any hero to be able to strike and harm anything in the Marvel universe if they kept getting the top card to match their stat. It may have only happened once in all the games I ran or played it, but one player got high enough to actually harm Galactis (not buy much but any amount of damage for this character, who threw feathers, would be silly).

The Saga system had one thing going for it over die: It was fun. It’s a lot of fun to pick the right card for the right situation and get to flip the top card on the deck and see if you can pull off some high numbers.

#4 - Kult

Rules: 2/5

Setting: 5/5

Fun Factor: 4/5

This was a real treat from the Sweds who are, as far as I can tell, pretty fucked up. The original Kult had misdirection when it had it’s rules. The world begged for a brutal and simply system but the rules were just one shade too convoluted for it.

At it’s core, it was a simple d20 system. The damage was very random but most weapons had an auto chance of killing a human which was effectively brutal. Mind you a lot of what you fought could take multiple Mortal wounds, so things that would kill a human wouldn’t stop these horrors.

The world of Kult was one that I will always love. I can’t even compare it to the better known Cthluthu because I find the later to be much of a joke. In Cthluthu there is no real hope. You can’t win. You can stave off the inevitable but I say, why bother? It’s like Japanese Horror movies: If there was no chance of beating the evil in the first place, what was the point of it all.

Kult was a much more robust world. Death, as they say, was only the beginning. That is both true and false. It is false because in most campaigns, once your character is dead, you have to do the traditional: make a new character. But it is also true in that, there is an entire aspect of the game which deals with life, death and rebirth. It would be possible for a GM to explore the death and soul of a character and their journey in the hereafter, but it’s not entirely encouraged.

What goes on behind the scenes is ultimately fascinating. This is a well written, vibrant and fiercely dark world. There is a huge lie going on (and it would be criminal of me to just reveal it here) and the players can try to find the truth of not. The difference between Kult and Sla Industries, where the Truth lies, is that in Sla Industries there is nobody to ask the questions of which doesn’t immediately incriminate you. The moment you ask the question, what the frak is going on, is the moment you’re on the radar and your life is over. In Kult, while there are titanic forces at work…there are sources that can answer the question for you which doesn’t always put you on the radar to so speak. In fact, a character can go insane (or find somebody who is insane) and glean some clues to reality. The bad guys want to stop you but they are totally and completely self involved in their own affairs and they are not prone to working well together so they might send one horrible creature after you and presume that everything went according to plan.

Kult is a powerful world, better I believe than the Cthluthu one because ultimately, mankind has a very powerful role in things and all the monsters can’t take that away from them. They can kill a human but they cannot snuff out it’s soul, so in the big cosmos, they have less power than you might think. Mind you, they still ‘ended you’ and so you generally ‘lost’ to them this time, but it’s very neat to be able to realize that, well, death is only the beginning.

Above all else, Kult features a host of bizarre, flesh wrapped monstrosities that are borderline stolen from Cenobites of Clive Barker’s mind. And c’mon now, who doesn’t love Pinhead and his buddies. Ignoring the convoluted and awful movies, Kult has that same feel, where the boundaries of life and death, passion and madness are a little too close to each other.

While I’ll never stoop to using the archaic rules system of Kult, I love the world and will use that in a heartbeat.

#3 - Savage Worlds/Cortex

Rules: 4/5

Setting: ???

Fun Factor: 4/5

Two, two, two systems in one. Well maybe not. How about, one system, Savage Worlds comes out and uses many decent ideas. Then another system comes out, Cortex, and practically steals most of the ideas but tweaks them.

Both system are without setting. SW tends to promote pulp style of play while Cortex is a bit more gritty (primarily so only because it’s damage system is a bit more brutal).

Both systems feature a dice ladder, which is similar to the one used in Earthdawn. A stat or skill is defined as a die type, often starting at d4 and increasing from there. Thus a character might have a d6 Strength or d10 Intellect.

One difference lies in the fact that SW’s skills are limited by the associated stat but when you roll you roll either Stat OR skill. Cortex does not link skills to stats and when you roll you roll the Stat die and the skill die and add them together.

In both cases, the average difficulty is based on giving the d6 a 50% chance. Thus in the single roll system (SW) your base difficulty is 4, giving a single d6 and 50% chance of generating a success. Cortex, using two dice, puts their difficulty at 7 (the average of 2d6).

Multiple dice create a bell curve that that is more attractive to me.

Still, in both system luck plays a huge factor. So to combat this SW has Bennies and Cortex has Plot Points. Bennies generally let you re-roll. Plot Points let you add more to your roll and can be used before the roll (giving a higher potential bonus) or after the roll (giving a flat bonus). Re-rolls are better for crap rolls whereas Plot Points are better if you just miss your target number but a smidge.

Ultimately, both systems set out what they aim to do. They make a system that is versatile and fast. It’s really easy to adjudicate situations in both games (albeit it’s a touch easier in SW because they really have 1 core difficulty of 4, whereas Cortex has like 8 difficulty levels). Games like D&D turned me off because there is a rule for everything and you have to check up how much you can add to your jump distance with a successful roll and all that. SW/Cortex is just roll and go.

The combat system is quite similar but Cortex wins 2 out of 3 areas. First their attack and defense system is better. In SW, characters have a pretty crappy static defense. In Cortex, you can accept your crappy static defense or use an action to make your defense an opposed rolls. Aces for opposed rolls in combat.

The damage system in SW is convoluted. They really tried to get away from Hit Points (bless their hearts) but in doing so they created a system where you have a lot of hitting but nothing happening because your damage roll has to be pretty high to hurt some of your opponents. Cortex wins here too, reverting to Life points (co-HP-ugh!) but splitting up the damage to Stun and Wound. Damage is the difference between your attack-defense and then you roll your weapon die on top of that. It’s just enough crunch to make things interestin’.

What SW did introduce was the concept of Shaken. This is a generic effect that can be caused by pretty much anything, such as a kick to the nads, to being distracted by the pretty lights to being pinned under fire. Shaken is such a great addition to the game because you have generic non-attacks called Tricks that can be used to cause the Shaken effect. Tricks are unexpected things that allow you to rattle your opponent. A Shaken opponent cannot act until they recover from being Shaken. It’s a neat way to at least affect an opponent who might otherwise be too tough. In fact it carries through because if you Shake an opponent twice, they are wounded (the restriction here is that you cannot shake somebody with a Trick twice to wound them, but you use a Trick to shake them and then hit them somewhat lightly to Shake them again and viola, you’ve wounded an otherwise tough opponent). The theory is sound but in gameplay I’ve never seen it come up.

SW has always been my go-to system but I’m going to give Cortex a good long try. I suspect, because the damage system is cleaner and easier and it has a bell curve, I will enjoy it more.

#2 - Warhammer Fantasy Role-play (3rd edition)

Rules: 5/5

Setting: 5/5

Fun Factor: 4/5

I’ve made it no secret that I love the new Warhammer (WFR). The previous editions had the Warhammer world going for it but used a very flat percentile system for the mechanics. I’ve worked with percentile systems a fair bit over the years and they bore me to death. Unless you alter the rules, it’s pretty much on/off. You either succeed or fail and there are no degrees by which you do either. So you can pretty much parry an Ogre’s attack as easily as a Skaven’s attack because the system doesn’t take into account the Ogre’s massive strength. Mind you, Ogres are 8 foot tall walls of muscle, but they are only slightly stronger than a human (I mean by their stats) so I guess I was fooling myself by looking at their pictures. Oh yes, and all their stat lines may have been fucked.

Ever since D&D and Warhammer both came out, both of which are games that focus heavily on combat, you’ve gotten into the “I attack” combat situations. For a long time there was little more than the player announcing that “attack” and rolling a die. It’s been a lot of fun over the years but it’s a bit tired.

D&D was smart enough to realize this and came out with their Powers based system, where you all but abandon basic attacks and everything has flavour. It was a step in the right direction but one which ultimately still ends up returning to its roots because the players end up using their small pool of powers over and over again so they become about as rote as “I attack”.

Warhammer tried a slightly different direction, using Action cards. Every player gets a number of Action cards which depicts basic or advanced attacks. Instead of limited how many times per fight or day that you can use these Actions cards (aka D&D), your Action cards have a recharge rate which determines how many rounds must pass before using your Action card again. It is a bit complex, especially at first, to be tracking so many cards but it does allow for some very neat and more importantly, very visual combat. You can actually build a fighting style for your character.

They have a neat defense system, where your Action cards can Parry (if you have a weapon), Dodge or Block (if you have a shield) and then advanced and better versions of each of those but with higher requirements. When attacked, you’re free to react with a defense card which will make your opponent’s attack slightly harder. The trick is, your defense cards have a Recharge rate, so if you throw out a Parry against the first Beastman, you will not have it ready for the second, instead having to rely on a Dodge or Block reaction. As a GM I really appreciate this because I can visualize this very well and it gives a player good control over their defense without making them invulnerable.

There is nothing to say, however, that you could just end up taking a set of cards with a 1 Recharge value and using them every round, thus it’s still possible to get into a “I attack” syndrome. Players are notorious for finding and utilizing the ‘best’ attack, which makes sense from a game perspective. If two weapon fighting nets you a bonus over a basic attack and only has a trivial risk associated to it, then you use the two weapon fighting card ad nauseam.

The dice mechanic in WFR is new, fresh and bold. Instead of numbers they use symbols and you use those symbols to interpret the results. Lots of ‘hit’ symbols results in a stronger hit. Lots of Boon symbols results in a bonus that happens which doesn’t necessarily translate into damage (such as knocking an opponent on their ass with a hammer weapon). Consequently there are plenty of symbols, none of which (on their own) are hard to interpret. But a single roll could take a fair bit more ‘handling’ time than most games, because with every action you have to build a dice pool, then roll, then interpret the results based on the card used and the GM input (where Banes – which are bad things – are rolled).

That being said, the bit of playtesting I’ve done with it showed some remarkable results. In one case, the party heard the braying of quickly closing beastmen, and were forced to make a Willpower roll to avoid stress. The dwarf made his roll successfully, but received a couple of Banes. The environment card that was out suggested that 2 Banes while performing physical activity would result in a character twisting their ankle, but I decided to allow that in this instance, because it was dare cool. The dwarf didn’t necessarily lose his cool, but the braying made him nervous enough that he took a step back, onto a piece of rock that was clearing unbalanced and he tumbled backwards, twisting his ankle.

They say that the dice can tell a story and in many ways they can. That was an excellent example of how the dice helped conjure up a perfect image in my head and the rules helped promote that random incident. In other games, if a character made his roll, it might be unfair or railroading if I were to then say, “well you aren’t really scared but you trip anyway.”. But here, I’m allowed to interpret some of the results of the player’s rolls.

WFR has a lot of tools at the GM’s hands as well. Monsters have basic stats but they also have bonus dice that the GM can use on any roll that they wish. No more do I need a massive list of skills that Orc A possesses. Are they putting an Aggression, Cunning or Expertise towards this roll? If so, then I can see if they have an additional dice that I’m allowed to add.

Finally, the monsters in the book are, final-fucking-ly, appropriately tough for, well, being monsters. The various races have their flavour and Orcs, who have biceps as large as my chest, have appropriately high Strength stats.

By and large, the whole game seems to ‘fit’ right. The game is not what I would call rules light but it does have a lot of stuff that is wide and open for GM interpretation. This is very good in the hands of a good GM and bad in the hands of a poor GM.

I only don’t give it the number 1 spot because I know that with such drastic rules (action cards, interpretive dice, etc) that there are the usual host of problems that will occur with the system. It’s a system that promotes a high success rate which means that the players will enjoy succeeding at most actions that they do. Characters can end up getting massive dice pools which leads to more handling time. Also there will be times where the imagination engine (GM’s brain) runs dry when trying to interpret Boons and Banes for a heavy rolling game.

Furthermore, whereas most games come out and are reasonably complete, Warhammer 3rd edition is not. I mean you can play it, but it’s missing the higher levels of Magic (both Wizards and Priests). The monster list is pretty small. There are no Halflings in the game (not that I care but some people will). This game needs a lot of expansions and they are coming, but very slowly. For the ideas that I have, I couldn’t even run this without a few more books that are coming out this year (2010).

#1 - Fate

Rules: 3/5

Setting: ???

Fun Factor: 3/5

The astute might have noticed that I’ve not assigned Fate particularly high scores in rules and fun factor. This is because Fate brings something entirely different to the table.

First the bad: Fate’s core mechanic is based on a very simple principle. Skill + dice roll. Simple enough, but the dice are proprietary and have only 3 results on them. A negative, a blank and a positive (2 of each). What this means is that you can have a bonus that swings from +4 to – 4 (or an 8 point swing) with an average of zero bonus or negative assigned to your skill. But there is a way to get an automatic +2 to a roll and a way to re-roll a particularly bad throw, thus, I found that in general, a character will gain some sort of bonus to their skill.

Factor in that skill values start as high as 4 or 5 and that the default difficulty for a lot of actions should be 1, you’ve got a system that will see players pass their skills rolls rather casually.

It isn’t a bad system but it doesn’t bring to the table all the crunchy bits that the new Warhammer does. Really it’s just a pass or fail system. The GM can make it easier or hard by assigning a difficulty and that’s about it.

What Fate brings to the table, is something entirely different: Aspects. Instead of a hardline set of stats/attributes, the game attempts a more literary interpretation. It presumes that your character is baseline (average) unless you tell it. Therefore Aspects are your own personal description and they tell the story what is important about the character. If your character is very strong, then you are free to buy that as an Aspect. The brilliant thing about this is that it brings us one step closer to books and movies. Take any character from a show or book. Now build that character in a standard system. Let’s see, John Mclane from the Die Hard films. Well, he’s slightly above average in strength (good pipes on Bruce Willis), ummm, I guess he’s probably a bit smarter than your average bear, is he more charismatic? I dunno, probably not? Oh but he certain has a great constitution or would he just have a lot of hit points?

I feel that we play games to image ourselves in fantastic settings, as displayed or told in movies/TV and books. But we use complex rules to define our characters primarily because RPG’s have their firm roots in war games. It’s something that we by and large, refuse to get away from. Fate brings us one step closer to the movies or books.

The point being, unless the author mentions that John Mclane has fantastic physical strength, then it doesn’t matter to the book and thus it doesn’t matter to Fate.

The Aspects can then be used to define unique traits or items, things that are more powerful than the norm but cannot be used all the time. This is a bit of a tricky situation as this is a very literary concept. To give you the best example, think of Harry Potter’s Cloak of Invisibility. He uses it, maybe 2-4 times in the book, whereas a real person would use it…like…24/7 to solve all their problems. Harry doesn’t because the author is smart enough to realize that the cloak is plot device and should not always be used to solve the plot. It would make for a dull climax if Harry just walked up to somebody at the end of the book and blasted them with a surprise attack cuz he was invisible.

Unique traits or items in Fate are purchased like Aspects but they fall into a more nebulous area. You gain a very cool ability, such as the cloak, a One True Sword, a spaceship or whatever you want with this. Then you gain a number of uses per story. Simple. Basically you can use this item to help make a situation easier to solve. But you can only use it so many times per game. This is where we as players can get a little stuck in our old ways. “It makes no sense that I can’t use the cloak again!” The idea here is that you have to make up a reason why you can’t use the cloak again. You forgot it at home. You did put it on, but the werewolf could smell you and pounces on you knocking the cloak off. It begins to rain which disrupts the flow of the cloak and so you resign yourself to taking it off, since it’s not helping.

Fate’s Aspects are such a massive step in the right direction for games that it propels this to my number 1 game, because I feel that this holds the best potential for rules-lite games. In a Fate game, I put down my character sheet and I role play. The sheet is an aid but the character isn’t defined by stats. It was defined by me. That’s such an excellent and exciting direction for games, that I can’t wait to see it implemented more.

Do I Get a Say?

2010-04-05T08:40:00.000-07:00

When a video game company makes their new Action or RPG game, they must at some point make a vital decision: Who will the main character be and will they be a character of the designers construction or the players?

The decision needs to be based on how much emotional investment you want from the player. Video games as a form of art is becoming more and more popular and for that to happen, you need to silicate emotions from your players.

I remember playing Dead Space (Xbox 360) a while back and while the game was fun enough, it never drew me in. The reason for this was very obvious (but two fold): The main character never uttered a single line. The only time he made a sound was when he was choking (the voice acting on that was very well done). There were other characters in the game which spoke to you but you never responded to them. You even had a girlfriend aboard this space station of horror and never spoke any fond words to her (Ripley when back for her damn cat, in Alien...and you don't even have one kind word to say to your girlfriend...damn that's cold).

This for me was a killer. While the gameplay was fun, I could not at all get invested in my character and because I was never invested, it was hard to get the emotional response which the game was trying to looking, in this case fear. My character had zero personality and (the other prong of the two fold problem) did not reaction in any way to his environment (other than breathing heavy during the outdoor space scenes and low oxygen moments). But giant monsters leap down at him and…he reacts not at all.

When your character has no reactions and no voice, it is downright near impossible for me, as a player, to invest any emotion into them. Dead Space was pretty, fun and had some cheap scares. And that’s it.

But then we come to the conflict: Dragon Age vs. Heavy Rain (the former of which I’ve finished, the later of which I’m only ½ through).

Dragon Age does not feature a full voice actor for your main character but it does feature a character creation system. Heavy Rain has 1 main character and 3 other (almost equally important) characters that you play.

Near the end of Dragon Age, though, I couldn’t help but feel a little distanced from my character. Here I was, in an otherwise intense scene with the ‘main’ bad guy and the dickwad who killed my parents and while my text options can imply that I can be emotional here, my character does not actually deliver these (or any) lines in the game. There is no emotional outpouring from my character, yet the characters around me have the emotion and the voice acting to go along with it. This scene really frustrated me because when the camera was on my character, she was stoic and blank faced (pretty much like she had been throughout the game). My enemies could sneer, scoff and yell at me, but I could not react, except with harsh text options.

Now playing through Heavy Rain, with pre-set characters, it would take a very hardened player not to become emotionally invested with the main character. He is well voice acted but also as importantly, the characters ‘acts’. When he goes through pain, whether physical or emotional, he really reacts to it. I feel very sorry for him and the awful situations he is put through. Half way through the game and he’s been put through physical hell and I can really feel it. The actor gets the emotion across.

So, in my books, Heavy Rain succeeds at drawing me in, far more than Dead Space and somewhat more than Dragon Age.

The reason I’m torn is because Dragon Age did create a level of emotional investment, but it wasn’t as strong as it has been during Heavy Rain. In Dragon Age, all the emotion needs to come from two places: The NPC’s (who are free to emote and are voice acted) and the player’s own mind. Without a actor/voice actor for your character, you the player are supposed to ‘edit’ in your own emotional content and your text selection is provided as an outlet, to display that in game.

There was some emotional investment that I felt near the end of the game. There are some great scenes with your companions give you a stiff upper lip scene about how you’re probably all going to die but maybe you’ll survive this. That scene was very touching as was the end scene that I choose. However all this emotion was again, portrayed exclusively by the NPC’s. The character I played in that game was wooden and for that, I could pretty much care less about her. The NPC’s lives meant more to me at the end than my ‘main’ character.

After playing Heavy Rain, there is something immensely different about playing a stoic, voiceless character choosing a text option and a playing a person actually crying over trying to find his son.

Also, Heavy Rain has been one of the first games that actually rattled me, the player, during a scene. The scene was one where an ally was in danger and I had a gun in my hand. First, they do a fantastic job of realizing when the character is nervous and as such, all your options become jittery and hard to quickly process and read. So clearly in this situation all my options were very jittery. Second, the scene does not pause at all. The bad guy here was yelling and freaking out and my ally was asking me for help. So, I as the player, being drawn into this well acted scene, was just as nerve wracked as my character was. With all the jittery text floating around his head, I saw only one thing that didn’t fit: R1 (the others were literally text like Negotiate or Calm, or something). But I focused on the simplest text I could see: R1. Hmmm, what does that do…

BLAM!!! Holy fuck, did I just shoot that NPC in the head?!? Yes…yes I did. R1 must have meant: to shoot. All the other options were to try to talk him down, but the scene was frantic and I, as the player, was drawn entirely into the scene and oh my god, I just shot the guy.

And that’s when I knew that Heavy Rain was art. People will critic the gameplay (which is really just a series of quicktime events, which I happen to love and other’s happen to hate) and the short playtime (it’s probably only 10 hours long) but I’ve never, ever been drawn into a game where I feel the emotional roller coaster of these people’s lives. I felt earnestly bad about giving into the frantic scene and shooting that guy but how glorious it all was that it managed to pull me in so completely. (What’s worse is that the guy I killed, while a bit loco is pretty much innocent).

I think, however, that this will come down to a potato potatoe debate. Some players probably feel a disconnect when they are ‘forced’ to play a pre constructed character and many will prefer to have a voiceless character in the Bioware style games because any voice acting just wouldn’t be their voice. (Let’s not ignore the fact that you would have to hire at several voice actors to deliver the same lines, at least 1 male and 1 female and if you didn’t have one for your human, dwarf and your elf, the nerd rage would be overwhelming. So that’s a minimum of 6 more voice actors and you would still have some nerd be annoyed because they didn’t like the particular voice actor).

But I’ve come to realize, for me, I cannot be invested in a character that I play unless they have their own voice and are free to emote. I don’t need to play Trent the Barbarian if Trent has no personality in the game. I am much more eager to play Ethan Mars, the guy who has the shittiest life in the world of Heavy Rain and when in pain, cries out to be heard.

Board Game Design

2010-02-16T08:34:00.000-08:00

I have only a passing desire to ever design a board game. There is a lot of work and it seems like something that most definately requires a team.

There is a two fold reason why board game design occurs to me. First, I do have a game in mind. I have the concept but not the mechanics (or much). I doubt very much whether this will even see any work on my part beyond the concept but who knows.

The idea was to create a semi co-op game that could be played with 4-8 players. Players pair up with a partner, one of which is the monach of a country, the other which is a Archon of a god. The land as a whole is under siege from the forces of darkness, which is represented entirely by the game itself (much in the way that Shadows over Camalot runs it's evil). The idea is that you must lead your nation to victory.

The concept was a way to bridge a bunch of ideas. First, boys like to play with little army men, but when you have them in a game, the lady-folk often dismiss the idea of playing. So I would see that the monach would typically appeal to the lads. That would leave the role of the Archon to be focused to the hands of the women-folk. This leads into what the role of the Archon serves in the game.

The bad guy of the game would be undead and their undeadness causes some sort of blight. This blight plagues the lands and spreads from the central area. This blight can only be fought directly by the Archon who can clean it up. Now I know this is a generalization but it's been brought to my attention (a few times from a few of the ladies) that girls tend to like the war stuff less and but the 'cleaning up' part more. It's not meant to be sexist so much as appeal to a psychological desire. Women do not like to clean any more than men do. But I think women appreciate a clean place way more than men do in general. Therefore the idea of contributing, fixing, repairing, etc allows the women to feel like they are making a significant contribution to the game. The role of the Archon would be more involved but their general power lies not in fighting but in acts of divinity and cleansing.

The only other idea that I've worked out is that, if you work together, your nations will have an okay chance to win, if you manage to conquer other nations first, you will stand a better chance to beat the evil at the end. Do you work with or against the other players? I would want the option to be yours.

One of the reasons to make this type of game is because I've found that there are not enough games that support up to 8 players. Another reason is to have a game that supports and encourages boys and girls to play a stategy game together.

Why am I struck with all these board game thoughts? Marvel Heroes board game (MHBG).

See, the MHBG is an example of a convoluted and poorly balanced game. MH is a 4 player team based game where you take the role of one of the teams of super heroes and battle villains that are controlled by another player in the game. The poor balance occurs when one of those teams, particularly the Fantastic Four, is so much better than the other three teams. Partially because their villain (Dr. Doom) is such a puss compared to the other villains. So efficient team + weak Archvillain = Big advantage. Fortunately this is not to say that they will always win. Luck plays a HUGE factor in this game.

When I look at MH I see so much potential. I also see a totally different game hidden within. I see a semi co-op game, where up to 4 players take on the role of a single hero (not a team) against another player who runs the villain. Have 1 Arch Villain and have all the villains run by the villain player. How could this not be an awesome game?

So I set out to modify MH to this co-op style. And this is where I've come to realize just how frakin' hard board game design is. Now keeping in mind my goal was to utilize everything in the game (and not make changes to how card text was written) so maybe I shot myself in the foot. But damn! It's all but impossible.

The game does not seem complex to me, until you look at it from a game design point of view. Then you start asking all sorts of questions: Why did they do movement like that, why did they have Ready vs. Support actions, why did they have Story cards, etc?

It makes me start to wonder how you ever design a board game in the first place. Why is this handled with a card? Why this rule has a token used when another does not? Why the icons on the dice were chosen?

