Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Ideas for the campaign, Part 1

So I'm thinking that I should post some ideas behind the campaign I've been working on since I was still on the boat. So here's the start, the basics of character creation for this campaign.

I am not a fan of 1st level DnD characters. I don't like players running characters that can be slaughtered by a house cat, so I don't start at level 1. Plus anyone who has seen my design philosophy or has played under me before has seen the terror I create for players. The last campaign I ran was using nothing but pre-made WotC modules and I almost slaughtered 4 players without trying multiple times.

So for my campaign I decided that the players will start at level 4 or 5. The level depends on the number of players I have. If I get up to 5 or 6 players it will start with level 4 characters. 3 or 4 players will be level 5. I'm pretty happy with that starting level because it gives you access to the abilities and skills that are a lot of fun and you still have plenty of time to adapt the character to the feel of the campaign.

I don't like random stats anymore. Just too many broken hearts and whining players happen with the use of it. I also think most of the point buys end up with too low of stats. So what I'm doing for this campaign setting is this, the characters are meant to be high powered. They are high end combatants to begin with, exemplars of their current experience level. So with this I decided to use the following starting stats to give the players the best possible chance to make the ideal character. The stats are 13-18.

What I mean by that is that they use 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18 to be distributed as they see fit. This gives them nothing but positive stats and let's them have high end characters from the beginning. It fits the feel of the player characters that I want for this campaign as well.

I'm still up in the air on this next one, I want to allow double starting gold. Not sure what that will really do for the PCs but I think it fits the feel I want for the PCs.

Class selection is up to DM approval, but is pretty much open. I just want it to make sense for a character.

Finally I want people to have free reign on race selection for characters. I've never liked the way the Savage/Monstrous Races are handled by the game. I've decided to eliminate the Monstrous Hit Die and the advantages they confer. I want to allow the players to use a monstrous race if they want to. The race selection needs to be kept simple and is up to DM approval in the end.

I'm still up for suggestions on this. I'm still up in the air on all of this. If anyone has ideas let me know. I'm always open for improvements.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

MMOs suck

Well kind of.
There's something about the scale of an MMO that calls to me in a primal way. I don't understand exactly what it is but I know I do enjoy the gameplay. Most of the time anyways.
Rarely do you find a multiplayer game where so many people understand the idea of working as a team. There's something almost Zen like when a party comes together in an MMO and stomps a raid/hnm/stf into the ground. You also get to feel that unique joy of the first time you beat one of those impossible battles.
Not everyone can understand the phenomena either. If you've never enjoyed one before you can't understand it. There is a sense of community, commitment, and belonging in an MMO that is unique.
The worst parts about them though are those exact things. That is what hooks you and keeps you there. That is how people get into trouble and do terrible, stupid things.
There's another problem too. The first one you were hooked on will be the best one you'll ever play. No others will ever measure up to your experiences in its digital playground.
I've played many different MMOs over the years. Including a few of the oldest ones. They all have their own flavor, and each stands out in its own way. My "first" MMO though was Final Fantasy 11. Technically I played some Everquest and some Ashernon's Call before then, but I didn't get hooked on them.
Final Fantasy 11 still holds a special spark of magic for me. Its flaws helped make it unique and entertaining. As much as the players complained about this or that with the system they never left it. The amount of time, effort, and skill invested in it was worth it to us.
The best thing about it though was the community. In order to level effectively you had to join a party of 6. Once you got in a group you had to work as a well oiled machine. If each of you did your job well you could pull off ridiculous experience chain bonuses (xp chains were killing things quickly enough that you got a percentage bonus based upon how many were chained).
Every person had to learn to do their particular role well. You also had to not be a dick. Reputation on each server was important. If you had a bad rep, you didn't get parties.
The job system was nice too. Each single toon was able to change over to each "Job" or class. You also had your sub-job which determined some secondary abilities which helped shape your party role. Yeah, you'd need to level everything separately, but you kept your gear and money all on a single character. There's nothing like this system anywhere else.
Anyways, as you can tell I sometimes miss the game. It's kind of expected though, I played it for over 3 years and spent over 4 months of actual time in the game. As I was trying to say though. There's nothing like your first MMO.
I've tried to go to others. Dungeons and Dragons Online, City of Heroes, Champions, Dark Age of Camelot, World of Warcraft, Star Trek Online, and EVE to name the ones I tried longer than a weekend. Nothing fit. EVE and STO are the only ones that I truly played longer than a couple months. I'm still technically playing STO right now, since I'm the co-founder of one of the fastest growing, and well known Fleets in the game now, and it's free to play so no fiscal commitment to keep me from coming back (I'm on hiatus from it for IRL timing reasons).
Really, the only reason I think I'm even playing STO is because of running the fleet with one of my best friends who I haven't been around physically for 6 years (I'm getting old...). I want to capture that spark and wonder of my first again, but I don't think that'll happen. Can it ever really happen?
It's like playing a tabletop rpg with your first gaming group. No other group is ever quite like that mix that you had. Sure your games might have been extreme adventures in noob gaming, but they were YOUR adventures dammit. Just like your first MMO, you first gaming group sets your expectations.
Anyone else got some thoughts on this? I'm just rambling about this here because I got disappointed by yet another MMO I was looking forward to.
I got to play the beta release and had my hopes shattered by a terrible and annoying combat system. Everything else was perfect. The free to mix and match skill system, the augmented reality side games/puzzles, the art style, the setting. The combat just blew goat balls. Turned me off of it in the tutorial mission and it just never got better.
I'll bitch about that later though, after its release.
Anyone else have a thought on any of this?

