Approaching Writing Again

Hey all, I'm back for the time being. It's been a long time since I've been on here.

Guess what? I'm going to try this again. The past few years have been pretty difficult for me personally and I've gone through a lot of growth and change in my life. It's been tough to find time for just sitting down and relaxing, let alone putting my mind to writing. Just haven't felt very motivated.

I feel though that this funk needs to change. It's been too long since I've been creative and I need to start exercising that aspect of my mind again. I have opinions about fiction I need to share. Hell, there have been two whole new Star Wars movies since the last time I wrote and I haven't been able to truly rant about them.

I've been thinking about it for the past few years and have been wondering if I could have what it takes to write professionally. Right now I know I don't have all the skills or the discipline. I can't even keep my own blog up to date, let alone sit down and write out a coherent multi-part epic story.

One of my favorite things in the world is world building. How a world forms from a small idea and through thinking of the logical interactions of people and their circumstances turns into a fleshed out setting is one of the most satisfying things to me.

I need to practice more. I need to write more. If I want to make this a thing I get paid for I need to treat this like it's a career. Paraphrasing the words of one of my favorite authors goal number one of professional writers should be to get paid.

So, how do I get paid? I need to get good. How do I get good? Practice. How do I practice? Just write stupid shit and maybe try some writing prompts. I don't know. I just have to start somewhere. This seems like a good start. Wish me luck!

Warmachine Musings

Recently I've begun getting back into a game that was one of my passions. Back when I was in the navy I used to play a decent amount of Warmachine. For those who don't know Warmachine is a miniatures based wargame that takes place in a type of steampunk world. (Although they don't like the label steampunk, they prefer Full Metal Fantasy.) I enjoyed the game and was pretty okay at it. I could even hold my own in most competitive circuits.

So like I said I'm getting back into the game again, with some gusto. I'm finishing up painting all of the things I've had sitting around for the last 5 years and I'm relearning the game so I can start picking up the competitive game again. The last time I played they had just introduced the official second edition of the game which brought about huge changes and add in my six year hiatus from the game you can see a need to find a way to catch up fast. So I've started listening to some podcasts about it.

Today I listened to an episode of the Chain-Attack podcast. Specifically Episode 215 where the last half of the episode was dedicated to the opinion of one of the competitive players of the four man group they normally have on the show. He's a very skilled player with a firm grasp on the meta-game and theory behind it, definitely someone who's opinion is worth a listen. I disagree with the somewhat elitist attitude taken by this particular group of players, but that's always a complaint of mine with the way certain circles of competitive players talk about their chosen game.

Anyways, the last half of the podcast was about a valid complaint about the competitive circuit of Warmachine. The tournaments can have a rather random feel to them because of the haphazard way tournament brackets are created by Press Gangers essentially by pulling names out of a hat. This can lead to the final pairings in a tournament to be lopsided depending upon how the first brackets lined up. If the two most competitive players in an 8 man tourney face off first round you essentially know who is going to win the overall.

The player wanted a different way to approach competitive play. His primary suggestion was creating an Elo style ranking system to determine matchups better. Elo is a system that essentially ranks a player based upon their skill levels and attempts to take that into account when determining matchups and how valuable a certain win is vs an opponent. Your number of games played and your win-loss ratio is what helps determine this ranking.

Which in theory sounds great from a competitive standpoint. He gave some wonderful examples of other games that use these types of systems. Magic, Chess (where it originated), Poker, and League of Legends were mentioned specifically. All of which have very strong competitive structures. There are a few problems with translating this to a wargame though.

In Chess every single move in competition is written down to make sure theres no cheating, League is a PC game hosted on servers controlled by the company and monitored for fairness, Poker and Magic have some very strict conduct rules and similar measures in place to ensure that no one is cheating. Every single one has very strict judging criteria, professional, or semi-professional judges, and a code of conduct as well as ways to ensure fairness.

In order to ensure fairness in a wargame you'd have to have every single move able to be measured and recorded and have official ways of measuring outcomes like officially built, weighted, and measured dice. There'd also have to be a professional judging staff rather than the amateur volunteers that make up the entirety of Privateer Press' tournament staff.

Another major difference between those other games and Warmachine (and really wargaming in general) is the size of the player base, especially in competition levels. Warmachine probably has less players in total than what Magic alone has that play in competition. It doesn't have the literal centuries of time that Chess has had to build up a player base, or the ease of access and large financial backing that any of these games have.

To be completely honest there's not enough money in the entire game to really make implementing that type of system worthwhile even if it weren't for the fact that it would change the way people play the game.

And oh boy would that change the way people play the game.

I don't play MOBAs like League or competitive Magic specifically because of the player communities. Magic was no longer fun to play one I got into the competitive play (my attitude towards it got even worse when I had to judge Friday Night Magic as a DCI *shudder*). It draws a different crowd to the game and really affects the way the meta is presented and the attitudes of the players at the tournaments.

All in all I feel that a change like that will make it an even higher entry barrier as the elitists in a game that's already tough to get into even harder for new players to get interested in.

Avengers Age of Ultron Thoughts

For the first time in I can't remember how long I went out and saw a movie in theaters more than once. Avengers Age of Ultron is something that will become a classic. I loved pretty much every second of this movie. The acting, action, effects, and pretty much everything else were spot on.

As always Joss and crew pay attention to the minor details that make each of the characters human and full of life. Everyone has believable motivations and killer one liners. It is pure bliss as a fan of the comics who is willing to accept the translation required to move these stories with literal decades of history into the very different medium of film.

I will likely talk freely here and not be worried about spoilers so if you don't want spoilers don't read further... jerk.

One of my favorite parts of the movie is when the Hulkbuster armor comes out. It's dropped from orbit and is named Veronica (because this is the Hulk's girlfriend, since Bruce's is named Betty. Yes, they put an Archie joke in a Marvel movie). The Hulkbuster armor was everything we needed it to be, and it was such a wonderful action scene that kept the intensity up while developing the conflicts even more.

Spader was awesome as Ultron. He is the perfect Anti-Stark. His delivery of each and every line in the movie was perfect. I have zero complaints. Seriously. Perfect portrayal for this setting.

The tidbits setting up the upcoming storylines were wonderful. Each step towards the Infinity War and the Civil War made me a bit giddier with anticipation. Marvel has a good thing here and I don't think I ever expected to be excited by random characters I never cared about before having their own movies (my god, I am actually looking forward to an Ant-man movie. What. The. Hell?)

My only gripes with Age of Ultron are relatively minor, but they are things that bothered me. (Major spoilers coming, seriously.)

