Well, it's been an age since I've posted anything here, but I didn't want anyone to think that I'd forgotten this place. Life has been a bit busy, recently, and a change at work means that I no longer get the opportunity to write these blogposts in the office, which is what's really put the brakes on doing so.
For those interested, I'm still running my weekly games, and this is just a brief update about where I am with them.
Mutants & Masterminds
This game is on Christmas hiatus right now, resuming in the New Year, having basically finished the last plotline. Go players! Especially since I managed to sneak in the old "reverse morality fight yourselves" trope. Which was, frankly, awesome, especially since it was the single largest combat I've run so far, and it went a lot more smoothly than I anticipated. Here's a hint to any budding online GMs out there - make the players do as much of the work as you can! That saves you time all the way down the line, allowing you to focus in rule adjudication and description. I'm still working on whether I should ask my players to write the descriptions of when they get hit in combat, as well the effect of their own strikes. I'd love it if they're willing, because it will allow them even more creative input into events, and simultaneously free me up to concentrate on keeping the game running smoothly, which could well chop combat time to about 2/3rds of the current length (which is still far too long for my liking).
For anyone interested (and assuming at least a basic knowledge of the M&M damage system), when a player hits an NPC in combat, I will write the outcome in a very simple format, straight into the OOC chatbox. These range from "Miss" to "Hit, no effect" through "Hit, Bruised", "Hit, Stunned", "Hit, Stunned, KB 25 feet" all the way up to "Hit, Unconscious, KB 1000 feet, hit a wall, wall does Bruise". It is then up to the player to describe the action in the IC chatbox, as well as the effect. This works brilliantly, because it means that as soon as I've said that in the OOC chatbox, I can call for the next character.
The problem I've experienced, though, is when I get multiple NPCs acting one after the other. Since I've retained control of the descriptive text for NPC actions, it can tie me up for several minutes while I detail it. If I can pass that across to the players, in a similar format (I'm thinking, say, "Speedbreak punches Liberty Belle. Hit, Stunned, Staggered, KB 10 feet" or "Death Knell uses mace on Scrub, Hit, Bruised") and leave it up to the players to write the descritpions for me, that could save me an inordinate amount of time.
I know that some of my players read this blog, so let me know what you think.
Dungeons & Dragons
My D&D game reached a natural pause point just before Christmas, so we paused. And entered into a huge debate about whether we like 4E enough to carry it on. The quick answer is "No". The long answer is as follows: D&D 4E is an incredibly sophisticated miniatures combat system, well balanced, very MMO-esque... and not flexible enough. I do not dislike it. I just don't like it as the premier fantasy RPG on the market. So, rather than playing D&D 4E, my Wednesday night gaming group is shifting to D20 Modern and giving that a go. I'll let you know how it works out for us.
City of Heroes
Obviously, as anyone who knows me even a little bit will be able to atest, I roleplay in City of Heroes. A lot. I still am. I've been very consciously avoiding major plotlines recently (which actually caused some friction in-game recently, since my character ended up refusing to help someone for possibly spurious reasons), but still going along regularly and getting involed with in-depth character interaction. There's a lot going on, as usual.
That's pretty much all there is to say for now. More soon, hopefully!
Tuesday 29 December 2009
Monday 2 November 2009
Villainy - the depths of depravity and beyond.
In my last post I examined my personal beliefs about heroism, and what it means to be a hero. This post is about the complementary subject - villainy.
Firstly, I will say that I believe that there is a fundamental difference between villainy and evil. To me, evil is the belief that one can impose ones thoughts and feelings on others, and that one has the right to do so. Evil has no regard for the feelings of others, because to the evil being, other people are not important. On the other hand, villainy is simply the conscious choice to act out of selfishness. It accepts that the feelings of others exist and are important to them, and then does something potentially hurtful anyway. Not usually because the villain believes he has the right to do it, but because he has a need to do it, because some external force is bearing upon him.
Taking a quick look at some iconic villains, then:
Lex Luthor. Lex is, to my mind, actually evil. He may not be casually cruel, but he certainly feels that he has the right to do anything he pleases. His own cunning allows him to temper his activities in such a way that it is not obvious to the world at large, but his core drive has no sympathy for the plight of other people.
Darth Vader: Okay, not a villain in the superhero sense, but a totally iconic villain nonetheless. The important thing to note about Vader is that he changes. I'm going to ignore The Phantom Menace, because he's too young to actually make reasoned choices, but in Attack of the Clones, Anakin Skywalker is clearly a hero. However, in Revenge of the Sith he rapidly shifts to villainy as a result of his fears of the future, and leaps to evil later on in the same film when Palpatine manages to convince him that taking iron control of his future is the right thing to do. While I think that it was done too quickly, it was actually an interesting visualisation of the fall from grace.
Catwoman. Not sure why I'm pulling DC villains out for this, other than that my exposure to DC was a lot higher than to Marvel when I was younger, because, frankly Batman is COOL. Anyway, Catwoman is a villain. She's a crook, a thief, not out to rule the world, just out for what she can get. She doesn't try to impose herself on other people except to get things she wants.
And, just for completionism, a look at my own villain from City of Heroes (well, City of Villains) - Psychonova. He's evil. I'm really not sure that I can go into all of the reasons why, but he is. He was meant to be, and continues to be, a truly despicable person, without any care or regard for the thoughts of feelings of others. Out for what he wants, and willing to do anything to get it. He's pretty much textbook evil, as far as I'm concerned.
The themes prevalent in those who are truly evil become obvious - some event or knowledge convinces the evil person that they have the one true vision of the way the world should be. Conversely, a villain is usually driven to their actions by some outside force or impulse. While it is possible for a villain to descend into evil, it is quite rare for someone who is evil to then ascend back. But it does happen. Darth Vader is a good case-in-point of this, with his redemption at the hands of his son. One thing that I'm not sure I've ever actually witnessed, though, is an evil person changing to become merely a villain. They will usually jump straight back to good or heroic. The change of heart that makes someone recognise the rights and values of others tends to blot out any prospect of villainy.
I can't take the time to discuss the myriad means by which a villain can descend to that level - might as well try to count the stars in the sky, because there are at least that many answers.
When it comes to roleplaying, then, it is always a good idea for the GM to know if the "bad guy" is villainous or evil, because the flavour of their activity will be coloured by it. A lot of modern comic books take the time to delve into the psyche of the antagonist, to explore what makes them the person that they are, and that is a good thing, since it allows us to explore the human phase-space of experience and events in a safe environment, but the thing that I personally enjoy is a well represented evil character. The Joker. Lex Luthor. Galactus. Megatron. Sometimes I like to hate the bad guy. It's why I made Psychonova as evil as he is - I get a lot of joy out of trouncing someone who is unequivocally evil, and offering that chance to my fellow RPers is part of the joy I take in running plots and GMing.
In conclusion: While similar, villainy and evilness are by no means the same thing. Evil may be a sub-set of villainy, but there are some clear distinctions and knowing the boundaries of each is worthwhile for anyone preparing to play a villain or an evil character. And, while it is a perfectly valid thing in this day and age of social awareness to ascribe motivations and reasoned actions to characters, to give them the chance at the sympathy vote from players, a GM should not be afraid to introduce a "bad guy" who is just plain EVIL. Being able to pound on someone because doing so is simply the right thing to do, without having to second-guess your actions, is one of the great pleasures in roleplaying, and it never hurts to let the players do it.
Firstly, I will say that I believe that there is a fundamental difference between villainy and evil. To me, evil is the belief that one can impose ones thoughts and feelings on others, and that one has the right to do so. Evil has no regard for the feelings of others, because to the evil being, other people are not important. On the other hand, villainy is simply the conscious choice to act out of selfishness. It accepts that the feelings of others exist and are important to them, and then does something potentially hurtful anyway. Not usually because the villain believes he has the right to do it, but because he has a need to do it, because some external force is bearing upon him.
Taking a quick look at some iconic villains, then:
Lex Luthor. Lex is, to my mind, actually evil. He may not be casually cruel, but he certainly feels that he has the right to do anything he pleases. His own cunning allows him to temper his activities in such a way that it is not obvious to the world at large, but his core drive has no sympathy for the plight of other people.
Darth Vader: Okay, not a villain in the superhero sense, but a totally iconic villain nonetheless. The important thing to note about Vader is that he changes. I'm going to ignore The Phantom Menace, because he's too young to actually make reasoned choices, but in Attack of the Clones, Anakin Skywalker is clearly a hero. However, in Revenge of the Sith he rapidly shifts to villainy as a result of his fears of the future, and leaps to evil later on in the same film when Palpatine manages to convince him that taking iron control of his future is the right thing to do. While I think that it was done too quickly, it was actually an interesting visualisation of the fall from grace.
Catwoman. Not sure why I'm pulling DC villains out for this, other than that my exposure to DC was a lot higher than to Marvel when I was younger, because, frankly Batman is COOL. Anyway, Catwoman is a villain. She's a crook, a thief, not out to rule the world, just out for what she can get. She doesn't try to impose herself on other people except to get things she wants.
And, just for completionism, a look at my own villain from City of Heroes (well, City of Villains) - Psychonova. He's evil. I'm really not sure that I can go into all of the reasons why, but he is. He was meant to be, and continues to be, a truly despicable person, without any care or regard for the thoughts of feelings of others. Out for what he wants, and willing to do anything to get it. He's pretty much textbook evil, as far as I'm concerned.
The themes prevalent in those who are truly evil become obvious - some event or knowledge convinces the evil person that they have the one true vision of the way the world should be. Conversely, a villain is usually driven to their actions by some outside force or impulse. While it is possible for a villain to descend into evil, it is quite rare for someone who is evil to then ascend back. But it does happen. Darth Vader is a good case-in-point of this, with his redemption at the hands of his son. One thing that I'm not sure I've ever actually witnessed, though, is an evil person changing to become merely a villain. They will usually jump straight back to good or heroic. The change of heart that makes someone recognise the rights and values of others tends to blot out any prospect of villainy.
I can't take the time to discuss the myriad means by which a villain can descend to that level - might as well try to count the stars in the sky, because there are at least that many answers.
When it comes to roleplaying, then, it is always a good idea for the GM to know if the "bad guy" is villainous or evil, because the flavour of their activity will be coloured by it. A lot of modern comic books take the time to delve into the psyche of the antagonist, to explore what makes them the person that they are, and that is a good thing, since it allows us to explore the human phase-space of experience and events in a safe environment, but the thing that I personally enjoy is a well represented evil character. The Joker. Lex Luthor. Galactus. Megatron. Sometimes I like to hate the bad guy. It's why I made Psychonova as evil as he is - I get a lot of joy out of trouncing someone who is unequivocally evil, and offering that chance to my fellow RPers is part of the joy I take in running plots and GMing.
In conclusion: While similar, villainy and evilness are by no means the same thing. Evil may be a sub-set of villainy, but there are some clear distinctions and knowing the boundaries of each is worthwhile for anyone preparing to play a villain or an evil character. And, while it is a perfectly valid thing in this day and age of social awareness to ascribe motivations and reasoned actions to characters, to give them the chance at the sympathy vote from players, a GM should not be afraid to introduce a "bad guy" who is just plain EVIL. Being able to pound on someone because doing so is simply the right thing to do, without having to second-guess your actions, is one of the great pleasures in roleplaying, and it never hurts to let the players do it.
Weekly Games: M&M
Sorry I've been away for so long, dear readers - new job combined with lots of holiday very rapidly has left me in a position where I've pretty much always found something more important to do thant write in this blog.
Plus, my memory being what it is, I'm undoubtedly going to forget a load of stuff that's been going on in my weekly games. I also have a post that I'm writing about a game I took part in a couple of months ago, now.
For the purposes of this post, though, I'm not going to focus on the events of the game session that happened, but rather on the implications of it.
I've previously described the party that is undertaking this game, at least in general terms, but what hasn't been covered in detail is my intent for the campaign. The most interesting thing to note from this perspective is that only a couple of the characters - Liberty Belle and Procyon - strictly fall within the specific genre I'm going for. The game is probably best described to comic geeks as "Bronze Age", but I'm not massively up on my terminology, so I might have that a little wrong. What I'm aiming for is slightly over-the-top villainy (the bad guys are bad, monologue lots, and have dastardly plans for taking over the world!), coupled with a more realistic appreciation of the lives of the heroes, and the things that matter to them. Ultimately, the direction I'm trying to guide things is that the interactions between the PCs, their lives and the things that matter to them are the important things. What the villains are up to is entirely secondary to that (though in a given session it might not seem that way).
Anyway, Liberty Belle and Procyon are Silver Age-esque "heroes are heroic!" characters, but with sufficient character flaws and complications to give them some traction. The rest of the party - and by no means do I consider this to be a bad thing - are more gritty and realistic.
This led to an interesting question raised in our last session. To briefly explain the situation - the heroes are currently on "Anti-Earth" - sort of the dark mirror to their own world, where the good guys are bad, and the bad guys are good - or dead.
The party quite swiftly fell into two camps regarding their responsibilities to the world in which they found themselves: Group A want to liberate the people, free the oppressed and generally be all-round good-guys. Group B want to do what they came here to do and get home.
Personally, I'm in Group B, but as the GM, and given that I want the players to make this sort of decision for themselves, I don't have any say in it. Nor do I want to influence the decision, because this is exactly the sort of theme I'm trying to explore in this campaign. Yes, hello players, you're all guinea pigs in the GM's social experiment.
A little bit of background for anyone not familiar with the Freedom City M&M setting. Anti-Earth is, as previously stated, the dark mirror to the universe of Freedom. For anyone familiar with City of Heroes, you won't go far wrong if you imagine Praetorian Earth as represented in the game so far (and definitely ignoring the dystopia that it will be revealed as in Going Rogue). The world is ruled by a cruel group of villainous super-powered beings called the Tyranny Syndicate, and the entire world is riddled with corruption, graft, cruelty, and all the vices of the modern world, expanded into the mainstream. It is not this way because some event made it different from the world of Freedom - it is like that because that's the way the world is.
Now, the standard superhero trope of "fight your doppelgangers" has already popped up in reduced form, and the heroes have already met Anti-Earth's sole, lonely hero, Mind Master (who, on their own world, is the villainous Mastermind). They are here to perform a rescue, arrived unplanned, with reduced resources... and the upstanding true-blue heroes among them are determined to "save the world", while the more down-to-Earth (I want to say pessimistic, but that's not really true) members of the group want to just do the rescue and make their way home.
This, then, raises the true point of this post: In a superheroic setting, are there any circumstances in which it is "reasonable" for a hero to be less than completely heroic?
This calls to the fundamental nature of a "hero", I suppose. To me, a hero is someone who, for whatever reason, helps to improve the lives of others without regard for personal gain or safety, and without regard for whom they are helping. I make that distinction quite purposefully, because it's possible for someone to help a specific person without regard for personal gain or safety, and not be heroic at all.
Now, in comics, the true, dyed in the wool heroes are larger than life personalities, clad in spandex, going around rescuing cats from trees, helping old ladies with their shopping and foiling bank robberies. The interesting stuff all tends to happen when a) their personal life gets involved or b) a particularly dastardly villain proves more than they can handle. But this particular situation is neither of those. It's a question of whether they truly are heroes, and what does being a hero mean to them.
Of course, I'm not so megalomaniacal that I believe that my definition of a hero is the true one, but I've not really seen anything that makes me want to change it. Nor am I going to enforce my beliefs onto my players - they have their characters, and they can play them however they want to, as far as I'm concerned.
For this situation, I'm only interested in the spectrum of heroism, rather than the full range of human responses. So, given that a hero's natural reaction to "bad things" is going to be "fix bad things", the range of possible actions is limited. As I see it, though, in the situation as presented, we have the two ends of the spectrum already - one the one hand there's "help those we came to help, and then get home", and on the other is "help everyone".
In a world not your own, where you are strangers, possibly feared, certainly hated by the powers that be, where does each hero stand? And why?
As I see it, a hero should want to help everyone. But in this circumstance, is it really feasible for their actions to match their desires? I don't actually think so. It's not their world, they have responsibilities to discharge in the universe they belong to, and the sheer scale of the problem on Anti-Earth is specifically tailored to be beyond them. They cannot just leap in and expect to win. And if they try, then they are running the risk of failing their own friends and families back home. But that should never stop the desire to help everyone. To have the potential to be larger than life.
Some may reach this conclusion quickly, for various reasons - perhaps they are smart enough to recognise that to win, they need more time to prepare, to gain every advantage they can. It's not something that can be won with fisticuffs - it needs social engineering on a grand scale, and is vastly beyond the intended scope of the current adventure. Which doesn't mean I would be upset if the players got proactive and decided to do something about it in the future.
In conclusion: A hero is still a hero even when they step away from a fight they can't win. Sometimes they are a hero because they step away from a fight. It is not actions that define a hero, but intent. And the intent should be an unthinking reaction to the welfare of others, and working to improve it. A hero is not a hero because they reasoned that it was the right thing to do, or because they feel responsible for others, or because they are looking to learn something about themselves. A hero is a hero because it is a fundamental part of who they are, which makes them do things to better the lives of others, and they don't think about it. They just do it. Not always the way they want, not always when they want, but they never turn their face away and give in.
Some people will say that a hero is someone who risks themselves to help others, but I don't see that. In the broader context of superheroics, characters like Superman are rarely in danger (Kryptonite notwithstanding), but I wouldn't dispute that he is a hero. One of my own roleplaying characters, Shadowe, in the City of Heroes MMO, is effectively immortal and unkillable, yet I believe that he is a hero, despite not really being in any true danger, no matter what he does. Spider-man is mortal, and became a hero out of guilt, and the awakening knowledge that "with great power comes great responsibility". Peter Parker could have taken that trite little phrase to mean that he has a responsibility to punish the guilty, as a way to assuage his own guilt. But instead he took the more difficult, and vastly more heroic, path to the real responsibility that heroes have - to help others. Because it is not about the dangers that heroes face. It never was, and never should be. It is about the ideals that they hold dear, and the constant striving to make the world a better place. Or, as Shadowe has been known to put it: "Making the world a nicer place, for one person at a time."
