Oh, Chem, where art thou?

I'm sure my faithful followers have been missing posts from me for the last couple of weeks. (If you haven't, there's no need to tell me.)

Why, when I run two weekly games and spend an inordinate amount of time RPing, have I not posted, I hear you cry?

Well, it's mostly been as a result of my personal life - Easter is always busy at home - and my wife's job. So I actually haven't RPd as much as I would normally like to. So, no updates on my regular games at the moment, I'm afraid, which leaves me wondering what to write about.

I could write about City of Heroes Issue 14: Architect.
I could write about the troubles I'm having RPing in City of Heroes right now.
I could write more thoughts about Dungeons & Dragons 4E.
I could tell you all some really boring stuff about my job.

Well, okay, I'm not going to discuss that last one, but I will talk about Architect for a while and see if I can write a post that at least has some purpose.

Architect
Those geniuses at Paragon Studios (previously NCNorCal) have recently released the latest update for City of Heroes - Issue 14: Architect.

In short, this update is a roleplayer's wet dream. I'm really not joking. Customisable, player created content. Craft your own missions and story arcs, share them with friends or with the player base as a whole. This update blows the curve of potentiality in an MMO, and I love it. I've already written two published arcs (Training Day and Psychotrauma) under my CoH pseudonym of Shadowe. I have several more in the works right now, too, including one that's shaping up to be a personal favourite.

Of the two arcs I've previously written, Psychotrauma is something of an ego trip, featuring a number of my own characters in what I can best describe as a "non-Unionverse" arc. (For those of you who might not be in the know, I roleplay in CoH on Union server in the EU server list, and the RP community as a whole try to keep a consistent canon-esque reality that is known as the Unionverse. Psychotrauma does not (currently) fit within the Unionverse continuity.) I have tried very hard to ensure that my characters don't steal the show in the arc - it's all about the player(s) helping them deal with a particularly troublesome supervillain (also one of my characters, converted using Architect to more accurately reflect the capabilities he should have, based on my original version of him... and that's a whole post in itself, so more on that another day). It's lighthearted fun, and introduction to my characters. It was never meant to be a great work of fiction, and I will admit that it does feature two of the most painful high-end standard villain groups in the game - Malta and Knives of Artemis - which means that it can be very painful to anyone not used to dealing with those groups.

Training Day was an attempt to create something as close to a "standard" mission as I could manage, using standard game resources. The premise is simple - it starts of with a hero being trained by Ms. Liberty, who assesses the hero's success or failure. There are a couple of plot twists in it, that I won't ruin by mentioning here, and is aimed at high-end characters, utilising Psychic Clockwork and The Carnival of Shadows, to name two of the villain groups in it. ArchVillains appear throughout the arc, so it's not a bad idea to be ready for them.

Away from my own arcs, though, I've played a few arcs by other people - mostly friends of mine, but every now and then I pick a random arc and give it a go - and I have to say that overall things are looking good.

There are some problems with it - mostly to do with obvious limitations of the Architect system in its current form - but this a tremendous step forward for the game. I'm looking forward to using Architect to run some custom semi-GMed RP plotlines in the near future.

Hmm... I was hoping to write more, and if anyone has any comments that spark more thoughts, I'll try to be as detailed and complete as I can.