First off, the appearance of the Vision I wasn't really expecting. I guess I missed the trailers that had him added in and the appearance of the toys. That isn't the disappointing part. I was excited to see him show up. It was awesome. My only issue is that his appearance and existence just felt a little tacked on and flat. Paul Bettany did a great job and I am extremely happy with the portrayal in the setting, but he didn't feel well developed or explained. There was just something lacking from his appearance in the movie. It could be because of how crowded the movie had become at that point though.

I really like the portrayal of Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. I love that they have been added to the series and were being done by two excellent actors who clearly had a ton of respect for the characters. I just found the death of Quicksilver at the end to be cheapened by him only having 7 lines in the movie. I wanted to be saddened by him getting Jossed, but I couldn't. There just wasn't enough time to get invested in his chracter. Someone needed to die in the movie, I get it. It totally needed to happen, but I just wasn't moved by it the way I probably should have been.

Captain America and Iron Man start arguing about their opposing views for the Civil War build-up in this. It's wonderful to see. I love it. I know that the Civil War movie is going to be great and I will be seeing that movie as soon as I can while being a mega fanboy during the build-up (I've already chosen a side, everyone who knows me should know that already). My only problem with this though comes from my personal politics starting to bleed into the entertainment I'm watching.

I really felt like the lines, acting, and directing going into the lines that Cap was supposed to be saying were a little too idealistic without much belief/oomph behind them. Captain America over and over again shows himself to be heavily libertarian leaning with his beliefs (we can argue about this later, just go with it). He is a believer in the founding principles of America and he believes in them wholeheartedly and without hesitation. In this movie though, the lines being written and read sound like what a politically Left-leaning Hollywood Progressive would think a libertarian or believer in the founding principles would say rather than what someone who truly believes in those principles would say and how they would say it.

I'm not saying it's awful drivel, it just feels off from what I would personally expect from those lines and characters.

My last gripe though is the big one. I'm pretty sure that in the last battle scene I saw Hawkeye smacking Ultron Sentries with his bow Legolas style. Who thought that was a good idea!?!

Other than those few things, it was seriously an awesome movie. I loved it and I can't wait to own it on every special edition blue-ray/dvd combo pack that they put out for it.

Back into the swing of things

So it has been quite a while since I've updated this blog on the regular. Real life seemed to take over everything for the past year or so making it very difficult to even play games, let alone find time to write on this random little exercise that I had started.

In the past year my life has changed significantly. I am now divorced and dating very seriously a wonderful woman who has integrated her life with my own following the split my ex-wife and I had. She's and her son have joined with myself and my two kiddos. It has been a grand adventure for us all.

My children are either uninterested or too young at the moment to enjoy gaming, but her son is very interested. So whenever my two kids are off at their mother's the remaining three of us sit around and do some geeky activities. Mostly it has been enjoying video games or a geeky movie, but last week I introduced her and her son to Dungeons and Dragons.

This has helped to make me feel inspired as life begins to settle back into place after a year of hell. I have things to write about again, some things to finish, and some things to start). It's time to continue back on the path I set upon when I started this blog. Soon this blog will again be filled with my insane rantings and ravings and minor gripes about systems and such while also relaying the stories and adventures of my family and friends as we go into this rabbit hole.

Truth time...

Okay, I’ll admit it. I’m a Speciest. In RPGs I am very partial to playing a Human to the exclusion of almost everything. When I create a setting or run a game I prefer to have it in a 90+% human population setting. I dislike Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Gnomes and pretty much every single playable race in tabletop games. (Except for games in Sci-Fi settings for some reason)

Why is this? I have no idea.

In most settings I will only play a human, or something that very easily passes for human. There are some rare exceptions, but in the end it will primarily be human. This may stem from myself entering gaming through the Everway/World of Darkness route rather than DnD. Those settings are without out a doubt Human-Centric settings.

There’s also the fact that in DnD/D20 humans start off with a major advantage, and extra feat at first level and extra skill points. That’s pretty huge in that system. Plus there’s also the fact that it’s far easier to relate to the thoughts and feelings of humans because of familiarity with their way of thinking.

If I don’t count the various things that aren’t human but take human form from the World of Darkness as not being human (Garou/Werewolves, Vampires, etc.) then I’ve only played a handful of non-human characters. Blarg the Orc, an Elan Psion, I think there was a minotaur and a gargoyle back there somewhere, and possibly one more that I can’t remember. Not one was a memorable character or had very much effort invested in them.

The other races just don’t appeal to me, especially the Elves. Screw Elves, they suck. Nothing but haughty assholes.

My current character in the Orcanraytrel campaign isn’t human, but he’s the closest thing possible to it in the setting. Being of Fell Human decent with an “Inert Bloodline” racial trait really makes him statistically speaking a Human in Pathfinder terms so it’s good enough for me.

I don’t think there’s any real point to this post. I just wanted to say that humans rule and all other PC races suck… maybe?

Wasted Potential or How I Wish I Had a Local Group

Current list of RPG Campaign Ideas that are actively running through my head or have been partially written out:

1)      The Eternal Seas campaign, my 3.5 and now being converted to Pathfinder high seas campaign/setting

2)      The Savage Plain, a Pathfinder campaign idea I had after seeing a picture. Basically Magical City, bunch of warring tribes, dinosaurs and unknown horrors beneath

3)      Dresden Files RPG, a San Francisco based campaign that I have a concept fleshed out for

4)      Werewolf The Apocalypse Chronicle that I’ve posted on here about before

5)      Werewolf The Apocalypse, Our Apocalypse with our group from high school. Sigh… I wish I could play in this one…

6)      FATE RPG, Geinrich The City of Merchants campaign I recently put together

7)      Star Wars (D20 or WEG D6), a campaign set in the New Jedi Order era centered around a young Jedi named Caleb Undertowner

8)      D6 Adventure based Mighty Morphin Power Rangers campaign. ‘Nuff said.

9)      D6 Space campaign that I’ve been playing around with.

10)   The Plague Campaign idea that just cropped up this past week

11)   A run through of The World’s Largest Dungeon.

12)   An Exalted Campaign based on our old dabbling in the setting back in high school.

13)   X-Crawl, because it’s awesome!

14)   A couple Iron Kingdoms ideas.

15)   A Werewolf/Dresden/FATE/whatever campaign idea that just needs to be “injected” into a system. Supernatural experiments are fun times.

Yeah, I really need a gaming group that meets up more than once a month in my life because these stories must be told dammit. At the very least I can see how awful they actually perform so I feel better about them not wasting space in my head anymore.

