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.
Friday 31 July 2009
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.
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