Monday, June 18, 2012

DnD Logic


Cost to build a 3 bedroom thatched roof house: 1000 Gold

Cost to hire a 9th Level wizard to cast Secure Shelter and Permanency: (Caster Level 9 x Spell Level 4 x 10 GP = 360 GP) + (CL9xSL4x10GP = 450 GP). Total cost: 810 GP.

Plus with the wizard you get a cottage that sleep 8, has multiple arcane lock, alarm and other security spells included and is as tough as any mason made stone house in whatever material you want it to look like.

I probably shouldn't be arguing economics with an inanimate object...

Bothersome Fantasy

I'm in the mood to write about something that bothers me. So let's talk about a few fantasy tropes that I don't like or annoy me.

Fantasy is one of my favorite settings. It's right there with Sci-fi as far as liking it is concerned. It lets you explore strange and bizarre worlds with unique histories. Morality and religion can be explored in unique ways bringing questions into the mind of the reader that they may never have asked otherwise. I've used fantasy books to explore my own beliefs plenty of times before. The black and white moralities of most high/epic fantasy down to the grey haze of anti-hero sagas really help you question your own views of what's right and wrong without letting things like the real world get in the way.

The telling of a fantasy story let's you explore these questions as you write them. That, and let you come up with amazing worlds full of (relatively) unique nations and organizations who do cool things. There's nothing quite like a good fantasy setting that makes you want to take up a sword and go monster hunting.

Unfortunately the genre is full of stupid tropes that bother the crap out of me and make it difficult for me to just pick up a series out of the blue. Some of them are just come with the territory, while others just get overused because of people not wanting to stray away from the basic formula of The Hobbit. Dungeons and Dragons might also be partially to blame since how many people who write fantasy have played that game?

Anyways, onto the whining!

The overuse of magic:

Don't get me wrong, magic is integral to an enjoyable fantasy adventure story. Without it how could you explain how the world has become imperiled by the random dude of dark desires? No magic tends to make a fantasy story less interesting to me, but when an author or director uses it in such casual ways I get irritated by it.

I'm having trouble coming up with specific examples right now, all that's coming to my mind is random Animes. Games (Final Fantasy you easily come to mind) can be very guilty of this. I know I've read some books like that before though. I think Eragon was like that, but I only read it once and really didn't like it for a lot of different reasons.

Anyways, what I mean by overuse is when magic is commonplace. DnD is a perfect example of what I see as magic being too commonplace. I have a big problem with how powerful magic is at relatively low levels. Come 8th level you can raise people from the dead. At 5th level Clerics can cast 3rd level spells that make them on par with the major miracles supposedly performed by the prophets/deities of real world religions.

Granted that type of thing is to be expected in a fantasy world, but still having mid-level priests exist that are able to just shrug after a fight because they have to perform a resurrection, like it's a common thing, really bothers me. It's like when comics resurrect characters with convoluted reasons (e.g. Aunt May), is mastery of the mortal coil really that simple and common place that all you need is some gold or a handful of spell components?

I could probably go on for hours on this subject alone just talking about each individual example that bothers me. So, I'll just get to the point. Having too much magic waters down its impact and tends to introduce plot holes. It's something that I've always felt should be wondrous, mysterious and, well, magical. It shouldn't be used as a technology replacement nor used as a way to make things generally easier on the protagonist. Magic shouldn't remove conflict from a story. It should just be a rare tool at the disposal of a few.

When magic gets overused it leads to the next problem.

Deus Ex Machina:

The God Machine. The Macguffin. The "I can't figure out how the protagonists are going to get out of this on so I'm just going to make an extremely contrived reason that they do that defies all logic and introduces gigantic plot holes that make you wonder why they couldn't do that before" maneuver.

Every storyteller is guilty of it at some point in their lifetime. Sometimes you just can't help it or it actually is needed in the story for a particular reason. So I can understand why it happens and why it gets done. It doesn't change the fact that more often than not it's used for a get out of consequences free card.

[Possible Spoilers here if you haven't read the Sword of Truth Series]

One example that really bothers me is the Sword of Truth series of books by Terry Goodkind. I love the series. It is well written with well plotted characters, beautiful descriptions, complex and poignant plots, with great ethical and political questions brought up. The problem though is that at the end of almost every book in the series Richard solves the problem with of the book with the sudden appearance of his magic talent out of nowhere that just wrap everything up nice and perfect.