The Plague Campaign

A discussion on a Facebook group about Plague Campaigns piqued my interest. In it there were people talking about how they’ve run plague campaigns and the usual discussions of how societ will break down and blah blah blah. I gave my typical opinion and viewpoint where I don’t believe that a magical society really has to worry about these types of things because Magic and centuries of curative spell items and so on and so forth. Numbers were thrown around, references were made, and a grand debate was had. It was a wonderful discussion. It also inspired me to have another spark of an idea for a campaign that will likely never see the light of day. I also have an Pathfinder Adventure Path to look into called “Curse of the Crimson Throne”, specifically the 2nd book because it apparently breaks down the numbers in a very meaningful way. (Something like a city of 18000 people might have between 12-20 Clerics capable of casting Remove Disease at a time and maybe 180 Divine casters total)

The idea has to exist in a high-fantasy world like the Generic DnD/Pathfinder world. The specifics don’t matter much, but it must be a D20 based system for this to work. The society is a properly outfitted and prepared society where magic exists quite as clearly as science exists to us. This is because humans act like humans and recognize useful tools, even if they don’t fully understand the tools they’re using they will continue to use them and find new ways to improve their lot in life. In my opinion this means that humans will do everything they can to ensure that they can do the best they can to prevent bad things from happening (more or less). In this case it means that someone will use magic to prevent plagues from breaking out.

Imagine if you will a world where magic is real and there is a deity along the lines of DnD 3.X’s Pelor who is dedicated to healing people and preventing outbreaks of disease. The god grants people very real and very measurable amounts of his own power that his faithful can directly use to influence the world. They can fashion magic wands, rings, potions, scrolls, and various other implements that have the ability to help stave off diseases, bolster people’s immune responses, or just remove the disease entirely. They can create wondrous magical fountains that could be capable of performing these deeds for them too and provide it to those who come to their temple. This is in addition to other magics they’ll have at their disposal, like scrying magic that would allow them to detect where a disease is about to strike, or detect who is infected and who isn’t.

Some people countered my thoughts on those with “these are higher level clerics that would have to do this” “there’s no way there’s enough of them to do that” “why would they waste their time, money and spiritual energy (read: xp) on those things”. Which are legitimate points if you’re talking about people thinking rationally about their own benefits; not a millennia old religious order dedicated to the prevention and curing of disease. You look at real world example where our religious leaders aren’t able to coat themselves in glowing magical armor by reciting a prayer and what real humans sacrifice for their religions based upon faith alone. We argue about the existence of deities because we don’t see real, measurable results like “Remove Disease” “Call Lightning” or “Animate Dead”. Imagine what people in the real world would do if their god rewarded their faith with access to a couple 0-level spells. Hell, Jesus displayed abilities equivalent to an 8th or 9th level cleric in a 3.X setting and we proclaim him to be the son of God imagine the world if your region’s Catholic clergymen could perform that stuff on a daily basis.

My point is, that when I look at a potential for a plague campaign there has to be more wrong than there just being a plague that exists. Religions like those dedicated to Pelor would have stockpiles of items with Spell-Trigger completion (that would allow lower level casters to use a spell like Remove Disease) while constantly making a new supply, active plans for dealing with outbreaks, Scryers and Healers working around the clock watching for plague, permanent magical artifacts at their temples that provided some type of healing or disease resistance, monthly cleansing rituals at the temple, and countless other measures that we might not be able to comprehend because we live in the real world. In order for a disease to cause a plague or have a major outbreak would require something different to happen with the disease.

If a disease is to cause an outbreak it either needs to be unusually virulent (Bubonic Plague is “only” a DC17, easily within the power of a low-level caster to help out with), magical in nature (very possible because microbial evolution is a thing. Just think about MRSA and other treatment resistant diseases), or allowed to spread in some way by nefarious people for nefarious purposes.

And now that this groundwork is established, here’s where things get interesting. The campaign idea starts with the PCs being members of one such religious order. They are tasked with taking care of a potential outbreak of some disease. They are sent off by their order into a district quarantined per their standard rules, but something is wrong. Maybe the disease is spreading in an abnormal pattern, or its resists all magical treatment, or maybe something is actively trying to stop them from curing the sick. Eventually the disease will have to escape from the confines of the quarantine and maybe something else is discovered about the situation. Maybe the order’s stockpile of Remove Disease Wands was stolen, broken, or disenchanted. Their magical fountain may have been smashed. Maybe their god disapproves of the city and is damning it for its sins. Is it the work of a doomsday cult? A lich? A mutated bacterial infection that has gained hive-mind sentience? SO MANY OPTIONS!!!

The PCs don’t even have to be just Clerics and Paladins either. Churches have use for all kinds of people with a variety of skills. Maybe a nun used to be a rogue in her pre-convent life. The paladins may be supplemented by regular Fighters and Knights. Oracles and Bards could be there performing their normal functions. Alchemists could Easily supplement the healing supplies. The trips out to cure diseases and help the down trodden could easily be construed as pilgrimages and evangelizing. What better way to convert people than by performing good deeds and curing people of The Plague and promising them further protection by attending your sermons?

For the first time ever I think I actually would want to play a Cleric…

PS: Upon further reading it appears that the spell Remove Disease grants no future immunity to a disease. So if you catch a virus it appears that Remove Disease will cure you but doesn’t allow your body to produce anti-bodies against future exposure to the disease. Interesting but useless trivia!

I have no class, and I like it.

A thread on a Facebook group caught my attention, and one comment in particular got me a little riled up. The subject was on how you prefer your character creation system. Do you prefer Iconic Classes, Homebrew Rules, or Classless systems (e.g. GURPS)? Good question and a neat thing to think about and see what other people say just to get a peek at the way other people think.

I of course mention that I prefer systems that don’t use classes and that I feel that Iconic Classes (and classes in general) restrict the player unnecessarily when crafting their characters. That got a few likes from like-minded individuals and it was all pretty benign discussion until one person decided to disagree with my statement. Now, I’m all for disagreement, but when you don’t address me directly and say something that’s philosophically incorrect it bothers me in a pet peeve kind of way.

Anyways, the response was directly regarding what I said with an underhanded insult. Basically he said Iconic Classes are only limiting if you lacked imagination. It got a little bit nastier as it went on. There were accusations of requiring Labels and Mechanics in order to be able to design a character. Some type of implication that the only way to interact with the world is through dice rolls. I’m sorry for being the butt hurt guy going to my blog with this but, WHAT!?!

Seriously, that’s insane and doesn’t make sense. A character class automatically is a restriction on your imagination. It is designed to give you certain gameplay bonuses based on a set role. A fighter is a weapons master, typically refining their ability to use a single type of weapon to the point of insane mastery. A Wizard studies spell books and is able to cast spells. A Rogue sneaks about, does precision damage, and is an extremely skill-based character.

In a game like Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder you select a class to be granted a set of bonuses, abilities, and powers related to your specialties that give you bonuses based upon particular rules situations. When you create a character you must funnel their personality and backgrounds through the filter of how it brought them to whom they are when you start playing. Their abilities are restricted to whatever the class says they are unless you’re allowed to multiclass. Even then you are still going to see restrictions on what you can or cannot do based upon what classes and archetypes are available to you.