Plus, my memory being what it is, I'm undoubtedly going to forget a load of stuff that's been going on in my weekly games. I also have a post that I'm writing about a game I took part in a couple of months ago, now.
For the purposes of this post, though, I'm not going to focus on the events of the game session that happened, but rather on the implications of it.
I've previously described the party that is undertaking this game, at least in general terms, but what hasn't been covered in detail is my intent for the campaign. The most interesting thing to note from this perspective is that only a couple of the characters - Liberty Belle and Procyon - strictly fall within the specific genre I'm going for. The game is probably best described to comic geeks as "Bronze Age", but I'm not massively up on my terminology, so I might have that a little wrong. What I'm aiming for is slightly over-the-top villainy (the bad guys are bad, monologue lots, and have dastardly plans for taking over the world!), coupled with a more realistic appreciation of the lives of the heroes, and the things that matter to them. Ultimately, the direction I'm trying to guide things is that the interactions between the PCs, their lives and the things that matter to them are the important things. What the villains are up to is entirely secondary to that (though in a given session it might not seem that way).
Anyway, Liberty Belle and Procyon are Silver Age-esque "heroes are heroic!" characters, but with sufficient character flaws and complications to give them some traction. The rest of the party - and by no means do I consider this to be a bad thing - are more gritty and realistic.
This led to an interesting question raised in our last session. To briefly explain the situation - the heroes are currently on "Anti-Earth" - sort of the dark mirror to their own world, where the good guys are bad, and the bad guys are good - or dead.
The party quite swiftly fell into two camps regarding their responsibilities to the world in which they found themselves: Group A want to liberate the people, free the oppressed and generally be all-round good-guys. Group B want to do what they came here to do and get home.
Personally, I'm in Group B, but as the GM, and given that I want the players to make this sort of decision for themselves, I don't have any say in it. Nor do I want to influence the decision, because this is exactly the sort of theme I'm trying to explore in this campaign. Yes, hello players, you're all guinea pigs in the GM's social experiment.
A little bit of background for anyone not familiar with the Freedom City M&M setting. Anti-Earth is, as previously stated, the dark mirror to the universe of Freedom. For anyone familiar with City of Heroes, you won't go far wrong if you imagine Praetorian Earth as represented in the game so far (and definitely ignoring the dystopia that it will be revealed as in Going Rogue). The world is ruled by a cruel group of villainous super-powered beings called the Tyranny Syndicate, and the entire world is riddled with corruption, graft, cruelty, and all the vices of the modern world, expanded into the mainstream. It is not this way because some event made it different from the world of Freedom - it is like that because that's the way the world is.
Now, the standard superhero trope of "fight your doppelgangers" has already popped up in reduced form, and the heroes have already met Anti-Earth's sole, lonely hero, Mind Master (who, on their own world, is the villainous Mastermind). They are here to perform a rescue, arrived unplanned, with reduced resources... and the upstanding true-blue heroes among them are determined to "save the world", while the more down-to-Earth (I want to say pessimistic, but that's not really true) members of the group want to just do the rescue and make their way home.
This, then, raises the true point of this post: In a superheroic setting, are there any circumstances in which it is "reasonable" for a hero to be less than completely heroic?
This calls to the fundamental nature of a "hero", I suppose. To me, a hero is someone who, for whatever reason, helps to improve the lives of others without regard for personal gain or safety, and without regard for whom they are helping. I make that distinction quite purposefully, because it's possible for someone to help a specific person without regard for personal gain or safety, and not be heroic at all.
Now, in comics, the true, dyed in the wool heroes are larger than life personalities, clad in spandex, going around rescuing cats from trees, helping old ladies with their shopping and foiling bank robberies. The interesting stuff all tends to happen when a) their personal life gets involved or b) a particularly dastardly villain proves more than they can handle. But this particular situation is neither of those. It's a question of whether they truly are heroes, and what does being a hero mean to them.
Of course, I'm not so megalomaniacal that I believe that my definition of a hero is the true one, but I've not really seen anything that makes me want to change it. Nor am I going to enforce my beliefs onto my players - they have their characters, and they can play them however they want to, as far as I'm concerned.
For this situation, I'm only interested in the spectrum of heroism, rather than the full range of human responses. So, given that a hero's natural reaction to "bad things" is going to be "fix bad things", the range of possible actions is limited. As I see it, though, in the situation as presented, we have the two ends of the spectrum already - one the one hand there's "help those we came to help, and then get home", and on the other is "help everyone".
In a world not your own, where you are strangers, possibly feared, certainly hated by the powers that be, where does each hero stand? And why?
As I see it, a hero should want to help everyone. But in this circumstance, is it really feasible for their actions to match their desires? I don't actually think so. It's not their world, they have responsibilities to discharge in the universe they belong to, and the sheer scale of the problem on Anti-Earth is specifically tailored to be beyond them. They cannot just leap in and expect to win. And if they try, then they are running the risk of failing their own friends and families back home. But that should never stop the desire to help everyone. To have the potential to be larger than life.
Some may reach this conclusion quickly, for various reasons - perhaps they are smart enough to recognise that to win, they need more time to prepare, to gain every advantage they can. It's not something that can be won with fisticuffs - it needs social engineering on a grand scale, and is vastly beyond the intended scope of the current adventure. Which doesn't mean I would be upset if the players got proactive and decided to do something about it in the future.
In conclusion: A hero is still a hero even when they step away from a fight they can't win. Sometimes they are a hero because they step away from a fight. It is not actions that define a hero, but intent. And the intent should be an unthinking reaction to the welfare of others, and working to improve it. A hero is not a hero because they reasoned that it was the right thing to do, or because they feel responsible for others, or because they are looking to learn something about themselves. A hero is a hero because it is a fundamental part of who they are, which makes them do things to better the lives of others, and they don't think about it. They just do it. Not always the way they want, not always when they want, but they never turn their face away and give in.
Some people will say that a hero is someone who risks themselves to help others, but I don't see that. In the broader context of superheroics, characters like Superman are rarely in danger (Kryptonite notwithstanding), but I wouldn't dispute that he is a hero. One of my own roleplaying characters, Shadowe, in the City of Heroes MMO, is effectively immortal and unkillable, yet I believe that he is a hero, despite not really being in any true danger, no matter what he does. Spider-man is mortal, and became a hero out of guilt, and the awakening knowledge that "with great power comes great responsibility". Peter Parker could have taken that trite little phrase to mean that he has a responsibility to punish the guilty, as a way to assuage his own guilt. But instead he took the more difficult, and vastly more heroic, path to the real responsibility that heroes have - to help others. Because it is not about the dangers that heroes face. It never was, and never should be. It is about the ideals that they hold dear, and the constant striving to make the world a better place. Or, as Shadowe has been known to put it: "Making the world a nicer place, for one person at a time."
Tuesday 8 September 2009
City of Heroes vs. Champions Online
While I have absolutely no doubt at all that there are a huge number of blogs, reviews and general discussion about the virtues of Champions Online compared to the virtues of City of Heroes, I feel it's time to put my view across.
A bit of background, for everyone who's not bothered to read my profile on this site: I am, first and foremost, a roleplayer, but I've been playing City of Heroes for 4 years, now, on the European servers, and I've been roleplaying there for about 3 1/2 of those years.
I really enjoy superheroes as a concept, but I'm not really much of a comic reader - I'll buy the odd graphic novel, but that's about it.
Superhero roleplaying, though... that's where it's at!
I have a character for superhero games. He's a sort of Batman/Ironman character in terms of motivation and apparent power, but his true source of power is the ubiquitous "radiation accident". I won't bother describing him in too much detail, for now. He's my character, and while roleplayers love their own characters, I know that most don't really enjoy listening to other RPers talk about their characters.
Character Design
Now, I've been playing Shadowe (that's him, the "e" is silent) as a character in City of Heroes very solidly while I've been there. I have a number of different costumes for him: Casual Civilian, Smart-Casual Civilian, Formal Civilian, Spandex (really leather, but who's checking?) and Battle-armour. Each gets pulled out depending on his current RP situation, and whether he's in a fight. His appearance has been fine-tuned to an art - he looks exactly the way I want him to. As a City of Heroes character, he is an Energy/Energy Blaster, meaning he does insane amounts of damage, but is squishier than an overripe melon. All of his powers and attacks are based around the ability to project and manipulate energy, which is perfect for his core concept.
Part of me judges games on the basis of how well I can fit it to Shadowe's concept, and City of Heroes scores very highly, there. Essentially, even within the constraints of the Archetype/Powersets system, I've been able to get exactly what I want, in terms of appearance and powers, and on those few areas where the game-world doesn't match his original concept, there are things I can fudge for RP purposes.
Champions Online, on the other hand, doesn't have the restriction of archetypes. Power Frameworks of linked powers exist, but it's possible to pretty much make a character have whatever powers you want him to have. Now, my current version of Shadowe was only created last night, and is only 6th level. He has one costume, and I elected to go for the Battle-suit version (for concept reasons), with flight as a travel power. So far, it's working out very well. During Beta, though, I got a very similar character up to about 15th level (I wasn't trying very hard), and some of the things that happened to him didn't really match the concept perfectly. I think that's mostly due to my lack of knowledge of the game and the options, so I'm not going to penalise it too heavily. However, despite all that, the "non-heroic" costume options are rather primitive, so I'm not sure how likely I am going to be able to get his civilian side working correctly.
CoH has lower-quality graphics, and really needs an upgrade, soon. That said, though, the character models, poses, stances and actions are very good, very polished, and I really can't fault them.
CO has significantly improved graphics (my slightly-older machine's graphics card is on the low-end of supported cards, in fact), but I find myself wincing slightly whenever my character runs or fires off his attacks, because he looks like a lumbering, thudding moron. He's designed around the "heroic" pose, which looks awesome when he's idle, but the instant he moves, he hunches over and lopes along like an ape. While CoH doesn't have similar poses, at least all the heroes stand up straight and proud. Whenever I'm playing my CO character, my camera angle naturally elevates until I'm looking down at him at a 45-degree angle, because that's the direction his head is pointing! Female poses seem much better, but I want an upstanding, proud man, and I can't seem to get one.
I read one commentary on CO that implied that the villain models and textures are on the most part very poor, but I haven't seen it, myself. Perhaps it's that my card doesn't support the whizziest graphics options, so I'm not getting the real impact of it all. I'm due for a graphics card upgrade myself, soon, so I might get to see for myself. Millenium City looks and feels more like a real city than Paragon City does, and I hope that Paragon Studios are paying attention, because there is a lot of good stuff they can do to make CoH even better.
CoH: 8/10
CO: 7/10.
Gameplay: Controls.
I tend not to change default keybinds for games. There are a couple of reasons for this: Firstly, because I want to see how the developers think the best way to play the game is. Secondly so that other people can intuitively use my PC to play games without having to learn a whole string of new keys that might differ from their setup at home.
There are a couple of significant problems with this, pretty much all of which can be explained with the following statement: I'm left-handed. I mouse left-handed. I don't reverse my mouse-buttons, for exactly the reasons given above. This means that I WSAD with my right hand on the keyboard, left hand on the mouse, and I adapt. I have to.
Both CoH and CO use a right-mouse = turn mechanic, which I now find completely natural, tab to cycle through targets, and the number keys to trigger powers. So far no difference. Where they do differ, though, is in the activation of powers. I'm going to have to change the defaults in Champions. A lot. Whereas in CoH you hit a power, that power goes off, then you wait while it recharges before you can fire it again, CO is a button-masher. You target a foe, hit "1" to activate your "Energy Building" power, and then mash the other buttons whenever you have sufficient energy. Okay, so I know that situation isn't going to continue forever, since in a few levels I'll be picking up "Maintained" combat powers that you just hit once and they annihilate everything until you run out of Energy. They're awesome. But the ability to mash buttons to trigger a more powerful attack is... annoying. It means that, unlike CoH (where there are two types of powers you can activate: Click-powers and Toggle-powers), CO has three - Energy-builder (toggle), Damage Click-powers (button mashers) and Damage Toggle-powers (toggle). It's just an added level of complexity, and I'm not sure it works. I'm also not sure it doesn't. Right now, though, at the low level I'm at, I click on my Energy-builder (I need to switch it to automatic), and mash my clicky-damage power as often as I can. My poor finger starts to ache in big fights.
Hmm, fights, that brings me to another thing. The standard control options for CO result in your character automatically turning to face their target, regardless of what you're telling the character to do. Ranges close down very fast, since almost everything prefers melee to ranged combat, and that frequently has meant that I've missed blocking opportunities because the taller bad guys have displayed off the top of the screen. I'm sure that's a settings problem, and not a problem with the game itself, but when the default display and camera motion options actively interfere with my ability to fight, it puts me off a bit.
CoH: 7/10
CO: 5/10 - might go up to 6 once I've tweaked the controls.
Gameplay: Rewards
City of Heroes has an almost insane number of reward types. I mean it. It's too much. Here's the list of possible rewards from defeating an enemy: Experience Points, Influence, Prestige, Inspirations, Salvage, Recipes, Vanguard Merits, Architect Tickets, Enhancements. I don't think it's possible to get all of them from a single foe, but the first four drop from any foe, anywhere in the game, as long as you haven't outlevelled them.
Scarily, I understand why each of them has been introduced, but I'm really not kidding: It needs simplifying. There's just too much complexity in the different reward systems, and I'm certain it could be reduced.
Champions Online might be even worse. There are "pills", which amount to power-ups, you earn "Resources" (more on those in a bit), and sometimes "Equipment". Depending on your current missions, you might get specific drops of the things you need to complete that mission. You can also find things that help with crafting skills. Okay, so that's a lot less than City of Heroes has, but it's not the variety that's the problem. It's the implementation. And it all boils down to this: Whatever developer came up with the "Resources" implementation needs to be taken out into a dark alleyway and SHOT. I'm not even slightly joking. It is such a ham-handed, obvious, crass, pathetic excuse for a game-system that my rage once I figured it out was unspeakable.
Here's why. You earn Resources for defeating foes. A varying number, depending on the type of foe, probably the level of the foe, and so forth. All good so far. The problem comes with how they are displayed to you as a player. The units and tens are grouped together, and symbolised by an orangey-brown disc. The hundreds and thousands are grouped together and symbolised by a grey disc. The tens of thousands and above are symbolised by a yellow disc. Yes, everyone, Champions Online has Copper, Silver and Gold coins! WHAT THE HELL?!
Bear in mind, this is a game that is set in the modern day. It is not a fantasy game. The standard monetary unit in the places where the majority of the game take place will be modern day currencies like Dollars. So WHY AM I COLLECTING COPPER COINS? The developers need to just have done, and call them Dollars. It would make so much more sense. As far as I can tell, it's just a way to make Fantasy MMO players comfortable with the standard unit of currency. There is no game-world reason for it, and there is no excuse.
City of Heroes gets away with things by not including a currency that is effectively "money". Yes, Influence does the same job, and Influence as a concept is a bit ridiculous in the implementation, but at least they don't artificially quantify it as the gold coin. I'll be honest - ANYTHING other than the coin system would be better. Because it just makes me think that COs developers are trying too hard to make the game something it isn't.
Other things seem to be okay, though. Crafting is fairly easy, though there are some issues relating to the restrictions you're under about what you can and can't take apart and build. I get the differences between Arms, Science and Mysticism, but since drops seem to be completely random as to the type of reward you get, it's a little draining to realise "Oh, look, I just picked up another Bind-on-Pick-up Mysticism item that's not quite as good as the one I have, so I can't trade the blasted thing". Bind on pick-up? I will never understand how something that is a representation of an in-game-world item can't be given to other people. Suspension of disbelief only goes so far.
CoH: 6/10
Champions: 5/10
Gameplay: Missions
Okay, this is where CO really comes into its own. The variety of missions I've seen so far is pretty staggering, and the choices for how to complete them are useful, too. It's not simply a case of "kill ten rats", with three variants of how to go about it. The game uses instances and deliveries sensibly. It uses open-world-spawn events sensibly. The only downside to this is that it can lead to spawn-camping of the particular foe you're looking for, which can get rather annoying. In CoH, once you've seen "generic warehouse map 5" for the twentieth time, it gets frustrating. In CO when something spawns right on top of you for the twentieth time, and you get suddenly hit by five enemies who simply weren't there two seconds ago, it gets frustrating. And the place where both games fall down worst is that enemies in open zones pretty much just stand there. Some form of semi-random walking AI for enemies would make some sense. Move them off their spawn points, please!
CoH: 7/10
CO: 7/10
Fluff: The world
In CoH, you're just one of thousands of heroes wandering around Paragon City. You're really nothing special. You work your way up from being "newbie pleb" to "hero of the city", but you don't really feel massively valued.
In CO, you're one of thousands of heroes in the world, but the end of the tutorial actually makes you feel a bit special. It gives me a buzz to see the military saluting me, the mayor giving me the Keys to Millenium City, and to actually feel like I've achieved something. It's a little thing, but the little things count.
The City of Heroes zones are artificial, and while there's a game-world reason for them, you can't help but feel tied down. I want to be able to fly from one end of the city to the other, without hitting a wall that prevents me from going any further.
CO zones, while also artificial, are very large, and the views are phenomenal. I love flying my main character up into the sky, and just barreling along, coasting over the wonderful terrain below me. Also, the city seems crowded, whereas in CoH the population seems a little sparse at times, depending on where you are.