I'm sure board game design is like other type of game design. You start at one place and work your way from there. So maybe it's much harder to reverse engineer a game out of the tools that are available with MH? But I still can't help but wonder where they started and why they ended up with MH, a middle of the road board game.

Can I ever 'fix' MH? I've no idea. It's a interesting challenge but one I may never have time for. Which is sad because it's a really great piece of IP that I would hate seeing it go to waste.

Misunderstood

2010-01-08T04:39:00.001-08:00

I could just say that larpers are misunderstood and leave it at that. Because it’s true. So very true.

But this rant has more of a point to it.

Over the past few years, I’ve watched the few and far between media articles done about role playing games and theatre style larping. And they never go over well.

And after watching a 70 minute Star Wars: Phantom Menace review, I think I realized why the media never quite ‘gets’ us. And never quite will.

The media is, by and large, filled with mundane people. Mundane people are not like ‘us’. We are much more elitist than I think we even acknowledge.

You see, there is something about the ‘gamer’ that leaps a boundary and just accepts worlds, settings and plots that are too bizarre or foreign to the mundane. In fact, it is so ingrained in us to cross their boundary, we no longer even see it.

You see, the typical story, as you might know, requires a protagonist. The protagonist is, and I’m quoting wikipedia here: the main character (the central or primary personal figure) of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, video game, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to share the most empathy.

Okay, that’s a bit (lot) more highbrow than I care to be. But there is a critical point there. The main character of a story is the person whom the audience is intended to share the most empathy.

Ahh, there we have it. The boundary that gamers completely ignore. For something to appeal to a large audience (the masses as it were) the audience needs to identify with and care for the main character. Because normal people are, well, normal, the easiest path to that is to have your main character share ‘normal’ traits.

Let’s take Luke Skywalker for a moment. At his start, he is an extremely normal boy. Stuck on a ranch, with dreams of adventure but being held back for whatever reason. The audience can identify with him immediately. Whether you loved or hated Luke, it’s still possible for your average person to identify with him. Hopefully through the course of the story, you can empathize with him. When his aunt and uncle die, he is torn up and so should the audience be, simply because all of us have had family members die. We understand the loss causes, thus we empathize.

Now then, the other goal of the main character is to lead the audience through the story. Because we identify with Luke, we can accept that there are these Jedi and wookies and while that’s all weird, we built a connection with the mundane character who is Luke and thus are willing to accept his wild ride into the world of Star Wars.

So I say again, there we have it. It’s that boundary that gamers forget. We do not require a mundane main character. We most often ignore it and opt to play fantastical characters in a fantastical setting and just go with it. And what’s ‘worse’ is that often you’ll have 20+ players who are all ‘out there’. In fact, the more fantastic the characters/setting the more you require a mundane protagonist.

Certainly to us, we have traits which we identify with which are aspects, often mundane, that we like to explore. But when a mundane person comes in and tries to grasp the setting, they are immediately thrown off. There is no connection that they can find. It often doesn’t matter if it’s Kingdom Come or World of Darkness (in a world like ours but just a bit different). The mundane person fails to identify with anything and thus will never ‘get it’.

To give you a very good example, take Neil Gaimon’s Neverwhere. I am not a fan of Neil Gaimon’s fiction, but for the reason that I often dislike his main characters. However, I realize that he’s recognized the critical importance of having a main character who is the guide to the mundane person who moves through the story. To me, I criticize the main character for effectively sleep-walking through the story and barely making any decisions (except finally doing something of interest near the end). But to the average reader, the main character is probably required to be very normal, as the setting is “so bizarre”.

Thus my hypothesis/epiphany of why the media always portrays us in an confusing if not offensive view. They cannot ‘get it’ so how can they explain it to others.

Dice telling a story

2009-12-20T15:46:00.001-08:00

Yes, more Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay...

When the system was presented before, it stated that the dice told a story. I was skeptical then but after a few test rolls, I can see what they might have meant.

The thing is, they give you a sample of how to interpret the dice rolls into the story that just don't work for me. It gives you a sample of dice and explains how you might narrate the attack whether it was a neutral, aggressive or conservative stance. The example is okay, but it was picking out every success, fail, boons, bane and other symbols of the dice to create a narrative.

While there is nothing wrong with that in theory, it would require the GM to easily look at the dice of each player, examining, processing and then constructive a quick narrative.

This seems like a lot of work, which is entirely unnecessary. The action cards themselves provide some interesting visuals that we can process. It seems no need to focus in on the dice themselves and point out every symbol that was rolled to create a narrative.

It doesn't matter to me, because I'm pretty damn good at coming up with my own narratives, to keep combat interesting and visual (hopefully).

But I was throwing some dice around and did see the potential for this: dice as a narrative mechanic.

I was toying around with a Fear roll. Test-Dwarf had a 3 Willpower, so I would roll 3 Dice. A standard Fear rating seems to be 2, so that's two challenge dice.

Now I ran into some interesting rolls. There was your standard pass/fail test rolls. But there were other results that started to, gosh darn it, narrate the scene for me (or us as the players). If you fail your Fear test, you take Stress point. If you get 2 Banes you get the Frightened Status.

On one roll, where the Test-Dwarf was heavy in an Aggressive Stance, he managed to roll enough Successes (so no Stress) BUT rolled both a Recharge icon and enough Banes to gain the Frightened Status. So from this roll, we know that the Test-Dwarf refuses to let his mind run rampant with fear (the no Stress part) BUT we know that some part of the Test-Dwarf is afraid of it, as his hand trembles (the Frightened status). The Recharge icon means he's hesitating so instead of Stress, an important maneuver may have slipped his mind.

One another roll, I ended up Succeeding in the roll but got the Recharge token and getting a Chaos Star. in this particular scenario, I was using the Location card as it dictated that on a Chaos Star, the character trips on something and takes a wound. This says to me that the Test-Dwarf was startled, backed up, tripped on something, hurting his ankle AND his pride. He stands back up and feels embarrassed at his momentary foolishness which represents the Recharge token.

So it was very neat to see how the dice actually could start helping out the story.

Whether this process stands the test of time, we'll see. It didn't take long in my D&D 4th edition test games for the players to resort to: "I attack" instead of announced with pride their uber-cool power (note this is after using the same At-Will power several times in a row). No doubt there will be times when the GM's narration tank is running dry and dice and action cards won't help.

Why we roll

2009-12-18T13:06:00.000-08:00

In my obsesion with Warhammer, I've figured out a prime example of why the system is (so far) proving itself to be superior to other more basic systems (what I call the pass/fail system).

In games, we roll dice. We roll dice when the outcome is not always certain. A little secret is: every so often, that roll is worthless. What I mean by that is that the outcome is already certain. But the GM either wants to give the illusion of chance (that you could have succeed or failed) or has some other motive behind the roll.

Now *I* do not try to do this on purpose. But a lot of GM's do it. As a good example: Investigation rolls. A lot of games (as I've previously stated) are Mysteries in their own right. The point is to try to collect info and solve it. The GM can't just 'give' the players all the clues when they walk into a locale so they make them roll for it.

But the problem here is, secretly, the GM wants/needs the info to get to the players. The players need that info or they stall out and have no clue where to go next.

A fair GM makes them roll and if they succeed, they get all the right info and if they fail, they get nothing. A bad GM makes them roll and success or fail, the players get all the right info. A good GM might give them the info (success or fail) but will find some sort of negative result to go along with a failure. You find the results, but you get some sort of negative, such as it takes you hours to figure it out, you cut your hand by finding some evidence or whatever (okay these negatives suck but the point remains).

Warhammer presents an interesting level for the difficulty of the dice. You can make it tougher by adding Challenge dice (which increases the odds of failure) OR you can increase the odds of getting Banes (which trigger negative side-effects) by adding Misfortune dice.

The point here being, since you need the information to get out to the player, instead of heaping Challenge dice on their investigation, instead you have the opportunity to add Misfortune dice. Here you are encouraging (via the system itself) the success of your characters (setting them up to succeed as it were) so that you can get your information out but you are also promoting more Banes so you can at the very least pretend that you're not just giving them the information.

Pretty sweet.

Larping 101

2009-12-14T08:59:00.001-08:00

This isn’t quite a guide or a class on fundamentals. Just my thoughts about running a larp and the difference that makes one situation good or another great.

Running a larp is more art than science. I used to have debates over which is more important: the story or the characters. I used to come down that it was 50/50. Both were equally important. Now I believe I was wrong. The characters (players) are far, far more important than the story.

See, the story doesn’t have any meaning without the characters there to give it meaning. You can be the Shakespear of writing but if you can’t get any of your players onboard with your ideas, you’ve ultimately failed.

The point is that you have to sell your plots to the players. There are a number of ways to do that. Bottom line is, the more personal and immersive you make it for the player, the more they will buy into your plot. Once that happens, they will work to complete that plot, because everything really comes down to ‘solving’ the game.

The big secret is that most larps are, more or less, murder mysteries. The game starts with a mystery. The players work to solve it, by unravelling the clues and figuring out what is ‘actually going on’. Then it often ends with a big fight against a bad guy.

As such the players need to be compelled to ‘solve’ the mystery. If they don’t buy into it, then your plot either progresses unimpeded (which is kinda dumb if you think about it) or stalls out. If the later, then the GM often is forced to ram it down the player’s throats to get them to take notice of it.

So selling a plot is key. And the best way to sell it? Well, this IS a larp. Immersion is what larpers come for. Therefore running scenes for the characters is crucial. I’ve found that players don’t always respond well when you write stuff for them to read. Reading a turn is informative but it’s not immersive. Only a small number of players get a lot out of reading a turn. Most players get a LOT more out of running their character through a scene. In some cases, simply because it was a scene, the player immediately ‘buys in’. In other cases, the scene must be more compelling to the player/character for them to buy in.

Then we get to another little element which I’ve picked up on after finishing Heavy Rain. It’s about the stages of Progression.

Players start everything blind. They’ve not lived in this world but are trying to pretend they have. They rely on the Storyguide for information to know how to make their first choices in this world. Baby steps if you will. Once they’ve taken their Baby steps they are often ready to find a plotline to dive into.

So they look for information that appeals to them. That’s Stage 1. There has to be something that interests the player (and I say player a lot because you are appealing to both the player and character at the same time). Heavy Rain was ‘easy’ because, with the backgrounds provided, I KNEW that some players would jump on particular monsters.

Example: Wayne’s background named Sethra as his nemesis. Thus when Sethra was listed as one of the main bad guys, I knew he and his group would focus on them. Steph and Lorne came into the game with missing children. Thus, when Father was potentially kidnapping children, it was not great surprise when they focused on him.

Stage 2 is a broad big stage. I call it the information stage (for lack of anything more snazzy). The information stage is where the player is collecting the information about the plotline that they are following. The information stage can take a long time, if the plot is big enough. The information stage is critical because too much information and the player solves your plot too quickly. But too little information, providing confusing information or conflicting information is dangerous.

And I’m going to have to go on a tangent here: I will maintain until I die, that a Storyguide does a grave injustice when they specifically put in false information and red herrings into a story. They do nothing but hurt the story entirely. I will go as far to say that any storyguide who does this is flat out wrong.

The reason why I’m so adamant about this is because of one simple truth: Players are legendary for misunderstanding, misinterpreting and generally fucking up the 100% truthful information that is presented. It’s rare that they intentionally do this, but rather it is the PurpleMonkeyDishwasher theory. Players will just screw up the information on their own, through little fault of their own. Thus, I’ve NEVER seen a reason as a Storyguide to ever give false information.

Instead, I’ve seen countless times where giving false information will destroy the fun for players. A player spends months of downtime looking into something, providing other players with lies and ultimately, they find out that what they were looking into was wrong and they feel that they’ve utterly wasted months of their time. I’ve also been in a Sunfall quest where I was paraded around for hours doing a red herring. To find out that I was duped by the game and actors was no small source of resentment on my part. I was hours behind solving anything in the game and as such, I had already ‘lost’.

Getting back to the point, and I’m not done with Stage 2 but I must then explain Stage 3: Progression.

Progression, I’ve come to realize, is critical. The players MUST feel that they’ve Progressed the plot. However, going back to the 101 lesson: I’ve realized that a lot of us storyguides easily confuse Stage 2 for Stage 3.

We get into a mistake that Stage 2: collecting information IS synonymous to Stage 3: Progression. But it is not.
Progression means that you’ve actually moved the plot forward. That the plot has shifted in some way to change it. But again, we storyguides fool ourselves into thinking that, by virtue of the fact that we’ve provided the player with information that the player feels a sense of satisfaction. Well the player does get the Stage 2 satisfaction. They’ve gotten the satisfaction that they went from Stage 1 to learning something more about the plot.

But make no mistake: Stage 3 is just as critical as Stage 2. Information is NOT progression. Progression means that the player has somehow influenced or changed the plot line in some fashion. They have done something to impact the game.

I’ve got some wonderful examples from Heavy Rain, my last larp. It was a hunters game that took place in a universal that I said ‘bordered both my own Kingdom Come world and that of the hit TV show Supernatural’.

In HR, I provided the players with a list of ‘assignments’. This list displayed the general monsters in the game.

A player could, in one month Investigate (Stage 2) and hunt down and kill (Stage 3) anything on the list. As they killed the monster it would be crossed of the list. That is a very basic example of Progression.

One of the monsters, a werewolf leader named Haight, had his own little storyline. Once some players focused on him, during Stage 2 they learned that if he wasn’t stopped by the November game, he would become extremely powerful. Stage 2 didn’t last particularly long but the players involved did some investigation to see how bad this ritual of Haight’s would be and then decided how best to deal with it. In addition to all this, there was some backstabbing because one of the characters in the game was loyal to Haight.

Finally came Stage 3 where they went and attacked Haight. The PC’s won the day due to their actions. It’s still very compressed but this was tackled over 2 months rather than all done in 1 month.

Now here’s an example of a failed situation. My Father plot was all about 4 characters. 2 of which were the parents of this evil creature (not by their choice mind you) and 2 were the people who had ruined this creature’s first host. Now my fault was that I was blind. I kept the entire group is Stage 2, but mistakenly thought that indeed, I was giving them some Progression, because I was giving them information. But I was most definitely mistaken.

But hindsight is 20/20. I only realized this after the final game. I had given them no actual progression. Only pieces of the puzzle. I fooled myself into thinking that they had the information to deal with this, to see the puzzle as it were. And they did, just barely, by the end of it all. And that makes the information I gave them some measure of progress, but it’s not the Progression that I speak of. They knew more about the Father plotline but they hadn’t moved the plot any closer to conclusion.

I ‘screwed’ my players out of Stage 3.

And I’m not saying that Stage 3 is solving the plot. Hell no. A big plot line should be a good blend of Stage 2 to 3, going back and forth as the players learn stuff, solve stuff, learn more stuff, solve more stuff. Until they are ready to finish the plot. If it’s the uberplot, then that typically happens at the last (or near to the last) game.

As an example, I set some of the monsters up with a group of guards. Their Presence of monsters. To attack the main boss directly at first was foolhardy. The players would have to attack the Presence first. Therefore, they spent some time in Stage 2 (learning that attacking without defeating the Presence was foolish), then they entered into Stage 3 (killed off the Presence) and then touched briefly back into Stage 2 (learn about the main boss’ lingering defences) and then plunged back into Stage 3 (kill the main boss).

Although it was all streamlined for a short whirlwind 5 month game, the idea is still sound. Killing off the Presence first, was a very obvious and clear display of Progression. The plot has moved forward. That particular boss monster was going to be a less tough fight than charging headlong into them.

Overall, one who played HR can see that there were technically lots of Stage 2-3 happening over and over again. The ultimate obvious goal of the game was to destroy all 5 main bad guys (and it turned out there were 3 ‘secret’ bad guys as well). Thus ‘winning’ HR was about killing those 5 main bad guys. Progression was happening as one by one they feel but the final Progression would only be completed once the 5th boss monster was dead (or in this case, she wasn’t’ killed but her Presence was utterly destroyed and she efficiently ran off).

So yeah, that’s it in a nut shell. Stage 1-3 of how to run a story and how easy it is to fool yourself into thinking that Stage 2 IS Stage 3.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

2009-12-09T13:42:00.001-08:00

From a rules standpoint, I am well and truly enamoured with this game.

Anybody who knows me, knows that I like to do many things in an abstract fashion. I do not like the tactical game play of D&D as I find it very confining and limited. The reason why I find tactical play so confining is because when I picture combat, I picture a movie in my head. D&D will never, ever, following that fast-paced, flowing visual that I get.

The holy grail of combat scenes, to me, was presented in Lord of the Rings. The fight near the end with the Fellowship vs. the Urak-Hai. I’ve never seen a more compelling and intricate fight scene. Why do I love it so?
There were multiple scenes/settings, involving a clearing, ruins that were climbed & a heavy forest
There were multiple scenes, including the Fellowship fighting, Frodo and his crew’s dilemma, Borimir’s death and Aragorn’s one on one fight with Lurtz
Aragorn vs. Lurtz is a stunning example of a brutal, anything to win fight. Lurtz use his shield as a weapon (throwing it at Aragorn). Aragorn lost his sword and had to draw a knife to use. It was a well choreographed fight.

You cannot run that scene in D&D. Or if you do, it conjures images of cheeto eating, pop drinking nerds who run the combat through it’s numbers. Tactical combat is sterile. You can move X squares, you can perform X attacks, you are frozen in time when it’s not your initiative, etc.

I’m not saying that I’ve hated D&D combat over the years, but it’s sterile and has never quite achieved the lofty highs which I, as a storyguide, desire. I prefer a lot of narration when I run a game and allowing characters to go the extra mile. I want combat to ebb and flow.

When Warhammer 2nd edition came out, I was eager to re-live my youth. The world of Warhammer is dirty and corrupt. Generally my favourite type of fantasy world. 2nd edition was a faithful re-creation of the original but one thing that I was disappointed with was that their combat system was a clone of D&D 3rd edition. There were Move actions and if you took a Move action you couldn’t take all your attacks. So the only way to take all your attacks in a round is to root yourself in place (which promotes static combat). I ran the 2nd edition game for about 2 years and it was alright.

Enter 3rd edition. Everything has changed.

Whereas 2nd edition was a rules heavy game (like D&D), 3rd edition is…a rules lite game. It’s a bold direction for a game heaped in mountains of rules.

This is not so say that it’s as lite as something like Fate. It’s got it’s rules and they are well structured (once you decipher them from the confounding and poorly designed rule books). But they’ve created a core dice system which allows a GM to easily add bonuses or negatives on the fly.

The trick to doing this is subtle. What they did was create some core dice which provide the bulk of your chances of success. Then they added Fortune dice to add compliments and Challenge and Misfortune dice to add difficulty to an action.

Why this works so well is that each Fortune dice has a mild affect on your total role. Adding a Fortune dice here or there won’t break the bank. So a GM or a rule can feel free to add them without fearing that you’re tipping things too heavily in the player’s favour.

The same works with Challenge & Misfortune dice. Challenge dice are bad for the players. When rolled, they will eat up successes and can cause all sort of problems. Misfortune dice on the other hand, are far less ‘evil’ for a player. They are more likely to not destroy successes so much as ruin something called boons (which are beneficial side effects that most actions can have). The GM can really tailor any challenge by adding either Challenge dice and/or Misfortune dice.

As a great example, take poor, average and superior equipment. Poor equipment can be represented easily as being the ‘same as normal equipment’ but you role a Misfortune dice along with your pool. Superior equipment adds a Fortune dice to the challenges.

It’s a really simple and elegant concept that allows the GM to tailor the game to his desires. Say they like to encourage outrageous actions? Add Fortune dice to players who want to swing on chandeliers and rescue the maiden. Say instead, they want an unforgiving brutal world. Add Misfortune dice to characters after days of trudging through swamps who suddenly find themselves in combat.

Like a true rules lite system, they do not give the rules to govern EVERY situation. The GM is left to use their judgment in 90% of the situations. This is both great and bad. For example, there is no penalty to Stealth while wearing Full Plate Armour. This is not because it’s meant to be that way, but it’s because they didn’t want to bog down every rule with how it is affected by everything else. You the GM must decide what the penalty is. Common sense must rule. Of course, despite it’s name, not everybody has common sense.

The setup for the game, however, is borderline brutal. It is not a pick-up game. Actions are governed through Action cards and the number of Action cards are great. This is good as it adds a lot of variety but it’s bad in that each player must sift through a stack of cards and decipher what they think will be good and bad. Now add Talent cards (more passive effects) which come in multiple flavours (Reputation, Focus and Tactics). Building a character is not an easy task.

This game is a paradigm shift. It’s rules lite so a lot of what is going on, while governed by Action cards in combat, will have to be judged by the GM during the game. Something that can be good and bad. Even a good GM can have bad rules calls.

They encourage a ‘say-yes’ attitude which I’ve seen in other games but which is better done here. D&D 4th edition suggested a ‘say-yes’ attitude which is all well and good but if most things are governed by the rules already…what is there to ‘say-yes’ too? The DM’s guide did have a nice section of how to govern some out of the box things, such as knocking over a giant statue to crush a giant. But…the question was, why bother? You’re already a fantasy superhero in D&D. Your powers are awesome so there is little reason to bother with anything out side the box.

In Warhammer, you’ve got a core mechanic that can blend with virtually any situation but you’ve got a lack of a tome of rules to go with it. So the ‘say-yes’ attitude is easy. A player wants to do something very difficult? Throw Challenge dice at them and if they succeed, great. If they want to do something tricky, throw Misfortune dice at them.

I’ve not meant this to be an attack on D&D and I generally make it no secret that I dislike 4th edition. Warhammer has the style and attitude that I like. I think it’ll work out really well…for those of us willing to fight through the terribly organized rules.

Oh, so getting back to my Lord of the Rings fight.

How does Warhammer handle this sort of battle?

Well check this out:

Map: Instead of a map with squares you’ve got a location card. It gives you the 411 on the location and what sort of perils you might face. Not really required but it gives you more insight as to what additional effects might transpire during the battle.

To make things interesting, you could incorporate multiple location cards to set up a full battlefield. So you could have your clearing, your ruins, your deep forest, etc. To run the LotR fight you would still have to give reason for the players to move or stay at one location. In the movie, the heroes of the Fellowship attempted to meet the onslaught of orcs, only to find that they were horribly outnumbered and the orcs were focused on the prize, which was the hobbits. Thus you have the orcs pour past the heroes and move to other locations. Additionally, while the hobbits are located in the deep forest location, you have it so nobody, friend or foe, knows their exact location without a proper search. Thus charging into the forest itself to try to save the day may not actually amount to anything.

Movement: Instead of squares, you’ve got distance ranks which are abstract. No need to know if you are 100 feet or metres from your target. Engaged, Close, Medium, Long and Extreme are your distance ranks.

Manoeuvres: In order to change distance ranks, pull a weapon, hold excess spell power or do other minor things in combat, you must perform a Manoeuvre. You get one free Manoeuvre during your turn but if you want to take more, you can take a point of Fatigue. You can suffer a fair bit of Fatigue but if you suffer too much, you’ll drop unconscious.

Combat: From there the action proceeds as normal. Action cards spice up combat as a means to encourage something other than, “I attack”. Once fighting beginnings, there is only a small amount of Manoeuvres that will be done. I haven’t gone through all of them, but ‘maneuvering’ your enemy isn’t a common effect. As such there is little reason to ‘give ground’ as Aragorn is forced to do, which forces him to climb the ruins in one scene, to retreat so that he can avoid being overwhelmed. Maybe in the future, more Action cards will be introduced which will allow such things.

I realize that there is so many details left unexplained. There are so many little things that showcase how the rules work with each other that make it the sum greater than pieces.

Now I just need to find time to play it…

Best Potential Mechanics

2009-11-24T08:56:00.000-08:00

I’ve come across two games which have excellent mechanics that I’m tempted to use or borrow for my own game design. I will discuss the first here and the second one in a later post.

The first comes from the new Warhammer RPG. The new game features non-numbered dice. The dice themselves have Axes (hits) and/or Boost icons on them which is reminiscent of their Descent board game.

What you loose in legacy you make up in potential. One of the best things that a system like this COULD do is mediate various effects into the dice. (I do not believe that they are going to from the previews that I’ve read but I’m talking about potential here).

Say you had a HIT icon and a BOOST icon on your dice. When you roll the dice, the HIT icons could reveal how hard you hit your opponent. It’s both accuracy and damage. Easy. Now what do those BOOSTS represent?

If you had a HAMMER – How about knocking your foe back?
If you had an AXE – How about damaging their armour?
If you had a SWORD – How about maneuvering your foe?

The point being that the dice can start telling more than just hitting and damage. They can show how the battle unfolds. It’s a neat concept that has a lot of potential.

Further to this, the new Warhammer RPG brings in Misfortune and some sort of Difficulty dice. It’s the Misfortune dice that I like the idea of.