I am very strongly in favor of a system that isn’t based on classes and allows complete creative control of the design of PCs. It might be because I grew up playing Everway and how spoiled I was playing such a simple and liberating system. You don’t realize how spoiled you are until you try to design your first character in a class based game with a non-class based mindset. This was something I struggled with for years. I never could get it quite right.

Take a character like Shem the Forsaken. Shem is a fallen paladin. Not a Blackguard, a fallen paladin. His story was that his knighthood and powers were stripped from him by his order because he tried to protect non-believers and violated the orders of his superiors doing so. He married one of them and was living a simple life with the people he saved until some new evil-infused power raided his town. He fought as bravely as he could, but he didn’t have his old powers and was eventually overwhelmed. Most of the people in his town were captured or killed while he was unconscious and left for dead. He awakens to see the evil god that was the nemesis of his order’s god before him offering him power to go forth and find and rescue his wife and his people. He was given a magic sword, some magic, and “shadow creatures” that would help him on his quest. The shadow creatures were things coming from his own shadow that mostly only he could see that would make strange noises and would tempt him down the darker path at every opportunity. He doesn’t want to be lead down these paths of evil and tries his best to resist, but the more he uses the powers, the more he is tempted and converted.

Shem is a character that doesn’t fit anything in the DnD/PF system. The closest thing available is Pathfinder’s Anti-Paladin who shares a couple of the proper powers. Unfortunately, as always, the requirements to be an anti-paladin are pretty restrictive. The requirement of being forced to perform evil deeds and embracing evil to its fullest just doesn’t sit right with me. I’d have to alter the concept more towards the embracing of evil rather than the attempt to only use it when necessary to prevent corruption for as long as possible.

Meanwhile in a game like Fate or Everway all I need to do is generate these powers using the rules with the DMs help designing and we’re good to go. I get exactly the narrative and mechanical items that I as a player want and we create a character that will be beholden to his high concept as a reluctant agent of evil who is trying to do the right thing. We have a man walking the path to damnation while trying to redeem himself and repent for his decision, but only attempting to drop the mantle when his quest is complete. If you attempted to do this in DnD/PF you’d be having far more difficult time playing this character in an RP heavy game.

Essentially all I’m saying is that I like it when I have no class.

Evil Player Characters

So today I feel like whining about Evil Player Characters. I’m not a fan of them, never have been. It might have something to do with my want to play these games as a form of heroic escapism to avoid the horrible reality that I see in the world around me. That’s probably some type of psychological problem I need to have looked into, but meh. I’ve got RPGs to work that out.

Everyone has at one point or another played an evil character just to explore something new. That’s cool and perfectly acceptable. That’s not what I have a problem with. Hell, right now I’m probably playing one the most evil characters I’ve ever played by a traditional 2-axis alignment system. Karrak Seaborne isn’t exactly a nice guy, he’s a pirate who has faked his own death, killed people he really had no personal reasons to even raise arms against, and conducts raiding, pillaging, and burning of various native and colonial powers localities while framing another faction for the raids while amassing support to create his own Pirate empire. These aren’t the actions of a “Good” or even “Neutral” character, but he’s a fleshed out character with real motivation and perfectly good reasons for doing what he does.

And I sidetracked myself…

Anyways, the point is that it isn’t the occasional anti-hero or rare occasion evil PC that I have an issue with. My issues are with Players who insist on playing nothing but Evil characters, players who play cartoonishly evil characters, and those who play evil characters in a completely disruptive manner. Each of those have various problems associated with them and all of them stem from portion of the player’s own personalities generally having to do with the need for some sort of attention.

The player that plays a cartoonishly evil character is the least offensive of the three in my opinion. These tend to be people who have either never played an RPG before or are inexperienced role players playing one of their first evil characters. These are easy to get under control as a GM. You basically make the real world come crashing down upon their antics. These characters either get craftier and more subtle or they get killed/captured/indefinitely disposed of. It’s just a short term annoyance that will temporarily disrupt the party. (The last time I saw this was in a gaming group that loved to talk about how awesome they role played their characters. The general extent of this was that they forced people who played Bards to actually sing in order to use their abilities as well as rendering all social related skills 100% useless by not allowing them to be used for any type of interaction and then penalized you for not being able to be a silver tounged rogue like your character should be because you’re an awkward nerd who isn’t very good at dealing with people.)

Those who play a disruptively evil character, in my experience, are doing it because they crave some type of attention. Any attention. These players are playing a character that is generally acting like a dick to other party members or generally being difficult to play with. I’m not talking about people who are playing a character that’s secretly evil (waiting to betray the party at the right moment), an anti-hero, or an evil character who is teaming up with good characters for the sake of taking on a far greater enemy. The ones I’m talking about are the types of guys who play a blatantly evil Cleric while the rest of the party is generally good or there’s a Paldin or Good Cleric. They play a Sith while the party is mostly Light-side. They tend to perform certain acts for shock value or to push for a fight within the party, typically with a player that they are personally trying to antagonize. These are the players who aren’t there to enjoy the game. They are there to be disruptive jerks and have their own fun at other people’s expense.

The Disruptive Evil PC is a little bit more difficult to deal with, as their actions are on purpose dickitude. The only truly effective cure for this tends to be exile from the gaming group. It’s boring for everyone at the table to be around these guys. It ruins the fun you have and is a waste of time. The older I’ve gotten and the fewer and further between the gaming has been for me I don’t have time to deal with that kind of crap anymore and have lost all patience for it. So if I see it happen I’m giving one warning, or I’m nixing that character concept from the start.

The last type of Evil PC is played by the guy (always a guy) who does nothing but play evil PCs. I really don’t like it. Something about it rubs me the wrong way. It’s like the person playing it has such a bad attitude towards reality and life that they can only lash out at everything in a harmful way, even in their own imagination. The problem I have here is a collision of individuals and their different visions for our mutual hobby of fantasy fulfillment.

A person who continuously plays a single class, alignment, or personality type annoys me on a fundamental level when it comes to these games. There’s just something wrong about it to me. The player who does nothing but play Evil PCs disrupts the potential story that can be told. They must always be planned for separately and tend to drag a group down.

As a GM this is disappointing on many levels. I don’t know if I can really put it into words properly. There’s just something sad about it. It’s like the player is trying to do something in a fantasy world to make up for their inability to do something in the real world.

I play RPGs for the escapism. In the real world I pay attention to politics, economics, and world events constantly. I read stories about some of the worst aspects of humanity on a daily basis. I vent about these things on Facebook in general and try my best to keep them out of the few blog entries I write here. This is because I try my best to keep my political junkie and activist habits out of my gaming hobby. Gaming is a place where I can be away from the real world and handle the problems put before me, or enjoy the ride through a story. It’s a pleasant distraction.