CoH: 5/10
CO: 7/10
Roleplaying
I've not tried RPing in CO yet. I've been RPing in CoH for a long time. I'm not going to slate something I don't know about, yet, but I will say that the emotes system in CoH is pretty clear (once you know where to look), and so far I've not seen any indication actually where emotes might be in CO.
The biggest problem with CO for RP purposes, though, is actually the chat box. I've not explored all of its functionality, so I'm not going to talk about that, but here's something that leapt out at me: If you click and drag on the top edge of the chatbox, you don't extend it in that direction. You can drag the box up, and then drag the bottom edge down but that seems decidedly silly to me. Also, dialogue boxes are displayed on a layer behind the chat box, so if you've made the chatbox a half decent size, you can't click on dialogue box options if the chatbox obscures them. CoH allows you to select which box has focus, just by clicking on the box, and neatly sidesteps that problem.
CoH: 7/10
CO: 4/10
Overall
I love CoH. It's my first MMO, and it's great fun. I still play it an awful lot, and I love RPing there. I'm looking forward to trying to RP in CO, and for a new game, it really has a lot going for it. But it also has some glaring problems that I thing could be addressed to make the game better from an immersion perspective, and thus allow it to reach its potential.
CoH: 40/50
CO: 35/50
Considering that CoH has 5 years of polish, while CO is less than a week on general release, those numbers are pretty close, but CO has a lot of work to do to make up the difference, because while it's trying to reach the same level as CoH, that game will also be improving, and tweaking. It's an exciting time for online Superhero RP, and I for one welcome the variety and challenges.
A bit of background, for everyone who's not bothered to read my profile on this site: I am, first and foremost, a roleplayer, but I've been playing City of Heroes for 4 years, now, on the European servers, and I've been roleplaying there for about 3 1/2 of those years.
I really enjoy superheroes as a concept, but I'm not really much of a comic reader - I'll buy the odd graphic novel, but that's about it.
Superhero roleplaying, though... that's where it's at!
I have a character for superhero games. He's a sort of Batman/Ironman character in terms of motivation and apparent power, but his true source of power is the ubiquitous "radiation accident". I won't bother describing him in too much detail, for now. He's my character, and while roleplayers love their own characters, I know that most don't really enjoy listening to other RPers talk about their characters.
Character Design
Now, I've been playing Shadowe (that's him, the "e" is silent) as a character in City of Heroes very solidly while I've been there. I have a number of different costumes for him: Casual Civilian, Smart-Casual Civilian, Formal Civilian, Spandex (really leather, but who's checking?) and Battle-armour. Each gets pulled out depending on his current RP situation, and whether he's in a fight. His appearance has been fine-tuned to an art - he looks exactly the way I want him to. As a City of Heroes character, he is an Energy/Energy Blaster, meaning he does insane amounts of damage, but is squishier than an overripe melon. All of his powers and attacks are based around the ability to project and manipulate energy, which is perfect for his core concept.
Part of me judges games on the basis of how well I can fit it to Shadowe's concept, and City of Heroes scores very highly, there. Essentially, even within the constraints of the Archetype/Powersets system, I've been able to get exactly what I want, in terms of appearance and powers, and on those few areas where the game-world doesn't match his original concept, there are things I can fudge for RP purposes.
Champions Online, on the other hand, doesn't have the restriction of archetypes. Power Frameworks of linked powers exist, but it's possible to pretty much make a character have whatever powers you want him to have. Now, my current version of Shadowe was only created last night, and is only 6th level. He has one costume, and I elected to go for the Battle-suit version (for concept reasons), with flight as a travel power. So far, it's working out very well. During Beta, though, I got a very similar character up to about 15th level (I wasn't trying very hard), and some of the things that happened to him didn't really match the concept perfectly. I think that's mostly due to my lack of knowledge of the game and the options, so I'm not going to penalise it too heavily. However, despite all that, the "non-heroic" costume options are rather primitive, so I'm not sure how likely I am going to be able to get his civilian side working correctly.
CoH has lower-quality graphics, and really needs an upgrade, soon. That said, though, the character models, poses, stances and actions are very good, very polished, and I really can't fault them.
CO has significantly improved graphics (my slightly-older machine's graphics card is on the low-end of supported cards, in fact), but I find myself wincing slightly whenever my character runs or fires off his attacks, because he looks like a lumbering, thudding moron. He's designed around the "heroic" pose, which looks awesome when he's idle, but the instant he moves, he hunches over and lopes along like an ape. While CoH doesn't have similar poses, at least all the heroes stand up straight and proud. Whenever I'm playing my CO character, my camera angle naturally elevates until I'm looking down at him at a 45-degree angle, because that's the direction his head is pointing! Female poses seem much better, but I want an upstanding, proud man, and I can't seem to get one.
I read one commentary on CO that implied that the villain models and textures are on the most part very poor, but I haven't seen it, myself. Perhaps it's that my card doesn't support the whizziest graphics options, so I'm not getting the real impact of it all. I'm due for a graphics card upgrade myself, soon, so I might get to see for myself. Millenium City looks and feels more like a real city than Paragon City does, and I hope that Paragon Studios are paying attention, because there is a lot of good stuff they can do to make CoH even better.
CoH: 8/10
CO: 7/10.
Gameplay: Controls.
I tend not to change default keybinds for games. There are a couple of reasons for this: Firstly, because I want to see how the developers think the best way to play the game is. Secondly so that other people can intuitively use my PC to play games without having to learn a whole string of new keys that might differ from their setup at home.
There are a couple of significant problems with this, pretty much all of which can be explained with the following statement: I'm left-handed. I mouse left-handed. I don't reverse my mouse-buttons, for exactly the reasons given above. This means that I WSAD with my right hand on the keyboard, left hand on the mouse, and I adapt. I have to.
Both CoH and CO use a right-mouse = turn mechanic, which I now find completely natural, tab to cycle through targets, and the number keys to trigger powers. So far no difference. Where they do differ, though, is in the activation of powers. I'm going to have to change the defaults in Champions. A lot. Whereas in CoH you hit a power, that power goes off, then you wait while it recharges before you can fire it again, CO is a button-masher. You target a foe, hit "1" to activate your "Energy Building" power, and then mash the other buttons whenever you have sufficient energy. Okay, so I know that situation isn't going to continue forever, since in a few levels I'll be picking up "Maintained" combat powers that you just hit once and they annihilate everything until you run out of Energy. They're awesome. But the ability to mash buttons to trigger a more powerful attack is... annoying. It means that, unlike CoH (where there are two types of powers you can activate: Click-powers and Toggle-powers), CO has three - Energy-builder (toggle), Damage Click-powers (button mashers) and Damage Toggle-powers (toggle). It's just an added level of complexity, and I'm not sure it works. I'm also not sure it doesn't. Right now, though, at the low level I'm at, I click on my Energy-builder (I need to switch it to automatic), and mash my clicky-damage power as often as I can. My poor finger starts to ache in big fights.
Hmm, fights, that brings me to another thing. The standard control options for CO result in your character automatically turning to face their target, regardless of what you're telling the character to do. Ranges close down very fast, since almost everything prefers melee to ranged combat, and that frequently has meant that I've missed blocking opportunities because the taller bad guys have displayed off the top of the screen. I'm sure that's a settings problem, and not a problem with the game itself, but when the default display and camera motion options actively interfere with my ability to fight, it puts me off a bit.
CoH: 7/10
CO: 5/10 - might go up to 6 once I've tweaked the controls.
Gameplay: Rewards
City of Heroes has an almost insane number of reward types. I mean it. It's too much. Here's the list of possible rewards from defeating an enemy: Experience Points, Influence, Prestige, Inspirations, Salvage, Recipes, Vanguard Merits, Architect Tickets, Enhancements. I don't think it's possible to get all of them from a single foe, but the first four drop from any foe, anywhere in the game, as long as you haven't outlevelled them.
Scarily, I understand why each of them has been introduced, but I'm really not kidding: It needs simplifying. There's just too much complexity in the different reward systems, and I'm certain it could be reduced.
Champions Online might be even worse. There are "pills", which amount to power-ups, you earn "Resources" (more on those in a bit), and sometimes "Equipment". Depending on your current missions, you might get specific drops of the things you need to complete that mission. You can also find things that help with crafting skills. Okay, so that's a lot less than City of Heroes has, but it's not the variety that's the problem. It's the implementation. And it all boils down to this: Whatever developer came up with the "Resources" implementation needs to be taken out into a dark alleyway and SHOT. I'm not even slightly joking. It is such a ham-handed, obvious, crass, pathetic excuse for a game-system that my rage once I figured it out was unspeakable.
Here's why. You earn Resources for defeating foes. A varying number, depending on the type of foe, probably the level of the foe, and so forth. All good so far. The problem comes with how they are displayed to you as a player. The units and tens are grouped together, and symbolised by an orangey-brown disc. The hundreds and thousands are grouped together and symbolised by a grey disc. The tens of thousands and above are symbolised by a yellow disc. Yes, everyone, Champions Online has Copper, Silver and Gold coins! WHAT THE HELL?!
Bear in mind, this is a game that is set in the modern day. It is not a fantasy game. The standard monetary unit in the places where the majority of the game take place will be modern day currencies like Dollars. So WHY AM I COLLECTING COPPER COINS? The developers need to just have done, and call them Dollars. It would make so much more sense. As far as I can tell, it's just a way to make Fantasy MMO players comfortable with the standard unit of currency. There is no game-world reason for it, and there is no excuse.
City of Heroes gets away with things by not including a currency that is effectively "money". Yes, Influence does the same job, and Influence as a concept is a bit ridiculous in the implementation, but at least they don't artificially quantify it as the gold coin. I'll be honest - ANYTHING other than the coin system would be better. Because it just makes me think that COs developers are trying too hard to make the game something it isn't.
Other things seem to be okay, though. Crafting is fairly easy, though there are some issues relating to the restrictions you're under about what you can and can't take apart and build. I get the differences between Arms, Science and Mysticism, but since drops seem to be completely random as to the type of reward you get, it's a little draining to realise "Oh, look, I just picked up another Bind-on-Pick-up Mysticism item that's not quite as good as the one I have, so I can't trade the blasted thing". Bind on pick-up? I will never understand how something that is a representation of an in-game-world item can't be given to other people. Suspension of disbelief only goes so far.
CoH: 6/10
Champions: 5/10
Gameplay: Missions
Okay, this is where CO really comes into its own. The variety of missions I've seen so far is pretty staggering, and the choices for how to complete them are useful, too. It's not simply a case of "kill ten rats", with three variants of how to go about it. The game uses instances and deliveries sensibly. It uses open-world-spawn events sensibly. The only downside to this is that it can lead to spawn-camping of the particular foe you're looking for, which can get rather annoying. In CoH, once you've seen "generic warehouse map 5" for the twentieth time, it gets frustrating. In CO when something spawns right on top of you for the twentieth time, and you get suddenly hit by five enemies who simply weren't there two seconds ago, it gets frustrating. And the place where both games fall down worst is that enemies in open zones pretty much just stand there. Some form of semi-random walking AI for enemies would make some sense. Move them off their spawn points, please!
CoH: 7/10
CO: 7/10
Fluff: The world
In CoH, you're just one of thousands of heroes wandering around Paragon City. You're really nothing special. You work your way up from being "newbie pleb" to "hero of the city", but you don't really feel massively valued.
In CO, you're one of thousands of heroes in the world, but the end of the tutorial actually makes you feel a bit special. It gives me a buzz to see the military saluting me, the mayor giving me the Keys to Millenium City, and to actually feel like I've achieved something. It's a little thing, but the little things count.
The City of Heroes zones are artificial, and while there's a game-world reason for them, you can't help but feel tied down. I want to be able to fly from one end of the city to the other, without hitting a wall that prevents me from going any further.
CO zones, while also artificial, are very large, and the views are phenomenal. I love flying my main character up into the sky, and just barreling along, coasting over the wonderful terrain below me. Also, the city seems crowded, whereas in CoH the population seems a little sparse at times, depending on where you are.
CoH: 5/10
CO: 7/10
Roleplaying
I've not tried RPing in CO yet. I've been RPing in CoH for a long time. I'm not going to slate something I don't know about, yet, but I will say that the emotes system in CoH is pretty clear (once you know where to look), and so far I've not seen any indication actually where emotes might be in CO.
The biggest problem with CO for RP purposes, though, is actually the chat box. I've not explored all of its functionality, so I'm not going to talk about that, but here's something that leapt out at me: If you click and drag on the top edge of the chatbox, you don't extend it in that direction. You can drag the box up, and then drag the bottom edge down but that seems decidedly silly to me. Also, dialogue boxes are displayed on a layer behind the chat box, so if you've made the chatbox a half decent size, you can't click on dialogue box options if the chatbox obscures them. CoH allows you to select which box has focus, just by clicking on the box, and neatly sidesteps that problem.
CoH: 7/10
CO: 4/10
Overall
I love CoH. It's my first MMO, and it's great fun. I still play it an awful lot, and I love RPing there. I'm looking forward to trying to RP in CO, and for a new game, it really has a lot going for it. But it also has some glaring problems that I thing could be addressed to make the game better from an immersion perspective, and thus allow it to reach its potential.
CoH: 40/50
CO: 35/50
Considering that CoH has 5 years of polish, while CO is less than a week on general release, those numbers are pretty close, but CO has a lot of work to do to make up the difference, because while it's trying to reach the same level as CoH, that game will also be improving, and tweaking. It's an exciting time for online Superhero RP, and I for one welcome the variety and challenges.
Monday 7 September 2009
Weekly Games: M&M
I've been on holiday, and have just finished my marathon "re-read Questionable Content" stint, I have half an hour until I finish work for the day, and figured I'd take a stab at writing a quick blogpost. I'll let you know if it gets done in the half hour, or if I have to finish it when I get home tonight.
So, the weekly Mutants & Masterminds game.
Last night was another "talky", moving the plot along a bit. Everyone headed to the school (leaving the police to deal with the crucified gardener), and there was much exposition.
It was kind of slow going, really, and not a lot actually happened... in the plot anyway.
New character: Burned Ice, played by my good buddy Floating Fat Man - teenaged, full of herself, ice and fire powers.
While I was busy undertaking the extensive and deep plot-related conversing involving my current whiny NPC and most of the characters, Burned Ice decided to spy on everyone and listen in. She got noticed, and a couple of the characters decided to go and have words with her.
I'm not overly ashamed to admit that I pretty much ignored that whole side-conversation. The players were self-managing inter-character interaction, and I really didn;t need to get involved. There was some dice-rolling, though, when it came to use of powers (I'd better read the logs and make sure nothing overly naughty happened), but I was busy on the plot side of things, and really wasn't needed for that particular conversation.
Until, that is, I come back from one of my occassional cigarette breaks (please, don't smoke. It sucks), and was asked to adjudicate things regarding one character attempting to persuade another character to do something.
And thus we come to the real point of this post.
Every RPG should have this rule explicitly stated somewhere: Social interaction skills can NEVER be used to influence the actions of another Player Character.
I'm not talking about powers, or spells, or Force Powers or whatever "supernatural" abilities are present in the game - when you use those, you're using special abilities - I'm talking about skills: Bluff, Persuasion, Diplomacy, Social, whatever it's called in whatever game you're playing, no GM should allow those skills to affect player decisions. Social skills are for use on NPCs. They're a way for the GM to quickly determine NPC responses, and are never a straitjacket for players.
Here's an example or two, to illustrate:
1) NPC Assassin uses the Bluff skill to attempt to convince one of the PCs that he didn't kill the Prince. PC fumbles up Sense Motive, Assassin criticals Bluff. However - the crime has the Assassin's MO, and he was caught stepping out of the Prince's bedchamber where the Prince was found dead moments later... The GM will tell the PC that they believe the Assassin's story, but there is no way the Player should be forced to be constrained by that limitation. The phrase "bang to rights" springs to mind. I'd suggest that the PC be lenient, perhaps just capturing and imprisoning the Assassin, rather than allowing instant justice, but there is no way on Earth that I would force the PC to just let the Assassin go. If that's the Player's decision, then fine. It's not my character, so I'm not going to make that decision for them.
2) PC 1 uses their Persuasion skill to attempt to convince PC 2 to let them out of the room they've been shut in (for good reason, as far as all of the characters except PC 1 are concerned). Ahem. NO. As GM I would never require Player 2 to submit to this. It's Player 2's character - if they want to keep PC 1 shut in that room, then fine, and if Player 1 comes up with a convincing In-Character reasoning that Player 2 decides will sway them, then that's fine as well, but there is no way that I would force Player-vs-Player social interaction to be resolved that way. If Player 2 decides to take the roll anyway, to help them make that decision, then that is fine, but they are not constrained or bound by the results of that roll. It is their character, and they can make their own choices.
This all comes down to the most contradictory aspect of RPing - Shared Storytelling. It is not one person telling a story. It is several people all telling their own stories that happen to all be happening at the same time, usually in the same place. It's tricky to manage, but very fulfilling when it works.
Edit: Awesome. Under 30 minutes.
So, the weekly Mutants & Masterminds game.
Last night was another "talky", moving the plot along a bit. Everyone headed to the school (leaving the police to deal with the crucified gardener), and there was much exposition.
It was kind of slow going, really, and not a lot actually happened... in the plot anyway.
New character: Burned Ice, played by my good buddy Floating Fat Man - teenaged, full of herself, ice and fire powers.
While I was busy undertaking the extensive and deep plot-related conversing involving my current whiny NPC and most of the characters, Burned Ice decided to spy on everyone and listen in. She got noticed, and a couple of the characters decided to go and have words with her.