The last book in the series is the absolute worst offender of the worst type too. I won't go too deeply into it here but there is seriously an entire chapter where it is nothing but a lecture by [Okay, SPOILERS AHEAD!!!] Richard as he uses magic in such a way that he is a deus ex machina as he reshapes reality to his whims and beliefs and makes everything everywhere better and more free and gives everyone what they would want, and a pony. [END SPOILERS]

Drove me up a fraggin' wall reading the ending to that book. Every single struggle, trial, conflict, difficulty undone by the wave of the infinite powers wand.

Dragons:
This is a point of contention between myself and most of nerdom. I don't like dragons all that much. I recognize why they're loved as a fantasy staple. They're powerful creatures that inspire fear and awe. They fly, breath fire, are intelligent and otherworldly, are an unstoppable force, and live for freaking ever. As a villain or antagonist they could be devastating. As an ally, amazing and a turner of the tide.

The problem though is that once the get brought into a story they're usually used as deus ex machina. Especially when used as an ally of the protagonist. Some stories do it right, I particularly like the way Dragonheart does it. Most of the time though it ends up overdone.

I think the best example of the comparison of a good use of dragons vs a bad use are the 2 live action Dungeons and Dragons movies. The first one is a good example of a bad use while the second one is a good use. The first one they're used as a background plot point and it eliminates half of what makes them a legend, they're basically enslaved by a human created magic device eliminating their free will and turning them into nothing more than aerial artillery pieces. The second movie uses an epic leveled Dracolich as the final antagonist that was driving the main antagonist onward. Eventually he is released and wrecks havoc upon those in his way.

The one dragon is able to take on an entire kingdom on its own and can only be put down with extreme effort outside of combat by the use of a dangerous deus ex machina device that took an appropriate amount of effort to be able to be used (the device gets a pass because its only purpose was to stop the dragon and was next to impossible to unravel its secrets).

Ridiculously sexy warrior-princesses:

This is a trope that Hollywood is overusing like crazy right now. It's used in place of good writing to show a woman as a hero. A 90 pound supermodel cannot wield a bastard sword and shield while wearing plate armor and still be able to go toe to toe with hardened combat veterans. It just isn't physically possible.

Also, distraction isn't an AC bonus. Women can wear armor that doesn't show off their tits. It's okay. They can protect their body from injury, it's allowed.

The new Snow White movie with Kristen Stewart actually looked bearable (everything but Stewart looked good) until she wanders out onto the battlefield in full plate. That dropped it from a "see in theatres" down to a "maybe rent it" in my mind.

The warrior princess trope is just lazy writing, substituting actual character and motivations with flashy sword moves and a "liberated until the plot requires a man to save her" personality. This type of thing is even more common in video/tabletop gaming. Female Shepard is the only recent female protagonist I can name off the top of my head that is well written enough to avoid this trope in recent memory. Can anyone else think of any?

Hell, Shaundi from Saint's Row is better written than most Hollywood heroines these days. At least she doesn't drop her bad ass skills if she gets into trouble.


These are only some of the thoughts I've had regarding these things. This entry is really just meant to get the ball rolling not only for a nerdverse discussion, but for the blog in general. So please excuse the rambling nature of this entry. I promise I'll work hard to improve the writing in the future. Now feel free to comment below or start a conversation/argument/bitchfest up on my Facebook.

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Subjects


So some subjects I think I'm going to touch on here:

-Gaming Culture
-Video/Computer Games
-Tabletop Gaming
-Story/Campaign/Adventure/etc Ideas and Concepts
-Character Concepts and designs
-Game/book/etc reviews
-Links to completed projects saved in my DeviantART account
-Model building/painting
-Thoughts on any campaigns I'm in and maybe some after action reports
-Game Theory (whatever I decide that is)
-No politics or philosophy unless they deal directly with a book/game/etc and concepts brought up in there
-Nerdverse character showdowns
-Nerdculture themed drinks, foods or other such items reviews (Maybe with video!)
-Whatever particular game or nerdculture thing that may have sparked my interest

If you think of anything I should write about let me know.

Welcome

Well this is how I'm supposed to start a blog right? Just get online and begin writing about whatever and talk about how I'm so clever and unique and why you need to read it right?

I'm doing this because I feel my creative juices flowing again and don't have the discipline that I need to follow through with it all. I'm also missing the contact with my old friends that we used to have. Talking about our nerdculture interests and the various arguments and debates that went along with those.

I want to talk about that stuff again. I want to talk about the religious implications of Star Wars. The secret dictatorship that is the Federation of Planets. Who would win in a fight, Batman or Captain America? Why does Blizzard hate and discriminate against the US Military? All of these are important things that must be addressed.

I don't get to talk about that stuff anymore and Facebook is just too inadequate for discussing these things. All I get into on Facebook anymore is politics and religion.

Don't get me wrong. I love discussing both of those subjects. I've just been growing tired of it without the hobby stuff in between.

So my hope is that I can have a substantial entry written in here by the end of every week or two. If that goes well I'll try to up the ante.

My subjects will be varied but will consist of as few political/philosophical things as possible unless they're directly related to a gaming/nerdculture subject.

Expect the first entry sometime in the next few days.

-Epithail