Most games have generic (and boring) ways to inflict the character with hindrances. Disease, poisons, lingering wounds, exhaustion, etc all have the same thing. They hit the character with a negative of some sort. It’s not generally that much fun to play a character with a negative. You miss lots or inflict no real damage. In short you fail because of your hindrances.

A Misfortune dice is an interesting concept. How I could see using it is quite simple. You roll the Misfortune dice along with your regular dice. Thy do not ‘eat up’ successes or anything but add some sort of complications if they come up with any HITS. The complication can be narrative as much as a rule.

For example, say your character is a great warrior but sick with the Skaven plague. You’ve got a couple of Misfortune dice. You roll your attack against an enemy adding in two Misfortune dice. Say you get HITS on both your attack dice and Misfortune dice. What happens? Well your attack still hits and causes damage. Go you! But something back happens as well. Maybe you’ve lost your weapon in the attack? Maybe you’ve slipped on the mud and are on your ass? Maybe you enter into a coughing fit. Regardless for once, the dice encourage a more dramatic scene.

What I really like about the Misfortune die is that it’s not just versatile but it’s easily adaptable. You can fluidly insert it into virtually any game. It’s just an add-on to the dice that you’re already rolling. The only modification is for how to interpret the effects for that system.

Warhammer brings an exciting new dice mechanic potential to gaming but I’ll hold my reservation. I was extremely excited about Android the board game until I played it three times and it lost it’s shine entirely. I was extremely excited about 4th D&D and it proved a disaster (IMHO, of course). I’m not expecting greatness from the new Warhammer game. But the previous incarnations presented themselves as a grim and gritty world, in which the both adjectives could be largely ignored by a well constructed party due to some shoddy rule loopholes (Allow Damage reduction to get too high and healing to be too casual). This new Warhammer looks to turn it more into a ‘game’ than a role playing experience. There is nothing wrong with that, I suppose. But it would be nice to look forward to a game where the mechanics themselves not just supported the grim and gritty feel but rather encouraged it.

Well, if I can find a way to afford the huge buy in ($100 for the box set) when it comes out, I'll have to give it a whirl.

10 Things you didn't know about the current KC - Part 6

2009-06-11T12:24:00.000-07:00

Burning Cinematic points

You can now permanently get rid of Cinematic points. Why would you want to? Because there is no other way to 'guarantee' some sort of game effect, albeit, sometimes that might be temporary.

When you burn Cinematic points, the camera is on YOU and all players should try to respect that.

I've given some examples of the things you can do on Page 243.

A generic examples are: Survive anything.

Other examples are based on what you are, particularly your Conviction. Divine can become heroes and can gain back all their Severe wounds. Infernal can make a Secular Action SUCCEED. Deistical can force others to respect ancient traditions (such as keeping the peace).

10 Things you didn't know about the current KC - Part 5

2009-06-11T12:16:00.000-07:00

Lingering

Lingering is a game term in which an effect...umm...lingers around. (Lasting lasts for 1 or more scenes, whereas Lingering will last, typically for much longer).

But there are now Lingering Wounds.

Setbacks (such as gained from Ranks of Maturity or potentially Hollow Death and Crucifixion) are examples of Lingering Trauma.

But now there are Lingering physical wounds. Not many things cause them but a few things here and there do.

Impartation causes Lingering wounds
Recure's retribution causes Lingering wounds
When under the effects of Perversion, when you take wounds, they become Lingering

The rule of 3 exists here in that you cannot take more than 3 Lingering physical wounds from any source.
Recure cannot heal Lingering wounds. They must heal naturally. They shift you one step up on the healing chart to heal (so Surface wounds takes 1 day each to heal, whereas Severe wounds take 1 week each to heal.

10 Things you didn't know about the current KC - Part 4

2009-06-11T12:13:00.000-07:00

Resources

Lackeys only allow you to re-roll EFFORT.

Overseers now not only manage 1 extra Resource/Temp Secular Power, but you can assign them to any action that interacts with an Opposed Roll. It gives that opposed challenge a re-roll. This is especially effective if you are doing an Investigation, a Hunt or even something that defends against such, like a Hide action.

Wealth gives +2 Marks to Acquire actions. I just felt it was taking too long to acquire all the stuff to help facilitate one's turn, thus it'll go by quicker.

10 Things you didn't know about the current KC - Part 3

2009-06-11T12:09:00.000-07:00

Antithetical Techniques - They aren't just for breakfast anymore.

It's possible to have a Virtuous but Immoral character who wants to 'convert' their 'goody' Techniques into something that befits their Morality. Here ya go! This Preeminence lets you do it. At the back of the Technique section you get the modifications to your normal Techniques.

Some Techniques have no changes.

Some Techniques have slight changes. An example is Scourge's Dramatic Maneuver: Condemn. Instead of harming evil, this DM harms good people.

And some Techniques have a complete change. My personal favorite is Infestation, which allows you to 'visit plagues upon your enemies'...and because it's still a Slothful Technique, it sorta affects everybody around you including friends and bystanders.

10 Things you didn't know about the current KC - Part 2

2009-06-11T11:59:00.000-07:00

Secular Potency is a new feature of Secular Power. It was always annoying that you couldn't do anything with your Secular Power at a game. It was a pain in the ass for one-shot games, lemme tell you.

Secular Potency comes when your character has a Predomination. Predomination in turn, has become a bit more personal. The character who sets it up sets it up to their liking and nobody else's.

When you have Secular Power and a Predomination, you gain some Secular Potency. Secular Potency is a form of worship, if you must know. People of liked mind which your Fallen draws power from. This is potent stuff (hence the name).

Secular Potency allows you to perform the following bonuses:

Empower:You increase your Technique by 1 rank for 1 action. This can raise your power to a previously unknown 4th rank but this only benefits you if the power has a progression of 1/1 basis. Powers such as Corruption or Recure, which give one Thing per rank are obvious.
Overpower: You gain 1 Advantage (that's +1 to the die roll) to any non-combat Technique.
Gnosis: If you use it on somebody, you can learn whether their actions are influenced by a Technique (or any other magical power really). You don't know who the heck did it or what the Technique is, only that this person is affected by something.
With Wings Spread: This is the most potent ability in the game. And not everybody can do it. You either need multiple aligned Districts or a fully aligned Civitas (depending on the style of game you're playing). If you can pull this off, kudos. Anyway, you can use a non-combat Technique that affects the entire Civitas! Sweet huh. There are limitations to it's use. Humans are affected by your Technique as if it were 1 rank lower. Fallen and Nephilim as two ranks lower. Angels and devils are the same however, they have a chance of shrugging off the effect of this, so it's not likely that you'll be able to just fuck with angels/devils for funsies. Oh and if you want to time it, you can try using Pure Slumber and give the city some crazy, horrible nightmare, then see how long it takes for the Shrouds to come and tear you apart.

10 Things you didn't know about the current KC - Part 1

2009-06-11T11:47:00.000-07:00

To finally support some of the crazy ideas in the game, having a Breakdown now has different effects depending on your Morality and 'creature type'.

Irredeemable characters, for example, who have a Breakdown becomes crazy, blood thristy maniacs who are out of control. You could probably help redeem them but...it's a lot easier just to hunt them down and put them out of their misery.

Nephilim are the new peach. Anybody who knows the background knows that Nephilim are bad cuz they are often out of control. But other than through role-playing, that wasn't a reality. Until now. Because, baby, when Nephilim have a Breakdown...watch out. See for Nephilim were always supposed to be ticking time bombs. Now for every Trauma in the set that they had when they went off the deep end, they will gain the Preeminence: Abnormality OR add one rank to one of their Body Prowesses. And of course they are insane and hate the living.

Greatest Game Evar?

2009-05-27T09:10:00.000-07:00

I’m no expert for video games but I know what I like. Every once in a while, you come across a game that tickles your fancy and won’t stop until your red in the face and gasping for air. It’s very possible, that InFamous for the PS3 is such a game.
I have only played it for an hour but it was a spell bound hour. It’s one of those games that, for me, the constellations of stars came into alignment and almost everything they did, so far, has been as close to perfection for a video game to achieve.
Bold words, no doubt.
I, am a huge fan of the story in a video game. I will admit, in recent years, I’ve turned the difficulty down to Easy on some games because…while their fighting systems are fun, I just know they are going to get repetitive. So I don’t care to die 23 times when fighting an end boss. I just want to get past him to see what’s next. I want the story more than I want the game-play.
After playing InFamous, even briefly, I let it roll around in my head to pick apart all the pieces and why it came together for me. Allow me to explain why the game play is so good, and then I can explain why the story is great.

First, the game seems to be taken some of what made Assassin’s Creed a good game. The free-form run everywhere. Assassin’s Creed was a good game, but not a great game. It did allow you to climb everything and that was great amounts of fun. I liked the combat system but it sounds like a lot of people who didn’t. The missions are repetitive and I completely ignored the flag acquiring missions (and thankfully, the game didn’t screw you for ignoring them). A.C. suffered because some of the required jumping was frustrating (not God of War frustrating but still). I died a couple of times from some really talk building falls. The missions are a little boring, because you did the same thing. Wandering around was neat but you had guards who couldn’t seem to recognize you yet Templars knew who you were the instant they saw you. Stealth seemed to amount to lowering your head and moving slower. You move at a brisk pace, especially later in the game, and the guards freak out on your ass. I guess people were allowed to ride horses but not very fast, back in the day. Again, it was a good game but not a great game. The best part being the ability to climb around the world.
InFamous does the same. And…well…better. Not much better, because not much needed to be improved. I was worried about the jumping controls but they are the most forgiving in a game and I’m thankful for that. If you miss your jump but are close, you’ll catch the object you were jumping on (rather than land on it). It’s very parkour in your running style which is almost getting overused but it’s still pretty fricken’ cool. But every once in a while you will miss your fall and plummet to the ground.
Which is pretty fricken’ awesome in InFamous. Why? Oh, I must have forgotten to mention it: InFamous (if you didn’t already know) is a superhero game. You are nigh-invulnerable (to falls at least, less so to bullets). And I don’t know about you, but when I fall a few stories, I really like the idea of cracking pavement under me. And InFamous does not fail to deliver. In fact, you can come down full of cracking lightning if you want. It’s pretty damn cool.
I wasn’t sold on the lightning powers at first. Who’s the most well known lightning guy out there? Electro. Who has the lamest costume next to the Riddler? That would be Electro again.
Regardless, the electricity powers are, without a doubt, a fantastic choice. I don’t even know where to start here.
First, they are flashy. And that’s just cool. Flashy when you use them (blasting lightning bolts out of your hands and shockwaving people with lightning). Flashy when you stand around, cracking with energy. And flashy when you move about the environment. I’d like to think that somebody walked into an office and issued the blanket statement: Electricity…everything…annnnd go! Because even while you’re walking through a puddle of water, electricity crackles through it. When you shoot something metal, like a car or a chain link fence, electricity lingers on it. It’s pretty sexy.
Second, this game has a good vs. evil mechanic (more on that later). The gangs have taken over so when you blast away at them you are actually tasering them into submission. There is a two fold mechanic that is happening. And it’s brilliant. First, you are incapacitating the bad guys, rather than outright murdering them. Second, if you happen to blast a bystander, you only stun them rather than accidentally kill them, which is great if you’re trying to play good. I mean, you’re not going to get a Christmas card from them but at least you can feel like a non-murderous hero. Now you get 5 XP based on taking the baddies down. But you can go and find their stunned into submission bodies and if you want to play evil, throw another jolt of power into them, which not only kills them but earns you 1 extra XP. I really like that they throw in that mechanic to allow the evil players to feel like they are being evil and yet have us good players feel like it’s not so implausible that we are blasting away and not killing the baddies.
My final love of the electricity powers is difficult to explain because it isn’t obvious. The electricity idea just ‘fits’. They make the game fit it and they fit into the game. I’ll try to explain. Without getting into the story too much (that’s for later), you have a huge chunk of a post-apocalyptic city that you can wander around in. Your character stores and controls, but does not generate, electricity. Now this is where I take my hat off to the game designers and give them the Chuck Norris thumbs up and nod. Because they balanced this perfectly.
So at the beginning of the game you shoot lightning bolts and perform a close in shockwave. But all your powers come from a battery inside you (not an actual battery but a number of points of power you possess). Now here’s the thing: I can see a LOT of games that would have said: well…we don’t want you shooting too much, so each shot you do will eat up the battery, that way the player will have to play smart. Instead they went with a: lightning is fucking cool so the amount of energy from your battery that a single electrical bolt is entirely negligible. Go ahead. Squeeze off a hundred or so without recharging. God bless them. Shockwave gives a significant dent to your battery, but you can still fire out probably 6 or so before drying out the internal battery.
So now we come to recharging your battery. The city, for the most part, still has power…thus you just have to walk up to a lamp post and drain the power from it. Easy. And solid gold. And it looks cool.
But wait, it actually gets better.
When I said, your powers fit and the game makes the powers fit. This is where it all comes together. I figure this one part stroke of genius and one part stroke of luck.
InFamous is a sandbox game. You can run around in the world and do kewl stuff. But in every game out there, there are areas which your character isn’t supposed to get into. You’re not supposed to because…well…because the level designers don’t want you to. It’s either where the big bad is or something they don’t want you to explore yet. Most often, this is done in a very heavy handed method: You can’t get in there. The classic locked door that cannot be picked, even if you’re playing a master thief. The force field. The wall of goons that, truly, you could probably beat if the game allowed you to. Whatever. Virtually all games that try to give you a sandbox also give you walls you can’t get past.
InFamous has the same walls…sorta. See, instead of saying, you can’t go in…the game has areas in town that have no functional power. Therefore…you could go in there…but eventually you would run out of juice…and then you would be shot…and then death would come. So instead, you have to do a mission to restore the power to that location, which in turn, allows the game designers to set up whatever hoops they would like for you to go through. But instead of feeling like the artificial/classic locked door, it feels natural. Of course my character wouldn’t go into that area…eventually I’d be helpless.
Let’s now chat about the good vs. evil. This is a mechanic that’s become quite prevalent in games. To me, I first took notice of it in the Star Wars games. Star Wars: Dark Forces was one of the first (that I recall) that gave you a path choice. Do good and you get the good guy ending. Do bad and you get the bad guy ending. Oh and you get good and bad powers as well. Now every Star Wars game does this so it’s become standard. InFamous works with it but does nothing to reinvent the good vs. evil paths. You get different powers if you go good or evil. Two thumbs up for that as it adds to the replayability.
However, the story benefits from the good vs. evil conflict greatly. And they do a great job with it. Better than Star Wars does.
See, in the Star Wars games, your good and evil actions are despite the game, not the cause of the game. You either act like a titanic dickwad to get the evil powers or act like a saint for the good powers. Some acts, which seem neutral, are classified as evil which didn’t seem entirely fair.
InFamous does it better because of it’s storyline.
So let’s touch upon that.
You’re a courier. You were taking a package in ‘the big city’. The package…exploded. While you were carrying it. Naturally, you survive while the city is nearly destroyed. (This actually makes sense because it wasn’t a ‘bomb’ that exploded).
The city is now a quarantine zone. Plague is running rampant. Gangs have taken over and are shooting people. A wall has been put up around the island city. It’s very inspired by the Escape from New York movie. And. You. Have. Superpowers.
Now here is why the good vs. evil works so well. The bystanders who are trying to live are being terrorised by the gangs. And with superpowers, why would you not want to help them. Thus the game gives you obvious justification of why you should turn good. But quickly into the game, the Voice of Survival (some survivalist nut with a TV) goes on to reveal that YOU are a terrorist and should be turned in. As Men In Black put it perfectly: A person is smart. People are stupid. Thus the bystanders quickly turn against you, believing you to be a terrorist. Oh and your girlfriend immediately leaves you (cuz her sister died in the explosion that you appear to have caused) and your best friend is…well…still your friend but a little afraid of you. Thus the game gives you obvious justification of why you should turn evil. Solid gold. The good and evil fit very well into the game and the game fits very well into good and evil. Two great tastes that go great together.
Shortly into the game you try to escape only to be caught. You are sent back into the city with a deal from a federal agent. She’s kinda a bitch but she’s doing her job, so again, you can feel like you’re being a hero working with the law or being a villain who is blackmailed into being her whipping boy. Your missions are given from her to try to find somebody who was at the heart of the package you were carrying. You are given multiple missions that you can explore as needed. But you can just as easily wander the city and look for neat things to do.
So now you have a sandbox game, with a character who has ample justification to be good or evil, with lightning superpowers, who can run every freakin’ where in the city and leap off buildings with reckless abandon and perform missions as needed (they are required to progress the game but you can do them at your leisure). Wow.
I have to say, if this game ends as well as it starts, this will easily be in my top five games of all time.
I’ll give the game designers of InFamous one more zooming focus shot of Chuck Norris giving the thumbs up and a nod. And a slow clap. Awesome game guys.

Mk I is dead. Long live Mk II?

2009-05-04T14:05:00.000-07:00

So Privateer Press did the unthinkable about a month ago, and they announced the sweeping change that will herald the end of MkI Warmachine and create MkII Warmachine.
The field test is almost over. They will then be closing it. Doing their final revisions. Printing the book. Then releasing it in January of 2010.
Seriously? That’s like 8 months away?
I do truly respect the company for allowing the fans to give feedback on the models. There have been a few changes but I think it’s pretty obvious that what changes there will be minimal. Some players are crying out for massive re-writes on a figure or unit and that’s clearly not going to happen. I figure that PP already knew what they wanted out of most figures and were happy with their results. A minor rule wording change here or there is all they are really looking for. If something is obviously too powerful or too weak, they might look at it.
Here’s the problem. I, like many players, hate, hate, hate (with a side of hate) winning a game due to a rules screw up. I’m not talking about a player who is obviously cheating but when you honest to god think a rule works one way and realize, always after the game, that it doesn’t. You walked away with a victory, feeling pretty good about yourself, only to have the wind sucked out of your sails because you realized that figure X couldn’t do what you did.
Waramchine is a deeply layered game. In a recent MkII game, I had to move my Arc node just enough to avoid giving my opponent cover. It was fairly critical because my dice rolls are shit. No really, my personal luck stat is pretty low. I’m infamous for some stellar crap dice rolls. So I leave nothing to chance.
But lo and behold, my opponent has a unit that can move outside of the turn sequence. Furthermore, he can counter charge my ‘jack. Therefore, I ran another unit up to cockblock his counter-charger. However, I only did that because I honestly thought he was immune to the feat damage. My opponent agreed at the time. I ended up winning the game. Upon retrospect, my figure could not do what I thought he could do. Thus my ‘win’ was null and void. At least in my mind. It was not a win because I screwed up the rules. I could have not have done what I had done. Now I could have still won the game, but I would have accepted giving the warcaster cover and that would have likely made me miss my critical shots. (As it turns out, I was not able to kill her on the dice rolls that I had but she burned to death due to the fire).
So I hate accepting that my victory was tainted. But I’m big enough to accept that it wasn’t a real win.
Now comes the relevancy. Since they will be making some changes with MKII and that it won’t be coming out for almost a year, what do I do until then?
You see, when I play a wargame, I want to play the most authentic version of it that I can. I want to know all the errata, I want to know the rules, I don’t want to screw up any rule. I want neither player to question: well…if you had used the rules correctly, I probably would have won. The bottom line is, I want neither player to question how it ‘could have been’.
So…what version of Warmachine is authentic? I’m sure the obvious answer is MkI, because MkII isn’t released. However, there have been so many sweeping changes from MkI, I feel…I dunno…dirty to use some of the old rules.
I’ll give some examples here. The Holy Zealots were a fantastic unit. They were cheap. I’m not arguing that. Their cost was low, their damage output and defense was high. I never relied on them all the time, but I did like them and when I used them I felt that they were a well above average unit. My enemies feared them and rightly so. I fear the Khador mortar crew. I fear Eiryss. I fear lots of things. Lemme have something that my opponent fears.
So now…in MkII they are a lot more reasonably. That’s not to say that they are good. They suck compared to their old selves. They can be killed quite easily and their damage output is lowered. They are a fragile unit with a mess of weaknesses. I daresay that I will not readily include them in any army.
So if I play with them in the next year, I will feel cheap. Clearly PP felt that they were too powerful. Clearly they exceeded what the company wanted them to do on the battlefield. So clearly, when I play with them, I’m being cheap. I’m exploiting some old rules that the company has every intension of correcting.
This same issue is compounded by other units. The Idrian Skirmishers have been radically transformed from 1 type of unit to another type of unit. Nobody is arguing that they used to be powerful. But before they had excellent range and excellent melee. They were a unit that did it all (and were expensive). Now they have good range and can fight in melee if pressed into it. Their role changes entirely from MkI to MkII (something that I don’t agree with but whatever, I’m not part of the company). As such, if I use the Skirmishers, any strategy I build with them, anything I do with them, has an expiration date. Once the MkII hits, all their accolades and victories will be null and void. I still think that they are a viable unit in MkII. A LOT more than the Holy Zealots (or about 3 other units). So I have no problems playing them now or in the future. I just hate that what I do with them now will be IMPOSSIBLE in the future.
The final example is of an odd tri-man solo group. Visgoth Rhoven. I hadn’t managed to pick them up yet. This is another unit that goes from one thing to something radically different. They were tuff with two F’s before. They had this crazy armour boost by being together that was excellent. I wasn’t sure how to use them but I was keen to give them a try. They also had an excellent and potent ability to allow another figure to ignore some of the line of sight rules.
The MKII version of them…changed them. They aren’t the tanks that they once were. And they changed the aforementioned line of sight ability to something…close but not quite as potent. So…should I buy them now? They really don’t appeal to me half as much as they used to. I didn’t buy them before because I couldn’t easily find them. Now I’ve found them but am a little sad to see them change so much.
They could, between now and the future, be blessed and see some excellent changes. But I don’t want to base my purchase on what could be.
So I’m stuck. The Visgoth is sitting there at the store now, but if I do go buy them and they turn out to be exactly the same way that they were previewed, I know that I just won’t break them out too much. So why spend the money?
And this spirals into PP’s other game Hordes. I just got the new book with all sorts of new stuff all of which is guaranteed to change. Not: might change in the future. It will be obvious that within two years, all the things I did with the Legion of Everblight will be changed. That those cards full and full of wonderful, glorious murderous text will be changed. I know that ‘so will everybody’s’ but after seeing what happened to some of my beloved units, I know that there are parts of Hordes MkII that I will be delighted with and parts that I will be sad to see go. Just like Warmachine MkI.
So…I guess, over the next year, I’ll try a few more games of MkI Warmachine, and feel cheap for using my Holy Zealots before signing off on them for being a cheap filler for when I have a few points to spare in future MkII armies.
I am, ultimately, looking forward to MKII. The game does run cleaner. But with every revamp, there will be units that players will find to be an efficient use of their points and some that will be a waste of their points. Some units that I hadn’t used in a good long time will be dusted off while other units will shelved. And at least one unit that was shelved will remain that way. I guess it’s just the way of things. Some units will always be more efficient than others.