I'm not overly ashamed to admit that I pretty much ignored that whole side-conversation. The players were self-managing inter-character interaction, and I really didn;t need to get involved. There was some dice-rolling, though, when it came to use of powers (I'd better read the logs and make sure nothing overly naughty happened), but I was busy on the plot side of things, and really wasn't needed for that particular conversation.
Until, that is, I come back from one of my occassional cigarette breaks (please, don't smoke. It sucks), and was asked to adjudicate things regarding one character attempting to persuade another character to do something.
And thus we come to the real point of this post.
Every RPG should have this rule explicitly stated somewhere: Social interaction skills can NEVER be used to influence the actions of another Player Character.
I'm not talking about powers, or spells, or Force Powers or whatever "supernatural" abilities are present in the game - when you use those, you're using special abilities - I'm talking about skills: Bluff, Persuasion, Diplomacy, Social, whatever it's called in whatever game you're playing, no GM should allow those skills to affect player decisions. Social skills are for use on NPCs. They're a way for the GM to quickly determine NPC responses, and are never a straitjacket for players.
Here's an example or two, to illustrate:
1) NPC Assassin uses the Bluff skill to attempt to convince one of the PCs that he didn't kill the Prince. PC fumbles up Sense Motive, Assassin criticals Bluff. However - the crime has the Assassin's MO, and he was caught stepping out of the Prince's bedchamber where the Prince was found dead moments later... The GM will tell the PC that they believe the Assassin's story, but there is no way the Player should be forced to be constrained by that limitation. The phrase "bang to rights" springs to mind. I'd suggest that the PC be lenient, perhaps just capturing and imprisoning the Assassin, rather than allowing instant justice, but there is no way on Earth that I would force the PC to just let the Assassin go. If that's the Player's decision, then fine. It's not my character, so I'm not going to make that decision for them.
2) PC 1 uses their Persuasion skill to attempt to convince PC 2 to let them out of the room they've been shut in (for good reason, as far as all of the characters except PC 1 are concerned). Ahem. NO. As GM I would never require Player 2 to submit to this. It's Player 2's character - if they want to keep PC 1 shut in that room, then fine, and if Player 1 comes up with a convincing In-Character reasoning that Player 2 decides will sway them, then that's fine as well, but there is no way that I would force Player-vs-Player social interaction to be resolved that way. If Player 2 decides to take the roll anyway, to help them make that decision, then that is fine, but they are not constrained or bound by the results of that roll. It is their character, and they can make their own choices.
This all comes down to the most contradictory aspect of RPing - Shared Storytelling. It is not one person telling a story. It is several people all telling their own stories that happen to all be happening at the same time, usually in the same place. It's tricky to manage, but very fulfilling when it works.
Edit: Awesome. Under 30 minutes.
Monday 24 August 2009
God-moding: The good, the bad, the ugly.
Okay, this is an issue that is dear to my heart, and one which other people have covered ad-nauseum, I'm sure, but given that someone has recently hit me with a pretty serious god-mod, I wanted to put down some thoughts about it.
What is God-moding?
At its simplest level, god-moding is defined as follows: Deciding what happens to another player's character, without the player's consent. It is sometimes subtle, but essentially, any time one player unavoidably affects another player's character, that's god-moding.
In a GMd game, the GM is the ruler of reality, and as such is theoretically incapable of god-moding, though I'd personally consider it good practice for GMs to allow players a way out.
But in a shared-world RP situation, such as you get in MMOs, or most online RP, then there is rarely one person "running" the game - there are just a large number of people who are playing it, and etiquette demands that they avoid annoying each other. Failure to do so tends to dissolve a game or scenario into "my e-peen is bigger than yours!" contests, which are laughable. But, and this comes from personal experience, when it's your character getting pissed on from a great height, it's really annoying.
Here's a little background for what happened recently: In City of Heroes right now, there's a character who rather severely needs their head seeing to. She's gone utterly off the rails, as far as several people (other characters) are concerned, and the number one suggestion for helping her has so far been for a psychic to take a gander inside her head and try to repair what's broken.
Now, one of my characters is psychic. Samantha Huntington, who has been known to brag that she is the fifth most powerful psychic in the world (she's not, but she's no slouch), whose skills are all based around memory alteration and mind control. I'm quite prepared to RP out a psychic repair session. I'm not very good at it, but I'll do it. Sam is rather arrogant, too, and confident in her own capabilities, and has strong feelings about right and wrong.
Now, Sam was engaged in a conversation with this character, and put across her feelings about the character's actions in a... rather blunt fashion. Sam also attempted a psychic probe of the character, which failed (because said player refused to let it work, which is fine). Said character got massively insulted and left. Sam really didn't think anything more of it.
Then I got a private message on the Official Game Forum:
Now correct me if I'm wrong, but that seems like something I can't control about my character. I wasn't asked if it was okay to put my character under surveillance, I wasn't given the opportunity to point out all of the HUGE flaws in trying to do so (which I'll cover in a moment), and it really does stink to high heaven of someone trying to muscle my character.
Now, I'm not averse to my characters being put under observation but I'd like to be involved in it. If I'd been approached first, I'd probably have agreed, because I'd have understood the reasons why it's happening. But right now this looks like someone who's in a mood with me (because of my character's attitude and actions) trying to "put one over" on me. Which is awful.
Now for the cathartic bit: Reasons why such observation is essentially impossible.
1) The Helena factor. Samantha Huntington built an Artificial Intelligence unit several years ago, called Helena. Helena constantly scans and observes the local area around Sam and her brother Richard (my main character), and warns of potential threats. The probability of such observation occuring for more than about five minutes is essentially nil.
2) Sam can teleport. Now, this includes the in-game teleportation travel power, which has a range of 100 yards (more than enough to break Line-of-Sight in most circumstances), as well as access to two Super Group bases with complete teleport beacon sets (meaning she can teleport to pretty much any part of the city, from any part of the city), so walking is something she does because she enjoys it. Good luck tracking her when she doesn't want to be followed.
3) Sam has a room in Huntington Manor. She hasn't been living there for a while, but she has a room inside a manor house with extensive grounds (walled grounds) that are constantly patrolled by a small cadre of ex-Knives of Artemis trainees (yes, they kept the stealth gear), as well as 100% coverage by a continuously active AI, extensive shielding and sound-proofing, and enough concealed firepower to hold off a small army - the manor is still standing after the second Rikti invasion for a reason.
4) Sam has a very protective brother. My main character, Richard, is what I tend to refer to as a "cosmic-level" character. He's one of those unbelievably awesome, Superman/Green Lantern/Dr Strange level people who tend not to get involved with the petty, but deals with threats from beyond. Let's take a look at some of his known (and easily represented in-game) abilities. A) He can move really fast. In-game, he's at the speed cap of 92.5 mph. For RP purposes, that's just the speed he sets himself inside the city limits - he can go a LOT faster. More than fast enough to reach a stationary van on a city street. B) He can walk through walls. Not represented in-game, unfortunately, but he does have the phasing power as a stand-in. Unless said van has some sort of weird multi-dimensional blocking technology, then he can get inside it. C) He doesn't need to rest. He can keep this up for days. I need sleep, but he doesn't need anywhere near as much as I do. D) There's a black hole in his head. Don't ask, the backstory is very complex, convoluted and comicy, but instead of a brain, he (sort of) has a black hole the size of a golf ball in his noggin, and he can control how much it affects the world, and if he wants to destroy a van that's spying on his baby sister, then he sure as hell can. (Yes, there are limits. I have no desire to destroy the game world, so I've set very stringent limits on the amount of control he actually has - when his choices jump suddenly from "energy blasts of serious pain" to "eat the world in less than a second", he's not about to go further than the energy blasts.) E) He can turn invisible. Yes, that's right, folks, he can fade completely from view and become undetectable to the entire electromagnetic spectrum.
The point is that all of these things have been established since before this player came along. I'm not suddenly making stuff up to be awkward. These things are all part of my characters' backstories/experiences, and a large number of my fellow roleplayers in the game are aware of them. So when someone tells me "Sam's under surveillance" without finding out how likely it actually is for her to be under surveillance, it winds me up.
Part of me wants to run with it, but I get the impression that if I try, I'll be trapped by whatever this other player wants to acheive, and effectively unable to play my own characters because "that doesn't work. Nor does that. Nor that." So I'm probably just going to write a short story explaining why it won't work, and put the kybosh on the whole deal straight away.
What is God-moding?
At its simplest level, god-moding is defined as follows: Deciding what happens to another player's character, without the player's consent. It is sometimes subtle, but essentially, any time one player unavoidably affects another player's character, that's god-moding.
In a GMd game, the GM is the ruler of reality, and as such is theoretically incapable of god-moding, though I'd personally consider it good practice for GMs to allow players a way out.
But in a shared-world RP situation, such as you get in MMOs, or most online RP, then there is rarely one person "running" the game - there are just a large number of people who are playing it, and etiquette demands that they avoid annoying each other. Failure to do so tends to dissolve a game or scenario into "my e-peen is bigger than yours!" contests, which are laughable. But, and this comes from personal experience, when it's your character getting pissed on from a great height, it's really annoying.
Here's a little background for what happened recently: In City of Heroes right now, there's a character who rather severely needs their head seeing to. She's gone utterly off the rails, as far as several people (other characters) are concerned, and the number one suggestion for helping her has so far been for a psychic to take a gander inside her head and try to repair what's broken.
Now, one of my characters is psychic. Samantha Huntington, who has been known to brag that she is the fifth most powerful psychic in the world (she's not, but she's no slouch), whose skills are all based around memory alteration and mind control. I'm quite prepared to RP out a psychic repair session. I'm not very good at it, but I'll do it. Sam is rather arrogant, too, and confident in her own capabilities, and has strong feelings about right and wrong.
Now, Sam was engaged in a conversation with this character, and put across her feelings about the character's actions in a... rather blunt fashion. Sam also attempted a psychic probe of the character, which failed (because said player refused to let it work, which is fine). Said character got massively insulted and left. Sam really didn't think anything more of it.
Then I got a private message on the Official Game Forum:
(( sorry to disturb you...))
...but it seems that Samantha Huntington is now under subtle surveillance. She may, or may not have noticed white rental vans with darkened windows parked near her whereabouts. Vans appear empty if scanned with psychic powers. And they're only seen from a distance.
Now correct me if I'm wrong, but that seems like something I can't control about my character. I wasn't asked if it was okay to put my character under surveillance, I wasn't given the opportunity to point out all of the HUGE flaws in trying to do so (which I'll cover in a moment), and it really does stink to high heaven of someone trying to muscle my character.
Now, I'm not averse to my characters being put under observation but I'd like to be involved in it. If I'd been approached first, I'd probably have agreed, because I'd have understood the reasons why it's happening. But right now this looks like someone who's in a mood with me (because of my character's attitude and actions) trying to "put one over" on me. Which is awful.
Now for the cathartic bit: Reasons why such observation is essentially impossible.
1) The Helena factor. Samantha Huntington built an Artificial Intelligence unit several years ago, called Helena. Helena constantly scans and observes the local area around Sam and her brother Richard (my main character), and warns of potential threats. The probability of such observation occuring for more than about five minutes is essentially nil.
2) Sam can teleport. Now, this includes the in-game teleportation travel power, which has a range of 100 yards (more than enough to break Line-of-Sight in most circumstances), as well as access to two Super Group bases with complete teleport beacon sets (meaning she can teleport to pretty much any part of the city, from any part of the city), so walking is something she does because she enjoys it. Good luck tracking her when she doesn't want to be followed.
3) Sam has a room in Huntington Manor. She hasn't been living there for a while, but she has a room inside a manor house with extensive grounds (walled grounds) that are constantly patrolled by a small cadre of ex-Knives of Artemis trainees (yes, they kept the stealth gear), as well as 100% coverage by a continuously active AI, extensive shielding and sound-proofing, and enough concealed firepower to hold off a small army - the manor is still standing after the second Rikti invasion for a reason.
4) Sam has a very protective brother. My main character, Richard, is what I tend to refer to as a "cosmic-level" character. He's one of those unbelievably awesome, Superman/Green Lantern/Dr Strange level people who tend not to get involved with the petty, but deals with threats from beyond. Let's take a look at some of his known (and easily represented in-game) abilities. A) He can move really fast. In-game, he's at the speed cap of 92.5 mph. For RP purposes, that's just the speed he sets himself inside the city limits - he can go a LOT faster. More than fast enough to reach a stationary van on a city street. B) He can walk through walls. Not represented in-game, unfortunately, but he does have the phasing power as a stand-in. Unless said van has some sort of weird multi-dimensional blocking technology, then he can get inside it. C) He doesn't need to rest. He can keep this up for days. I need sleep, but he doesn't need anywhere near as much as I do. D) There's a black hole in his head. Don't ask, the backstory is very complex, convoluted and comicy, but instead of a brain, he (sort of) has a black hole the size of a golf ball in his noggin, and he can control how much it affects the world, and if he wants to destroy a van that's spying on his baby sister, then he sure as hell can. (Yes, there are limits. I have no desire to destroy the game world, so I've set very stringent limits on the amount of control he actually has - when his choices jump suddenly from "energy blasts of serious pain" to "eat the world in less than a second", he's not about to go further than the energy blasts.) E) He can turn invisible. Yes, that's right, folks, he can fade completely from view and become undetectable to the entire electromagnetic spectrum.
The point is that all of these things have been established since before this player came along. I'm not suddenly making stuff up to be awkward. These things are all part of my characters' backstories/experiences, and a large number of my fellow roleplayers in the game are aware of them. So when someone tells me "Sam's under surveillance" without finding out how likely it actually is for her to be under surveillance, it winds me up.
Part of me wants to run with it, but I get the impression that if I try, I'll be trapped by whatever this other player wants to acheive, and effectively unable to play my own characters because "that doesn't work. Nor does that. Nor that." So I'm probably just going to write a short story explaining why it won't work, and put the kybosh on the whole deal straight away.
Weekly Games: M&M
This will probably be my last post on this for a little while, due to some significant changes happening in my life (as well as a lot of holiday) in the near future.
Now, that doesn't mean that my games will suffer, just that I'm unlikely to have the time to post on this blog.
Last night's session was really rather good: A fair chunk of characterisation, a plot-twist, and a lot of fun.
There are currently two threads of investigation: Joanne Blake, student at Claremont Academy; and Aiden O'Hara, assistant groundskeeper at the same establishment.
The ladies (Liberty Belle and Rapscallion) followed and found Joanne, and Raps had a nice conversation with her, while the men (Axelerator and Procyon) headed off to investigate the gardener. Scrub's player was unavailable, through no fault of his own, so he was relegated to the background - I had enough to handle as it was!
Split party adventuring is always tricky, but since it was all talky stuff, no combat, I felt confident that I would be able to handle it... and I believe I managed it with aplomb.
Joanne revealed herself to be a young student feeling the pressure of her teachers, struggling with the complexity of her learning (who said magic was easy?). It was discovered that she had, in the middle of the night, performed a magical ritual, intended to summon an imp to help tidy her room. According to Joanne, though, nothing happened, and the following day it was discovered that all of the teachers and adult support staff had vanished from the grounds. Joanne, feeling guilty and frustrated, came to the conclusion that it might be her fault, so kept quiet about it. She can't see how she could be to blame, but is afraid that she is.
The pair heading to see Aiden, the gardener, found his residence, and discovered evidence of a pretty wild party - beer, babes and bongs would be a pretty fair description. As events unfolded, though, it seems that there is something decidedly more sinister at work, here, as Aiden himself, along with an as-yet-unnamed girl, was crucified in his own bathroom, mystic symbols inscribed in their flesh.
No, I'm not above introducing some slightly dark themes to my games.
Now, I've said before that it takes a lot out of me to run this game, and it really does. But it's at times like this that I just love it! Up to now, everyone has been assuming the situation at Claremont is due to either Joanne or Aiden. Now the seed of doubt is thrown in, because it looks like it could be both.
I'm going to try to avoid spoiling my intended plotline with reveals about my thinking process, but I will offer my players a little teaser by pointing out that one of these events was not planned by me until the very last minute. The other was intended all along.
This brings me on to my preferred GMing style - winging it so much that I might as well be flying. Okay, let me clarify that a little. I don't just make stuff up as I go along, really, but I'm pretty well practiced at allowing events to pan out along a very loose plotline, and then suddenly bringing in details that match previous observations, but cast them in a completely new light.
I'm not very good at using red herrings, though. I like to interweave and combine all my plotlines into a single tapestry that, when viewed after the fact, looks stunning... but I can guarantee that I didn't actually plan it that way.
There are advantages and disadvantages to this style. The biggest disadvantage is that the plots can sometimes have little direction while I'm waiting for a flash of inspiration that will allow me to link it to what else is going on. In those situations, I tend to resort to events and encounters that don't require me to think all that much, and that can make a campaign stagnate. On the other side of the coin, though, when my mind is working the way it usually does, I am able to adapt events and encounters to the changing world in a coherent and sensible fashion, and the coolest thing it means is that player actions matter. If the PCs have a moment of insight, and come up with a brilliant plan, I'm not going to force events unless it will ruin the rest of the story. I'd much rather the players felt a sense of accomplishment, than my carefully crafted plotline flow out the way I've planned.
Let's take a quick look at the current situation in this game, as an example. What follows are pretty much my notes for this adventure, not counting NPC statistics, and this may contain spoilers (though I've removed huge chunks of them), so be warned:
The Scenario: The adult staff from Claremont Academy has vanished, and the heroes are drafted in to help find them.
1) Get the players involved. Use Serena Vervain (Seven) from Freedom City. Asking for help from heroes as trying to avoid the public eye.
2) Suspicious events. Gardener Aiden O'Hara not missing (under age 20), lives off-campus, hasn't been in to work since the first morning, though. Joanne Blake tried a summoning ritual that failed.