The problem with people who consistently play Evil characters though is that they bring in the suffering of humanity and the evil of the real world into our fantasy world and force it upon the world themselves. It ruins one of the things I like about it by thrusting a piece of reality directly in my face.

It’s also boring to see someone play the same thing or a similar theme over and over again. I just don’t get the appeal.

There's not much constructive thought here, I'm just bitching.

Anime Hunt

So following the 2nd BAMCon being a success, I've become interested in watching some anime again (at least temporarily) and I've realized that I haven't seen anything new (or at least new to me) that I've been able to enjoy in years.

The last anime I was introduced to that I enjoyed was Rune Soldier and Record of Lodoss War which I only watched because we owned them already. Most everything else I've seen in the past few years just isn't interesting to me.

I enjoy fantasy and sci-fi most of the time and love Shonen type things. I loved Trigun, Hellsing, Outlaw Star, Cowboy Bebop, Akira, Spriggan, Transformers, Dragonball Z, Bastard!, Full Metal Alchemist, some Gundam series, Voltron, Yu-Gi-Oh, the first Pokemon series, and a bunch of others of a similar vein.

I've tried to watch things like Vandread, Gurren Lagann, and a few others that have been available on Netflix. I found them too goofy/formulaic/other random complaint for my tastes and never got into them.

I didn't enjoy Naruto. I did enjoy Bleach, the little bit I've watched. (I keep meaning to go back to it...)

Hmmm, I'm really just rambling here. I just want something creative and entertaining that doesn't follow predictable patterns and doesn't murder my eyeballs. Is that too much to ask?

If anyone has some suggestions let me know. I don't have the money to spare going out and buying up discs and I'm not going to pirate things so please make suggestions that are available through Netflix/Hulu or other legitimate places.

Charla, the Sphere of the Dragon Kin

So a long time ago, at a high school that is very far away from me, I started getting involved in Role Playing Games. My friends and I started participating in game of Everway at lunch with people who would become part of our core group of friends (every single one of which I still think of as family). I was able to get my hands on a copy of the Everway box set during this time and began reading. My creative spark was inspired and I wanted to start running a game, but didn't know what I was going to do for a story or quest.

I truly had no experience or anything close to an idea of what I was doing. At this time I only had really shitty  writing and random knowledge of Fantasy universes/writing to work with. I wasn't fully "out of the basement" yet and didn't embrace my geek nature and I didn't have much confidence in my ability to tell a story. This was all happening prior to the outbreak of Geek culture into the mainstream and the release of movies and TV series that would make it okay to talk about these things to normal people.

I don't know where I'm trying to go with this particular portion of this rant. Really though I think I'm just trying to get  across the point that I was inexperienced and not ready for the big time, but I had some lofty ideals that I was trying to get across. I started coming up with what I thought was a neat idea and tried to create a world around it.

This world was what I called Charla (Char-lah). It was based off the idea for one of the literally hundreds of character ideas I had been coming up with during those early days. The character (who's name escapes me) was a humanoid character with Dragon wings, immunity to fire, and the ability to control fire (an inborn talent for pyromancy ran in this race). This was his home Sphere (Everway was a crossroads for many different portals to other "spheres" or planets and Spherewalkers always ended up in Everway proper some way or another). I never got to play him, but I liked the idea of his world a lot and started to think about what types of things it would have to deal with.

I created a world where there were two species of sentient beings. One of them were the Charlanites, who all had the dragon wings, fire immunity, and the pyromancy. The other race was the Dak'kon (I think... it's been about 15 years since I created this thing, maybe it was the Drakar... I wish I could remember. Dak'kon may have been a character's name the more I think about it) which were a race of Dragon like humanoids with a breath weapon, an extremely reptilian style body, and no wings. Both races had a strong magical heritage and had been warring for millennia.

The Charlanites were ruled by an Archmage in a magic skills based monarchy. They had no real society other than that. I was inexperienced, shut up. The Dak'kon were led by a war chief, or warlord or something... it wasn't important at the time. Whoever it was happened to be the main villain who was just kinda there with no motivation other than to fight the PCs because Noob GM.

The Charlanites worshiped a god they believed resided in the volcano in their capitol city. They held various ceremonies and combat tournaments in the god's honor because that sounded like a good idea. The Archmage would lead everyone in the ceremonies and used the gathered energy to protect everyone from the eruptions that would regularly take place during the height of the ceremonies.

It was during one of these ceremonies that the PCs were brought in. This being the Everway setting I had to come up with a reason for the PCs to be brought out there to a whole different "Sphere" via the portal network. I of course didn't want to give them an option to potentially ignore my "finely crafted" adventure, so I created an ultra powerful and very awful NPC named The Watcher. So called because he watched over many different spheres to ensure that prophecies were fulfilled. (A concept that is so ridiculous that it might actually make him a great concept for a villain now that I think back on his role in things. Maybe I'll write that down for later.)

Anyways, The Watcher (no I didn't know about the Marvel Comics character of the same name at the time) gathered the PCs together at his tower on a desolate and featureless sphere that may or may not have been a pocket dimension. There he told them of Charla and that they would play a vital role in protecting the future of that sphere. He then opened a portal for them (not really a power that anyone is really allowed to possess other than gods) and shoved them through into the welcoming arms of the Archmage as he completes a ceremony.

The specifics of this adventure become hazy from this point on, I'll do my best to retell it but no promises that it'll be even remotely right.

The Archmage welcomed them and then offered them a chance to prove their worth and abilities in various arena battles. I'm trying to remember what each PC was, because this would prove to eventually be important in a few cases. Let's see, there was the half-demon, a zombie-esque undead creature based off of Rob Zombie (I think he named the species a "Creeper"), a Gargoyle (as in Gargoyles the cartoon) with an amulet that kept her out of stone form in the day, a beserker named Orsen (whose battle cry was "SPOOON!!!"), some type of fighter... I think (it was an early Chris character, I can't remember and feel ashamed by that), and an magic sensitive, graceful dancer whom I think could spin illusions.

So after a bunch of combat the PCs were told that they were to gather the ancient weapons of legend to use to defeat the evil warlord and were given the locations of these four weapons. Oh yeah, and everyone had a chance to get fire lizards bonded to them as pets, as in the ones from Anne McCaffrey because.

[Later edit: You have no idea how difficult this is to write, this storyline is just awful and it HURTS to remind myself of it.]

The weapons were a physical manifestation of the four elements that govern Everway; Air, Fire, Earth, and Water. I thought it was clever and neat. The first weapon they went after was the Sword of Inferno. Inferno being the name of the Charlanites' greatest hero whom used the sword to do something heroic sometime in the past.