The Unthinkable

2009-04-15T08:27:00.001-07:00

My main wargame would arguably be Warmachine. I don’t get the opportunity to play it more but that’s mostly my fault. I am, at heart, a little too competitive. Because I don’t play enough, I would rate myself as upper middle.
Warmachine has suffered from several problems, few of which wreck the game itself. The two biggest problems seems to be a slight lack of balance ad a rules glut.
It was the former that bothered me. There were definitely games in Warmachine where you were playing a rock army and faced a scissor or paper army. As in, you either had little chance to fail or win. That I never cared for. You could, of course, retune and tailor your army to beat that scissor or paper but part of the game is not knowing the army you’re going to play against. That’s part of the fun.
However, it was the rules glut that Privateer Press was frustrated with. Every figure had to have kewl special abilities. And once that door is opened, you now have a problem that future releases have to be even more appealing to get players to pick up the new miniatures. In none of the new figures are appealing, then the game collapses.
So Privateer Press has redone their game. A new set of base rules and they’ve revamped all the figures, changing or discarding abilities and altering point costs. It’s a bold move. One that’s left a lot of fans rather frustrated.
The problem is, to avoid the rules glut, you have to remove some of those rules. Refining them only works so much. There were too many rules that allowed you to act on your opponent’s turn, so most of those were cut out (but strangely, not all of them). The problem with acting out of turn became who got to complete their action first. And what if my acting on your turn activate one of your special abilities that allowed you to attack or move your figure again! It became quite the nightmare.
So fine, they removed a bunch of abilities. Naturally, when I have 10 chocolate bars in a week and you take 4 of them away and say I can do just fine with 6 chocolate bars…dude…6 is not the same as 10!!! It doesn’t matter that I didn’t need the 10 chocolate bars…I had them and they were mine and I enjoyed them. Now to say that I only have 6…somehow it’s hard to get excited about just 6 chocolate bars…
Now I’m hungry…
Anyway, I’ve only given it one play in the new rules. I tried some things out as did my opponent. Things that I wouldn’t likely have taken previous to this. I busted out my favourite Warcaster (think of this as an uber wizard who’s like physical buff and can cast crazy powerful spells every round), Kreoss. And while I tried in vain to kill my opponent, the Old Witch, on my turn she did not die (on average rolls I should have killed her). Then, due to a complete fluke, she burned to death at the beginning of my opponent’s turn. I guess you take a victory where you can.
My first impression then, is that this is a great game. I was pleased that several things were toned down but that the game was still workable. People will complain endlessly that they miss ability X or that ability Y was taken from them and it’s not fair ‘I tells ya!’. But one thing that they can’t say is that the game doesn’t play well still.
But it’s still not going to be a fair game. There are still some Warcasters and combos out there that are stupidly easy to pull off. And it is a shame that Privateer Press hasn’t bother to correct those problems.
See, tournaments are a big, big thing to Privateer Press. I wouldn’t play in a tournament because there are too many douchebags in the world, but I love to hear about them.
There are four factions in the game: Khador (the Russians), Cryx (the undead), Cygnar (the ranged/lightning guys) and Menoth (the religious zealots). I know it sounds strange but it’s fun and it works.
Anyway, Khador wins the majority of the tournaments. Followed by Cryx. Then Cygnar and Menoth are probably tied for last place.
So it was with great surprise that in this massive level of change, Khador seems to gotten away with the least amount of change. In particular they had the most powerful Warcaster, Vlad. Vlad has actually managed to defeat half of another player’s army by himself. He is extremely powerful and special tactics were invented on how to defeat just him. I just wanted to see him toned down…and in some ways he was. And then they gave him a brand new ability that makes him just as awesome again. In fact, if he didn’t have that new ability, I wouldn’t feel so threatened by him.
So it makes me think, did each faction have a different editor? Did they not acknowledge the fact that Khador consistently wins more than most and Vlad is at the top of the list of victories?
This is not to say that every faction doesn’t have that Warcaster. Menoth, my faction, has the Harbinger which can protect her people from dying which can be hella frustrating for your opponent.
So they successfully fixed the rules glut. But it seems, that they failed to fix the game balance. After these changes, I can’t imagine Menoth will ever start winning tournaments again. But Cygnar might be very competitive against Cryx for 2nd place. Khador, I suspect, will be at the top still.
We were told, as players, that we are doing a field test of all the figures and rules. To see what works and what doesn’t work. If there are anything still unclear about the rules. But we were told that most likely, nothing will change. Except that they have said that if enough people report a problem or concern, they might consider a change. I’m curious as to how much weight a persons voice carries?
I know (from some personal experience) that you cannot build a perfect and balanced game. But it’s my hope that you can at least have a game where one faction or figure doesn’t roll over others. I find all too often, my opponent has a better combo than me and due to a spell, a feat (an uber spell) and a sweeping assault, I’m vanquished without so much as a “hey!”.
Warmachine has been and always will be, a game where knowing what your opponent can do is just as important as knowing what you can do. I’ve never seen a person win by beginners luck. There is just too many factors to take into account. Case in point, most games of Warmachine are won in a single sweeping round. The game ends with the death of the Warcaster, so you have to not only attack the opponent but protect your Warcaster. The moment you slip up in the later is the moment an opponent can sweep in for the win. Warmachine has a lot of crazy movement where it’s hard to see all the angles that an enemy could move in for the win, so it’s usually impossible to have complete protection from all harm.
Now there is slightly less to remember. Most units had something taken away from them and there are less out of turn instances with the game. Does this alone make it better? In many ways, yes. But people are still going to cry that you nerfed this unit and didn’t nerf that unit.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go to the Privateer Press forum and scream bloody murder over the nerfing of some of my beloved Menoth figures.

To War!!

2009-03-30T09:21:00.000-07:00

I’ve been bit by the board game/war game bug as of late. I guess I realized that I own a bunch of board games and they are collecting dust. In my normal gaming group, there are actually plenty of girls…but the board games I’m talking about aren’t very ‘girl’ friendly.
The boargame I’ve been playing as of late is Starcraft. We joke that there is little reason to actually be playing the board game when we could just be playing the video game, but it’s a different sort of camaraderie when you have a room full of trash talking nerds.
Starcraft is definitely one of those ‘boy’ games. It’s complicated and focuses entirely on competition and war. The game plays…reasonably okay. It is too complex to be what I would call a beer and pretzels game. The game requires you to plan out what you’re going to do during the next turn AND in reverse order. The order that you give first will be your final action. The combat is the same, where you have cards that determine the strength of your unit but only if the card matches the figure. But if you don’t have the correct cards in your hand for a fight, you could have what appears to be a powerful unit who gets beaten by an inferior unit and there isn’t much you can do about it.
It’s…not entirely intuitive but after playing it a few times now, it makes sense.
The problem with Starcraft is that nothing ever feels intuitive. From placing orders to building to fighting, nothing ever feels confident, for lack of a better word. I really have no idea if my plans will work (my orders), or I build too much in one area forgetting about another crucial area or I lose fights which I figure I should win.
I guess Starcraft could technically be the most complex beer and pretzels game out there because I find that there isn’t really much I can do to ensure my victory. I didn’t feel that anybody else could either, other than very obvious, very simple tactics (like people who needed to win by holding X number of areas and nobody attacked them for the entire game).
Starcraft is also a game that punishes you for screwing up. One player amassed a huge army but forgot to buy a transport. His warmachine was immediately brought to a halt and it allowed the other player to survive. What was worse was that we thought that the game might come to an end that round, so he would never even bring his forces to bear, which would have sucked.
Ultimately, Starcraft is a fine way to pass an afternoon but I don’t’ find it a particular rewarding game. I tried very hard but in both my recent games the moment I overextended myself was the moment that somebody else stepped in and crushed me like a bug. It would have been better for me to consolidate power carefully and play a very defensive game instead, which is not the way that Starcraft (the video game at least) should be played.

Saga System

2009-03-02T14:12:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, I don’t get gamers. There are certain and rare systems that come out that are excellent, yet they do not catch on. Why, I wonder is this?
One of those systems was the Saga System. Like all systems, it was not perfect but it was one of the better ones out there. It was fast and simple, which most games claim but it’s a damn dirty lie.
The Saga System was used by TSR for two of their games. Marvel Superheroes and Dragonlance. It was a very novel attempt. I have played the Marvel Superhero version of Saga and read about the Dragonlance version.
The Saga system used cards, not dice, as it’s method of resolution. I’ve seen a handful of card systems and they are solidly okay. Castle Falkenstein, a great setting, used cards, but the card value was a bit wonky. In that game, if the suite of the card matched your action (Hearts for social for example) you would use the full value of the card. If not, then you would only add one. The cheap things about Castle Falkenstein was that you could pitch in as many cards as needed, so if you had a hand of 4 crap cards, you could attempt an action, just to pitch all 4 cards and then re-draw a full hand, thus circumventing the limit of your mitt of cards.
The Saga system was better but a bit monty haul, because it went the other direction. A card is worth it’s base value, no matter the suite. You would add Stat (or Power) and the value of the card and try to get over a difficulty number. Marvel went a bit nuts because the stat values varied so much. A 1 was pretty weak. 10 was max human. And beyond that? Well Hulk had a 20 Strength but you could go up to 30 or higher for beings such as Galactus.
Now if the suite of the cards matched your action, then you would get a Trump, which is to say, you could draw the top card on the deck and add that to your value. If that card was the same suite, you would Trump again. There was no limit to the amount of Trumps you could do, but eventually it would stop (cuz you would eventually pull a non-suite appropriate card).
I cannot express to you how much fun it was to play this system, as superheroes. The card system was actually fun to use, rather than dice, which are not fun but functional. The math was relatively easy and quick. Heroes could try to stack the odds in their favour by holding onto an appropriate attack relevant suite for later. By the time combat hit, you were blurring through cards like crazy.
Did I mention that there were five suites to the Marvel system? Well the first four just matched the four stats: Strength, Agility, Intellect and Willpower. As you can imagine, these four stats governed everything, including your powers (so all powers had to be attached to one of those stats). The only flaw here is that your Strength could be used to hit, for damage and to resist damage. (I hate mechanics which allow one ‘godstat’).
So what’s the 5th suite? In Marvel it was the Doom suite (for Dr. Doom, duh). The Doom suite was a great mechanic. You could add the numbers just like normal, but the Doom suite never associated itself to any action, so it never Trumped. Furthermore, the GM took the Doom card and formed a hand of cards with it, using it to increase the difficulty of a particular action. A wonderful mechanic (and it gets better but I’ll get to that).
There is a further component to the Saga card system. They call it Edge and Hand Size. Every character has an Edge, representing how skilled they are. 1 is a wiener. 2-3 is your average character. 4 is Captain America. It can get as high as 6 but they didn’t give any examples of anybody that high.
Your Edge represents two things. First, you add two to your Edge and that’s your hand size (more on that later). Second, you can use any card that’s equal to or lower than your Edge in addition to whatever card you ‘actually’ use. Thus with a 3 Edge, you can add your crap 1-3 cards into a challenge in addition to the card that you actually play. Very few games handle ‘experience’ in such as brilliant and easy fashion. Captain America, has a high Edge because he’s got more experience than anybody else. Thus, he can win over others because if he had good and bad cards, they all work out.
Back to the hand size, there is more to it than just more cards. See when your character is hit and takes damage, you have to discard a number of cards at least equal to the damage. So if you took 8 damage and had 9 a 4, a 3 and a 1 you have two choices. Discard the 9 which temporary reduces your hand size to 3 cards and be done with it. Or discard the 4, 3 and the 1 (which equal 8) and temporary reduces your hand size to 1. In this way, the player can make the decision on how powerful the hit actually becomes, based on the cards in their hand at the time. And more experienced heroes, who have a higher Edge and thus a higher hand size, know how to roll with the blow better than other, less experienced heroes.
Oh and one more neat thing about discarding cards due to damage: If you happen to discard a Doom card in that process…well…the GM can say that something bad happened to your character, such as a broken leg or something more serious. If say you discarded a Doom card as your final card (which would normally KO you), the GM might decide to say that you are now actually dying.
Overall the system works extremely well and is fun, as I said before. There are problems with the system but they are fairly trivial and would be easy enough to fix. We once had a bird-girl who had a ranged attack that would shoot her feathers out. She once Trumped so many times she could have wounded The Hulk or Galactus with her attack. This was more of a once in a lifetime sorta thing but it can happen, so it would be something to watch for.
Now I’ve read some reviews on the failed attempt to bring the Saga system to D&D. I’m sad to say that it failed but it did. Players, I guess, just couldn’t accept that much of a departure from regular D&D. I can understand the loosy-goosy feel to the cards, rather than the dice. With crap cards and no appropriate suites, a high stat doesn’t really amount for much. That was the one ‘big’ flaw in that if you’re a smashy character (and who isn’t in a superhero game) and you can’t get your favoured suite, you would sit there and not be able to do much in a fight.
That being said, with the new D&D 4th edition, there is a big push to allow each and every character to use different stats for their powers. If such a concept were applied to the Dragonlance version, that could have been very cool. The Dragonlance version had 8 stats (2 for each suite I believe) and thus you open up a lot of neat potential combos. Perhaps you have a Strength Maneuver, an Intellect Maneuver and a Resolve Maneuver. This would open your combat up to use 3 of the 4 suites available to you. If you keep getting Strength cards, keep using the Strength Maneuver. But when you get an Intellect card, you can switch off to that Maneuver if you like.
But alas, I believe that it was just use Strength or Agility to hit. If you get the right cards to Trump, then great. If not, then oh well, you suck this fight (that’s not exactly true, a high non-aligned suite card works just fine, but players LOVE to Trump).
Magic was a little different and there was no equipment if the review is to be believed and I think that had something to do with how the game failed. Going from the traditional d20 world to something altogether different and not having kewl stuff like equipment and an unfamiliar magic system spelt it’s doom. (Personally, I can’t figure out why they wouldn’t have had equipment).
The feel of a game system is important. The Saga system was one of those rare gems but it has a definite fast paced feel to it. That’s why it was exciting in a superhero game but I can see how it would be difficult to get it in a D&D style game. Something about cards just has a different quality to them. Cards to be associated with many other things, particularly a host of card games. Using them as your random mechanic makes for a very different game. There is less randomness to it, because if you have a stat of 8 and your best card is an 8, your best ‘roll’ is a 16. A Trump adds some measure of randomness but it’s not quite the same as a randomly rolled die. At the same time, you also tend to know when you’re going to suck in the next encounter, because if you have nothing but garbage in your hand and nothing that Trumps for the situation, you’re going to feel that you’re being screwed or punished by your lousy hand. Strangely enough, I for one would much rather know that I suck in advance than to suck after I’ve rolled that die. If I’m going to suck, at the very least it prevents me from making crazy promises that “nobody’ll get hurt on my watch!” or something to that effect.
Still, if you can part with your dice, there is something that’s quite magically about how the Saga system handles pretty much everything and with relative ease. Too bad it’s effectively dead. =(

The Hour is Late

2009-01-21T14:21:00.001-08:00

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…

Android - Living up to the hype...

2009-01-11T22:25:00.001-08:00

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.

Do Androids Dream of Board Games?

2008-12-29T14:37:00.000-08:00

I have always been fascinated with Cyberpunk, primarily because, if you didn’t already know it, Blade Runner is my absolute favourite movie, and nothing has ever budged it from that spot.
What I liked about Blade Runner is almost ephemeral, but to try to put it into words, it was the dystopian, noir setting mixed with a protagonist and antagonist who were both mixtures of grey. While the Blade Runner is the hunter, the replicant in the prey, the roles are reversed by the end of the movie. I find Roy a particularly fascinating villain, because he toys with Deckard in the final hunt. Roy is dying, yet he plays the game one last time because he was built for combat. He shows how he is not a product of his engineering but something much more by saving Deckard in the end. Because at the end of his life, he finally was able to understand how precious life was.
I’ve run a number of Cyperpunk RPG’s and, while fun, they were pretty much fluff. It was D&D in the future, where cyberwear replaced magic. You ran a mission, you got paid, you got more cyberwear. Later the creators of the game would go on to state that that wasn’t their original intention. That you were supposed to be brave street soldiers who fought against the ‘system’. But of course, absolutely nothing was presented in the main book to play like that (with the possible inclusion of the Rockerboy character class, which was an odd choice for somebody to play as a ‘edge runner’).
The problem, it would seem with cyber RPG’s is that when you have cyber equipment, you are generally superior to somebody without cyber equipment and since cyber equipment just costs money and sometimes a small bit of humanity loss (or Essence cost in Shadowrun) there is very little reason not to do it.
Looking to another supers game call Underworld, I think that game had it right. See, in Underworld all supers were engineered with science. So all superpowers where genetic, cyber or whatnot. In Underworld, you had to not only buy the power you wanted, but the doctor who was going to install all this stuff and the therapist who was going to help you out with it afterwards. While odd for a supers game, what a brilliant mechanic to introduce for a cybers game.
And yet, neither of the major two cybers game did just that. Both had a bland $X will get you X bonus.
The reason I think about Blade Runner and the Cyberpunk RPG is because of a new board game, called Android. While I have not yet played Android I own it and have read it over. It is a game which is complex. Overly complex in fact, to the point that it will overwhelm some players. But it is a very deep and quite logical game. But it does one thing in spades, which is atmosphere. It is dripping with atmosphere which is quite interesting for a board game to accomplish.
In Android, there is a murder. And that murder hints at a bigger conspiracy going on. Now unlike say, Clue, the murderer and conspiracy are not predetermined. You are not trying to guess who did it (which I think I would have preferred but the game works almost as well without it). There are a number of suspects and you are given two ‘hunches’. One is your guilty hunch and one is your innocent hunch. If your guilty hunch turns out to be the murderer, you get a nice victory point bonus at the end of the game. So, you go around collecting evidence of the murder or the conspiracy and you can place that evidence on any suspect you desire (i.e. usually the suspect you have your guilty hunch about). Whether or not you see this as actually finding real evidence or manufacturing evidence, that’s up to you. The conspiracy works much the same. You place pieces on a puzzle which, if they link up to a person or organization, give you certain victory point bonuses at the end of the game.
But like Blade Runner, the murder isn’t the important thing here. It’s the vessel which drives the game but the story is about the hunter. Or in the case of Android, the investigators. There are 5 such characters and each are unique. Like RPG level unique.
Each of the 5 investigators comes with a back story and a unique set of problems. One is a corrupt cop. One is a bioroid (android) who has directives that he must obey. One is a detective with a bucketload of bad memories. One is a psychic clone who must avoid going insane. And finally one is a bounty hunter who is bad with money.
Each investigator has a set of unique goals and unique plots which affect them. They can ignore those plots in favour of trying to ‘solve’ the case or they can focus on them to try to get a ‘happy’ ending from the plot. Getting happy endings results in victory points. ‘Happy’ for the bounty hunter means she ends with lots of money. ‘Happy’ for the clone means not going insane.
The victory points comes from three areas. ‘Solving’ the murder/conspiracy. Getting favour tokens (which is the ‘money’ of the game). And resolving your personal plots in a ‘happy’ way. In their example, the player who completely failed to solve the murder but resolved their personal plots very successfully ‘won’ the game. I guess the idea is that while other character successfully solved the murder, their life was so fucked up as a result of it, that it wasn’t worth it in the end.
Again, dripping in atmosphere. I haven’t really seen this type of game play in any other board game before. And atmosphere can be ignored, certainly. You can just treat the plots you get as text on a card. Corrupt cop is loosing his wife. Get enough good ‘baggage’ to ‘succeed’ in the plot and she stays. Get too much bad ‘baggage’ to ‘fail’ and she leaves you. The first one gives a victory point bonus so that’s the ideal one, right? Sure, but this is a game where, if you like, you can really get into the life of your investigator. It’s not role playing but it’s far more involved than any other board game would normally attempt.
During the course of the game you spend your time getting some form of token. There are lots in the game and fortunately, it’s reasonably logical if not somewhat convoluted. Again, this is not a simple game and it’s hard to get your head around what is needed to be done to accomplish anything. But once you do, the logic appears.
In order to solve the ‘crime’ you need to hunt down one of three types of clues that are on the board. When you move to a location with a clue, you get to investigate it which gives you evidence to place on a suspect or a conspiracy piece (again, you can pretend this is actual evidence/conspiracy or you can be manufacturing it to fit what will give you the win).
While not tracking down evidence, you spend the game getting those aforementioned tokens. There are plenty of different types of tokens and they are confusing but again, they eventually follow a logical understanding.
1) Favor tokens are the game’s currency. This is the tricky part to the game. Knowing where to go to get the favour that will open up what you want. The favour tokens are: street, corp, society and political. Generally favour tokens do very little on their own (they are worth a small amount of victory points) but usually they are used to buy other tokens which are more useful.
2) There are baggage tokens, which are used to affect your/another players plots. You want to put good baggage on your plots and bad baggage on another player’s plots. The concept behind good baggage is that you’re actively trying to resolve your plot in a good way, rather than a immoral way. You’re pretty much responsible for putting good baggage on your plots while other players are responsible for putting bad baggage on your plots. You need favour tokens to buy baggage tokens. As a fine example, you can use street tokens to buy baggage tokens at the local bar/brothel. Hopefully the logic begins to appear (favors from lowlifes can be exchanged for goods and services which will make your miserable life slightly better).
3) Some places are restricted. You can go there but it takes a bunch of your time to get through the ‘front door’. As a way around that, especially if you plan to visit that locale a few times in the game, you can go get a warrant. But warrants require political favour tokens.
4) Interestingly enough, if you really want to help or hinder the suspects, there are expensive places on the board which can aid you. There is one place where you can ‘buy’ an alibi for a suspect that you obviously want to be innocent. There is another place where you can buy a ‘hit’ to be put onto a suspect. Three ‘hits’ and that suspect dies. It’s expensive, but it’s a good way to get rid of a suspect that you don’t want to be guilty or innocent. And are you manufacturing this or uncovering the truth? You get to decide.

There is logic to the game but it wont’ be entirely obvious to players what they should be doing on a particular turn. If you’re close to some Street Favors, you might as well snatch up a few of those in hopes that later, you can use them. But unless you know that you will want a warrant on one of the major corporations later in the game, you might not think it wise to get the political favours that are required to get the warrant in the first place. It’s not a game that lends itself well to the first time players. Strategy will be hard to build until the game is very familiar.
But the game has enough beauty and feel that I’m fascinated with it. Just like I am with Blade Runner. I dunno if it’ll be the best board game of all time. I’ll have to play it to see. A game can’t just be all style and no substance, afterall. I dunno if it’s quite as innovative as the designers will claim it is, still, I have to respect the design behind the game. They put a lot of love into this one and I hope it pays off for them.

Midnight

2008-12-18T14:15:00.000-08:00

So far, my Midnight D&D game has been going very well. The first session and ½ were all cut-scenes of the backgrounds of the characters. Then came the character creation during the later half of the 2nd session.
We had our first official game before, and while it was good, I’m still establishing many things.
This weeks session was…different. I have, if I may boast, a great deal of experience in GMing but little in D&D. D&D is new territory for me and that comes with it’s ups and downs.
I am not a big fan of D&D combat. At least from the book. I find that too many fights become: “I attack.” Over and over again. Because D&D, while tactical, tried to keep things ‘fast’ by limiting the form of attacks. Smashy characters can use Feats to mix things up, but not until they take those Feats during their character. And the Feats out of the main book are pretty simple. Power Attack is the most common one, allowing you to take a negative to hit and a bonus to damage. Not what I would call exciting.
What I noted in the combat was that I managed to give just enough choices for the players. Armour in my Midnight game doesn’t make it harder to hit you but makes it harder to hurt you. And while that allows the heroes to hit the enemies more often, they do a bit less damage. But…there is a way to take a negative to hit to circumvent some or all of that armour. So ultimately you can either chip away at your enemy bit by bit (hitting frequently but doing a bit less damage than normal) or you can choose to hit less frequently and do ‘normal’ damage. The choice, however, is up to the player. And I like that.
Another change is the use of Vitality and Wounds (from the Unearthed Arcana). I love, love, love this much better than Hit Points. They function in nearly the same capacity but the flavour is different and important. I would use this for any D&D campaign I ever run (but I announce my retirement here and now, cuz I can’t see myself running anther D&D game after this one).
Vitality are equal to HP’s. It’s your level times your Hit Die. Pretty standard there, but again, it’s the flavour. HP’s are a combination of taking damage, being tired and getting lucky. It’s the luck part that I never understood because how does a healing spell ‘cure’ your luck. Anyway, Vitality represents, more or less, your fatigue level. D&D still has the Fatigue and Exhausted conditions, but Vitality represents a character’s natural energy levels. When you chip away at Vitality you are not really being hit. You’re blocking, dodging and using all your effort to avoid the attacks. And with each narrow miss, you are getting more tired. And this is a very visual thing for me as a GM who insists on seeing their combatants sweaty and tired after a fight, with aches and pains, pulled muscles but still alive.
Vitality returns quickly, much more than HP’s do, 1 per hour (so long as you’re not doing strenuous things). So healing, which happens to be limited in Midnight, isn’t always necessary.
Now Vitality by itself isn’t much more of a HP like mechanic. So why do I love it so? Because I’ve added rules to it (shocker, I know). What I’ve added is that characters can push themselves harder, making a Surge as it’s called. They can get a bonus to hit and/or damage. And this can be done before or after the dice roll. But each Surge requires the player to spend a random amount of their Vitality (1d6 all the way up to 2d10).
Now I am a huge fan of putting the choices of the characters in the players hands. The d20 mechanic is horrifically random and I’ve spent many a combat where I miss all my attacks and wait, kinda bored, often reading until my next action. I am so limited in what I can do as a player, in a standard D&D game, which is why I have limits on how much I enjoy D&D combat. So here, I’ve developed a way for players to decide for themselves when something is important and when they can just ‘let it go’. They can spend their own Vitality to do better in combat. And I like that because as a pile of HP’s, it’s just a static pool (only affected by the enemy hitting you). But if you can use Surges that spend your own, it’s now dynamic. Both you and your opponent can chip into your Vitality (oh and just wait until I start doing that back to the players). Now I can see combat very clearly in my head. The exhaustion that comes from whirling around your opponent, from pulling a muscle to avoid that sword swing and then to push yourself beyond your normal limits to delivery a killing blow. Love it.
After Vitality all characters (who have classes or are semi-important monsters) have Wound points. Wound points are equal to the Constitution of the character. And these are WOUNDS. When I start getting into a character’s Wound points, they are cut and bleeding and badly damaged. Wound points heal very slowly naturally and with limited healing in Midnight, this makes things pretty brutal. After a character chips away at all their Vitality and starts taking Wound points, I can still see the visual clearly. The character is just too tired to get out of the way. They are just too slow to block it properly. Or even they blocked the shot, but the bruise under their shield splits open finally and blood starts to ooze from their fresh gash.
Oh and Criticals? Well attacks that Critical bypass Vitality and go straight to Wounds. Criticals are brutal in this system and I love it. Even at 15th level, the Rogue is only going to have 12 Wounds (unless he raises his Constitution). Even at 15th level, every hero and villain is vulnerable. Which requires both sides to think things differently. Regular D&D gives you the benefit that you’ve got your meatshield who can take the front line attacks. My own Ravenloft character has 71 HP at current. I have the confidence, while walking into combat, that nothing can ‘one-shot’ me. I would expect nothing more than 50 HP in a single round, inflicted upon me. But with Wounds? There’s always that unlikely chance that it would be possible to take any character out.
Combat was very good. I enjoyed it, and I didn’t think I would. The last time I ran D&D was 4th edition and I was bored stupid by the combat. The players had lots of stuff to do but the monsters I was using was boring to the extreme, no matter how many powers they had). I enjoyed running the monsters (undead orcs) and they were quite simple. They didn’t use their Feats, shields, tactics and had no wounds, so they found without performing Surges. And yet, I was quite satisfied with them.
The players got around 3 Critical hits, which outright killed three of the undead orcs. Very nice. The others had the standard chip away at their ‘HP’ (again, Vitality in this case). The party released quickly that it was easy to hit them but scoring much damage was harder because of the scale mail that the orcs wore. So many of them resorted to using a combination of circumventing the armour (taking a negative to hit) and Surges. The damage Surge was used to great effect, especially by the Pact Mage (wizard type) in the group who was able to use Burning Hands on three of them. She only rolled 1 point of damage but because of the Surge, she inflicted +5 to each for a total of 6. (This might come to bite me on the ass later but we’ll see).
For my part, I critical one character (and confirmed that critical). Now we got to try out something that I was eager to see. Because I’ve altered Criticals to allow players to inflict ‘special effects’. Think of cinematic things done in combat. In this case, I choose the Pin option, so the Rogue was pinned by one of the orcs. Again, very easy to see an orc bashing down their opponent and then thrusting his sword to pierce and pin their opponent. It was a moment of real worry for the party. The rogue had no Vitality left and was down to about 2 Wound points…it was a dangerous and potentially bad situation. But he was aided and saved.
The party, was beaten to shit by the encounter and that was perfect. By D&D standards, a party should exhaust 40% of their resources on an equal level encounter (I shit you not, it’s in the book). This is nonsense as any good GM knows. A standard CR 1 creature should be an equal level encounter for a party. Now granted I’ve done a lot of changes, but I hit them with 7 CR 1 creatures. They were in peril, spending more than 40% of their resources, but it was a good fight. I feel very good about the flow and that I didn’t completely overwhelm them. The point of Midnight is that the enemy has won and you’re in occupied territory. I’ve failed the moment combat is blasé and orcs are just XP train rides.
So only because I used a lot of optional rules, do I feel good about my budding D&D campaign. It fits my GM style more because it’s gritty and brutal. More than I was finding the Warhammer RPG (with it’s loosy goosy healing rules).
Here’s to a great start and a long future.