3) [Deleted due to spoilers] has resulted in the teachers being transported to [Deleted due to spoilers]. PCs must find a way to get there (piggy-back off previous event?).
4) Staff have been captured by [Deleted due to spoilers], and handed over to [Deleted due to spoilers], who consist of [Deleted due to spoilers].
Yes, that is an entire adventure, so far. Everything else that happens is completely off the cuff.
Essentially, it's a flagrant acknowledgement of my number one rule: No plot survives contact with the players. I know what's happened, I know why it's happened, and I know what's going to be happening right up until the PCs arrive on the scene... but after that, all bets are off. NPCs have to react to changes just as much as anyone else, and they only know what they know - though super-smart ones might be able to guess and have put contingencies in place that I will simply invent on the fly.
Many people might ask why I do it this way, and the simple answer is: Because otherwise I'll just be writing a story.
I like writing stories. I enjoy it a lot, and I get a kick out of it. But I like shared stories better. I like being surprised by what players come up with. I like stealing player ideas to improve my plots. And allowing the players to directly affect the outcome of the story is the best way I know of to ensure that they feel involved and a real part of the world we're building together.
Now, that doesn't mean that my games will suffer, just that I'm unlikely to have the time to post on this blog.
Last night's session was really rather good: A fair chunk of characterisation, a plot-twist, and a lot of fun.
There are currently two threads of investigation: Joanne Blake, student at Claremont Academy; and Aiden O'Hara, assistant groundskeeper at the same establishment.
The ladies (Liberty Belle and Rapscallion) followed and found Joanne, and Raps had a nice conversation with her, while the men (Axelerator and Procyon) headed off to investigate the gardener. Scrub's player was unavailable, through no fault of his own, so he was relegated to the background - I had enough to handle as it was!
Split party adventuring is always tricky, but since it was all talky stuff, no combat, I felt confident that I would be able to handle it... and I believe I managed it with aplomb.
Joanne revealed herself to be a young student feeling the pressure of her teachers, struggling with the complexity of her learning (who said magic was easy?). It was discovered that she had, in the middle of the night, performed a magical ritual, intended to summon an imp to help tidy her room. According to Joanne, though, nothing happened, and the following day it was discovered that all of the teachers and adult support staff had vanished from the grounds. Joanne, feeling guilty and frustrated, came to the conclusion that it might be her fault, so kept quiet about it. She can't see how she could be to blame, but is afraid that she is.
The pair heading to see Aiden, the gardener, found his residence, and discovered evidence of a pretty wild party - beer, babes and bongs would be a pretty fair description. As events unfolded, though, it seems that there is something decidedly more sinister at work, here, as Aiden himself, along with an as-yet-unnamed girl, was crucified in his own bathroom, mystic symbols inscribed in their flesh.
No, I'm not above introducing some slightly dark themes to my games.
Now, I've said before that it takes a lot out of me to run this game, and it really does. But it's at times like this that I just love it! Up to now, everyone has been assuming the situation at Claremont is due to either Joanne or Aiden. Now the seed of doubt is thrown in, because it looks like it could be both.
I'm going to try to avoid spoiling my intended plotline with reveals about my thinking process, but I will offer my players a little teaser by pointing out that one of these events was not planned by me until the very last minute. The other was intended all along.
This brings me on to my preferred GMing style - winging it so much that I might as well be flying. Okay, let me clarify that a little. I don't just make stuff up as I go along, really, but I'm pretty well practiced at allowing events to pan out along a very loose plotline, and then suddenly bringing in details that match previous observations, but cast them in a completely new light.
I'm not very good at using red herrings, though. I like to interweave and combine all my plotlines into a single tapestry that, when viewed after the fact, looks stunning... but I can guarantee that I didn't actually plan it that way.
There are advantages and disadvantages to this style. The biggest disadvantage is that the plots can sometimes have little direction while I'm waiting for a flash of inspiration that will allow me to link it to what else is going on. In those situations, I tend to resort to events and encounters that don't require me to think all that much, and that can make a campaign stagnate. On the other side of the coin, though, when my mind is working the way it usually does, I am able to adapt events and encounters to the changing world in a coherent and sensible fashion, and the coolest thing it means is that player actions matter. If the PCs have a moment of insight, and come up with a brilliant plan, I'm not going to force events unless it will ruin the rest of the story. I'd much rather the players felt a sense of accomplishment, than my carefully crafted plotline flow out the way I've planned.
Let's take a quick look at the current situation in this game, as an example. What follows are pretty much my notes for this adventure, not counting NPC statistics, and this may contain spoilers (though I've removed huge chunks of them), so be warned:
The Scenario: The adult staff from Claremont Academy has vanished, and the heroes are drafted in to help find them.
1) Get the players involved. Use Serena Vervain (Seven) from Freedom City. Asking for help from heroes as trying to avoid the public eye.
2) Suspicious events. Gardener Aiden O'Hara not missing (under age 20), lives off-campus, hasn't been in to work since the first morning, though. Joanne Blake tried a summoning ritual that failed.
3) [Deleted due to spoilers] has resulted in the teachers being transported to [Deleted due to spoilers]. PCs must find a way to get there (piggy-back off previous event?).
4) Staff have been captured by [Deleted due to spoilers], and handed over to [Deleted due to spoilers], who consist of [Deleted due to spoilers].
Yes, that is an entire adventure, so far. Everything else that happens is completely off the cuff.
Essentially, it's a flagrant acknowledgement of my number one rule: No plot survives contact with the players. I know what's happened, I know why it's happened, and I know what's going to be happening right up until the PCs arrive on the scene... but after that, all bets are off. NPCs have to react to changes just as much as anyone else, and they only know what they know - though super-smart ones might be able to guess and have put contingencies in place that I will simply invent on the fly.
Many people might ask why I do it this way, and the simple answer is: Because otherwise I'll just be writing a story.
I like writing stories. I enjoy it a lot, and I get a kick out of it. But I like shared stories better. I like being surprised by what players come up with. I like stealing player ideas to improve my plots. And allowing the players to directly affect the outcome of the story is the best way I know of to ensure that they feel involved and a real part of the world we're building together.
Wednesday 19 August 2009
City of Heroes: Internet Drama
Time to relate a couple of my personal experiences recently while RPing in City of Heroes. All the usual disclaimers regarding personal bias and so forth.
There has recently been a plotline going on involving a "possibly rogue hero", who has essentially wrecked almost every level of trust she has with other heroes. My character knows this hero (for ease of use, let's call her "R"), likes her, and hoped that she was actually trying to trick the villain.
R is now pregnant with the villains's child (whoah, that's some trick she's trying to pull!), but was instrumental in his (illegal) arrest.
Now, my main plays the perception game. A lot. By that, I mean that he thinks it's better for people to believe he knows more than he does, and is more dangerous than he really is. As a civilian, he's generally friendly, cheerful, cheeky and (I hope) likeable. As a hero, he's a serious, cold-hearted, ruthless bastard. The heroic persona is a complete fabrication. He believes that people who actually know him will recognise that he puts on an act as soon as he puts on the spandex. Obviously, this disparity is designed to cause potential in-character conflict as people try to work out what's the truth.
During the investigation to find and deal with the villain and his plot to kill a lot of people, my character got into a very loud and very public argument with R. The reason? The villain, despite knowing that R cannot lie, did not entirely believe that she was not working against him. Probably a sensible move. So, in the interests of convincing the villain (I'm going to call him "S") that R was on the level, my character made it very publicly known that he no longer trusted R, and thought she was roughly on the level of pond scum.
Now, when he's not actively acting out a role, my character is very honest. He doesn't lie very well, and tends to broadcast his feelings in the things he says. So it became clear to a number of other heroes that my character was hiding something. Well, yes, he was - his real intentions. However, they decided to interpret this as him hiding some useful knowledge that would help with the investigation of the villain.
Due to this, after things got settled, one of those heroes decided to call down the full weight of the law on my character, because of his (to paraphrase) "suspicious behaviour that may constitute obstruction of justice".
Fair enough, and that's a completely reasonable response, given the suspicions flying around. But in-character the response I gave was one of anger. My character thinks he should have been trusted to help people. He's been an active hero in Paragon City for over three years solid, has saved the world a number of times, knows most of the more powerful heroes on a first-name basis, and believes that he deserves the benefit of the doubt. So when someone he considers a friend states quite clearly that she believes he's pulling a fast one, he gets angry.
Result: If she decides to pursue calling the feds down on him, he will sue for harrassment and defamation of character.
To be honest, I really didn't think much more of it. It's one of those fun little character conflicts that makes RPing so enjoyable to me.
Which now brings us to last night. I'm still decidedly unsure how I feel about what happened. I think I'm a bit peeved, to be completely honest.
Anyway, the villain had put in motion a plot that involved the kidnapping and unlawful incarceration of an 8-year old girl. Or at least that's what was claimed. I still don't know if it was "true".
Here's what happened from my perspective:
A number of heroes are chilling out at the local RP hangout, chatting, enjoying themselves, discussing recent events and so forth.
Suddenly, out of the blue, someone mentions a kidnapping. No preamble, no set-up. Just "There's been a kidnapping!" On querying this, my character hears that there has been an announcement over the police radio. I go and check all of my chatlogs, including the channels I don't keep open when I'm RPing, but there's nothing. Nada.
Now, given that I had no interest in getting involved in another plot so soon after dealing with the whole situation involving R and S, and given that the only source from which this alleged kidnapping has come is the same character who thinks my character is guilty of obstruction of justice, I decided not to get involved. Wasn't in the mood, was enjoying the casual chat RP going on, didn't want to get involved in the plot.
At which point this same character (I'm going to call her "P"), starts harranguing my character for not taking action. Not any of the other half-dozen characters who were still hanging around chatting - mine, and mine alone.
Now, since my character only had P's word that there was even anything going on, and given that he's less than happy with P at the moment, he pointed out that for all he knew, there was a mass delusion going on, because the so-called police announcement had not happened.
P then spends an absolute age moaning and whining at my character for not helping. Other people observe that P could have spent the time looking for the kidnap victim, which would have been productive.
Maybe I'm reading too much into things, but eventually P left to help with the rescue attempt, which was apparently successful, and P's player said on an out-of-game multi-user chatroom of which I am also a member, words to the effect of "now to confront someone about this 'delusional' kidnapping".
WHOAH, THERE!
Taking a step backward in time, now, I figured out what happened. The kidnapping was announced on an in-game Out Of Character chat channel of which I am not a member. Which is why I knew nothing about it. And if I know nothing about it, my character sure as hell knows less. Which is why my character responded in the way he did. If it had been a public announcement, I'm sure my character's response would have been different. But it wasn't. It was on a chat channel that I am not on, and have no interest in being on. Since I was not party to the announcement (which could VERY easily have been made in local or broadcast chat), and since I didn't want to get involved anyway, I am reacting very badly to someone who a) tried to bully me into taking part and b) has come across, OOC, as wanting to gloat that my character was "wrong" about the veracity of the kidnapping report.
Some things to remember when running a plot in an MMO:
1) Every player has the right to decide if they want to be involved. Forcing plots down the throats of players who do not want to be involved is only going to piss them off.
2) When announcing an open plot that anyone can get involved in, ensure that the announcing event is available to everyone. If you don't, don't be surprised when people who weren't party to the announcement don't get involved in the plot.
3) Deciding what is real for characters that aren't your own is god-moding. God-moding is wrong. Deciding to gloat about it, and mentioning your intention to do so, OOC, is just petty and silly, and makes you look foolish.
There has recently been a plotline going on involving a "possibly rogue hero", who has essentially wrecked almost every level of trust she has with other heroes. My character knows this hero (for ease of use, let's call her "R"), likes her, and hoped that she was actually trying to trick the villain.
R is now pregnant with the villains's child (whoah, that's some trick she's trying to pull!), but was instrumental in his (illegal) arrest.
Now, my main plays the perception game. A lot. By that, I mean that he thinks it's better for people to believe he knows more than he does, and is more dangerous than he really is. As a civilian, he's generally friendly, cheerful, cheeky and (I hope) likeable. As a hero, he's a serious, cold-hearted, ruthless bastard. The heroic persona is a complete fabrication. He believes that people who actually know him will recognise that he puts on an act as soon as he puts on the spandex. Obviously, this disparity is designed to cause potential in-character conflict as people try to work out what's the truth.
During the investigation to find and deal with the villain and his plot to kill a lot of people, my character got into a very loud and very public argument with R. The reason? The villain, despite knowing that R cannot lie, did not entirely believe that she was not working against him. Probably a sensible move. So, in the interests of convincing the villain (I'm going to call him "S") that R was on the level, my character made it very publicly known that he no longer trusted R, and thought she was roughly on the level of pond scum.
Now, when he's not actively acting out a role, my character is very honest. He doesn't lie very well, and tends to broadcast his feelings in the things he says. So it became clear to a number of other heroes that my character was hiding something. Well, yes, he was - his real intentions. However, they decided to interpret this as him hiding some useful knowledge that would help with the investigation of the villain.
Due to this, after things got settled, one of those heroes decided to call down the full weight of the law on my character, because of his (to paraphrase) "suspicious behaviour that may constitute obstruction of justice".
Fair enough, and that's a completely reasonable response, given the suspicions flying around. But in-character the response I gave was one of anger. My character thinks he should have been trusted to help people. He's been an active hero in Paragon City for over three years solid, has saved the world a number of times, knows most of the more powerful heroes on a first-name basis, and believes that he deserves the benefit of the doubt. So when someone he considers a friend states quite clearly that she believes he's pulling a fast one, he gets angry.
Result: If she decides to pursue calling the feds down on him, he will sue for harrassment and defamation of character.
To be honest, I really didn't think much more of it. It's one of those fun little character conflicts that makes RPing so enjoyable to me.
Which now brings us to last night. I'm still decidedly unsure how I feel about what happened. I think I'm a bit peeved, to be completely honest.
Anyway, the villain had put in motion a plot that involved the kidnapping and unlawful incarceration of an 8-year old girl. Or at least that's what was claimed. I still don't know if it was "true".
Here's what happened from my perspective:
A number of heroes are chilling out at the local RP hangout, chatting, enjoying themselves, discussing recent events and so forth.
Suddenly, out of the blue, someone mentions a kidnapping. No preamble, no set-up. Just "There's been a kidnapping!" On querying this, my character hears that there has been an announcement over the police radio. I go and check all of my chatlogs, including the channels I don't keep open when I'm RPing, but there's nothing. Nada.
Now, given that I had no interest in getting involved in another plot so soon after dealing with the whole situation involving R and S, and given that the only source from which this alleged kidnapping has come is the same character who thinks my character is guilty of obstruction of justice, I decided not to get involved. Wasn't in the mood, was enjoying the casual chat RP going on, didn't want to get involved in the plot.
At which point this same character (I'm going to call her "P"), starts harranguing my character for not taking action. Not any of the other half-dozen characters who were still hanging around chatting - mine, and mine alone.
Now, since my character only had P's word that there was even anything going on, and given that he's less than happy with P at the moment, he pointed out that for all he knew, there was a mass delusion going on, because the so-called police announcement had not happened.
P then spends an absolute age moaning and whining at my character for not helping. Other people observe that P could have spent the time looking for the kidnap victim, which would have been productive.
Maybe I'm reading too much into things, but eventually P left to help with the rescue attempt, which was apparently successful, and P's player said on an out-of-game multi-user chatroom of which I am also a member, words to the effect of "now to confront someone about this 'delusional' kidnapping".
WHOAH, THERE!
Taking a step backward in time, now, I figured out what happened. The kidnapping was announced on an in-game Out Of Character chat channel of which I am not a member. Which is why I knew nothing about it. And if I know nothing about it, my character sure as hell knows less. Which is why my character responded in the way he did. If it had been a public announcement, I'm sure my character's response would have been different. But it wasn't. It was on a chat channel that I am not on, and have no interest in being on. Since I was not party to the announcement (which could VERY easily have been made in local or broadcast chat), and since I didn't want to get involved anyway, I am reacting very badly to someone who a) tried to bully me into taking part and b) has come across, OOC, as wanting to gloat that my character was "wrong" about the veracity of the kidnapping report.
Some things to remember when running a plot in an MMO:
1) Every player has the right to decide if they want to be involved. Forcing plots down the throats of players who do not want to be involved is only going to piss them off.
2) When announcing an open plot that anyone can get involved in, ensure that the announcing event is available to everyone. If you don't, don't be surprised when people who weren't party to the announcement don't get involved in the plot.
3) Deciding what is real for characters that aren't your own is god-moding. God-moding is wrong. Deciding to gloat about it, and mentioning your intention to do so, OOC, is just petty and silly, and makes you look foolish.
Monday 10 August 2009
Weekly Games: M&M
Well, last night was the (eventual) continuation of my "weekly" Mutants & Masterminds game. It got put off last week thanks to a last-minute change of plans on my part, involving my wife and I, both our cars, and my mother-in-law.
Thankfully the two weeks have given me the opportunity to think a little about the current plotline.
It was originally planned to be a brief side-step from the core campaign plot involving the sinister Zodiac Group, but, as ever, the GM took an idea and ran with it. This now has the potential to turn into a full-blown adventure, rather than a brief aside. Not that I intend to be at all bothered, though if my players complain, I'll have to take steps.
Last night was a wonderful talky session, no action at all, but a few conflict resolution rolls were needed (mostly Notice Checks) to see if things would be easy or hard.
As a recap, the teaching and support staff of Claremont Academy (in fact, every adult working there who is over the age of 20) have vanished! The pupils have called in outside help, because they want to keep things quiet and out of the press ( and that's because they don't really want it publicly known that they're all super-powered). So, they got in touch with the PCs who have gone over to see what they can learn.