That sword was meant to go to the person with the highest score in the Fire element when I initially designed the campaign but I couldn't justify giving the sword to the Creeper who used claw-like weapons. so instead I exercised my first bit of the Golden Rule and gave the Sword to the half-demon because of his connection with the element because it made more narrative sense. The sword was kept inside of some volcanic landscape somewhere and they had to sort of dodge the environments and fight something simple. If I had encountered this in a game now I as a player would expect that we were being set up at this point.

So after grabbing the sword they report back to get the next weapon's location and were then given all three of them. They headed up to the highest mountain peak to retrieve the Lightning Dagger, which was given to the Gargoyle. They wandered a frozen wasteland and retrieved the Bow of Ice which went to the dancer. Finally they descended into a deep canyon to retrieve the Stone Axe (or maybe it was the Axe of Earth) which was at the center of this canyon/ravine thing that it was in the center of which went to Chris' fighter. They reported back to the Archmage and then participated in an "epic battle" between the Dak'kon/Drakkar and the Charlanites which the players participate in and the chosen wielders learn the true power of their legendary weapons. (There may have also been gratuitous use of the word "Swack!" and the destruction of a carriage made of spoons during this time. Shut up, it made sense at the time! Okay it didn't, but shut your face hole anyways!)

The Sword of Inferno basically changed shape to fit with the personal style of the bearer. It was also able to coat the blade in flames and launch fireballs and other fire based attacks at foes. The Lightning Dagger did similar things, but used lightning instead. The Axe of Earth was made of stone and cut things super well while enhancing the strength of the bearer. The Bow of Ice generated its own arrows in its quiver that when they hit their target basically completely froze the target in an effect similar to what you see in movies where things get turned to stone by magic, but with more ice and it adding a couple of inches of ice around the body. They also had the ability to be willed back to their bearers but that was never used.

The characters were charged with chasing the warlord back to his castle and take him down. And so they did and then peace became the norm and the prophecy was fulfilled. At this point the story is very fuzzy and I can't remember it because I was flat out making it up as I went along. No prep, no notes, just winging it at lunch everyday with no thoughts given to it other than a general goal for the players. The PCs were allowed to keep what they had found and/or were given (including the weapons) and were picked up by The Watcher to be brought back to Everway. The two races may or may not have suddenly merged together and become full blooded dragons (I seem to remember that thought, but can't remember if it was just an idea or what actually happened. If it did happen though it raises a whole bunch of other questions that make my head hurt).

And that is basically the end of that story. I think there were gifts and abilities given out as the players so desired, but I can't remember what the rewards were. It was awful (but not the worst!) and there were more holes than plot, but it was my first time in the hot seat and I'm glad that I did it. I learned a lot from that experience.

My second time running a campaign went far, FAR worse. I won't retell that tale, but it is a shame filled thing that nearly stopped me from doing anything again ever. I'm glad I learned from that one. Let's just say that the second game evolved from the idea that aliens from X-Com decided to invade Everway and there was a Predator.

As for the first campaign though. I keep thinking I should try to rebuild it as a D20 module with a proper storyline and everything but every time I try to I run into the same problem I always do. D20 systems just seem to be too restrictive for it to work the way I want it to. Although it is very easy to transplant the legendary elemental weapons into any other system out there. I may use them again, but the base idea of this campaign may not ever see the light of day again.

I'm not sure I'm okay with that though. I want to go back and tweak and/or fix it.

BAM-Con Panel Ideas

So some of you have heard about BAM-Con (Berkshire Anime and Manga Convention) that the wife and I have been a part of for the past two years. Some of the talks we've had about it are about expanding it beyond just the themes of Anime, Manga and Japanese culture. Mostly adding in more mainstream Sci-Fi/Fantasy and Geekculture themes.

Our convention is going to continue to be in early May. It's just a good time period to run one. It puts us between a couple of the big ones in the area and is early in the season so people aren't already burned out by other conventions. I can't talk about some of the things the organizers have been talking about yet, but the early May timing means that the convention happens around some important dates in Star Wars fandom. Which is of course one of my favorite subjects.

So I'm being told that I should be designing some type of Star Wars panel/panels for next year's convention. I'm not sure if I am going to do it, but before I figure out if I want to do it or not I need to figure out what types of panels I could do well at and what type of unique talk I could bring to the convention.

I'm not sure what I can do based upon my own interests and knowledge that can be turned into a half hour to an hour long panel though. I'm open to suggestions if anyone wants to post some ideas. I'll be trying to figure out some ideas myself. Hopefully I will find something that will stick.

Musings

So I'm trying to figure out what direction I'm going to go with this blog next. I've got some more 3.5/Pathfinder campaign stuff that I'll end up posting here, but I've also got some other thigns that have been pecking at my brain lately.

I've been wanting to do more Fate conversions for old characters, which will require some Character Profiles to be created. I also got the bug to go through old campaign ideas and write them down.

The only problem there is that I've been wanting to actually run these ideas at some point and I don't want to ruin the surprise for some of them for people who might one day potentially play them (on the rare chance that anyone actually reads this blog...). I have to have realistic expectations though, and I know that the likelihood of getting to run these things is slim to nil. So really I want to write about the ideas but I don't wan to write them because I don't want to ruin them.

I'm really conflicted about it and may decided at some point over the next few weeks whether or not it will be worth it to attempt it.

I also want to write some short stories, but I keep getting hit with life and AD/HD based laziness. My wife has challenged me to complete at least one 3000+ word story within the next few months though, so we'll see if that happens. Don't know what I'm trying to accomplish here other than writing SOMETHING to keep me doing this writing thing.

X-com Enemy Unknown; some thoughts.

As some of you may or may not know I’m a huge X-Com: UFO Defense fan. It is the game that I most credit for me making the transition to what I consider to be a gamer. This ancient (by technology standards) game is something that I still play to this day. There is nothing that compares to the intensity and nerve-wracking suspense of each and every turn. The terror that you feel when you see a Chryssalid wandering near your troops or when you hear that distinct shrill shriek as the psionics sound rip its way through your speakers and directly into your brain. The apprehension as that horrific window popped up with the dreaded words “Terror Site.”The amazing feeling you got when you passed that point in the game where most aliens no longer threatened you (except those damn Ethereals) and you were just wiping the floor with them.
It was a tough game. A game where you’re just thrown to the wolves under-equipped, under prepared, and under manned. Hell, your base is set up as a death trap if it’s ever invaded. Veterans of the game know you have to completely rebuild your first base because of this. The online community has also helped keep this game fresh by giving us mods to help it keep running even on today’s systems. It takes some tweaking and trial and error, but it’s worth it.

Sectoid then and now.

Anyways, my point is that I love the game and have been playing it pretty consistently for over 15 years. You can understand my elation when I heard that Firaxis was heading up a remake of this beloved game. People who were fans of the original game were working on a successor at the studio of one of the legends of game design. My money was spent already before I had even finished reading the headline.