Is it Just Me?

2008-11-25T10:30:00.001-08:00

I liked Halo 3. I love Gears of War 2. But, is it just me or did these games both take a million years to come out with…absolutely nothing new.
Now I understand in the case of Halo 3. The previous Halo was on the Xbox, not the 360, so I’m sure a new engine had to be created. And yeah, the graphics were better. Very crisp and clean visuals. But the game play is pretty much exactly the same.
Gears of War 1(GoW1) was made on the Xbox 360, so Gears of War 2 (GoW2) and received a token graphical update but pretty much looks and plays like GoW1.
Now I get it. If you have a franchise that works and works well you don’t fuck with it. Metal Gear Solid and Silent Hill have skirted the line of changing things around and both have been caught between various degrees of success and epic fail!
But what I don’t get is why it took so damn long for both Halo 3 and GoW2 to come out. Both games are, ridiculously short. I could have finished Halo 3 in a single day. GoW2 seems a bit longer but I think I could have had it beat in 2 days. Fortunately the online play gives both games considerable survivability. But I still can’t get my head around why it’ll take so long to construct these games.
I presume that level design is an important feature and takes a long time to make. I remember Doom 3, a FPS and the game was HUGE compared to these games. I suppose Doom 3 has a lot of endless corridors which help pad the levels considerably, but still, it took me weeks to almost finish that one. Dead Space took me only 13 hours to complete if the clock is to be believed but it took me days and days to finish because I had to move at a more careful pace and died a lot.
What I guess I find funny is that Halo and GoW are acclaimed for their storytelling. But…these are really basic stories. They are exciting in that you really like the main characters. Master Chief and Marcus are both tuff guys and you get into the role because these are just two soldiers who absolutely refuse to die (despite the fact that both really should have many times over). The Halo series is a very simply constructed story, at least after the first game. And the GoW series introduces so many little plot threads that never get explained, it comes across as sloppy writing rather than what I think that they are trying to do, which is, sell more games in the future with promises of explaining themselves. But I can’t help but think, if GoW had better storytelling in the first place, they wouldn’t need to tie up loose ends. Good storytelling makes a reader/player invested in the story in the first place.
To give an example of the frayed storytelling (look a metaphor, I think), you start GoW1 in the middle of the war. Without any explanation in game as to why this war is being fought. It just is. You look awful human to me, so we presume you are human…but who actually knows. It really wouldn’t be the first time a game tries to trick you. As you fight people talk about the Locust Invasion. You quickly learn, more through osmosis than clear storytelling, that this doesn’t mean that the crops are in trouble. The Locust are aliens. Okay, fine. You start fighting them and while some of them are yelling you realize that a) they are speaking English and b) they are using guns not unsimilar to your own. Is this a story thread? After two games, I don’t think it is but it could be. Oh and they are talking about cities that I’ve never heard of so I have to conclude, we aren’t on Earth.
Since this is all super confusing, maybe it’s time to pause the game and watch the intro movie for explanation. They talk about E Day (Emergence Day) on Sera (which is the planet), the day that the Locust first showed up. Now there is war. That’s about the entirety of the short, opening cut scene.
So you are thrust into GoW with a shaken understanding of what it is your exactly you’re fighting for other than to avoid extinction. It’s a very private tight story focused on Marcus and his squad of Gears (soldiers with cool armour and cooler weapons). And while they all remain a mixture of charming and dicks, you can immerse yourself in their individual plight but I found it extremely hard, from what the game delivered, to figure out the setting (seriously, why are the enemy speaking English). I mean sure, I should care about them not dying but I couldn’t figure out why, if these are humans, they can’t just abandon their planet on spaceships, since they must have used them to get on the planet in the first place. In fact, the Locust feature no space ships themselves making it…another unresolved plot thread.
Since the storytelling in GoW 2 isn’t very deep (although it’s very well acting, IMO) it’s a surprise to me that it took so long to put out. I’ve seen some screenshots between GoW1 and 2 and yeah, 2 looks a lot better. But GoW1 looked great. So I’m a bit disappointed that GoW 2 didn’t bother making their story better.
That being said, a big part of their story involved the secondary character, Dominic, where Marcus plays the role of witness to the tragedy going on in Dom’s life. That was a bit of a surprise although kinda refreshing. It’s a bold maneuver that I think pays off. If it happened to Marcus then you’ve got a character in which the world revolves around. So that was a very good touch.
Halo, storywise seems to have the opposite problem that GoW has. The first game was reasonably deep, with a story that was clear and concise. Halo 2 had an alright story that ending in a big screw you to the players. Halo 3 had a very vapid, forgettable story which had it seem like there wasn’t really a story at all. Something about the Death Star being rebuilt and somebody trying to use it. So I get that the time it took between Halo 2 and 3 was to port it over to the power of the 360 but you think they could have spent some time on the story. I don’t mind the story that they choose but the framework seemed weak. You are location A. You discover that you need to do C. Suddenly you’re at the location of B so it’s just a hop-skip and a jump to get to C and get your objective, where you find out that you need objective E. Suddenly, you’re at location D and it’s just a hop-skip and a jump to get to objective E. Wash, rinse, repeat and you’re done. It really seems that they could have done a better job with the story.
Fortunately for both games, you like the main characters. Marcus is seriously bad ass and has such a great emotive voice that you have to like him. If I were him I would have punched out one member of the Delta squad a long time ago, but Marcus is the leader and keeps professional. More than any of them, he keeps his eye on the ball. Nobody appointed him the protector of the human race, and he wouldn’t even admit it, but he’s the most focused to winning the war. Master Chief seemed more bad ass at the start when you find that you’re a cyborg and soldiers are cheering when you approach to help them fight but as the story goes on…I wonder…did anybody else think that he had the hots for that tiny woman A.I. that he was always saving? I mean, it’s kinda cool if they did something with it, unrequited love and all. Regardless, Master Chief is given the weight of the world because he’s a cyborg and thus, he can do things that others cannot. To me, that’s an entirely more believable synopsis than a single human soldier who can wade through bullets and being eaten twice (in GoW 2). But who cares cuz it’s just a game.
I cannot believe that Halo or GoW is done. So I will look forward to next time when both, I hope, have a better story to go along with all that intense high octane action.

More Human Than Human (Drugs in Games)

2008-11-07T14:42:00.000-08:00

Dice roll Modifiers: To reward players we heap on bonuses. To punish players we give them negatives. This is one of the reasons that drugs in games don’t often work.
Shadowrun was always a game of prissy elves and sterilized technology, so having cybernetics that always worked and having drugs that were entirely forgettable, was fine. Shadowrun is gritty-lite.
But Cyberpunk really tried to go for a much dirty game and therefore, I blame them entirely for these same failures.
Very quickly: cyberwear was much too clean in Cyberpunk. There was never a chance that it was installed poorly, that it could wear, that it could fail or screw up and become more of a problem that it was worth. It was always superior to have cyberwear over not having it. Cyberpunk’s mechanic to avoid too much tech was a fairly weak mechanic that would lower your Empathy and once it was gone, your character was a raving lunatic (and you lose your character). The mechanic is entirely weak because the player can roll their dice for how much of a loss they take and then judge whether or not their character can take more. Once the roll was done, there was never any adjusting it. Once I hide the character’s rolls but then, a player took too much cyberwear and I was stuck. They didn’t want any more stuff but I rolled and their character became a cyberpyscho and was done for. They were the central character. So what to do? In the end, I ultimately ignored it and told the player not to take any more cyberstuff and he was perfectly happy with that.
Games that try to go for the gritty seem to also lack any moral or ethical system. I guess in the grim future, it’s become perfectly acceptable to shoot low paid security guards in the face and be fine with it later. A good player may take it upon themselves to have a moment of feeling awful, but they’ll get over it (often forgotten about by the next session).
Because of a lack of moral/ethical rules or even rules for stress, a character has no need for things that we use everyday to counter stress. Everybody in this world has a way to escape their lives (many of us pretend that we’re other people). And so too should a good and layered character has those outs. Although a lot of players tend to rely on some arguable ‘weak’ methods of escape: “My character sure does love to clean. Yes sir, after a day of murdering security guards and getting nearly killed, there really isn’t anything I like better than going home and doing something entirely safe and without consequence.”
I’m not saying that every character needs to turn to drugs, but to get into the mindset of the character, living on the gritty streets of Night City, drugs would be everywhere and they would be cheap. All your friends are doing it. People look at you like you’re a damn narc if you don’t take. But most importantly, it fits with the genre that you’ve chosen to game within.
The problem isn’t the world or the genre. It’s the players and how drugs are handled in the game. Recreational drugs almost always give some trivial bonus to skills that won’t come up and give hefty negatives to skills that are important to the game (often combat skills). And of course, right after that, the player gets to read the addition difficulty value and most of them say ‘No dice. My character is living clean.”
Ignoring the fact that booze and smokes are actually addicting drugs (but they’re legal and hence cool and can’t harm anybody), unless the system has a mechanic that handles something as ephemeral as stress, there will never be a reason or a need for a character to take recreational drugs. Games like Cyperpunk try to promote heavy combat and in combat, things that give you the aforementioned negative modifiers, especially when they are optional to begin with.
I believe that hard lives demands hard play. Part of a great Cyberpunk journey, at least the books that started the genre, was about the human part, not the cyber. Sure for the RPG they introduced more corporate hiring of street mercs to pull local black ops, but they completely dropped the ball on making their gritty world…well gritty. The Cyberpunk RPG wasn’t a journey to watch your soul slip away due to cybernetics, bad moral choices, loosing people close to you or even losing yourself into the violent world of gangs and drugs. It was D&D with guns.
In order to make these things compelling, you have to make them compelling to the type of player who wants to play Cyberpunk. You then have to construct rules that say, if you sell this piece of your soul, you get this benefit. Then you have to have the negative be there, but not completely outweigh the benefit and still have some relevance to the game. Players, after all are nothing if not efficient. The street solo (fighter) is completely willing to sacrifice all their social skills to become the bestest killer evar. And it’s all the more apparent in an RPG, because often the player never has to deal with the character on a non-adventure level (heck, nobody would ever want to live the life of this bad-ass machine who goes home and sits on his bed, waiting in quiet until the next time he’s called…it would be boring in the extreme). And furthermore you have another play handle all that ‘sort of thing’. The ‘face’ of the group who gets the contracts and the like. And this is always handled poorly and always handled in true min-maxer capacity. First there is the Face who gets the job and then the corp meets with the group. All the players address the corp equally and questions are answered. But really, you don’t think that the corp wouldn’t turn to the cybermachine character and tell him he’s not talking to a fucking toaster and then only address the ‘face’. I wish I had pulled that one of the characters. The second thing, that I *hate* is when one player shops for everybody else. Really? That’s absolutely, without a doubt, utter crap. Pick five friends. Now go do all their shopping for a month. Fuck that. It just won’t happen. Shopping for others is boring and entirely unrealistic and yet if the Charisma high character can get a price discount on stuff, everybody will take advantage of it.
Now back to my point, the killing machine with no empathy, what if you introduced an abstract system of friends and contacts. And your inhuman character no longer has people outside the group to call a friend. Without friends you have nothing to keep, say…your character’s Aspiration Stat afloat, because it’s constantly dwindling like your ammo supply. One cheap way to put your Aspiration stat above zero is to take drugs. Well now, you may have just used game mechanics to enforce the genre, but why not. We have Charisma stats to let us understand how well our character interacts with the world. I think it would be a bold system to have a stat something that represents the core motivation of a character (you say Willpower, I say Aspiration) and that with more cyber, you have less reasons to care about anything. You are dying inside and the only way to make you feel anything is through a drug.
That sounds like a damn fine story potential to me. So instead of making a D&D rip-off, why don’t game designers tailor the rules to their genre more? I wish I knew.

Tactical Role Playing

2008-06-15T21:13:00.000-07:00

With the arrival of D&D 4th edition we witness a new system that is a blend of video game action (primarily Massively Multiplayer Online games, hereafter MMO) and miniatures combat.
What D&D 4th edition does, it does well, as I've expressed previous. It handles combat in better fashion than ever. Maybe I should explain why:

All games give you the ability to make 'an attack'. Some games might even vary that up a little, as previous editions of D&D did. You might have a Bull's Rush (shoving your opponent), a Power Attack (less accuracy and increased damage) or a Trip attack. But often, these variations, which are meant to lead to more interesting combat, just add filler rather than anything interesting.
You bull rush your opponent...inflicting no damage but shoving them back a square. Unless they are next to a pit, there is little point to this maneuver.
You power attack, which is just an application of math. I remove 5 from my chance to hit for the chance of +5 damage. It's not very engaging.
You trip attack, which, without the correct Feat, allows your opponent to hit you first. If you trip them then they are on the butt. They can stand next round but you can make a free attack on them. What did this net you? You could have attacked them outright instead of caused the
slowdown. Now with the Feat, you can attack without fear of a counter-attack and can take a free shot on them if you succeed. You need a lot more rolls to pull this maneuver off (roll to hit, roll Strength check, roll to hit again). The net gain is okay.

Now the interesting thing about the last maneuver in D&D 3rd edition is that with the Feat and the right weapon, you can pull this Trip attack every round. Making it your standard form of attack, in which it now becomes a triffle boring. You just Trip over and over and over again,
having to make 3 rolls to pull it off. I've almost built a character like this but then you realize that there will be creatures immune to your trip. I didn't see the point.

So to fix all this, 4th edition gave a character a number of interesting attacks but with one bonus and one limit. The bonus is that, built right into a new attack are all the 'extras and effects'. Instead of being able to 'tack' a Trip onto your standard attack, you will now have an
exploit that is called "Spinning Sweep" which, if it hits, inflicts damage and knocks your target prone. One roll to determine all that. It's a simple system where you will have a power that will inflict a) scads of damage, b) moderate damage and a good 'extra effect' or c) light damage and
a powerful 'extra effect'. It's a simple but very good system.
Now there is a limit on these powers, but it's a good one from both a DM point of view and a game design point of view. Attacks are limited by how many times in a day they can be used. There are only three classifications: At-Will, Encounter and Daily. At-Will is just like it sounds. You can use this attack every round if you like. These are pretty basic and every character gets two. That's not a lot but it allows you to switch things up a bit. A Fighter could take Cleave and Tide of Iron. Cleave is great for fighting multiple foes. Tide of Iron allows you to shove your enemy around the battlefield. Again, this is in addition to inflicting damage.
Encounter powers are an excellent concept. You can use this attack once per encounter. So you have to rest and it resets, ready to go for the next fight that day. This was done because the previous edition of D&D had a lot of situations where you would blow all your cool powers in the first fight and be 'spent' (more often for your magical types than your fighter types). So...you had little other choice than to stop and go back to sleep. Which was kinda dumb and stagnanted the flow of a dungeon crawl. An Encounter power is better than your standard At-Will powers.
Daily powers are just that. They can be used once per day. They are, of course, the most powerful abilities that you will get. These are the times where you have to make an important choice. Will a fight require you to use your Daily power? Or will you save it in case there is another fight around that dark corner.

D&D 4th edition has improved combat. But it seems to have done so at the expense of role playing.

There is a fine argument to be made that there is nothing in a rules set alone, that limits me from role playing. If I want to play an axe wielding dwarf, a fighter is the best class for me. If I want to play a two weapon wielding Dragonborn, taking a Ranger is probably the right thing
to do. And if two players choose to be an axe wielding character, then it becomes more important to role play my dwarf different from your character. It was the same thing that might have happened had two players in 3rd edition played Fighters in the same campaign.
The problem occurs: what if I want to play a spy? What if I want to play a person who is a tracker and good in the outdoors but is more of a mystic who doesn't perform magic but speaks with spirits? What if I want to play a cleric who is all about healing and buffing the group?
In 3rd edition: For the spy, I could easily take a rogue and focus their skills and Feats to be all about manipulating people with my words and perception and stealth based. I couldn't entirely get away from the fact that rogues aren't that bad in combat but I could look for a feat to trade off my Sneak Attack for something more spy based. Eventually I could even work my way up to a Spy Prestige class.
For the outdoor mystic, I could probably take a Druid. Maybe I could focus it on summoning spirits. I could also take a look through the millions of books and find a class that gave me what I wanted.
For the cleric, I could easily pick the spells that focused me on healing and buffing.
The options are no longer there. D&D clearly defines the roles that all players MUST conform to (and I use the term players, not characters) and all characters must be good in combat. There isn't even an option to be less useful in combat. The Rogue is a combat monster now. He doesn't
even get much for 'thief' abilites until some paltry tricks at 2nd level (many of which are more useful during combat than out of combat).
The Druid is gone for a year, until then next book comes out, but we can already see what is in store. A combatant that uses the power source of Primal, rather than Exploits, Prayers or Magic. And you know what: Primal will result in the same type of powers that I've listed above. High damage and no effect, moderate damage and moderate effect, or low damage and high effect.
The healer/buffing cleric: gone. Clerics can heal but there is barely any reason to focus on it. All clerics are battle clerics. A number of their abilites boost others ONLY if they fight. You can build a cleric who uses melee weapons (to attack) or their holy implements (to attack) but gone are the days of giving Bull's Strength to the fighter or Cat's Grace to the Rogue. These spells no longer exist. It's all about inflicting damage.

D&D is truly just a tactical combat game with some role playing elements. You no longer have the option to play a character who isn't a combatant. You have to be an combatant and on top of that you can do your best to inject some character and give yourself a reason to role play.
Is it possible to have a game that can blend tactical combat and role playing? Actually, yes. I have a game called Cadwallen. It is produced by a company that is better known for their miniatures game: Confrontation (and AT-43 if you care). Cadwallen touts itself as a tactical role playing game and was released about a year before D&D 4th edition. And it gives you all the options and a lot of flavor while primarily being a game about combat.
Cadwallen is a game about combat. You are supposed to buy a miniature and the DM uses a map. But there is a lot more meat there. It's combat system isn't quite on the same level as 4th edition is, but it's actually quite good. And it already differentiated the fighters through it's skill system. Combat in Cadwallen is skill based. So you have Bash as a skill. You also have Slice as a skill. You might have Trick as a skill. Bash might use your Pugnacity stat (it means how aggressive your character is). Slice might use the Sleight stat. Trick would use the Opportunity stat.
It was quite easy to build a character who fit your view. In D&D 3rd edition, I am currently playing along side with a Paladin who is very un-Paladin. He has trades his spells and his mount for other features. He has taken feats that allow him to be adept in acrobatics and he wears light armour. It's an interesting character and the system fought the player every step of the way but he manage to pull it off and make it work. He even uses only a dagger in combat.
In 3rd edition, if you wanted to play a Rogue you were still stuck with the concept that Strength was the defining stat for hitting and damaging. You could take a Feat to allow you to switch to Dexterity for hitting but nothing that would help your damage. It was still strength based. 4th Edition fixes that.
In the only edition of Cadwallen, if you wanted to play a Wolfen warrior you can focus on your Pugnacity stat and the Bash and Pummel (and other type of attack skills) skills. If you wanted to play a Goblin warrior, you were in luck. You could effectively rely on your Pugnacity but instead could focus on the Opportunity stat and the Trick and Back Stab skills. The Wolfen might be a more effecient killer but the Goblin could get the job done and allowed for an interesting diversion.
If you wanted to play a human explorer, that option was there as well. Not a great fighter at all but you could notice all the hidden treasure when it came time for it. And of course, you could mix and match professions quite easily.
Every character started with three 'tours of duty'. Want to play the best warrior: start with three combat 'tours'. Want to play a rogue who can fight and explore? Take one fighter tour, one rogue tour and one explorer tour.
With Cadwallen's system you could make nearly anything you could imagine. The combat ended up a bit dry as your Wolfen had no reason to ever change things up and not rely on Pugnacity and Bash (same with your Goblin trickster fighter). But it was a step in the right direction, and really, it was only as 'dry' as 3rd edition combat, which really isn't that bad. The important thing is that the system barely limited the character concept. You can do what you want and how you want it.
This simply isn't true with 4th edition. You are stuck in a role. This role limits a character more than it helps. Two fighters will look awfully the same and I can have an elborate backstory, hunting down my father because he was murdered by a demon, and you can be Ted the fighter.
My backstory will amount for nothing. Our powers may be different, our skills may be different but we will have the same number of attacks in a fight and the same number of skills. There isn't any real variation. Two fighters will function in the same role and there isn't anything that helps support my background.
And my concept could have been grander. I might have really wanted to have some good exploration skills, be a real outdoors type. But I like the idea that my character is a defender of others. The former part would insist that I'm a Ranger. The later part would put me in the role of a Fighter. Without some (very weak) multiclass feats, I can't really pull off this concept. I have to make my concept fit into the roles the game has given me. And it really shouldn't be that way.

I still like D&D 4th edition, despite what I say. But it has really relegated itself into a tactical combat game with some role playing. Combat will always be the most important and overwhelming part of D&D now. Where in my current game that I play in, my character worries about when the Rogue and the Druid wander off because they aren't quite as capable in
combat as my character might be (both a rule and a role playing thing), this wouldn't be true in 4th edition. Both would kick ass without exception and both would have a large number of hit points so I wouldn't have to fret about them in combat.
Thus D&D truly has become a game about kicking open the door, killing the monsters and looting them for treasure. Nobody is saying that's a bad thing. It fact, it's a hell of a lot of fun. But that's all D&D 4th edition promotes now. It does not promote diverse characters and you can't make your concept always fit.
I guess that the sad part is, given how the classes and powers are laid out, there isn't much hope that expansion books will do anything different. The Martial Exploits book will be coming out in a few months. Now instead of 12 pages of Fighter attack powers...I might have 30.
Weee....
The best thing that this new book could do is showcase Exploits that any Martial character can take (possibly allowing your Fighter to do more than just hit things with Strength) and if they had a ton of Utility (non combat) Exploits, that would be great as well. Again, if they didn't force them to be of a certain class that would be great. Thus your Fighter could take a Martial Utility Exploit that made him more useful outside of combat. Now you could build the diversity that we saw in D&D 3rd edition. They could fix it, but sadly all signs point do not point to yes.