From the OOC comments made, my plans are working quite well. There are a couple of suspicious characters at the school, and so far everyone is managing to treat the information they've been given the right way. Heck, they even managed to make one of the suspects cry. (I would say "like a girl", but she is a girl, so that would be a little pointless.)
The session was characterised by a few things I love about the online gameplay: Clear and concise communication between players, the ability of the GM to pass secret information to specific players, and a very clear demarcation between IC info and OOC info.
Problems that occured were pretty minimal, from my end - there was a small hiccough when I misread my map of the Academy's layout and described the wrong building as the PCs destination, and I misread the intent of one of the players who arrived after everyone else and mildly messed it up - neither of those were insurmountable issues, and neither actually caused any problems for anyone.
The party is starting to settle down into their personalities and roles, and it's a lot of fun to see certain people acting brashly, others being reconciliatory, others taking the lead - that sort of thing only comes to the fore in "talky" sessions, and it's truly wonderful to see.
I'm looking forward to this plotline (short or long), for a number of reasons - firstly is that it's my first attempt at a significant plot-twist in my M&M game (significant isn't the same thing as important). Secondly, I'm hoping to instill a sense of achievement - I can't say with what, because it will give away a major plot point. Thirdly because one part of it actually falls under the "moral ambiguity" issue, and I'm curious as to how the players choose to deal with that.
More on that as the plot develops.
That's it from me, for now - more coming after Wednesday (I hope), when I've had my D&D game.
Thankfully the two weeks have given me the opportunity to think a little about the current plotline.
It was originally planned to be a brief side-step from the core campaign plot involving the sinister Zodiac Group, but, as ever, the GM took an idea and ran with it. This now has the potential to turn into a full-blown adventure, rather than a brief aside. Not that I intend to be at all bothered, though if my players complain, I'll have to take steps.
Last night was a wonderful talky session, no action at all, but a few conflict resolution rolls were needed (mostly Notice Checks) to see if things would be easy or hard.
As a recap, the teaching and support staff of Claremont Academy (in fact, every adult working there who is over the age of 20) have vanished! The pupils have called in outside help, because they want to keep things quiet and out of the press ( and that's because they don't really want it publicly known that they're all super-powered). So, they got in touch with the PCs who have gone over to see what they can learn.
From the OOC comments made, my plans are working quite well. There are a couple of suspicious characters at the school, and so far everyone is managing to treat the information they've been given the right way. Heck, they even managed to make one of the suspects cry. (I would say "like a girl", but she is a girl, so that would be a little pointless.)
The session was characterised by a few things I love about the online gameplay: Clear and concise communication between players, the ability of the GM to pass secret information to specific players, and a very clear demarcation between IC info and OOC info.
Problems that occured were pretty minimal, from my end - there was a small hiccough when I misread my map of the Academy's layout and described the wrong building as the PCs destination, and I misread the intent of one of the players who arrived after everyone else and mildly messed it up - neither of those were insurmountable issues, and neither actually caused any problems for anyone.
The party is starting to settle down into their personalities and roles, and it's a lot of fun to see certain people acting brashly, others being reconciliatory, others taking the lead - that sort of thing only comes to the fore in "talky" sessions, and it's truly wonderful to see.
I'm looking forward to this plotline (short or long), for a number of reasons - firstly is that it's my first attempt at a significant plot-twist in my M&M game (significant isn't the same thing as important). Secondly, I'm hoping to instill a sense of achievement - I can't say with what, because it will give away a major plot point. Thirdly because one part of it actually falls under the "moral ambiguity" issue, and I'm curious as to how the players choose to deal with that.
More on that as the plot develops.
That's it from me, for now - more coming after Wednesday (I hope), when I've had my D&D game.
Friday 31 July 2009
Random gameplay: City of Heroes
Not a post about Roleplaying!
Last night was the latest foray into City of Heroes with a wonderful bunch of people I met through Rockjaw (and who are affectionately known on my Twitter feed as "Nutters").
We made an attempt at Statesman's Task Force, which is a Level 45-50, 8-man event of 5 missions. We only had 7 players, so we grabbed a filler to start it.
We were only able to complete the first three missions, with the next two due to complete... sometime. Since I'm taking my main character along, I'm hoping it will be sooner rather than later.
Of the team, not everyone had done the TF previously, and there was some variance in the team's levels (a L45 Ice/Kin Controller played by my wife, up to a L50 Energy/Energy Blaster played by me, with a smattering of L46/47s from everyone else).
Mission 1: Blow up 45 Giant Sticks of Rock!
Okay, that's not what it's called. Or even what it's about. But there's these big cables that look for all the world like giant sticks of Brighton Rock. Tactically it worked pretty well for that phase of the mission. The team left two of the sticks of rock near the start, in preparation for the inevitable AV spawn. I decided to go for comedy gold, though, and used /e dance6 while standing in the right spot... and when the cutscene kicked in, there I was, dancing in the background. Thankfully my Superspeed w/Stealth IO and Stealth power made me effectively invisible, so I didn't get instantly ganked when the cutscene ended... though when the first ambush arrived, the entire team got torn a new one. A couple more wipes later and we had beaten the stuffing out of Arbiter Sands.
Mission 2: Beat up a pile of people who think you're wimps!
This is one of the "Find and defeat some Archvillains" missions. There are four of them, spread throughout a future version of Atlas Park that has been claimed by Arachnos.
The cutscene in this mission is sheer genius - some of the best comic-style tongue-in-cheek lines ever. I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't played it yet, though. But it's funny every time I see it.
Other fun stuff that happened was facing Regent Korol (who, despite what one of the team claims, is just a big, scary, really tough spider - who cares if she has babies?), and the rather casual comment from me "Say goodbye to your health"... just as she dropped to 50% and fired off a nuke that wiped at least 75% off everyone's health.
Also, every single one of the archvillains seems to be surprised that the team is able to defeat them. Hang on, there, bub, we've been trapped by Dr Aeon because he's basically afraid of us - surely you might consider us some threat? Apparently not, because "This is impossible!", "This cannot be!", "How could there be heroes with any power left?" and "Now I'll never find out..."
"What happens next..."
"On my favorite soap operas..."
Okay, maybe that last one isn't about how tough the team is. Maybe.
The rest of that mission was pretty trivial, really.
Mission 3: Who's up for a respec?
This is the wonderful mission that is actually a villain respec trial. Somehow the "villain respec crew" who are found running through the mission managed to see through my Invisibility plus Superspeed w/ Stealth IO combo, and ripped me to shreds in seconds, but the rest of it was rather easy, up to and including working the vines around the Tree. Only 80 vines, this time - I'm used to 88, but this is probably because we only had a team of 7 - but the "Triple Pass" tactic worked as it usually does. For anyone not aware of this tactic, it's "Pass one: Defeat Circle of Thorns; Pass two: Damage vines; Pass three: Destroy vines". Three quick trips around the room, and the job is done.
Then pound the tree. Easy.
We've left it there, and I'm hoping that the 5 hour timer on the temp power is in-game time, not real-time.
Last night was the latest foray into City of Heroes with a wonderful bunch of people I met through Rockjaw (and who are affectionately known on my Twitter feed as "Nutters").
We made an attempt at Statesman's Task Force, which is a Level 45-50, 8-man event of 5 missions. We only had 7 players, so we grabbed a filler to start it.
We were only able to complete the first three missions, with the next two due to complete... sometime. Since I'm taking my main character along, I'm hoping it will be sooner rather than later.
Of the team, not everyone had done the TF previously, and there was some variance in the team's levels (a L45 Ice/Kin Controller played by my wife, up to a L50 Energy/Energy Blaster played by me, with a smattering of L46/47s from everyone else).
Mission 1: Blow up 45 Giant Sticks of Rock!
Okay, that's not what it's called. Or even what it's about. But there's these big cables that look for all the world like giant sticks of Brighton Rock. Tactically it worked pretty well for that phase of the mission. The team left two of the sticks of rock near the start, in preparation for the inevitable AV spawn. I decided to go for comedy gold, though, and used /e dance6 while standing in the right spot... and when the cutscene kicked in, there I was, dancing in the background. Thankfully my Superspeed w/Stealth IO and Stealth power made me effectively invisible, so I didn't get instantly ganked when the cutscene ended... though when the first ambush arrived, the entire team got torn a new one. A couple more wipes later and we had beaten the stuffing out of Arbiter Sands.
Mission 2: Beat up a pile of people who think you're wimps!
This is one of the "Find and defeat some Archvillains" missions. There are four of them, spread throughout a future version of Atlas Park that has been claimed by Arachnos.
The cutscene in this mission is sheer genius - some of the best comic-style tongue-in-cheek lines ever. I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't played it yet, though. But it's funny every time I see it.
Other fun stuff that happened was facing Regent Korol (who, despite what one of the team claims, is just a big, scary, really tough spider - who cares if she has babies?), and the rather casual comment from me "Say goodbye to your health"... just as she dropped to 50% and fired off a nuke that wiped at least 75% off everyone's health.
Also, every single one of the archvillains seems to be surprised that the team is able to defeat them. Hang on, there, bub, we've been trapped by Dr Aeon because he's basically afraid of us - surely you might consider us some threat? Apparently not, because "This is impossible!", "This cannot be!", "How could there be heroes with any power left?" and "Now I'll never find out..."
"What happens next..."
"On my favorite soap operas..."
Okay, maybe that last one isn't about how tough the team is. Maybe.
The rest of that mission was pretty trivial, really.
Mission 3: Who's up for a respec?
This is the wonderful mission that is actually a villain respec trial. Somehow the "villain respec crew" who are found running through the mission managed to see through my Invisibility plus Superspeed w/ Stealth IO combo, and ripped me to shreds in seconds, but the rest of it was rather easy, up to and including working the vines around the Tree. Only 80 vines, this time - I'm used to 88, but this is probably because we only had a team of 7 - but the "Triple Pass" tactic worked as it usually does. For anyone not aware of this tactic, it's "Pass one: Defeat Circle of Thorns; Pass two: Damage vines; Pass three: Destroy vines". Three quick trips around the room, and the job is done.
Then pound the tree. Easy.
We've left it there, and I'm hoping that the 5 hour timer on the temp power is in-game time, not real-time.
Monday 27 July 2009
Roleplaying fail.
Prompted by a Livejournal post by my friend Fusebox_Ellen about some RP in City of Heroes, I have decided to add some more thoughts.
As it should be obvious, I know the player and character to which she is referring, and it is a particularly reprehensible bottom-milliner who shall remain nameless.
For anyone who hasn't read that, this particular player claims to be autistic (in fact, isn't shy about declaring it), and is playing a several-thousand-year-old half-demon who also claims to be autistic.
Now, I'm no doctor. My speciality is astrophysics with a lively interest in cosmology and particle physics. My understanding of the autism spectrum is that the external signals are a lack of desire or interest in social interactions, coupled with narrowly focused repetitive actions. Within the realm of their condition, people with autism are frequently brilliant at the subject of their focus, but lack many of the skills deemed necessary to interact with the wider community.
Now then, we come to this player and his character. I'm going to call him "T". T's social skills are severely lacking. By which I mean that he has no concern for others.
In an online RP community such as City of Heroes, where you have to avoid stepping on each other's toes, the cardinal sin is God-moding - dictating the actions and/or effects of actions on characters that are not your own. Different people react to it in different ways, and the same person might react differently depending on the characters involved - for example, I have very few qualms about many of my characters' friends spontaneously giving them hugs, but if a stranger did it, I would react strongly and negatively OOC. The preferred method of approaching this sort of situation would be something along the lines of "Richard moves over to give Annette a hug" - I've not stated that he does give her a hug, just that he's intending to, which affords the recipient the opportunity to avoid it should they choose to.
Fortunately for me, I have never been on the receiving end of T's actions, so I've not had to deal with them. God-moding avoidance can easily escalate into e-peen measuring contests, and at the end of the day, I am not going to let someone else dictate to me what my character can or cannot do, or has happen to them. With the sole exception of a GM'd plotline, which is highly unlikely in the setting.
Further to the God-moding issue, there's also the thing that actually winds me up more than anything else, which is that T's character (I'll call him "Y", should I need to) is meant to be a superhero. Read that again, just to make sure you have it straight in your head. A SUPERHERO.
Superheroes, except certain particularly dark anti-hero types, generally do not threaten (not "pretend to threaten") to kill people in bars for not letting them queue-jump, and nor do they chase a villain onto the road and then stand there and laugh when said villain gets hit by a truck. HEROISM DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY, to borrow a phrase.
Now, to give him the benefit of the doubt, this hero makes no claim on being an ultimate paragon of virtue, but Y is not a villain pretending to be good so that he can live amongst heroes - he claims to be an honest-to-God, bona fide, hero. A hero who interacts more with villains than other heroes, who laughs at people who get run over by trucks on the street, and who loses his temper so easily that unless he can get to the front of the queue for the bar, he threatens to kill the people in his way.
That is not the way heroes behave, in my book.
The character explains away this social ineptitude by proclaiming loudly and often that he is autistic.
The player then defends his character's social ineptitude by proclaiming loudly and often that he is autistic.
Autism is being used as an excuse, it seems to me. An excuse when actually none is needed - the player is roleplaying after all, so it would be a simple enough matter to actually make the character a socially inept, rude, obnoxious sort. But the player doesn't seem to want that. He wants the character to be liked. And yet does things that make it almost impossible to actually like the character.
Perhaps an inability to learn is one of those things I don't know about autism. Could well be.
The character is despised by a sizeable fraction of the RP community in CoH, and the player is the subject of many a rant in certain circles. I don't know if that's unfair, and if the player autistic, then it probably is unfair. But I am still left with the nagging feeling that someone who truly was autistic would play a non-autistic character, and just quietly let people know that they struggle in social situations, so the character's behaviour might be a little off-centre... and that's only if the player is even capable of RPing at all, due to the underlying social nature of the activity.
As it should be obvious, I know the player and character to which she is referring, and it is a particularly reprehensible bottom-milliner who shall remain nameless.
For anyone who hasn't read that, this particular player claims to be autistic (in fact, isn't shy about declaring it), and is playing a several-thousand-year-old half-demon who also claims to be autistic.
Now, I'm no doctor. My speciality is astrophysics with a lively interest in cosmology and particle physics. My understanding of the autism spectrum is that the external signals are a lack of desire or interest in social interactions, coupled with narrowly focused repetitive actions. Within the realm of their condition, people with autism are frequently brilliant at the subject of their focus, but lack many of the skills deemed necessary to interact with the wider community.
Now then, we come to this player and his character. I'm going to call him "T". T's social skills are severely lacking. By which I mean that he has no concern for others.
In an online RP community such as City of Heroes, where you have to avoid stepping on each other's toes, the cardinal sin is God-moding - dictating the actions and/or effects of actions on characters that are not your own. Different people react to it in different ways, and the same person might react differently depending on the characters involved - for example, I have very few qualms about many of my characters' friends spontaneously giving them hugs, but if a stranger did it, I would react strongly and negatively OOC. The preferred method of approaching this sort of situation would be something along the lines of "Richard moves over to give Annette a hug" - I've not stated that he does give her a hug, just that he's intending to, which affords the recipient the opportunity to avoid it should they choose to.
Fortunately for me, I have never been on the receiving end of T's actions, so I've not had to deal with them. God-moding avoidance can easily escalate into e-peen measuring contests, and at the end of the day, I am not going to let someone else dictate to me what my character can or cannot do, or has happen to them. With the sole exception of a GM'd plotline, which is highly unlikely in the setting.
Further to the God-moding issue, there's also the thing that actually winds me up more than anything else, which is that T's character (I'll call him "Y", should I need to) is meant to be a superhero. Read that again, just to make sure you have it straight in your head. A SUPERHERO.
Superheroes, except certain particularly dark anti-hero types, generally do not threaten (not "pretend to threaten") to kill people in bars for not letting them queue-jump, and nor do they chase a villain onto the road and then stand there and laugh when said villain gets hit by a truck. HEROISM DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY, to borrow a phrase.
Now, to give him the benefit of the doubt, this hero makes no claim on being an ultimate paragon of virtue, but Y is not a villain pretending to be good so that he can live amongst heroes - he claims to be an honest-to-God, bona fide, hero. A hero who interacts more with villains than other heroes, who laughs at people who get run over by trucks on the street, and who loses his temper so easily that unless he can get to the front of the queue for the bar, he threatens to kill the people in his way.
That is not the way heroes behave, in my book.
The character explains away this social ineptitude by proclaiming loudly and often that he is autistic.
The player then defends his character's social ineptitude by proclaiming loudly and often that he is autistic.
Autism is being used as an excuse, it seems to me. An excuse when actually none is needed - the player is roleplaying after all, so it would be a simple enough matter to actually make the character a socially inept, rude, obnoxious sort. But the player doesn't seem to want that. He wants the character to be liked. And yet does things that make it almost impossible to actually like the character.
Perhaps an inability to learn is one of those things I don't know about autism. Could well be.
The character is despised by a sizeable fraction of the RP community in CoH, and the player is the subject of many a rant in certain circles. I don't know if that's unfair, and if the player autistic, then it probably is unfair. But I am still left with the nagging feeling that someone who truly was autistic would play a non-autistic character, and just quietly let people know that they struggle in social situations, so the character's behaviour might be a little off-centre... and that's only if the player is even capable of RPing at all, due to the underlying social nature of the activity.
Weekly Games: M&M
Okay, it was uncertain as to whether this post was ever going to be written. As anyone who read/commented on my previous post about this game will know, there were a few... struggles.
Well, that seems to have been pretty much cleared up, now (I hope), and last night we started the next adventure in the lives of the heroes.