I had been worried that I was never going to see a turn-based X-Com again, especially since that weird prequel FPS was in the works and the last few X-Com games we got were weird ones like Interceptor and Enforcer if you don’t include all of the titles that got lost along the way. But here it was, right there in front of me.

I was finally able to download it via Steam and have been playing it as often as I can ever since. The new game is a great spiritual successor to the original. It maintains the tension while streamlining the controls and troop advancement systems. The art style is wonderful. It captures the essence of the original game while giving the game its own modern twist. I will gladly and happily recommend this game to EVERYBODY EVER. It is wonderfully crafted and masterfully executed.

Old School

Many problems with the original games have been smoothed over and streamlined. The swapping of time units with the two actions is very nice. The creation of the 4 classes of soldiers is wonderful, and so is the fact that you can customize appearances. I’m always for customizing appearances. (Okay I DO have the Elite Soldier Pack DLC specifically so I can give people the original ULTIMATE FLAT-TOP. Yes it has to be in all caps, that’s how Guile trademarked it.). The upgrades to the Psionic abilities is a breath of fresh air. The distinct abilities and the great cover system make every mission enjoyable and far more tactical than they used to be. I could sing the praises of this game all day!

ULTIMATE FLAT-TOP

There are very few complaints I have about it, nothing that makes me even want to regret playing it. But since whining seems to be the theme of my blog, I’m going to go ahead and complain about these few problems I have with it now.

[Please note: Because of the small amount of free time I have available to me these days I usually don’t get to play very often. That means I haven’t been able to finish my first playthrough yet. I am to the point where I’ve just built the Hyperwave Decoder which says to me as a fanboy that I’m probably getting to at least the ¾ point in the game’s timeline. I’m saying this because I want you to understand that I haven’t seen everything the game has to offer yet and that there might be some things here I haven’t encountered yet that I’m complaining about so bear with me. (I refuse to look at walkthroughs, FAQs, etc. until I’ve completed at least one playthough on this one because you should have to be completely blind going into this game dammit!)]

My first complaint is one of my biggest. It has to do with the number of troops you have. In the original game you have 3 types of transports available to you. You have your basic Skyranger, the UFO-like Lightning, and the “ultimate transport craft” the Avenger. Each one had its own strengths or reasons for existing. The biggest thing though was the number of troops you could transport with you into battle and the amount of equipment available to you.

In the new game you are limited in your number of troops by a hard number that is based upon your researched tech and the ranks of your soldiers. That wouldn’t be too bad except for the fact that you are only going to have four to six soldiers in a mission. Period, end of story. That’s it.
I understand why they did it tech and gameplay wise. It makes sense, but it still irks me, not only from a classic X-Com point, but from a narrative/military stand point as well. When going to an encounter in this game you are going to lose people, especially early on. Each squad member is a specialist of some kind and brings something specific that you want or need into the fight. Losing just one of them when you have that low of a number of troops means you could be losing 25% of your fighting effectiveness from a single lucky shot on one guy.

I find that unnecessarily frustrating, especially in a game that is as brutal as this one gets. It’s more frustrating when you think about how the first Skyranger you have in the first game was equipped with about a dozen soldiers. I’d personally like to see larger engagements with more troops under my command. I need rookies to sacrifice as scouts!

Another thing that’s been missing, and I know this one is missing because of some reviews I’ve read, is the classic Base Defense mission. This was when the aliens discovered your base and made an attempt to invade it. It was a desperate and brutal fight every time, especially when it was your main base. Those aliens wrecked everything they freaking could. It was a nice change of pace from the other missions and was an especially important mission because it could destroy you and end your game.

If this entered your base and you didn't shit yourself...

I’m just a little sad I won’t be able to shoot up my base in this one. Oh well.

I’ve also noticed that this game seems to have a lot less alien encounters than previous editions. Normally at this point in the original you’ve encountered over 100 UFOs and at least fought in 2 alien bases, if not more. I’ve seen, what, one Base and maybe a handful of UFOs. The abduction sites and all that count as encounters and all, but you still aren’t sending your ships out to shoot down those fleets of ships every couple of days, which has led me to neglect upgrading all of my interceptors. Which of course leads to my weaksauce ones getting shot down repeatedly.

Sometimes it seems like the LOS for this game wasn’t checked out very well. Sometimes my troops can shoot through walls, while other times they can’t see something 30 feet in front of them. It’s just a little inconsistent and slightly annoying. This won’t prevent you from completing missions, but if I were playing Ironman mode (which means the game autosaves for you while beating you over the head with the highest difficulty level, basically creating what we vets were doing on the honor system in the original game to keep it challenging after so many playthroughs. We X-Com vets are a sick bunch.) I would be rather upset by this more often than not because it can lead to the loss of some of your troops through poor positioning. As mentioned earlier, the loss of one guy is devastating in these encounters.

Not every race, terror beast, or piece of tech that you might know and love from the original game are represented here. Items like the Stun Bomb or Aliens like the Snakemen don’t make an appearance and it makes me a little bit sad. I was looking forward to seeing modern interpretations of Reapers and Snakemen and they’ve obviously been passed up for Berserkers and Thin Men, which are great, but I want my damn Snakemen and easily burned bipeds! Maybe they’ll be in a DLC or something, I could get behind that.

This! Why couldn't we have this!?!

And my final complaint is really going to sound really picky, but it’s one that bothers me a lot. When you completed research in the original game, no matter how worthless or benign it was (Alien Entertainment I’m looking at you!) you got to read the description while you looked at some type of artwork that went along with it. Autopsies had each of the aliens cut open so you could see their organs and such while Interrogations showed you what they looked like while alive.

Hell, you can see some of those Interrogation pictures on the targets that this game’s scientists are testing their weapons on. Really this isn’t much, but it would be nice to be greeted by a completed research project with some type of artwork unlock or character model coming up so you can truly admire the work the team put into these things.

Ah, gotta love the homage.

If you’re on the fence about getting this game do not let these little complaints stop you from buying it. The game is wonderful. It is far more than I ever hoped to see from this franchise I thought was long dead. With 2K and Firaxis working together on this behind the scenes and it being available on consoles as well as the PC (which is really is the only platform you should be playing it on but if you don’t have the hardware, I guess you can play it on a console…) this game should be able to keep you entertained for far longer than you think.

It is by far a successful reimagining of the Franchise and I’m looking forward to more.

Transition to Pathfinder

So I've been working on and off for a couple months now on translating the campaign I made while I was still in the navy from DnD 3.5 to Pathfinder. Along the way I've been updating, altering, and generally screwing around with everything I have already and in some cases, remaking it from the ground up.