Ah to have the power to blend gaming systems. The character building options and stats/skills of Cadwallen and the combat powers from D&D. Maybe that would too good of a combination and thus limit any future Tactical Role playing games from hitting the market? Well, I can dream, can't I? =)

D&D 4th is here

2008-06-06T08:04:00.000-07:00

So gaming as we know it has changed. TSR --> Wizards of the Coast --> Hasbro has graced us with Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition.

I've taken a long look at it. Not a crappy preview look but a good hard look.

And I'm a bit torn.

I like a LOT of what I see. I really do. I will certainly enjoy the fights and the encounters in D&D 4th edition more than any other D&D. What they do, they do tremendously well. This will likely be the closest thing to playing a scripted video game fight scene. I'll give you an example: There are creatures and classes that have very cool 'interrupts' that occur and certain times in the fight. Typically when they are Bloodied, which has at 1/2 their HP's. For example, a high level wizard might explode with crackling lightning that blasts all nearby foes or a dragon might be able to immediately interrupt the action to breath fire. Stuff like that.

So what part am I torn on? Equality.

I remember a long time ago, I believe a much earlier edition of D&D had different stats for the different sexes. Male characters got an increase in Strength, while women often got an increase in Constitution and likely Charisma, if memory serves. That division didn't last long as newer games told the bold concept of making men and women equal and there were no changes in the stats. I'm not saying focusing on the difference between men and women is a good or bad thing but it's a realistic thing. I mean, I am not a big fella, but I know very few female friends who can outwrestle me. It's just how the human body was made. Things are not equal.

Well...D&D 4th edition is. Wow did they ever work tremendously hard to ensure that everybody is equal.

Let's look at D&D 3. This was not a game built on equality. And I've flip-flopped many times to thinking that was wrong to that was good. The obvious negative of a lack of equality is that somebody is getting the shaft. I remember one of my favorite games had me as a Fighter and another player playing a Halfling Bard. I seem to recall that the player specifically went out of his way to try playing the weakest character he could. He succeeded. In case you wondered, a Halfling Bard is the weakest thing you can play in D&D. From 1st level to 14th level he did 1d8 damage. And he sang giving us all that 'precious' +1 bonus to hit. Woot...

Some classes in D&D 3 sucked. Some sucked at the start and didn't come into their own until much later. Nobody is going to claim that their 1st level Wizard is going to be able to beat the 1st level party fighter. It just doesn't happen. You don't play a Wizard because he's awesome. You play him because one day...he will be. It matters not whether your character is going to reach the coveted 20th level, just the promise that you could have been the overpowered time-stopping 'nuke that no good bully fighter from orbit' (meteor swarm) ubercharacter is good enough. You start as a wimp. One day you could be a tiny god.

Oh and druids suck. That's for you DD.

There is another type of inequality that existed in D&D 3. The fact that it was very possible to make a character who did not use that awesome-sauce feat or spell and thus be entirely inferior to another character who built their character around it. Did you know about that Feat? Did you buy the Spell Compendium to discover that totally 'broken' spell? I remember flipping through the player's guide and giving our party cleric her two best spells. She would have survived without them but with them, she was so much better and more efficient.

So the fine people at Wizards looked at these disparaging differences and wiped them out of their game. Now...everybody is equal. Not the same, but equal. There is a difference.

The way that they've done it is through Powers. Everybody gets Powers now. Fighters, Rogues, Rangers & Warlords get martial powers (called Exploits) that are basically tricks in combat. Clerics and Paladins get divine powers (called Prayers) that are basically tricks in combat/magic. Wizards and Warlocks get arcane powers (called Spells) and I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this. Everybody now has stacks of phat powers.

And, to make sure that everybody is equal....everybody gets the exact same number of powers. (That is not 100% true but it's like 90% true). Every class earns the same number of powers. It's possible to get an 1 extra power here or there from races or a class or a feat but generally, you're going to have roughly the same number.

The benefit of this may or may not be obvious. NOBODY sucks in 4th edition. While there aren't anymore bards, even a Halfling fighter is going to be a terror in combat now. As much of a terror as that Half-Elf Rogue. And exactly as powerful as that Dragonborn Wizard. Yep...you're all equally awesome.

And I guess that's where I'm torn. Gone are the days where Wizards would one day become tiny gods. You now start as powerful as a Fighter and/or Paladin and/or and you will remain just as powerful as they will. Spells are now just 'powers'. Just like the fighter's exploits. I'm afraid to report that fireball does 3d6 damage. That's it. If you want ti inflict more damage, you get a more powerful spell (one that is sufficiently in tune with the power of the fighters more powerful exploit).

Now this is not to say that all classes inflict the exact same amount of damage. You have to read the finer powers of powers for it to all make sense. Suffice to say that fighters will inflict some really good damage. Clerics will inflict decent damage but they give buffs and heals to their party WHILE fighting. Wizards inflict moderate damage but to a lot of opponents. Rangers and rogues get lots of movement in addition to their smashing. So I'm not trying to say that at the end of the game, everybody does Xd6 damage. But the powers all scale with each other so that no one class has becomes the Wizard of 3.5. Nobody surges ahead in the 'end game'.

And the impressive nature of spells is now relegated to being 'just a power'.

You see, back in the day, when a monster designer wanted to jack the power of a monster up...you would add the final, brutal, evil component: the ability to cast spells. Your dragon...sure...he's tough. Great AC. Lots of HP's. Lots of attacks. Tough fight. But oh god, you add spells and a DM who know their stuff...and you are on the verge of an epic fight.

But now...adding 'spell casting' to a monster is irrelevant. It's irrelevant because saying that a monster can cast spells as a 10th level Wizard is now comparable as saying it can use Exploits as a 10th level Ranger. The result is kinda the same.

All is not entirely lost. Wizards lost a lot in spells being cool and gain Rituals. Rituals are where your long term magic comes from. Anything that lasts for moments is a spell. Anything that lasts for a long time is a Ritual. The only fault is that they could only fit so many rituals in the first book. So the rituals do not really have the same flair as spells did before.

D&D 3.5 had 123 pages (of 317 page book) dedicated to spells. 4th edition has about 10 pages in each class dedicated to their powers (so that's about 10 pages of Wizard Spells and 10 pages of Cleric spells, sorry, Prayers). They have 15 pages of Rituals for players (both Wizards and Clerics) to use. Rituals, while very cool as a concept, really have yet to come into their own. They aid the adventurers in many ways but I can't see any of them turning the tide of any encounter.

I don't think D&D 4th is bad. It's just a different beast. I think most players had gotten used to some things sucking and some things being more powerful. Spell casters were a mixed bag. On some adventures, with the wrong spells...they weren't very helpful. In other adventures, when they had the right spell for the right situation, they defused the fight without too many problems. Maybe that was a sticking point for Wizards of the Coast? Maybe they couldn't stand the idea that some encounters to too hard while others were too easy. While I understand their concerns, this does end up allowing encounters to not get boring because you never quite knew how something would turn out. Would the flying Drow hidden in darkness fuck the party hard because the Wizard used up all their Dispel Magic?

Now, based on my impression (because I haven't had time to play it) the Wizard will provide the exact benefit that having the Warlord and the Fighter and the Rogue (etc, etc) will to the party. Each members provides their powers. No more, no less.

Conformity and equality. Will this make for a better game overall? Yeah, I guess, probably. Had we not played with the inequalities of the past, the push to make everybody equal wouldn't be so transparent.

So welcome to D&D 4th edition. The system is cleaner and smoother. It is simple but has depth. Everybody is awesome in their own way, and there are no classes that are wildly unbalanced. And I for one can't wait for the new books to come out and throw in a TON of new powers to unbalance things and shake things up. =)

I. Am. Iron Man

2008-05-01T22:48:00.000-07:00

Don't panic. This is not an Iron Man spoiler.

Among my group of friends it is no argument that I am the biggest Iron Man fan. I just saw the film. I loved it.

It brought up some interesting questions in my head, and please forgive me because I'm departing from the game stuff for a moment and just examining some superhero movies.

We have Batman Begins, Superman Returns, 3 X-men, 3 Spiderman and now Iron Man. Oh and Daredevil...but...the less we talk about that, the better.

Did I like Iron Man better than all of those films? It's a very hard question for me. I don't think I'll be able to resolve it.

Batman Begins was an instant love. It was a great film. Superman Returns...I didn't like it in the theatre much but I began to love it after I thought about it more. I liked all three of the X-men films, or should I say the Wolverine films guest staring the X-men. They fucked up Rogue big time but there is no turning back. Spiderman films were fine. Good in fact, but I hate Toby and felt he gave a pretty boring, wooden performance.

So...Iron Man. I love him. I love the suit and the tragic history of Tony Stark (alcoholic, playboy, hero). But...would other people like him? I liked Tony Stark for reasons which will become obvious quickly. He was a very, very smart man (like my dad), he was a bit older than your Peter Parker/Captain America type (like my dad), he was an recovering alcoholic (like my dad). Notice a theme here? When I was young I very much associated Tony Stark and my dad. So I had an instant connection with Tony. And I loved the idea that a person, a man, could build a suit of armour that could make him a global hero. (One of the Avengers, doncha know).

After seeing it, I think, hands down, Iron Man is THE most entertaining superhero film. I will not say that best superhero film...people will make their own judgment on that. But it is the most entertaining. There were almost zero scenes where your mind wanders off and you wonder where this scene is going and could that actor overact just a little more...

Iron Man is entertaining due in no small part to Downey Jr.'s excellent performance. In the comics: I cared about Tony Stark but...I realize that I didn't really like him. I liked his story but he wasn't all that...I dunno...interesting? It's hard to write a character and make him compelling. Tony had his dark side. He struggled with a lot of personal demons. Tony was alright....but I really just read the comics to watch Iron Man kick ass. He was always more interesting, as with many superheros, with the mask on.

However, Robert Downey Jr. performance as Tony was excellent. Because Robert has what Mr. Stark is missing. Charisma. Downey Jr. has a ton of Charisma. You quickly grow to like and care about Tony Stark because of the charisma the actor portrays. And suddenly, Iron Man becomes a lot more likable as well.

Christian Bale did a fine job as Batman and an okay job as Bruce Wayne. But nobody cares about Bruce Wayne. You're just waiting for him to grab some two bit criminal and yell out: "I'm Batman!" That's the interesting parts of the movie.

I loved the actor who played Superman...does anybody know his name. Clark Kent was cute and funny, but Superman doesn't wear a mask. He's always Superman. The actor did a fine job.

But Tony Stark was awesome in this film. And as such, Iron Man, the hero, became a more interesting character to watch. And thus Iron Man the film becomes the most entertaining superhero flick around.

I'm very glad. Cuz they owed me for Daredevil...

Descent – Part 2

2008-04-25T15:32:00.000-07:00

I’m finding it very odd, perhaps considering my previous ‘Storyteller’ interest in the game of Descent, that there is a very odd debate on the forums for the game. Actually not one but two debates. Debates…arguments…overreaction…take your pick.

It seems, that with the new campaign system there is a way for the hero players to manipulate the game by out running the clock so to speak. Thing of Descent as a video game in that there are many video game mechanics. One of these mechanics is that the heroes can return to the main town in the middle of a dungeon run. During this trip to town they can receive some quick healing, buy some potions and return. The game it would seem presumes that at least one hero is remaining in the dungeon to kick some ass and take some names. But by the rules, all of the heroes can technically leave the dungeon, go shopping for any length of time, and return.

During such an extend shopping trip the Overlord is free to fill the dungeon with countless monsters, so the heroes would return with an uphill battle. Thus it’s quite foolish for the players to wait in town for any real length of time. Part of the strategy of the game comes from the idea that players will need to minimize their trips to the ‘mall’.

But the loophole in the campaign rules is two fold. First, while on a dungeon run, both sides have the ability to earn Conquest tokens (think of it like XP). The heroes earn Conquest tokens by exploring, looting and murdering the inhabitants of the dungeon (sweet!). The Overlord earns Conquest tokens from murdering the Heroes, with said inhabitants, and by cycling through his evil Overlord deck of cards (which is a timer for the Heroes to speed things up). Second, the game is forced into a confrontation conclusion when the total Conquest tokens (earned by both the Heroes and the Overlord) reaches 600 tokens.

Thus, some crafty (rules lawyers) players have figured out that if they are loosing badly, they can just enter a dungeon, all ‘port to town, announce to the Overlord that they are waiting for 600 turns or so to go by at which point the game hits 600 Conquest tokens (cuz the Overlord is cycling endlessly through his deck and earning Conquest) and the Heroes are magically transported to the Overlord’s Keep and battle with the Overlord’s Avatar begins. Ta da!

No, no…it gets better.

The Overlords have discovered their own rules manipulation. This is less of a rules loophole and more of a jack ass thing that Overlords who are playing to win can do.

Imagine that the focus of the game is for the Heroes to go through about 12-15 Dungeons, where both sides increase their power slowly. The Overlord puts pressure on the heroes and has a few ways to win the game premature to the heroes confronting the Avatar. The heroes need to make some tough choices and if they make the right ones, the heroes will thwart the plans of the Overlord. This should take roughly 80 hours of game play.

Or….the Overlord can teleport one of their Lieutenants to the main city of Tamalir and siege it. Once the city of Tamalir is razed (taking about 4-6 turns) the game ends. The reason why this works is because a starting Lieutenant is more than a match for the heroes. It’s expected that the heroes go through a couple of dungeons before they face a fearsome Lieutenant. But if they do go through a few dungeons first (getting the much needed loot and magic items to defeat the Lieutenant), a vicious Overlord can earn enough Conquest tokens himself to upgrade the minions of the Lieutenant so that as a whole the Lieutenant and his minions are once again too strong for the players to face. Thus they lose horribly and cannot stop Tamalir from being sieged and the Overlord wins the game.

Far be it from me to judge these Overlords or Heroes who play a game like this. But I will anyway.

To the Heroes…well…their tactic is just stupid. An Overlord should just say ‘no’. At some point the deck cycling should end or the town should kick the heroes back into the dungeon or the dungeon portal should close. It’s exploiting the build it timer of the game.

To the Overlords…okay what do they think they are playing here? If they want to use the rules to manipulate the game so that they win a game in hours which is supposed to take weeks to months to play…who are they fooling? How much of a titanic loser do you have to be to not only steal the hero’s thunder by not even giving them a chance, let alone a fair chance, but to use a cheap rules combo to win the game before the heroes can react properly to it. What is the point of ever playing with a person like this? Is this player proving something to themselves? Will they gloat that they won in record time? Will they gloat about how they crushed the other players so badly?

After reading these exploits, I feel so much better about my stance to be both a Storyguide and an Overlord in these games. I no longer think it’s an option. It should be required.

If the Overlord is being a dink, then I would encourage the hero exploit being using to trump the Overlord exploit, however. Because there is some great comedy to it. You see: when a hero teleports from a dungeon to go shopping, they go to Tamalir. The very city that the Overlord can siege (and raze) to prematurely end the game.

We enter a narrative on week (turn) 4 of the new campaign:

Citizen: Woe is us! The Overlord sends his minions to attack us. The siege is blocking our food, our water and our hope. Woe is us. Will no one help?!

2nd Citizen: No, there is no one. The Heroes are weeks away and I heard that they just entered a dungeon. Even once they leave, they will not be strong enough or experienced enough to save our city. No one can help!

1st Citizen: Can you save us?!? Can you help us?!?! Please, you must!

Heroes: Oh yeah. No worries.

2nd Citizen: Nay, they cannot help. They are in the middle of a dungeon run. And even once they are done, they still won’t be strong enough to fight the evil that sieges our city.

Heroes: Whatever. We got it covered.

1st Citizen: Pray good sirs, what are you doing.
Heroes: I said, we got things covered.

2nd Citizen: But the siege engines will not stop. We are but a week away from the walls failing.

Heroes: Trust me. This’ll work.

Heroes: That’s us.

Both Citizens: I can’t believe that worked…

Descent

2008-04-22T12:22:00.001-07:00

I’ve been fascinated for a while with a board game called Descent: Journey into the Dark. I think that they called it that because the name Dungeons and Dragons is already used somewhere else.
Descent is a game that pits 1 player, known as the Overlord, against up to 4 other players, known…er…as the players. The players take a character and their goal is to fight they way through the dungeon to defeat the evil that lies within. There is treasure and magic items that are placed along the way. Naturally, the closer to the big evil you get (we’ll call him the end boss) the better the magic items are. Naturally. Cuz I guess…the end bosses always keep powerful health-threatening magic items close to them, packed in chests, often right outside their own personal lair. I guess all the monsters in the world are quite keen on giving the would-be heroes a sporting chance.

Regardless, the game plays out quite well. I’m surprised that I like it because I played it’s predecessor, Doom (based on the video game), a long time ago and was completely unimpressed. I don’t even remember getting that far in Doom before disliking the game. But games like Doom and Descent should have been right up my alley. Lots of little plastic figures, well designed scenarios and fun gameplay.

A game like Descent, however, seems to create two interesting schools of thought. Some people look at it like a board game and nothing more. It’s a board game where there are 4 players verses 1 player. The Overlord player can play the game to win. He uses his monsters and cards without mercy to defeat the heroes until they have lost enough conquest tokens. The Overlord wins. Muahahaha, I guess.

But there are lots of people who will look at Descent as a game that strips away the role playing from D&D and is just a straight out dungeon crawl. It is a tactical game, more so than D&D is, but it still has the fun that a D&D dungeon crawl can have. Actually, for people my age, it’s probably better. Old sckool D&D would take many sessions to perform a dungeon crawl. When I was a kid, we could play once a week if not more. So a dungeon crawl could take 1-2 months. Now, I play 1-2 per month. So a big ol’ D&D dungeon crawl could take 2-4 months of actual time. That’s boring. Descent makes it fun. It’s different, but fun.

I am most definitely a person who feels that the Overlord is there to run the dungeon but not focus too much on winning. The point is not to let the players walk through the dungeon but it’s also not to brutalize them. I’ll be honest with you, I’ve run about 12 games of Descent so far and I probably could have won 11 of them.

In the first 11 cases, I ‘fudged’ the dice. Which in this case means, I didn’t throw everything in my hand at the heroes. In most of the games I was winning anyway and I didn’t feel there was a point to making the game unfun for the players. One I was beaten quite badly and had no hope of winning but that was great because we all had fun.

I guess that’s the difference in mentality. I don’t believe that the people I invite to play this game would have fun with it, if we treated it purely like a board game. Me vs. them. Instead I think after playing it, we all realize that we play the game to have collective fun, not competitive fun. I don’t consider myself, as the Overlord, a loser in the game when the players defeat the end boss. In fact, I find it very odd that some other people online do. They have lost the game. I guess they have, if they define the victory of the game as win/lose. I find it amusing that I never once thought that’s how the game was supposed to be played. I always figured that I was there to make the players have a good time. That I was their guide as much as I was their adversary. That to win, we all have fun.

I remember playing Doom and I don’t remember all of it, but I think we were getting pounded on at the beginning and I recall that I wasn’t enjoying that part. I seem to recall that we did get further in and did make some headway but I think we were beaten in the end. I don’t really remember. I just remember that parts of it were unfun. I don’t blame the Overlord in that game, he was just as new to it as I was at my first game of running Descent. But had my initial experience to the game be more positive, like we did some serious kicking ass and felt a bit awesome, I might have liked it a lot more.

In retrospect, I’m very glad that the players I managed to wrangle into playing Descent with me stuck with it. Now everybody I play it with finds it a fun game. And I find myself careful to pace the adventure based on their success or lack thereof. A bit of bad luck on their part could allow me to easily ‘win’ the game. But I realized that I’m not running Descent to win. I’m actually running it to lose. I want the heroes to win in the end. I want it to be a very close game and one that is hard fought. But one the few games that I have won, I feel like all of us have lost. Isn’t that funny?

I now have a campaign system to work with Descent, where the players get to play the same heroes over and over again and watch them grow. I’m quick to offer my suggestions and opinions and helpful advice. I guess I could offer them nothing but hard times and win the game by playing it like a jerk. But I just can’t see the fun in that. And I doubt either would my players.

My players. That’s how I see Descent. That’s how I see most games that I introduce my friends to. Like a RPG, the people I introduce to the game are my responsibility to take care of. To give them a positive experience with for that crucial first time. Once they start having fun with it, I can try to focus on the win. But if a player is having a bad time at a game, they likely won’t enjoy it and then they won’t want to play it again. So I guess helping the players in a game is as much for me as it is for them. I’m helping them enjoy the game so that I can catch their interest in the future when I want to run games. It must be the gamemaster in me. I like to run games for other people. Descent seem to be no different, despite it’s pretence of being a board game.

Scion

2008-04-10T14:36:00.001-07:00

I picked up White Wolf’s latest creation: Scion. They are released it in three stages: Hero, Demi-God and God. As might be gleaned from the riddle that is their title, this game is about playing the child of a god, who, if they gain enough legend, might one day achieve god-hood.

The concept is pretty sound and that’s very good…because this game only has a concept. There is virtually no follow through.

I remember a while ago being excited about another game, called Sorcerer. It was something about controlling demons via magic to do…stuff. Sweet. Sounds great. Had a friend pick it up from Gencon for me.

I got it and was entirely disappointed. It had some pretty barebones rules, some GM stuff and some essays about gaming (if you can believe that) and no setting whatsoever. In fact, the point of the game was for me, the GM, to make the setting. That was a total cop out. I don’t buy games to create the world. I buy them for the world. I most certainly don’t buy them for the weak rules, because I can create far better ones than a lot of games out there.

So I think you know where I might be heading with Scion. At least, Scion has a better concept. The Titans have awakened. The gods are in peril. The world is in peril. The gods have no time to save the world so it’s up to their kids to do it.

I love this concept. Sure do love that concept. I couldn’t wait to dive into the book and consume the juicy details within. Only problem is, they were missing.

I have to wonder if the fact that this game lacks a true setting/world because they wanted to do something very much the opposite of their bread and butter games in the World of Darkness line.

Oh you can figure out the setting and the world, more or less. There is a 40 page story at the beginning of the book that is the usual blah that most games produce. There is a lengthy 1st Adventure that is including in the back of the book, some parts of which pretty much contradict the fiction in the front. But I really am not paying good money so that I can extrapolate your setting. I am paying good money so that I can go to the GM section and read the juicy secrets. I will choose what I want and what I don’t want. But at least give me some world to use or discard.

There are the basics, given out in brief point form which one would presume is for the players. But instead I must use it as a GM to build my world from. I really find this shoddy work.

So what do they have in place for a GM? Well they have this handy dandy section on how to be a Storyteller with many tips on what makes these Epic stories different from other things you may have run. Okay…I can see this being of some value. But only to a select few. To be honest you really will end up with two types of GM’s here. Inexperienced GM’s, who will not ‘get’ what this type of section has to say or experienced GM’s who ignore this section in favour of flipping to the “Adventure Seeds” section (which naturally does not exist in this book). Because experienced GM’s know their trade or are too stuck in their routine/rut to re-read what they think they already know. What they really want to know is what this world is about so they can let it sit and gel in their mind’s eye and develop into a story that they need to run.

The rest of the book is filled with character creation, powers and rules. I won’t say it’s the worst set or rules I’ve seen. I’m sure I’ve purged the Palladium system out of my head. But it is not good.

White Wolf has a formula. Stat plus skill as a pool of dice, normally totalling between 3 and 10 dice. When this was compared to all the d20 games at the time, it was new and innovative. Now it’s pretty darn common. There is nothing wrong with this mechanic, however. When it first hit Vampire, each die that rolled a 6 or better (their standard difficulty) yielded a success. So successes were plentiful. As you watched WW games over the years, you got to witness as each one in turn slimmed down on the successes. The default difficulty became 7 with Aeon Trinity. Now the success number is 8 or better. We’ve gone from a 50% chance per dice to get a success to a 30% chance for a success per dice.

Some math nerd better than I could tell me I’m full of it, but I certainly have seen that trying to get an 8+ provides a player with wildly random results. After building a character in Vampire with 11 or higher dice to roll for their Dominate, a few lucky dice rolls from opponents with less than half my dice pool and I was beginning to think that my poor vampire was only fooling himself into believing that he could control people’s minds.

But I could live with the 30% chance per dice. If the rest of the system wasn’t so bad.