There's been some shuffling around in the roster of the party (due to players being unable to commit to the game, and other players deciding that four tanks is more than enough.
So, here's the current crew:
Liberty Belle: Patriotic heroine and wielder of the Mace of Liberty (anyone else think that's funny?), this personification of Truth, Justice and the American Way is always there to Protect The Innocent and fight for Liberty (and so does her cape! Seriously - I love the cape. It's awesome)!
Axelerator: The team's resident speedster, a Russian immigrant who makes no attempt to hide his identity.
Procyon: Not an invasive medical procedure, this Energy Projector/Blaster uses the power of cosmic energy to fight the forces of evil!
Scrub: And if anyone else immediately thinks of a certain American hospital sitcom, I'm not alone! Scrub is a mystical wielder of arcane energies, particularly tied to the elements and natural world.
Rapscallion: Tech. Tech-techity-tech-tech-tech. With some added gadgetry and tech thrown in. Plus tech. We're talking stealth suit, flight belt, bike-mounted rocket launchers, blaster pistols, lock-picking gear, the works.
Fresh from the defeat (or was it...) of the Zodiac conspiracy, our heroes are flushed with success, becoming famous, and making a little headway into the crime prevalent in Freedom City with the absence of the Freedom League.
This week was a very talky session, with an NPC character asking for help with a slight problem - it seems that all of the teachers and adult staff at Claremont Academy (the local school for children with superpowers - not that most people know this) have vanished, and the kids have decided to ask for some discrete help from the heroes.
That was basically all that happened, but the character interaction was really coming out well - particularly the burgeoning relationship between Procyon and Rapscallion suffering as the extremely attractive Serena Vervain was asking them for help.
I enjoyed myself thoroughly, even with my usual struggle to manage RPing a character that isn't actually my own (Serena is an NPC from the Freedom City campaign setting), but I think I was able to pull it off.
The investigative side of the adventure - as well as the links to the previous adeventure - are due to kick off next session, so I'm just going to leave things with this thought:
Talking to players never hurts. Talking to GM never hurts, either. And if you're feeling the strain, taking a break and doing something different is a good thing.
Well, that seems to have been pretty much cleared up, now (I hope), and last night we started the next adventure in the lives of the heroes.
There's been some shuffling around in the roster of the party (due to players being unable to commit to the game, and other players deciding that four tanks is more than enough.
So, here's the current crew:
Liberty Belle: Patriotic heroine and wielder of the Mace of Liberty (anyone else think that's funny?), this personification of Truth, Justice and the American Way is always there to Protect The Innocent and fight for Liberty (and so does her cape! Seriously - I love the cape. It's awesome)!
Axelerator: The team's resident speedster, a Russian immigrant who makes no attempt to hide his identity.
Procyon: Not an invasive medical procedure, this Energy Projector/Blaster uses the power of cosmic energy to fight the forces of evil!
Scrub: And if anyone else immediately thinks of a certain American hospital sitcom, I'm not alone! Scrub is a mystical wielder of arcane energies, particularly tied to the elements and natural world.
Rapscallion: Tech. Tech-techity-tech-tech-tech. With some added gadgetry and tech thrown in. Plus tech. We're talking stealth suit, flight belt, bike-mounted rocket launchers, blaster pistols, lock-picking gear, the works.
Fresh from the defeat (or was it...) of the Zodiac conspiracy, our heroes are flushed with success, becoming famous, and making a little headway into the crime prevalent in Freedom City with the absence of the Freedom League.
This week was a very talky session, with an NPC character asking for help with a slight problem - it seems that all of the teachers and adult staff at Claremont Academy (the local school for children with superpowers - not that most people know this) have vanished, and the kids have decided to ask for some discrete help from the heroes.
That was basically all that happened, but the character interaction was really coming out well - particularly the burgeoning relationship between Procyon and Rapscallion suffering as the extremely attractive Serena Vervain was asking them for help.
I enjoyed myself thoroughly, even with my usual struggle to manage RPing a character that isn't actually my own (Serena is an NPC from the Freedom City campaign setting), but I think I was able to pull it off.
The investigative side of the adventure - as well as the links to the previous adeventure - are due to kick off next session, so I'm just going to leave things with this thought:
Talking to players never hurts. Talking to GM never hurts, either. And if you're feeling the strain, taking a break and doing something different is a good thing.
Weekly Games: D&D 4E
Well, it's that time of the week again where I recap what's been going on in the wonderful world of Chemlak.
In my 4E game this week... we had a lot of fun. I'm still somewhat bemused by this, and I have found myself thinking longingly of 3.5E characters and the 3.5E system.
As always, I'll try to avoid any serious spoilers, but suffice to say that the ongoing dungeon crawl is proceeding apace. Everyone is now pretty much settled into their roles and knows the effects of their powers, so combat is getting smoother and quicker.
I'm still ambivalent about the skill system, though, and I'm just waiting for a chance to dig in and use it more fully.
That's about all I've got to say on this right now - I don't hate the game, but I'm still unsure about its usefulness as a roleplaying system. Great power and combat system, though.
In my 4E game this week... we had a lot of fun. I'm still somewhat bemused by this, and I have found myself thinking longingly of 3.5E characters and the 3.5E system.
As always, I'll try to avoid any serious spoilers, but suffice to say that the ongoing dungeon crawl is proceeding apace. Everyone is now pretty much settled into their roles and knows the effects of their powers, so combat is getting smoother and quicker.
I'm still ambivalent about the skill system, though, and I'm just waiting for a chance to dig in and use it more fully.
That's about all I've got to say on this right now - I don't hate the game, but I'm still unsure about its usefulness as a roleplaying system. Great power and combat system, though.
Monday 13 July 2009
Weekly Games: M&M
On In Character Perspective and Paying Attention
Okay, it looks like my weekly Mutants & Masterminds game might have died a death last night. Which is a great shame, personally, because I had a lot more stories to play.
As an experiment, though, I believe it was successful, and I can happily report the following conclusion:
Without custom online playing tools, running an online Pen & Paper RPG is HARD. I regularly had upwards of ten open windows, just to manage normal play, as well as all of the rulebooks immediately to hand. It went smoothest when I had my darling wife acting as an assistant GM for me.
Now, this is not to say that it's impossible. It's not. It's just a lot of hard work. And when RPing becomes hard work, it stops being fun. Not a lot of point playing if you're not having fun.
Anyway, things kind of blew up a bit, last night. I'm still fairly bitter about what happened, but I'll try not to let that colour my points too much.
Okay, here's the scene:
The heroes have just rescued the Atlantean Princess from the villainous plot to hook her into a weather control machine, through the simple expedient of blowing the machine up with a rocket attack, and then beating the stuffing out of the bad guys.
Yay, awesome, woohoo and so forth.
The heroes are planning on taking the crooks to a police station that is capable of handling super-powered prisoners.
Fail the first: When informed that the anti-super police squad have their HQ at 14th precinct, opening the magical portal to 16th precinct doesn't help.
During the course of events, as the prisoners are being dragged toward the magical portal to the (wrong) police station, the Atlantean Princess mentions that the villains' plan involved hooking her up to "that strange machine".
Now, I'm going to digress here for a moment, to consider a few things about the Princess. Firstly, she's never visited the surface world before. Second, she lives underwater. Thirdly, electricity and water (especially salt water, like you tend to find in oceans) really do not mix. Fourthly, to the best of my knowledge (aided by a university course in geophysics), there's not a lot of weather in the depths of the oceans. So I don't consider it to be especially unusual that the Princess would consider a Reed-Richards-esque, high-technology, computer-controlled, human-interface weather control machine to be "strange".
Fail the second: When RPing online, and your GM has you as a friend on Steam, if you go off to play another game that is registered there, your GM gets a pop-up that tells him what you're doing.
I had some ideas on what to do when the players dragged the villains to the anti-super police squad's HQ. I was prepared to wing it, when it became clear that they were heading somewhere completely different.
So, thinks I, here we go for an RP-intensive cooldown session.
Fail the third: If you turn up for an online game session an hour after it starts, expressing surprise that very little has happened (other than some obviously unimportant dialogue) is not condusive to a fun mood.
I then got stopped dead. Completely. Utterly. As in, the-GM's-brain-has-stopped-functioning-because-he-cannot-comprehend-what-you-are-asking.
I can't remember the exact words, as I'm nowhere near my logs as I write this, but it went something like this:
"Strange machine? I don't remember nothing about no strange machine!"
"What does it look like? We can't continue until we get a response from Chem about this."
"Chem? Is it big? Small? Square? Round? What colour is it?"
Fail the fourth: When, in-character, a character who would not know what a weather control machine would looks like mentions a "strange machine", and the GM has only ever mentioned one machine being in that room, with that machine being the now-destroyed weather control machine that said character wouldn't recognise the appearance of, it is not the GREATEST leap of logic to assume that, since you, the players, destroyed said weather control machine last session, that just might be the "strange machine" to which the Atlantean Princess who has never even seen a car, radio or computer before is referring. Maybe.
Result: Game-lock. I kid you not. Because the players could not continue without getting a detailed description of a machine that they blew up last session.
I, not to put too fine a point on it, was stunned. Completely. So utterly stunned that I had to go outside for a cigarette (don't smoke - it's bad for you). While I was gone my darling wife (with my blessing) took over the keyboard for me and got so frustrated with the replies she got that she logged out of the chat server.
Again, I kid you not. Apparently, asking for a detailed description of a room-sized piece of destroyed machinery is "trying to move the game toward the police station". I still can't figure out how.
I will always believe that no plot survives contact with the players, but there's a difference between the plot and "extraneous gubbins".
So, as a result of this, it's quite likely that the game isn't going to go anywhere. Which is a shame, because it has been a lot of fun, but at the same time it's been a lot of work.
Okay, it looks like my weekly Mutants & Masterminds game might have died a death last night. Which is a great shame, personally, because I had a lot more stories to play.
As an experiment, though, I believe it was successful, and I can happily report the following conclusion:
Without custom online playing tools, running an online Pen & Paper RPG is HARD. I regularly had upwards of ten open windows, just to manage normal play, as well as all of the rulebooks immediately to hand. It went smoothest when I had my darling wife acting as an assistant GM for me.
Now, this is not to say that it's impossible. It's not. It's just a lot of hard work. And when RPing becomes hard work, it stops being fun. Not a lot of point playing if you're not having fun.
Anyway, things kind of blew up a bit, last night. I'm still fairly bitter about what happened, but I'll try not to let that colour my points too much.
Okay, here's the scene:
The heroes have just rescued the Atlantean Princess from the villainous plot to hook her into a weather control machine, through the simple expedient of blowing the machine up with a rocket attack, and then beating the stuffing out of the bad guys.
Yay, awesome, woohoo and so forth.
The heroes are planning on taking the crooks to a police station that is capable of handling super-powered prisoners.
Fail the first: When informed that the anti-super police squad have their HQ at 14th precinct, opening the magical portal to 16th precinct doesn't help.
During the course of events, as the prisoners are being dragged toward the magical portal to the (wrong) police station, the Atlantean Princess mentions that the villains' plan involved hooking her up to "that strange machine".
Now, I'm going to digress here for a moment, to consider a few things about the Princess. Firstly, she's never visited the surface world before. Second, she lives underwater. Thirdly, electricity and water (especially salt water, like you tend to find in oceans) really do not mix. Fourthly, to the best of my knowledge (aided by a university course in geophysics), there's not a lot of weather in the depths of the oceans. So I don't consider it to be especially unusual that the Princess would consider a Reed-Richards-esque, high-technology, computer-controlled, human-interface weather control machine to be "strange".
Fail the second: When RPing online, and your GM has you as a friend on Steam, if you go off to play another game that is registered there, your GM gets a pop-up that tells him what you're doing.
I had some ideas on what to do when the players dragged the villains to the anti-super police squad's HQ. I was prepared to wing it, when it became clear that they were heading somewhere completely different.
So, thinks I, here we go for an RP-intensive cooldown session.
Fail the third: If you turn up for an online game session an hour after it starts, expressing surprise that very little has happened (other than some obviously unimportant dialogue) is not condusive to a fun mood.
I then got stopped dead. Completely. Utterly. As in, the-GM's-brain-has-stopped-functioning-because-he-cannot-comprehend-what-you-are-asking.
I can't remember the exact words, as I'm nowhere near my logs as I write this, but it went something like this:
"Strange machine? I don't remember nothing about no strange machine!"
"What does it look like? We can't continue until we get a response from Chem about this."
"Chem? Is it big? Small? Square? Round? What colour is it?"
Fail the fourth: When, in-character, a character who would not know what a weather control machine would looks like mentions a "strange machine", and the GM has only ever mentioned one machine being in that room, with that machine being the now-destroyed weather control machine that said character wouldn't recognise the appearance of, it is not the GREATEST leap of logic to assume that, since you, the players, destroyed said weather control machine last session, that just might be the "strange machine" to which the Atlantean Princess who has never even seen a car, radio or computer before is referring. Maybe.
Result: Game-lock. I kid you not. Because the players could not continue without getting a detailed description of a machine that they blew up last session.
I, not to put too fine a point on it, was stunned. Completely. So utterly stunned that I had to go outside for a cigarette (don't smoke - it's bad for you). While I was gone my darling wife (with my blessing) took over the keyboard for me and got so frustrated with the replies she got that she logged out of the chat server.
Again, I kid you not. Apparently, asking for a detailed description of a room-sized piece of destroyed machinery is "trying to move the game toward the police station". I still can't figure out how.
I will always believe that no plot survives contact with the players, but there's a difference between the plot and "extraneous gubbins".
So, as a result of this, it's quite likely that the game isn't going to go anywhere. Which is a shame, because it has been a lot of fun, but at the same time it's been a lot of work.
Thursday 2 July 2009
Epic Blogathon? Unlikely. Touching base, more like.
"Chemlak, you've been gone so long! What's the matter?"
Okay, no one's actually asked me that. That's okay, you're all busy people. So am I. That's kind of what's been happening, really. Life got a bit busy for a while.
And it probably will be getting busier in the near future, so there'll be even less posts from me for a while.
Having said that, though, I'll try to squeeze my weekly (*cough* that didn't work well, did it? *cough*) updates on my regular games in at some point.
So, what has Chem been up to?
Well, other than the day job, pretty much the usual.
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday = City of Heroes (either playing or roleplaying)
Wednesday = 4E Dungeons and Dragons
Sunday = Mutants and Masterminds
As far as City of Heroes is concerned - I've recently started enjoying myself more and more.
Now, to anyone who doesn't know CoH - and more particularly roleplaying in CoH, on the European servers, the unofficial RP server is Union, and on that server, there are two regular and fixed RP meeting places, where anyone is welcome to drop in: Underneath the Galaxy Girl statue in the Galaxy City zone, and the bars in Pocket D. Of course, people RP in other places, but those are where you end up if you just want to RP a character. Suits me fine. My main character, Shadowe, frequented the Galaxy Girl meet (9pm UK time, every day) from mid-2006 until a few months ago. Now I drag him along to Pocket D, and I have to admit, I'm having a blast. New faces, new conversations, new everything, to me. Great fun.
One thing that recently changed in CoH is the introduction of the RPers dream - user created content, aka Mission Architect. We can write our own missions! Populate them with custom enemies! Write the dialogue! It's great. But I have spent an age pondering it, unsure how to actually use this feature for roleplaying.
Then a friend of mine decided to run a plot, using an Architect storyline for the missions. It was fantastic fun, well written, and generally well managed - though there were one or two problems. Undettered, though, we carried on, and saved the day, in a way that has never been possible before. I even wrote a little guide for using Architect as a plot-master, and posted it on the Official Forum for the game. You can find it here: http://uk.boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=1376229&an=0&page=0#Post1376229
In Dungeons and Dragons, we've been carrying on the published adventure, and I'm enjoying it more and more. Maybe it's just me getting more experiences with the system, but my objections to it are being slowly worn away thanks to two things: The enthusiasm my gaming group is showing for it, and the fact that I remembered GMing Rule Zero - the rules are there to help tell the story. If they get in the way, IGNORE THE RULES.
Yay! Peace reigns, because Chem remembered that he could do what he wanted, and found reasonable.
For Mutants and Masterminds the adventure continues. We've finished the current "episode" (for want of a better term), which means that the story has reached a convenient break point, and I intend to have a couple of relaxing weeks before diving back into the campaign's meta-plot.
That's it from me, for now. More soon, hopefully.
Okay, no one's actually asked me that. That's okay, you're all busy people. So am I. That's kind of what's been happening, really. Life got a bit busy for a while.
And it probably will be getting busier in the near future, so there'll be even less posts from me for a while.
Having said that, though, I'll try to squeeze my weekly (*cough* that didn't work well, did it? *cough*) updates on my regular games in at some point.
So, what has Chem been up to?
Well, other than the day job, pretty much the usual.
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday = City of Heroes (either playing or roleplaying)
Wednesday = 4E Dungeons and Dragons
Sunday = Mutants and Masterminds
As far as City of Heroes is concerned - I've recently started enjoying myself more and more.
Now, to anyone who doesn't know CoH - and more particularly roleplaying in CoH, on the European servers, the unofficial RP server is Union, and on that server, there are two regular and fixed RP meeting places, where anyone is welcome to drop in: Underneath the Galaxy Girl statue in the Galaxy City zone, and the bars in Pocket D. Of course, people RP in other places, but those are where you end up if you just want to RP a character. Suits me fine. My main character, Shadowe, frequented the Galaxy Girl meet (9pm UK time, every day) from mid-2006 until a few months ago. Now I drag him along to Pocket D, and I have to admit, I'm having a blast. New faces, new conversations, new everything, to me. Great fun.