Scion uses a very close system to another popular WW game, Exalted. I never got into Exalted but it looks neat (think crazy martial art action in a fictional world). But it looks like the creators of Scion tried to tighten up the system here and there. In combat, Exalted has an opposed dice roll (where I roll for attack and you roll for defense). In Scion there is a just a defense value (DV). Okay, nice and simple. But I guess this didn’t feel like 2nd Edition D&D enough for them so they decided to have multiple DV’s for every character (Parry & Dodge and a third one which amounts to None). Sorry, I should say poorly defined multiple DV’s because there is no reason to rely on anything other than your best one unless there is an attack that denied you the right to use that DV. What are those attacks? I wish I knew because they give you some vague examples that are confusing and really just amount to the fact that you still will want to rely on your higher DV.
Oh and those DV’s change the second your character takes any action other than standing around looking bored. So the DV’s constantly get adjusted while combat progresses. Fine. Stupid…but fine. I know it makes sense. If you extend yourself with a fierce attack, you’re easier to hit. But it’s a serious pain to deal with in the thick of combat.
They also made a Soak value, which means you take less damage from things when hit. No real problems with that. Until you actually try to use the system.
See the system might work fine until you factor in the Epic stats. Supernatural stats that overwhelm and break the system. This wouldn’t be so bad if some extra thought and playtesting went into it, but…I don’t think it did.
Epic stats give you automatic successes tacked on top of what you roll. The problem doesn’t like in the Epic stat itself. The problem occurs when one character as the Epic stat and the other character does not have the Epic stat to counter.
If I hit your character and you have Epic Stamina…but I do not have Epic Strength…the vast majority of my attacks will simply not hurt you. Likewise if I don’t have Epic Dex but you do, I will never hit you in combat, while you will always hit me in combat. The moral of this story might be: Make a well balanced character, but in practice it really does mean: Everybody be the same. Everybody take Epic Strength, Dex and Stamina. And that isn’t fun.
Their sample characters are not balanced. The chick from the Asian gods can pretty much beat all the rest 9 times out of 10, because she is impossible to hit and can always hit them. She has everything put into Dex, Epic Dex. Her Epic Dex allows her to hit so accurately that her excess to hit successes can translate into damage so she may even be able to circumvent Epic Stamina.
So…basically…in the WW world: Dexterity is god. If you don’t take Epic Dex, you’ve all but crippled your character.
So…whatever. I don’t like the system. Maybe it could work better on practice than it does on paper? The answer to that is a resounding no. The system is criminal.
It is slow.
It is dull.
It is painful.
Two of these are bad enough. But this has all three . It takes a long time to conclude one attack (slow), that takes a bunch of math to figure out (painful) and ultimately, it just comes down to “I attack.” (dull) with little variation. Exalted worked because you had half a dozen bad ass maneuvers you could pull off. Scion is just…bad.
So...a great concept, a poorly executed setting and a god awful system. Scion is a titanic failure, as far as I’m concerned. I will run a game, but I gutted the system and even after one session of playing it, I’m gleeful at the possibilities (more on that in the future). Without much of a setting, I guess I am free to do whatever the hell I want. But I didn’t need to pay money to do that…seriously. As a GM, I can always do whatever the hell I want. But if I’m going to do that, I’ll use the far superior Fate system.
So I can’t recommend Scion to anybody. I will run it and then never pick it up again. Not for ideas or brainstorming. It adds nothing helpful to the world of gaming.
I guess I should say something nice: the covers are very pretty.

4th Edition D&D Races

2008-03-20T10:09:00.001-07:00

When D&D published the campaign setting Eberron I had to groan. They included the addition of a new race known as the Warforged.
The Warforged are player character constructs. There are constructs in the D&D world. I love the concept of infusing a soul into a construct. It’s been used in other games, most notably in Warhammer 40K (The Eldar infuse their Dreadnaughts with Eldar souls) and Starcraft the video game (Dragoons were infused with Protoss souls).
But the Warforged…they just came across as an uber-nerd’s wet dream. I’m not saying that Warforged are horribly imbalanced. I’m just saying that they are kinda lame. If for no other reason than they represent the type of gaming that I used to do (aka Power Gaming) when I was like, 15.
Enter D&D 4th Edition preview. While Warforged are mentioned, thankfully they are contained in the Eberron book which will be published at a later time. I skipped Eberron 3.5…I think I can manage to skip it again.
But wait…enter a new race. One that we’ve almost never encountered before…the Dragonborn!
I am so torn about the Dragonborn. And yes, they are dragon men. Horns, giant bodies, tails, scaly skin. The works.
I have always loved worlds where ‘monsters’ are not all evil. Where ‘monsters’ have their own societies and sometimes, those societies function along side or within humanity. Mageknight, the collectable miniatures game, did this a great deal, for example, and I really liked that. Trolls were part of the Elemental Faction and worked along side with elves and tree constructs. I really like that feel. Shadowrun has their Trolls and Orcs. Earthdawn (which is kinda the same world as Shadowrun) has their Obsidian Men (and their orcs).
So…why am I torn about the Dragonborn? Well…cuz they are the Warforged of the new D&D world. Regardless of their stats and benefits, they are just another uber-nerd’s wet dream. I know I love dragon men. I know that there were Draconium in the D&D world already. But I never played one. Why? Cuz I would feel dirty. I would feel like I’m being so cheap and twinkish for playing one.
So I think that the Dragonborn are kinda…nerdy and lame. Thrown in because somebody decided that they were cool. No really, that’s listed in the book as the Short Answer reason. Dragonborn are twinkish.
But god do I want to play one. I wanna play a Wizard Dragonborn or maybe a kick ass Dragonborn Fighter! Oooh…maybe a Warlock Dragonborn!!! Sweet!
And…I feel like I’m 15 again.
I’ve gamed for a lotta years. I’ve never played a Halfling. Or a gnome. I’ve played maybe 2 dwarves. 1 Elf, for a short lived campaign. Shouldn’t playing a Dragonborn be like getting a driver’s license? Shouldn’t you have to do the probationary period where you play other races so you can learn how to respect the ‘regular’ races, before you are allowed to try out a Dragonborn?
I just don’t know. I wanna play a Dragonborn. But I don’t want my friends looking at me like I’m just taking one to min-max my character. I can already hear one of my friends in his deep voice: shame...

Random Characters

2008-03-14T10:58:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine recently said that she liked random stats (in reference to D&D). I confess that I've loved the idea of rolling up those great stats as well. Notice I said great stats. Nobody likes rolling up a GAP employee. Lousy GAP employees...hate them so much...but I digress. In a Ravenloft game I've rolled up the best stats that I ever have and ever will. So I'm tempted to retire from D&D here and now, just to keep that legacy alive.

With this in mind and my recent comments about Classic Marvel I remember that there was another system that had very random character creation.

Top Secret. Not the 'updated' S.I. Nope...the original one.

Okay, if you've no idea, Top Secret is about playing...gasp...spies. It was obviously inspired by the James Bond movies of the past and the various other 70's Spies TV shows. Anybody who played it would be hard pressed to say bad things about it. I will, only cuz "I'm that guy."

Only in retrospect is the system bad. It's percentile...kinda. I know that sounds odd but really...it was...a very...ahem...unique system. I mean...it was very common for players to have 75% in a skill that they were okay in and 120% in skills that they were great in. There were a lot of modifiers to help bring you down.

And the combat system was just messed up. We didn't care at the time. It didn't matter that the gun combat used percentile and that the hand to hand combat system was...actually a chart based system with zero dice rolls. And the two systems did not mesh at all. It also didn't matter that if you wanted to shot 10 bullets at an opponent you had to roll your first bullet with a 0% modifier, the 2nd bullet with a -10% mod, the 3rd bullet with a -20%, etc, etc. We did not care. We loved it. Well...we were kinda young and impressable and willing to put in the calculations to roll 10 times to shoot 10 bullets.

This is a game that had their first module named: Operation: Sprechenhaltestelle. I played that module several times and even read it. I have no idea today what the hell a Sprechenhaltestelle is, but it was damn cool! Here was a game that was not going to dumb things down, even if they thought about it, they should have. But no sir, not for all us pimply faced losers who played it. You wanted to know what the hell a Sprechenhaltestelle was...you had to go to the library to find out...or ask a German kid...or maybe it was somewhere in the damn module. I don't remember. I don't even care. The word itself just became something iconic. You could be failing math but you would be pretty damn proud of yourself if you could even pronounce this module. It gave you nerd cred.

But back to the Random Characters. This game had it all. Nothing will beat it (not entirely true but there are some games that just made a joke out of it). You had to roll for everything. Everything. What sex your character was. Your stats. Your skills (as in, which ones did you have and how good were you). Your languages. Which hand you were proficent with. In the expansion (that everybody used...duh) you could roll for such glorious and important things as your blood type, your retinal ID code, your fingerprint ID. There were some calculations too, based on your random rolls. You could figure out whether you were endomorphic, mesomorphic or ectomorphic. I had no fucking clue what the hell these were but I figured out one meant fat, one meant skinny and one meant stocky. I think. I didn't take biology and I didn't care. This was rad.

Classic Marvel was just as wonderfully random. It's randomness was magnified if you got the Ultimate Powers book. At least Top Secret was reasonably fair. Everybody played a human...you were only so tough or strong or smart. You could have sucked in all departments but you did have some good skills that could be (hopefully) useful under the right circumstances.

But Marvel...Marvel said fuck fairness. To be painfully crass, I think it skull fucked fairness and then dated it's sister.

No, seriously, it's the only game I've seen where I can roll up a well trained human with no real superpowers and you can roll up a god, while Jim over there rolls up a living plant. Oh and totally random powers. But of course my human gets random powers at low power levels and the god gets his totally random powers and at very high levels. And then the living plant guy is totally random powers at random power levels, such as getting Feeble (2) Storm Control (can make it sorta, kinda windy) and an Unearthly (100) ability to meld with cork or something. Oh and teleportation and laser eye beams. Why not. He's a plant afterall.

Rifts may rival Classic Marvel for inappropriate power levels but only Classic Marvel made it random. It was kinda fun to roll up something totally wild. When I was a kid. I tried it recently...and...yeah...it's pretty awful. A random character creates a role in which you are forced into playing. It is not 'fun', IMO. It's a bit of a lark and silly but it's not a long term thing. You have zero investment in it. And if you can't get invested in your character, then you're just rolling dice.

At the end, I'm a bit more of a fan of a points buy system. I don't want all characters to be equal. But I'm keen to not have anybody outclassed by random character generation. I think it's obvious that the Top Secret and Marvel systems were rather silly. No control over character creation is wrong. There was some joy in watching a character unfold before your eyes but now, I've been unable to find any ability to invest myself in a random character. I would rather build a character the way that I want. To suit whatever music is going on it my head at the time. I think that the industries obviously has adopted this as well, since I can't remember the last time I've even seen an random system. Other than, of course Warhammer. Hmmm...maybe that's why the players had trouble getting into their characters? I dunno.

Warhammer - Final Nod

2008-03-14T08:37:00.000-07:00

So...after two years, I brought my Warhammer game to an end last night.

I felt that some words needed to be said about Warhammer.

The original Warhammer game hit sometime in 1986. I don't remember exactly when I started to play it. Must have been in the late eighties, early nineties. I really liked the world. D&D was entrenched but I've never quite been sold on the setting, which D&D kinda has a lack of. D&D, even at the time, felt like they were going for something unspecific in their setting. It was a melting pot for monsters and magic. This rarely detered any GM I knew.

Warhammer was different. It had a finite setting, but one which could easily act as a sandbox. It had years of history that you could read and buy into. It had plenty of monsters but many monsters were 'feature' monsters: The orc (greenskin), the daemon, the beastman. It had a very high quotent of zealots. It was also very low magic, both mages and items. It was definitely different than D&D.

I remember enjoying Warhammer a great deal, both playing and running it. I remember my campaign got rather out of control but the players enjoyed it. I just remember my friend Jason's unstoppable Dwarf who slaugthered every Chaos Warrior he met in some grisly fashion. He quite enjoyed writting down every gruesome way that he butchered one.

In the game that I played in, I remember my first actual...well...role playing. Where the story started becoming more important than the stats on my character sheet. Golly. How did that happen...

Good players helped. I remember that, Steve tried out a female rogue. I was a bodyguard and started protecting her. We could see a romance forming between the two and that was neat and different. And kinda odd because...well...we are both straight males...so...it was just weird. But we both got into the roles.

Dave played some pale Outrider character, who, as it turns out, had quite a bit of plot associated to him. He became a follower of Morr (the god of death) because he had been the only survivor of a massive war. We later questioned whether he had survived that battle or if Chaos had given him some fortune.

As the campaign progressed, we found out that Dave's follower of Morr began to see strange things. We uncovered a plot to overthrow a high ranking member of the Empire. We met with some lizard creature who was giving us information, when the GM handed Dave a note. Dave murdered the NPC before our eyes, believing it to be a heretic. We had watched Dave's character get slowly worse at this point and we crossed swords for the first time. We didn't fight...just crossed swords. Dave's character was so tough that he could beat any one else in the party one on one...except me. I was had the 'strong' to beat through his 'tough'. So it was a very tense sense. And we were like teens here, so it became all the more intense.

I told him that he had to leave the party. And he did but he was filled with sorrow for doing it and I for telling him.

I later decided that I needed to busy my character's time because I didn't want to think about what had just happened so I would go on a quest to get a magic sword. The GM had not given us any magic items at that point but felt that if we were to seek one out, that would be an excellent way to introduce one. I got a quest about a sword broken in half. Sounded pretty epic.

Then Dave's character returned. He sat down and revealed that he had already learned of my quest and he presented me with the haft of the sword. Then he hit me with the bombshell. Probably the first incident where I could really understand what role playing was all about. He entered into this speech, explaining that my character was his only friend. And that he was haunted with darkness. That he may be a servant of Chaos. And that he could only trust me to kill him if he turned over to the darkness.

Solid. Gold.

Naturally, I could never let my friend perish in such an awful way. I told him that we would find him some cure. That I would never give up on him. He made me promise me that if we couldn't find a way to cure the darkness in his heart, that I would kill him.

I say again: Solid. Gold.

Without saying it, the GM, myself and Dave all knew that there was no cure. There would never be a cure. There might be a false cure, a quest for a cure or some other such nonsense. But my best friend was turning to darkness...and one day we would cross swords again...and one day we would find out who was stronger. Light or Darkness.

I am said to say that the campaign ended before this could ever get resolved. The GM was moving to Vancouver. I am always a proponent of good so allow me to bring it to a conclusion. We cross swords. We fight and we are well matched, but my heart isn't in it. He gains the upper hand. I beg him to remember some shred of who he used to be. He has a momentary lapse of conscience and pleads with me one last time. He raised his sword to finish me off and I finish him off instead. I fade off into the sunset, never to be seen or heard from again.

Regardless of the lack of true resolution, Warhammer will be the first game where I remember what true role playing could be like. That having uber stats are great, but it's just a sheet. Getting into the role could be more rewarding.

So I was eager to try the new Warhammer. Like trying to play the Classic Marvel Superheroes again...it just didn't quite have that magic. The combat system tried to steal too much from D&D, with full actions and half actions. The magic system was much better but that also meant much more abusive. I didn't quite like the percentiles, having experienced a newer generation of superior mechanics. Still quite liked the world so I dived into it.

I'm glad that it's over. I was very keen on it at the beginning, but I've come to realize that anything that last so long does lose it's steam after a while. The characters were powerhouses at the end. I was generous on XP and magic items at the end but I threw up a creature that said in the book: Characters cannot possibly manage to beat such a creature. These are plot devices at best. Well my Greater Daemon WAS a plot device and I gave them enough magic boost to beat it. I suppose without those, they might have failed. But I suspect, even without a magic boost, they could have beaten it. No big deal but it's the one thing that was never 'fixed'. Their monsters are wimps. I know, there is a template that you're supposed to add to monsters to make them tougher but I really would have rather had a book that gave you the Newbie, Expereienced and Tuff guy versions of each monster.

I saw a lot of potential in the Warhammer RPG but it never quite achieved what it could have. It has the same problem that I have with Cyberpunk 2020. In both cases, they built this world to be grim and dirty. Then their rules don't quite follow through with it. In Warhamemr you have Luck Charms which are great in concept...but they have nothing to do with luck. They have a 1 shot use where you can avoid taking damage. What?! Where's the luck? How do you recognize a luck charm? Etc, etc. Luck Charms should have been a 50% chance that they work, for example (and been much cheaper). (Cyberpunk 2020 has a clearer example of what I mean: It's a grim/dirty world...but Cybernetics cost $X.XX amount and get installed without any problems, ever, and there are no grade of doctors or anything. For a grim world it had a pretty clean system to handle getting Cybernetics).

Warhammer was a grim world but most of their mechanics were too clean. They did have their critical hits tables and that lead my party to lose eyes, ears, toes, fingers, etc. And that was grim and dirty. But their disease rules were a little weak. And their healing rules were too easy. When my group found out that Healing Poultices were 1 penny apiece...well...they laughed and then cleaned out every store they could find. Again, no chance that those Healing Poultices would ever be bad. Not for 1 whole penny!

Anyway, I really would have liked to have seen a world where it was a bit more dirty, where not everything worked the way it should have. Where the rules matches the fiction. It's grimmer than regular D&D and other fantasy settings, so that's something at least.

One last observation about Warhammer and D&D. With the new 4th Edition D&D that, again, I think will be a very fun game. But it will now be infused to the core with magic, as first level characters can now produce magic shields, teleport short distances and the like. That's fine for D&D but it will now create a bigger distinction between Warhammer. D&D looks like it'll be much harder to have a low magic campaing without excluding some classes. Warhammer may well become the fantasy game of choice for low magic fantasy gaming.

Oh...who and I kidding...most people won't even remember Warhammer when the new D&D comes out. I guess I will and the first time I was walked down a campaign in which the worse enemy of the adventuring group was my best friend and one of our own. The Enemy Within. That's was Warhammer was all about. I may never touch it again but I hope that it does well.

Railroading

2008-03-13T13:15:00.000-07:00

If you know me, then you know my rant about railroading. But I've got a blog so why not post it again.

Railroading is when a GM puts an encounter or situation into the game which, no matter the course of action the players takes, cannot be changed or altered. As a player, it is one of my biggest pet peeves. I hate railroading. Because: a) most of the time, it's really transparent, b) it's kinda weak GMing and c) it makes me think: Why doesn't the GM just tell me what I'm doing and why I'm doing it.

I'm just as guilty of railroading players as other GM's. I make no such claim that I have not done it. But I don't think I've been awful with it.

There are degrees of Railroading. I've seen all types. In the bigger pespective, some railroading is very forgivable. So long as it's not over done. These are minor tweaks to the dice rolls, encounter level and so forth where the GM already knows the outcome of the fight. It gives the illusion that you are not, in fact, railroading the party. I played a D&D game where our 8th level party encountered a bunch of devils who hit us with tons of Strength drain. This is the most forgivable form of railroading. We were captured, a big part of the plot was displayed, we were saved by other enemies and allowed to go on our merry way. The important thing here is that there was a reward for being railroaded. We were stuck in a boring dungeon anyway, so getting out of there was a blessing in disguise. Thus, nobody minded.

I've been in other games where the railroading was painful. I don't want to name names here. Suffice to say, I've felt like handing the GM my character sheet and, as above, saying, just tell me what my character does because I don't know what you want here. Obviously, that is a very bad form of railroading.

This becomes a tricky situation for a GM. To recognize and understand when he has a situation that has one possible outcome and when you've not given the players any options.

I'll try to give a few examples.

Example 1:

I played a superhero game in which the GM had a mad scientist shoot a giant laser at me. I was told to roll to dodge. I succeeded. He explained that the laser hit me and I was transported to another dimension. The entire point of the game was that I was transported to another dimension. There was no session without being hit by the giant laser. Hence the roll was entirely irrelivant. I recall saying: "It really didn't matter what I rolled...did it?" To which my GM smiled and told me flat out: "No."

Okay, smile and forgive. I would have rather the GM just said, "and this happens" because it was obvious that his plot was the basis of projecting us into this alternate dimension. So for plot, we had to be railroaded.

Example 2:

In a supernatural game, I was trying to shoot a creature. I was told to roll. I rolled realy well and shot it. Without marking down any damage the GM informed me that the creature started healing. It was clear to me that my roll was pointless. I had wasted my time and effort on thinking that I could hurt this monster and that the roll I had made, no matter what the outcome, would result in the same thing. I later learned that the monster HAD to be destroyed in a particular fashion. (I suspose, to some degree I must grin and bear it. But I didn't like it.) As far as I could tell there were no stats on the monster. The monster did not have the power of regeneration until I shot it will a killing blow. Then 'suddenly' it gained that ability.

Example 3:

In a Heroes (Champions) game I played, I was a bard. I had a Fear spell. We encountered a group of jerky jerk for jerks on a road. They were getting difficult so I used my Fear spell. The leader fails his roll. So the GM explained that he ran away into forest, then returned after my spell finished. The Jerky jerks weren't attacking us but they were...I dunno...waiting around for their leader to return. We didn't want to fight them but they seemed like they didn't want us to leave. So instead of any normal reaction, we all just waited there for the leader to return. So my spell was pointless. It had worked and the GM largely ignored it's effects.

The scene continued and devolved further. One player did not want to play his character, a Lizard man, anymore. He wanted an excuse to play a new character. So this jerky jerk NPC leader did something to prove he was a better fighter than the Lizard man. The player surprised everybody by saying, "wonderful. I seek to train with you. I will abandon my group to travel with you." Perfect. No fuss, no muss. Except that the NPC wanted the lizard man to fight the other fighter in our party. Huh? So the lizardman took a couple of weak swings at the other fighter character and the scene just sorta...ended...cuz everybody thought it was dumb.

The GM in question is an excellent GM. He just seemed to have what would amount to a brain fart in this situation. This was accidently railroading, which is likely to be the most common form of it.

Example 4

My character's girlfriend was killed by my character's arch-enemy. The arch-enemy then fled the scene, with no possibility that I could get to him in time. I even had the power to heal people and I got to the girlfriend. Death itself appeared before me and told me that I couldn't save her. Wow...okay. Death itself, eh?

We were swaping GM's at the time, everybody took their turn at the head chair. This GM then had no intention of me fighting my arch-enemy. He just did this and then was handing things over to another. WTF?!

Moments like these can be very frustrating to a player.

It's sometimes hard for GM's to comprehend when they are railroading the players. Often times it is done with the best of intentions. The plan is to use the railroading to produce a very good scene. The problem is that the players can feel slighted. The degree of this irritation is what the GM has to consider. I've beaten the group in a Marvel game only to have them taken by Apocalypse. I gave them a very tough fight and was getting heavier handed because the fight took longer than I had hoped. But the plan was that they would be kidnapped. I really needed this to happen. I don't know how the players reacted to losing the fight. They escaped their plight later of course and got some nice revenge. But how unsatisfying was it for them to lose that fight?

And sometimes, railroading isn't always clear. What say, if I as a GM want to make a monster that cannot be killed except with a particular ritual. The characters don't know that. They encounter it and treat it like a standard monster and don't understand why it cannot die. Is that fair to them? Did I fail because I didn't make it clear before hand that this was a special monster? Did I fail because I ran combat as normal and didn't explain to them that they were doing no damage? I did not railroad the players. I presented them with a new challenge that requires something other than raw strength to beat, in the guise of something that could be beaten with raw strength. But I can see how, if my description of the scene and the monster was off, then it could appear as railroading.

Railroading, used correctly, is still not a great GM technique, IMO. But if it's done to set up a better scene, then it's forgivable.

Railroading, used poorly, will only hurt the trust between the GM and the players. When the situation has gone as far as the thought: "GM...just tell me what my character does." then you've crossed that border. That is often when players consider leaving the game and that's rarely a good thing.

Superhero RPGs

2008-03-06T14:04:00.000-08:00

Superhero games are, IMO, one of the greatest challenges known to game design. An RPG tries to emulate, more or less, the entire world. From how a bullet interacts with one's stomach to how a detective solves a murder from the moment they walk onto the scene to the end where they catch their perp.

Most *co-all-ugh* game designers do not have real world experience in these areas. I've never been shot. I've never been framed for a murder I didn't commit. I'm ashamed to say it, but I've never even gotten into a high speed car chase. I'm so boring.

But we make presumptions. A lot of them. And we watch TV. From that wonderful resource, we draw conclusions. A lot of them. People don't like being shot with guns. People don't like being knifed with knives. In prison you always run the risk of being raped and having to choose sides. If you light a flame near any sprinkler ALL of them will go off. Etc, etc.

Okay, movies and TV that we often look to for inspiration in matters that we have no real experience in can be very fake. But we often rise up to the challenge, seperating the chaff from the wheat. Actually what we do is wait for those particular movies/shows that come on that seem to 'get it right' and make our presumptions from there.

More or less, we get it right or close enough that players can deal with it. Guns inflict damage on people. Skill + Stat roll to be perceptive enough to notice that evidence. Skill + Stat roll to intimidate the street scum. The mechanics vary but most people are fine with boiling things down in this way. Maybe it's not always correct. Shadowrun and Cyberpunk, for example, allowed you to be perforated with a lot of bullets before you were dropped. Shadowrun was possibly a more realistic simulation but there were a hell of a lot more rolling to determine that. I take some offence when system allows a character, such as in Top Secret/SI, to hold a grenade in their hand and let it explode. But whatever. You make due.