One thing that recently changed in CoH is the introduction of the RPers dream - user created content, aka Mission Architect. We can write our own missions! Populate them with custom enemies! Write the dialogue! It's great. But I have spent an age pondering it, unsure how to actually use this feature for roleplaying.
Then a friend of mine decided to run a plot, using an Architect storyline for the missions. It was fantastic fun, well written, and generally well managed - though there were one or two problems. Undettered, though, we carried on, and saved the day, in a way that has never been possible before. I even wrote a little guide for using Architect as a plot-master, and posted it on the Official Forum for the game. You can find it here: http://uk.boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=1376229&an=0&page=0#Post1376229
In Dungeons and Dragons, we've been carrying on the published adventure, and I'm enjoying it more and more. Maybe it's just me getting more experiences with the system, but my objections to it are being slowly worn away thanks to two things: The enthusiasm my gaming group is showing for it, and the fact that I remembered GMing Rule Zero - the rules are there to help tell the story. If they get in the way, IGNORE THE RULES.
Yay! Peace reigns, because Chem remembered that he could do what he wanted, and found reasonable.
For Mutants and Masterminds the adventure continues. We've finished the current "episode" (for want of a better term), which means that the story has reached a convenient break point, and I intend to have a couple of relaxing weeks before diving back into the campaign's meta-plot.
That's it from me, for now. More soon, hopefully.
Thursday 18 June 2009
What's this I see? A change of heart?
Two things to write about, here. First is that the iPhone OS 3.0 is a bit weird. I think I need to hunt down some documentation on it. And it killed my iPhone for pretty much the entirety of last night, which was worrying. All working now, though.
The second thing is Dungeons & Dragons 4E. As usual, I played it last night (while waiting for the Apple authentication server to start working properly), and I had a strange experience. I actually enjoyed playing it.
Okay, that may sound like a weird statement from an inveterate roleplayer, but anyone who's read my previous blog posts about it, or the huge comments I've made on Rockjaw's blog about it, will know that I've had reservations about 4E. Great big huge steaming reservations. And last night they didn't exist.
Let me just clarify - my Wednesday night games are not huge story-based epic adventures with in-depth character development and convoluted plotlines. They're a chance for some people to get round a table, chatter for a few hours, roll some dice and have fun. I'll also freely admit that I'm a bit of a rules-monkey, so I love being able to see how rules fit together, and I still believe that D&D3.5E is the pinnacle of rules for the D&D game.
So... what changed last night?
There have been a couple of alterations to the way we play the game, recently. The best is the addition of a whiteboard for tracking the status of the PCs. The information tracked on it is Character Name, Healing Surges Remaining, Total of Healing Surges, Healing Surge Value, Action Points, Total Hit Points, Current Hit Points and Conditions - all on a nice table, with enough space to make changes, and the best bit about it is that I don't keep track of it. I gave that job to one of my players. I now use index cards to track initiative order, too. I'm still writing down the initiative scores, because when a combat is in the offing I've got too much on my mind to shuffle index cards into order at that stage. But all I have to track on my "GM Combat Pad" are the bad guys. There's a good 50% of my work in combat delegated. Awesome!
So, those changes sped up combat no end. Another interesting thing that happened was that the PCs started working together a bit more. That's kind of a vague thing to assess, but they were pulling together more, bouncing plans and ideas off each other more, and it just seemed to be smoother. This did have an effect on combat, but it was most obvious in the course of some investigative conversations that they had as they tried to discover more about what was really going on.
I had fun, it was easier than it's ever been, and I could put the game system to one side and focus a lot more on the story than the rules... and so I enjoyed it.
I'm not a 4E convert, by any means, but I learned a valuable lesson about it - except in combat, throw out the rulebook. Honestly. The adventure stipulated a "Skill Challenge" for one part of last night's session... and I just utterly ignored the Skill Challenge mechanic, allowing a couple of quick skill rolls to settle things (which sounds a bit like a skill challenge, but isn't), and drove the adventure forward. It worked. We'll have to see if it can continue.
The second thing is Dungeons & Dragons 4E. As usual, I played it last night (while waiting for the Apple authentication server to start working properly), and I had a strange experience. I actually enjoyed playing it.
Okay, that may sound like a weird statement from an inveterate roleplayer, but anyone who's read my previous blog posts about it, or the huge comments I've made on Rockjaw's blog about it, will know that I've had reservations about 4E. Great big huge steaming reservations. And last night they didn't exist.
Let me just clarify - my Wednesday night games are not huge story-based epic adventures with in-depth character development and convoluted plotlines. They're a chance for some people to get round a table, chatter for a few hours, roll some dice and have fun. I'll also freely admit that I'm a bit of a rules-monkey, so I love being able to see how rules fit together, and I still believe that D&D3.5E is the pinnacle of rules for the D&D game.
So... what changed last night?
There have been a couple of alterations to the way we play the game, recently. The best is the addition of a whiteboard for tracking the status of the PCs. The information tracked on it is Character Name, Healing Surges Remaining, Total of Healing Surges, Healing Surge Value, Action Points, Total Hit Points, Current Hit Points and Conditions - all on a nice table, with enough space to make changes, and the best bit about it is that I don't keep track of it. I gave that job to one of my players. I now use index cards to track initiative order, too. I'm still writing down the initiative scores, because when a combat is in the offing I've got too much on my mind to shuffle index cards into order at that stage. But all I have to track on my "GM Combat Pad" are the bad guys. There's a good 50% of my work in combat delegated. Awesome!
So, those changes sped up combat no end. Another interesting thing that happened was that the PCs started working together a bit more. That's kind of a vague thing to assess, but they were pulling together more, bouncing plans and ideas off each other more, and it just seemed to be smoother. This did have an effect on combat, but it was most obvious in the course of some investigative conversations that they had as they tried to discover more about what was really going on.
I had fun, it was easier than it's ever been, and I could put the game system to one side and focus a lot more on the story than the rules... and so I enjoyed it.
I'm not a 4E convert, by any means, but I learned a valuable lesson about it - except in combat, throw out the rulebook. Honestly. The adventure stipulated a "Skill Challenge" for one part of last night's session... and I just utterly ignored the Skill Challenge mechanic, allowing a couple of quick skill rolls to settle things (which sounds a bit like a skill challenge, but isn't), and drove the adventure forward. It worked. We'll have to see if it can continue.
Wednesday 27 May 2009
How to NOT roleplay...
I have to share this. It cracks me up.
For the last few nights that I've been in City of Heroes, I've been popping along to Pocket D... because I've been finding the RP a lot more fun than what's been happening at Galaxy Girl, recently.
Anyway, for anyone who doesn't know, Pocket D is a nightclub that is designated Neutral Territory, so heroes and villains can interact without coming to blows.
Let's start with Saturday night:
My wife was in there, RPing on one of her infrequently played characters. She had a brief conversation with a character that she described as "sooooo boring!"
Sunday Night
Said "boring" character was chatting up (badly) a character played by Shadow Kitty of the Echelon SG (of which I am a member on a couple of toons). Kitty shot him down like a pheasant. Can't really blame him - the guy was hurling hyperbolic compliments at his character like they were going out of fashion.
Within about a minute of being shot down, said character had turned to a completely different character, played by Fanservice (whom I know from a number of places in-game), and was asking his character for "a kiss".
I snerked.
Monday Night
This character was at it again... chatting up "random female toon" with insanely over-the-top compliments: "I have lived amongst the angels, and I can say that you are more beautiful than any of them, lady Bea". Cue appropriate hurling.
He was trying to persuade her to go out to dinner. She just wanted to know what kind of food. How hard would that be to answer? Apparently very. Italian. Chinese. Japanese. He even offered to fly her out to Japan for some real Japanese cuisine... fine, but you're trying to hard, numb-nuts! Just pick something, take her out, and give up on the extreme puke-making compliments, because it makes you look like a 16-year old kid wanting to get his rocks off with some cyber-sex.
My character has a reputation as a bit of a man-whore (he's not... honest...), and managed to utterly destroy this poor fool's chances with a well-placed business card containing the message "I know a great Thai place. Give me a call when you get bored."
Hint to people attempting to RP men who compliment women. NEVER MAKE THE FIRST CONVERSATION THE ONE WITH THE COMPLIMENTS. Save them for the second one. The first one is all about getting to know the character.
For the last few nights that I've been in City of Heroes, I've been popping along to Pocket D... because I've been finding the RP a lot more fun than what's been happening at Galaxy Girl, recently.
Anyway, for anyone who doesn't know, Pocket D is a nightclub that is designated Neutral Territory, so heroes and villains can interact without coming to blows.
Let's start with Saturday night:
My wife was in there, RPing on one of her infrequently played characters. She had a brief conversation with a character that she described as "sooooo boring!"
Sunday Night
Said "boring" character was chatting up (badly) a character played by Shadow Kitty of the Echelon SG (of which I am a member on a couple of toons). Kitty shot him down like a pheasant. Can't really blame him - the guy was hurling hyperbolic compliments at his character like they were going out of fashion.
Within about a minute of being shot down, said character had turned to a completely different character, played by Fanservice (whom I know from a number of places in-game), and was asking his character for "a kiss".
I snerked.
Monday Night
This character was at it again... chatting up "random female toon" with insanely over-the-top compliments: "I have lived amongst the angels, and I can say that you are more beautiful than any of them, lady Bea". Cue appropriate hurling.
He was trying to persuade her to go out to dinner. She just wanted to know what kind of food. How hard would that be to answer? Apparently very. Italian. Chinese. Japanese. He even offered to fly her out to Japan for some real Japanese cuisine... fine, but you're trying to hard, numb-nuts! Just pick something, take her out, and give up on the extreme puke-making compliments, because it makes you look like a 16-year old kid wanting to get his rocks off with some cyber-sex.
My character has a reputation as a bit of a man-whore (he's not... honest...), and managed to utterly destroy this poor fool's chances with a well-placed business card containing the message "I know a great Thai place. Give me a call when you get bored."
Hint to people attempting to RP men who compliment women. NEVER MAKE THE FIRST CONVERSATION THE ONE WITH THE COMPLIMENTS. Save them for the second one. The first one is all about getting to know the character.
End of Hiatus?
Well, I've actually been RPing recently, but thanks to the sheer terror that is my job, I've not had a chance to write anything here about it.
I'll try to find time over the weekend to bring everyone up to speed on where things are at.
For the record, though, tonight's scheduled D&D4E game is going ahead, and is due to see some actual roleplaying rather than monster-bashing, and I'm seriously looking forward to it.
In Mutants & Masterminds, I played one of my favourite GMing tricks, which is to have the "turncoat NPC" arrive on the scene, utterly confusing the characters (and their players, apparently), with the second introduction of Gemini - this time in person - on the side of the PCs... well, if you can call a battered and bruised woman with a knife in her back as being on their side. Well, I say Gemini... technically, this is Sister Gemini. What happens to Brother Gemini off-screen is a whole different story. Next session should see some nice plot progression as Gemini is questioned, as well as the proper introduction of Aquarius - as one of the PCs keeps saying "lamest villain group theme ever" - and they should start to see more of the metaplot unfold. I hope.
Note to self: NO PLOT SURVIVES CONTACT WITH THE PLAYERS.
I'll try to find time over the weekend to bring everyone up to speed on where things are at.
For the record, though, tonight's scheduled D&D4E game is going ahead, and is due to see some actual roleplaying rather than monster-bashing, and I'm seriously looking forward to it.
In Mutants & Masterminds, I played one of my favourite GMing tricks, which is to have the "turncoat NPC" arrive on the scene, utterly confusing the characters (and their players, apparently), with the second introduction of Gemini - this time in person - on the side of the PCs... well, if you can call a battered and bruised woman with a knife in her back as being on their side. Well, I say Gemini... technically, this is Sister Gemini. What happens to Brother Gemini off-screen is a whole different story. Next session should see some nice plot progression as Gemini is questioned, as well as the proper introduction of Aquarius - as one of the PCs keeps saying "lamest villain group theme ever" - and they should start to see more of the metaplot unfold. I hope.
Note to self: NO PLOT SURVIVES CONTACT WITH THE PLAYERS.
Monday 11 May 2009
Brief RPG Hiatus
Well, in case anyone's wondering, I'm on a (very) brief hiatus from RP for personal reasons. Naturally, this does nothing to change my general feelings about roleplaying, Dungeons & Dragons, Mutants & Masterminds and City of Heroes, so I'll try to think of something relevant to post about in the near future.
On another note, killing zombies is incredibly cathartic, so I'd recommend Left 4 Dead and Plants vs. Zombies (both available on Steam) to anyone.
On another note, killing zombies is incredibly cathartic, so I'd recommend Left 4 Dead and Plants vs. Zombies (both available on Steam) to anyone.
Tuesday 5 May 2009
Irregular Games: D&D 4E
What a weekend...
A group of my friends and I get together for some irregular gaming sessions every once in a while. We're currently playing a D&D 4E game, DM'd by my friend Matt, with myself and his two brothers Ian and Simon as the "core" players, and their friend Jim, my friend James and my friend Adam as additional players as and when they can turn up. We're going through the low-end published adventure "Keep on the Shadowfell" right now... and just had one hell of a weekend playing it.
There's a lot to say, and I'm frankly not all that inclined to go into the huge story of what's going on - play the adventure yourself, you lazy sod! - but there are a few things that have stuck in my mind about how it's gone.
1) 4E is a good miniatures game. It really is. Loads of fun options for the characters, in-depth combat choices, fast and simple tactical movement rules.
2) It's hard to actually roleplay in a dungeon crawl. 3 solid days of gaming. Total of all interaction encounters: Zero. Zip. Nadda. Total of intra-party RP as a result... naff-all.
3) The rules ain't finished, yet! I found not one, not two, but THREE distinct sets of rules about holding your breath. The first is in the PHB, and says that you must make an Endurance check every round after the 5th round of holding your breath, starting at DC 10, increasing by +1 every round thereafter. The second is in the DMG, where it says that after 3 minutes of holding your breath, you must make a DC 20 Endurance check, increasing by +5 every minute thereafter. The third is also in the DMG, on the same page as that second one, and says that if a character is exerting themselves, they must make a DC 20 Endurance check every round (note - there is no mention of this DC increasing over time, unlike the other two sets of rules). When you have characters in combat trying to hold their breath, it becomes quite important to have consistent rules. These ain't consistent. Okay, maybe there's something in the errata... but I don't want to have to have a printout of the errata document to hand when I'm playing.
4) It's a lot of fun, but most of that fun is social between the players. Cue the "chocolate finger" jokes that were flying around for most of the weekend. I won't explain that. But it was bloody hilarious. Rockjaw has waxed lyrical on this issue in the past - the game doesn't matter, the people are what's important. Given the good company I had over the weekend, we could have been playing live action Frogger (don't try this at home, kids!) and it would have been good fun.
Conclusion: I'm not a fan of D&D 4E. To me, it's just another roleplaying system, and has lost a lot of what made D&D my favourite, and has become so deeply integrated with miniatures that it's lost a lot of its spontanaeity and mental visualisation. I think this is a shame, even if it makes sense commercially.
I shall soldier on with my Wednesday night game for the duration of the current adventure... but after that I'm going to try to persuade my group that it might be an idea to try a different game for a while. Maybe a one-shot or three, just to take a break.
A group of my friends and I get together for some irregular gaming sessions every once in a while. We're currently playing a D&D 4E game, DM'd by my friend Matt, with myself and his two brothers Ian and Simon as the "core" players, and their friend Jim, my friend James and my friend Adam as additional players as and when they can turn up. We're going through the low-end published adventure "Keep on the Shadowfell" right now... and just had one hell of a weekend playing it.
There's a lot to say, and I'm frankly not all that inclined to go into the huge story of what's going on - play the adventure yourself, you lazy sod! - but there are a few things that have stuck in my mind about how it's gone.
1) 4E is a good miniatures game. It really is. Loads of fun options for the characters, in-depth combat choices, fast and simple tactical movement rules.
2) It's hard to actually roleplay in a dungeon crawl. 3 solid days of gaming. Total of all interaction encounters: Zero. Zip. Nadda. Total of intra-party RP as a result... naff-all.
3) The rules ain't finished, yet! I found not one, not two, but THREE distinct sets of rules about holding your breath. The first is in the PHB, and says that you must make an Endurance check every round after the 5th round of holding your breath, starting at DC 10, increasing by +1 every round thereafter. The second is in the DMG, where it says that after 3 minutes of holding your breath, you must make a DC 20 Endurance check, increasing by +5 every minute thereafter. The third is also in the DMG, on the same page as that second one, and says that if a character is exerting themselves, they must make a DC 20 Endurance check every round (note - there is no mention of this DC increasing over time, unlike the other two sets of rules). When you have characters in combat trying to hold their breath, it becomes quite important to have consistent rules. These ain't consistent. Okay, maybe there's something in the errata... but I don't want to have to have a printout of the errata document to hand when I'm playing.
4) It's a lot of fun, but most of that fun is social between the players. Cue the "chocolate finger" jokes that were flying around for most of the weekend. I won't explain that. But it was bloody hilarious. Rockjaw has waxed lyrical on this issue in the past - the game doesn't matter, the people are what's important. Given the good company I had over the weekend, we could have been playing live action Frogger (don't try this at home, kids!) and it would have been good fun.
Conclusion: I'm not a fan of D&D 4E. To me, it's just another roleplaying system, and has lost a lot of what made D&D my favourite, and has become so deeply integrated with miniatures that it's lost a lot of its spontanaeity and mental visualisation. I think this is a shame, even if it makes sense commercially.
I shall soldier on with my Wednesday night game for the duration of the current adventure... but after that I'm going to try to persuade my group that it might be an idea to try a different game for a while. Maybe a one-shot or three, just to take a break.
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