So...superheroes. Nobody...but nobody has ever had bullets bounce off their eye, torn metal doors from their hinges and leapt over skyscrappers (that aren't models) in a single bound. So truly we have an entirely fictional frame of reference. Further this is complicated because our frame of reference exists in comic form or a few movies/cartoons.

There are plenty of superhero games out there. Many of them have some really great elements to them. None of them have ever quite done it right. I almost think if you could steal from each one of them...you would have your Holy Grail of gaming. The best damn superhero game evar.

Let's review a few:

Mutants and Masterminds
A lot of pepole think this is the greatest supers game ever. Which only convinces me that people as a whole are really dumb. I tried to like this game. It's shining grace is that it's damage system is good in thought if not execution. You make a Damage 'Save' (like a Saving Throw). If you make your save, you're fine. If you fail it by a certain amount, you are hindered, stunned or even knocked out. The mechanic works in principle but in practice damage varied a lot. So you never really knew if you would drop a foe or not. And sometimes a 'tuff tank' would be taken out in the first hit that they took, just cuz it used a damn d20.

Champions
Also another game that many of us think foldly of. Ahh...Champions. I think somehow a lot of us fell in love with this game when we were young and...I dunno...could contribute a large portion of our brain to unlocking it's juicy mysteries. It is a game where, if your GM knows it inside and out, can sing and dance. But it requires a huge commitment to learning the rules. The complicated, math heavy rules. Character creation can be wildly unbalanced. But when Champions worked...it worked really well. This is a game that could use a huge over haul. They practically invented the point cost system which allowed you to do any god damn thing you wanted with your character. Want to shoot lasers from your toes that only affects enemies during the light of day but dogs are immune? There is a calculation for that. I also liked how you could figure out Body (lethal) damage when rolling Stun (bruising) attacks. I loved the idea that my villains could kick a Captain America type so hard so as to break a rib.

Champions created a lot of the mentallity for a lot of future superhero games. But it's shown it's age. It's much too complex to hold the interest of a lot of modern day players.

Savage Worlds ~ Necessary Evil
Savage Worlds is my game of choice for a quick/pulp style game. It has it's flaws but what game doesn't. It still works. Necessary Evil is their supervillains game but I just took the powers rules and ran it for two superheroes games.

Necessary Evil does one thing right. It decided that nobody cares if Spiderman or the Human Fly put more points into Wall Crawling. Because...really...c'mon. It's a crap power. But Marvel to Champions, there was a a power level attached to Wall Crawling (every power really). But at the end of the day, it truly does not matter. Thus Necessary Evil made Wall Crawling a very low cost power and based any rolls made on it against the Strength of the character. Done and done. Spiderman is stronger than the Human Fly, so he sticks 'good' to walls. Simple. Effective.

Necessary Evil needed much more work on all it's powers and there were a lot of powers that were missing. But it's a very good step in the right direction.

Marvel Saga
First off. I will not be talking about the classic Marvel (FaseRip) system. It worked back in the day. It's terrible now. No really...I tried it out a few months ago...it really sucks now.

The Saga system had terrible character creation but it used cards instead of dice. 5 suites (4 for the main stats and 1 for Doom!!!!) Your hand represented your Health and your 'attacks'. If you built a Strength based character you were hoping for Strength cards. If you played a Strength card you got to flip the top card of the deck and add those cards together. If you fliped a Strength card...you got to flip again and keep on adding. Somehow, this system just seemed far more exciting than rolling dice. Thus it wins for the superhero feeling. An exciting system makes for some exciting battles.

There were a few problems with healing and how the GM could make the battles challenging for the characters.

Marvel Universe

Still not talking about Classic Marvel. This is yet another Marvel game. They just keep trying and trying, don't they. The Marvel Universe game was a very unusual attempt. It's diceless. But it uses tokens where players allocate to their actions. The concept intrigues me. A lot. On paper it sounds like a delicious type of rule but in practice it fails to do super heroics justice.

In practice, it's very tactical. There would be a steep learning curve. As Daredevil...how many tokens do you allocate to leaping down a building acrobatic style? Also, once you figured out if something worked, you could just do that every single time. For example, I figured out that Captain America could simple 'win' against Sabertooth everytime by putting a lot into Defense and little into attack. Sabertooth simply couldn't hurt Captain America. There was no variable to tell whether Cap could manage to get his shield in the way every round. Likewise, Gambit would lose most of the time to the Blob, unless he put everything into his blast attack, in which case he would beat the Blob every time.

It was a weird system and too on/off for me. But with some work, that could be a real gem. If the was a good reason to divide your resources up (like some into movement, attack, defense, perception, etc) and some risk vs. reward...then maybe it would be a system that would be cooking with gas. But too much resource management is bad. So...let's just say it would be delicate to handle.

Truth and Justice
Okay, nobody has heard of this one. It's by an indie company called Atomic Sock Monkey. They have a core mechanic which is charming and works very well for one shot games. The idea is that you have a bunch of traits, like: Brave, Spiderman, Aunt May, Works at Daily Bugle, etc. When you are attacked and would take damage, you can cross off any trait, even if it's not physical. The GM can interprete this in any capacity. If you crossed off Aunt May, maybe you were thinking about her and it's disrupting your fight. Or maybe she shows up at the scene, thus causing you problems. Or maybe still, because you used her trait, it's going to have
It is, a great concept, which fails only because one would presume that you would want to use your heroes more than twice. The obvious problem is that the player is inclined to use/abuse their Aunt May traits while keeping their Porportial Strength of a Spider traits. After a while, it's gotta get kinda annoying to bring Aunt May in every freakin' comic. Of course maybe this explains all those awful storylines where Doc Ock wants to marry Aunt May or where she became a herald of Galactus. No really...this sorta crap did happen.

Godlike
This was a very neat attempt at making a WWII Supers game. They had an interesting dice mechanic which worked reasonable well. The system itself was unclear in places, however. All powers required 'activation' and weren't, by default, always on. So if you built your hero in a particular way you were, godlike, but only for like 1-2 fights. After that you're out of juice. Powers were a points buy. Kinda awkward all told.

???? (Can't remember the damn name!!)
There is another game, whose name I cannot remember. But it was very distinctive and the concepts stick with me until today. It's a Supers game set in a crazy, crazy cyberpunk future. The governments use Science!!! to build Supers. But almost all of them go bat fuck crazy, so they figure out when building them, if you put them into a VR (Virtual Reality) for a while before hand, a VR where they are good and noble and people give them apple pie and they save kittens from trees). After the VR training they are reasonable well adjusted (i.e. NOT baby-eating) heroes who fight for a world gone wrong.
What was really well done was a innovative character creation system. It was not the first of it's kind but it was better than most. Basically, you started your character...as the government planning on building him/her. You have, if I recall, 5 areas where you have to divide your money into. You have your core person, the training of your core person, the Powers that you're going to infuse him with and the doctor who is going to install these Cybernetic/Bionic powers, and the psychologist who is going to help your character afterwards. It was one of the more interesting systems out there. It's like saying...we have 6 million dollars to build this guy. Do you start with a very fit person? And/or a soldier with a lot of training already (you don't want a pizza delivery guy with superpowers, now do ya?). Oh and how much money are you going to allocate for the parts to put into this guy? Running out of money are we? Well...maybe we could just skimp on the doctor, get one of those 2nd rate, 3rd world country doctors. Hmmm...maybe we should consider that pizza guy...cuz the money is getting tigher...). It was one of the very few 'fun' character creation systems.

Those are all the Supers games that I played. I never got to play DC Heroes (which Black Industries is re-making) nor Villains and Vigilantes which sounds just a bit too lame for me to try.

In every Supers game there is one key element, one thing that make it different from, say, Cyberpunk or D&D. One element that made it 'super'. If you could just...what's the word I'm looking for...steal! that element from each game...would you create the greatest superhero game evar?!? Well...I dunno. I've been trying. But not very successfully. Cuz if I had, you would be banging down my door to play it. ;)

But I'm not giving up hope. One day...one day...

Percentile - Bad

2008-03-05T14:43:00.000-08:00

With the arrival of Warhammer 40K the RPG (no...not the miniature game), I've had to accept that I really can't handle another system that uses percentiles as their core mechanic.

I've run two games in recent memory that use percentiles (Maelstrom - a tiny game published by Penguin publishing) and Warhammer Fantasy Role playing. And...well...percentiles suck.

It's a reasonably clean mechanic. If I have a 45% change to hit you...well...45 out of every 100 attacks should hit you. Mechanically...there are no flaws.

But...but...well...they just suck. I can't speak about statistics because my players are always anomalies. One guy I had in the Maelstrom game had a 50% attack value...hit almost every single time. One girl in my Warhammer game had a 65% attack value...she missed more often than she should have. Look people...follow the rules of clearly defined statistics OR ELSE!

I dislike this wild probability that percentile systems bring to the table. I, as a player, want to minimize the randomness.

"So why the fuck do you play these games, Trent?" That's the thought forming in your mind. I know. I am psychic.

There is a space between complete randomness and complete determination that is my happy space. Complete randomness would be flipping a coin for every action with no 're-rolls' (re-flips?). 50% chance you succeed, 50% chance you fail. Clearly very boring. Complete determination is that the GM or the players as a group decide whether every action succeeds or fail without any dice rolls at all. There are some people who would call me an elitist as far as gaming goes. I call the people who play deterministic systems elitists. Mainly cuz, I don't get it. You're not really playing a game at that point...you're just telling a communal story.

I cannot (get) stand deterministic systems. Therefore I understand and require some sort of randonmess in my games. But what I don't have to accept is utter and complete randomness. The percentile (and the d20 for that matter) will produce more randomness in a game than a system that used a d6. It's as simple as that.

Therefore, I much prefer a tighter, less random system. Games like Maelstrom and Warhammer cannot manufacturer that. Games like Savage Worlds sits around the middle ground. It sometimes works but due to exploding dice, it can get very random. The Unisystem (Buffy, Witchcraft, etc) has a simple and tight system. Some randomness but if your character is competent in an area, it really shows.

It is a shame, then, that the new Warhammer 40K RPG is percentile. Of course they mirrored their Warhammer Fantasy system almost word for word. The flaws with the Warhammer system have become apparant after running it for almost 2 years. Your character seems either incompetent, relying on luck to save the day or your character is too competent and you cannot fail so there is little reason to roll the dice. It rarely feels like there is middle ground.

To give an example, it was my desire, at one point, to ambush the characters with a group of Skaven (rat men if ya don't know). I actually wanted to have the Skaven pepper the group with poison darts, leaving them unconscious. Then I thought about the rules...and other than telling the characters this is what happened (which isn't really fair in most cases) I realized that there was no way for this to actually happen, rules wise. At least, in the Warhammer system.

I tried to think about this example from both side. It is clearly not fair to just hit the party with an attack with no roll. So it would make sense that a Perception roll would be due. But having a Perception roll and then saying you're attack anyway is just a slap in the face. No, a successful Perception roll should mean that that party member noticed something and has stopped just shy of the ideal spot. Okay, if that's what I feel comfortable with...I now realize that I have 6 players. One of those players has a Perception through the roof. Something like 80% at the time. So...he's gonna make it. He's gonna make it even if I tack on a -30 to his Perception test. And if he makes it, there is a very likely chance that 1 other party member will also make it...cuz it's percentiles and they are all over the place.

So...I presume that two of the characters make it. If one of them makes their roll by a considerable deal then maybe they noticed the ambush well before the entire party walks in. That's only fair. So the Skaven are competant enough to realize that their abmush has failed...they attack...combat begins.

Now poison in the world works with Toughness tests. And I have to hit. I'm not one of those GM's who just says my NPC's always succeed (that'll be a rant for the future). So between the hits of the Skaven, piercing their armour and the Toughness tests of my party...would any of them actually fall? I doubt it. Regardless of the fluff about Skaven being master assassins and using poison because it's very effective...the rules do not support this. Because the laws that seem to govern precentile would suggest that my party will do a tremendous amount of dice rolling, just to find out that they could probably murder those 20 Skaven. I'm not saying that the party would come out smelling like roses afterwards. Some would be dropped. And then those players would get the glorious fun of sitting around waiting for the other characters who were tougher, better armoured or luckier than them, to finish the damn combat.

In the end, I realize that the numbers wouldn't work. So it was far better to just drop the ambush (which might have worked at the beginning of the campaign) and just have the Skaven talk to the party. That was the original point. I just wanted a confrontation between the two. My first way was to capture the party (never works outside of a superhero game) to force a meeting between the Skaven and the party. Instead, I just cut out the headache of the painful dice rolls, which would have likely failed to produce the results I was hoping for in the first place.

Bottom line: I don't like precentile systems. They are too random for my tastes. They cannot produce the desired effect that I like when running games. By the same token, I cannot stand deterministic systems. Some randomness is required in a game. Just not as much as precentile brings to the table.

D&D 4th Edition - Part 4

2008-03-05T13:39:00.000-08:00

I can’t tell you whether D&D 4th edition will be good.

I can tell you that when it was first announced, everybody hated it. The forums were and still are full of people saying that they will not touch it. Now I question whether these are the same people who said the same thing about D&D 3rd edition or not.

I don’t know anybody who still plays D&D 2nd edition. Maybe people just realized that for all it’s faults 3rd edition was a cleaner system than 2nd edition. And 4th edition is newer and revised still. So all these nay-sayers will eventually jump aboard the 4th edition train. It’s just inevitable. If you continue to play D&D, you will play 4th edition and likely, the pros will outweigh the cons. And then you won’t run into the awkward problem of chatting and coming into conflict with other gamers about your 3.5 game verses their 4th edition game.

The truth is, there is something in the human psyche that has a desire to be ‘current’. Maybe it's the old 'keeping up with the Jones' mentality. I'm sure somebody smarter than me could tell you that there is in fact a psychological need to remain with the 'pack'. We all want to make sure that we are using the most current, up to date version of the rules. People who are heretical and resist the conversion to 4th edition will eventually be swayed by it. One of their players will play in a 4th edition game and babble endlessly about it. Or there will be an overheard conversation at the local gaming store where some titanic nerd will be boring the clerk to death about their new 15th level Fighter and all the kewl Exploits that they have. But regardless, something about the new version will be so intriguing to the resistant DM that they will pick up a copy. And they will like what they see. Or they won't like what they see but will cave under the pressure of all the kewl new stuff that is coming out.

Regardless, all these people who claim that they'll keep all their 3.5 stuff and not convert are filthy liars. Well...they might keep their 3.5 stuff. But they'll convert. WotC isn't going to be hurting. Slavering fans will be buying 4th edition the day it comes out. And if you play D&D, you will be too. Whether you stay with the 'pack' or you actually like the new rules, you will buy it. You might as well ear mark that $45 right now for your copy, cuz that money is already spent.

D&D 4th Edition - Part 3

2008-03-05T11:13:00.000-08:00

I’m sure that not everything new in 4th edition will come across smelling like roses. They’ve got a lot more options now but some of the elements are such a strong departure from the game that many of us have played for the past few years now, that it’s going to be very hard to get used to.

They have taken (currently unknown but suggested upon) steps to decrease the number of magic items in the game. Whatever. There will be nerds out there who will heap treasure upon their party regardless of what the books says. But even with the decrease in magic items, the magic is still very much there.

I'll give you an example right from one of the sample characters:

"A translucent golden shield forms in front of a nearby ally as you attack with your weapon."

This is a new Paladin Attack called Shielding Smite. This is a 1st level ability. So we've gone from 3.5 where Paladins weren't really magical until a few levels in (one could argue that they had to earn their powers from their gods) to 'anime video game graphic' power!
Don't get me completely wrong here. I like that the Paladin can do cool things and I like that even at 1st level they can do cool things. I'm a big fan of the characters being heroes. But let's not kid ourselves here, 1st level warrior types forming translucent golden shields around other people is pretty over the top. Before it's concievable that a Paladin might have to explain their good intention to a group of townsfolk. Nope...not any more. "See...I can produce a translucent golden shield. I'm a freakin' Paladin. Can't argue with that now, can you?!"
Again, this isn't bad. But it's a big departure from the D&D of the past. It's very modern and very video game. Is that a bad thing? At the end of the day, I will say no. Because despite it being over the top, it does mean that the Paladin (and all classes) will have various ways to contribute to every combat situation without running out of spells, or being too weak to hurt the enemy, or taking an 'Aid Action'.

So what else is weird (to get used to).

Well another huge departure will be the number of times you can use certain actions/spells. There is now At-Will, Encounter and Daily actions/spells.
At-Will means you can use it once per round. Many special attacks (Fighter, Paladin, Ranger) are At-Will actions. Great, so they can use them once per round. Very nice. But forget about them, because lo and behold the Wizard...aka the low level party gimp, finally, after 20 years of gaming, gets Magic Missile At-Will. In 10 years time when we old timers crack jokes about how our 1st level wizard cast magic missile and then told the party, 'come see me in 24 hours if you want another display of my arcane might.", young nerds will look at us like we are George-Lucas crazy.
At-Will Magic Missile (and other spells) allows the Wizard to throw as many 2d4 damage attacks as Ryu/Ken could launch Fireballs. Will this make your Wizard not suck at 1st level? Well...I dunno yet. But finally they can blast away for the length of the fight. This folks, is the end of an era. Seriously.
Encounter actions/spells means once per encounter you can pull off this move. I like it. It's artificial but I like it a lot. Artificial tends to happen for game balance and I'm all for that.
Daily means that once per...well...c'mon...it's once per day. Again...artificial when the fighter can only use his x3 damage attack once per day but great for game balance, so it'll get a thumbs up from me.
Oh...but wait...this is still D&D. And D&D needs exceptions. So on the sample characters the cleric's Healing Prayer is Encounter based, meaning he should only be able to use it once per Encounter. Except that there is an exception that he can use it 2 times per Encounter. I suspect that there will be a lot of these Encounter exceptions.

There is one problem with how At-Will actions and Basic attacks work. Intuitive is a word that you'll hear a lot here, presuming you weren't entirely bored and/or forgot that I even have a blog. Some rules are Intuitive, meaning: when you visualize the action you see how well the rule allows you to re-create that action in the game. Now I read the word: Basic attacks and, like most people, assume that you will use basic attacks for the bulk of combat and your other 'kewl' attacks when is appropriate. Nope. Not really. Your Basic attacks are so boring that they've even advised you not to use them. Wha-? You are expected/supposed to use your At-Will attacks all the time. Thus the point of the Basic attack is...well...I guess their example is for Opportunity attacks. (Did I just mean Attacks of Opporunity? No. They are Opportunity attacks now...for some reason.)

I get why you have basic attacks and At-Will attacks (which are also called Exploits, by the way). A basic attack is needed to help define what your Exploits will do. All an Exploit is, at the end of the day is your basic attack with a special effect tacked onto it. So the Fighter's Cleave Exploit allows him to make 'a basic attack' and ALSO inflict 3 points of damage on an adjacent foe. So I get it. They needed some baseline from which all your Exploits will work with. But to have the suggestion to never use your basic attacks...that is what I call not-Intuitive.

I already hear the conversation in my head:
Cindiloohoo: "I make an attack. I use my sword. It's...a basic attack."
Me: "No, no...use an Exploit. They are much better."
Cindiloohoo: "But...I have a basic attack on my sheet right here."
Me: "But on the other sheet you have Exploits. Seriously, they are cooler. And you can use them all the time."
Cindiloohoo: "But...but...why??"
Me: "Ummm...cuz...umm...just do what I say."

D&D 4th Edition - Part 2

2008-03-04T14:15:00.000-08:00

So onto the good about D&D 4th Edition.

I really like how they’ve realized that a cleric (aka the Heal-bot) was really fun to play if you just cast spells for yourself and didn't focus on the healing but kinda boring if you just spent all your time being the Heal-bot (i.e. keeping the party alive). I’ve seen some players do the Heal-bot thing and they never complained (nor did anybody complain about them) but c'mon, it has got to get awfully boring.

Say what you will about 4th Edition, but it solves that problem very well it would seem. You now have Standard actions and Minor action (in addition to the tacked on Move action). It looks like, from the sample characters posted elsewhere, that healing (whether the cleric’s Prayer or the Paladin’s Lay on Hands) is a Minor action. Therefore, they can do something interesting like attack AND throw off a heal. Very nice.

So the Heal-bot, er, cleric was just an example of the new doors that are open. They’ve committed themselves to creating a game where nobody sits around doing nothing. There is always something that each party member can contribute, not just the “Aid action” (i.e. The Halfing action).

If you're curious about the 'new' healing in D&D, it works very differently from old school D&D (aka 3.5 and lower). All characters now get something called a Healing Surge. You have X number of Healing Surges per day and each time one is used it gives you X number of HP's back. When you have a short rest (like a few minutes) you can use a Healing Surge. So between combat you can use a Healing Surge (or two/three/etc? that part isn't clear) to get your HP's back.

Additionally, once per combat you can use 1 Healing Surge. But that's your standard action. So every character across the board can get back a number of HP's during combat, without resorting to a potion.

Lay On Hands and the Heal-bot, er, Cleric's Prayers of Healing work with Healing Surges. The Paladin will now tick off one of their own Healing Surges and another character gets to heal some HP's (based on their own amount). The Cleric's Prayer allows them to make a target check off their own Healing Surge and even get an extra 1d6+X HP's back.

Why have I ranted about healing and HP's? Because this was one of my most hated points about D&D. Hit Points, suggests that you can physical take so many cuts, lacerations, burns, etc before you perish. In their actually description for HP's, they backpedal and claim, oh no...it represents luck and skill (to avoid blows) and the ability to shrug off minor wounds. Okay...I can totally buy that HP's represent more of a 'luck' system, where eventually your luck runs out and you are actually skewered by a sword or roasted by that Dragon's breath. However if that's how HP's work...then why healing spells? Do you 'heal' luck? Is that how that's supposed to work?

Now, however, it is clear that sitting down, resting and getting some of your composure will give you some HP's back. Okay...I can accept that. Healing Prayers can represent giving you some of your composure back, removing some of your exhaustion and mending some of the cuts you might have gotten. Okay...finally I can visualize and accept how 'healing' and HP's work.

That being said, Healing Surges and HP's are now rather...gamey. When you watch Aragorn fight in Lord of the Rings, you don't say to yourself, "gosh, he's avoiding all those blows, gotten a few cuts and looks winded...he clearly is low on Hit Points." But since I bring action movies into the fold, I will accept that Healing Surges and HP's are very much in the same style as an action movie. John Maclane can get shot or run on glass and be fine in the next scene. So of course our D&D characters should be able to as well.

D&D 4th Edition

2008-03-04T14:12:00.001-08:00

Okay, time for my first rant. P.S. Not all rants are a bad thing.

D&D 4th edition seems like a very good place to start.

To preface, I’ve not read the new book. I’ve read only what other people have online.

I might as well start with what I hate about 4th edition: Any and all Massively Multiplayer (MMO) references. The game didn’t need this. It really didn’t need things like Striker, Tank, Controller, etc. I see a reference to recharge rates and I cringe. It’s too late now, they are firmly entrenched. But why god why did they have to use the actual terms. Why couldn’t they just use it for development and then not disclose this to the public.

Why do I hate MMO references? Because despite what MMO’s do successfully (i.e. create an engaging, addictive gaming experience) it also comes with all the baggage of what they don’t do well. Which is to say, create a community devoid or role players and put players on the level grind.

MMO’s are pretty notorious for a complete lack or role players. Some people try and I respect that. But eventually, people have to give in to the concept that role playing in an MMO is entirely inefficient. Whether picking a class or a power/spell that ‘sux’ because if fits your character or not giving into the massive losers who send messages on broadcast, role playing on MMO’s is rarely productive. You ain’t getting XP for all that awesome role playing. So the bulk of players don’t kid themselves. They pick the uber spells, farm for the best item drops or slot their powers with the best enhancements. So when *I* think of MMO’s I think of that sort of thing. I don’t role play. I play them to game. So when I hear that D&D is using MMO terminology, I cringe and wonder whether I’ll be forced to ‘slot the best enhancements’ on my Fighter or Wizard.

The level grind is also what I think of when I think of MMO’s but fortunately, D&D practically invented the level grind. I want to say that they did for sure but I know in 1.5 years down the road some titanic nerd will come and explain that some other game that predates D&D did it first. I really don’t care. The point being, level grinding is part and parcel for D&D.

What do I like about the new D&D? Well…a great deal actually. I think it’ll be a very good but very different game. But I will probably save this for a separate rant. =)

First Post

2008-03-04T13:34:00.000-08:00

Hello world (or the 2-3 friends who bother to read this).

I realized that I have a lot to say about games. And that I like to rant. And sometimes, people even like to hear me talk endless about various game stuff. So...here I go. Into the vast world of blogging. I will try to be entertaining but I can't promise the moon.