I've created new gameplay mechanics that fundamentally alter the way magic works and that has introduced some interesting quirks into some of my encounters. Some were easy, but most require heavy alteration.

My storytelling skills and attention to detail have changed since I started this project which has caused me to retweak the storyline over and over. I'm going through it again this week, tweaking some things that felt too forced and trying to help create the organic feel between the transition between the structured/linear portions and the open world portions.

It's hard to predict player reactions, but I think I'm striking a good balance, playing on expected reactions and using that to get them to do what I want them to. That whole illusion of choice concept that Bioware once had perfected before becoming a soulless husk following their acquisition by EA is what I'm trying for. Hopefully they'll bite.

The bounty system I've developed should help keep things fresh and interesting between story quests, with plenty to do of they end up taking a different direction. The addition of the trade rules also gives them some options to spice things up and earn cash easily without any real adventuring. Which is a blessing and a curse.

I still need to redesign about half of my PC-Class mobs and make sure the random encounter tables are level appropriate too. Sometimes I wish I still stood mid-watches, it would make this so much easier to find the time to do.

With the custom ships I've been designing I've figured out that most of the D20 stuff just doesn't seem to do Age of Sail ship combat justice. I'm now looking at alternative combat systems, particularly Hex-based systems, for one that feels right to me.

I've also figured out that the sheer number of things I'm altering, creating, or including is going to necessitate me actually writing up a standardized campaign book in order to allow players to keep track of it all. Maybe that's a good thing.  Maybe I could eventually sell it off, wouldn't that be something... I doubt I'd be able to but that would be pretty damn cool. With how much effort I've put into it and how much more I have left to put in it would be nice to have something to show for it other than some blog posts whining about official systems and maybe a completed and run campaign that some people may or may not have enjoyed.

I'm a little excited though. Two of the players have already started making their characters and have fully embraced the theme. It has forced me to step up my efforts and get this ready to go quicker. Maybe if I can get 2 more players started on creating their characters I'll move even quicker.

Naming the world

So people may have noticed my Facebook rant today (and instuted the standard "Ignore the crazed political/economic rant of Epithail's" procedure). I need something to distract and calm me down so I thought about things that are relatively easy to deal with when I don't have books on hand (work tends to look down on you having a shelf of role playing books in your cubicle for some reason). So what I realized I'm missing is names for the various nations/islands/continents of this world as well as an overall name for it.
I started to write some stuff down and the names are coming slowly but I'm not sure how much I'm going to be able to do right now. Forcing it is only going to make things sound too forced. Naming just somehow seems far more important than what it is.

Naming truly sets the feel for what you feel you want to have in your world. A name can create a sense of mystery and raise questions if used properly. It can also break the setting by being extraordinarily too complicated or too simple. If the name doesn't fit it can ruin the immersion.

So with me being the perfectionist that I am, I'll probably end up overthinking this and people won't even really notice the effort. That's okay though, it makes me feel better about myself and that's what's important right?

I'm going to write up a list of what I have so far with a little bit more detail of the general culture of an area and use my map references from my earlier entry about the setting. Not everything has a name yet and this list will be updated over time as I figure more out.

Now most of the information about these lands is kept vague on purpose for right now because I want players to help me form the background of the world they're in. I don't want to finalize a history until players have put their mark on the world with their fantastic ideas about what culture their characters came from was like. Some of this will be predefined, but only to act as a spring board. For example, the primarily desert like continent contains Middle Eastern and Australian style cultures upon it generally lead by monarchies, while the two large jungle/rainforest islands controlled by the Orcs are ruled by Orcs with an Aztec/Mayan like culture.

And I let this entry sit and get too long and lost my motivation to put the list in here right now, but the good news is that I'm making a little progress. Probably sitting somewhere around 15% complete now instead of where I was.

Play testing my Campaign

How I play test my D20 based campaigns and adventures is something you probably wonder if you’ve ever heard me talk about it. It’s pretty easy. It is also a vital thing to do because of the way I tend to design dungeons/encounters/scenarios, which can be brutal sometimes. Without the testing I can’t really tell if a scenario is too difficult for players and because it is a heavily stat based combat system, it’s harder to do the DM fudge here and there to ensure the players aren’t being brutally overwhelmed. So here’s my way of testing the scenario out in order to make sure it is possibly survivable.

I start out with a generic set of “Player Characters.” These are 3-6 generic PC builds for important party rules built using the same rules as what I expect the players will have and appropriately leveled/geared. There’s nothing spectacular about any of them, they’re what you expect from a generic adventuring party using only the core rules. I don’t have anything weird in here nor do I have the broken combos that one might expect a player to make.

This group can be adapted to generic versions of what the players are running so that I can get a better feel for how the particular group is going to fair against the scenario.

Now that’s all well and good, but we’re talking about a game that involves dice, which means of course that luck can be fickle and cruel. So depending on the challenge I want to give I use 3 die values for determining the challenge level. Those numbers are 5, 10, and 15. The number chosen as the representative of a die roll depends upon how much of a challenge I want a particular thing to be.

When you get into combat though you can’t just select things like that arbitrarily though. There is far more going on than is possible to conclude with only those 3 numbers. So I rotate each character through a cycle of those numbers with every 20 th “roll” designated as a critical success or failure (determined by flipping a coin). Damage is determined with the half die value method I learned to use when playing Warmachine/Hordes. Each die is going to roll an average equal to one half of its highest number plus 0.5. So a D6 is worth 3.5 damage while a D12 is worth 6.5. For odd numbers of dice, say 3D6, you round down to the nearest whole number, because your dice will always screw you more than help you. So 3D6 = 10.5, rounded down to 10.

It gives the combat a sense of randomness and helps to make sure that it isn’t too easy or too hard. So when I say I’m playtesting my campaign and tweaking it, this is what I’m doing. It is typically an exercise performed entirely on paper. This enables me to not have to worry about figures being moved by children or animals and goes much quicker.

Which reminds me that I really need to go through this stuff again as soon as I finalize my latest system tweaks. Some of these modules I’ve designed haven’t been tested since I started tweaking the way magic works, that could be bad…

When I say I’m running the numbers on something, this is also how I’m typically going to do it. While working on the cannons and ships I’m running these types of numbers through my head with generic assumptions along each phase of development. Right now I’m working on damage scaling vs hull section Hit Points/Hardness. So a Pinnace, a small sailing ship, has 4 hull sections and sinks when a single section is destroyed. Each section has 5 inch thick wood which gives it a Hardness of 5 and 50 HP (10 HP/inch of thickness). A single Demi-Culverin, a type of medium cannon, does 4D10 damage. At a value of 5.5 damage per die it is dealing 22 points of damage (17 after hardness is applied) per hit.

That means that it will take about 3 hits on average from one of these types of cannons in order to sink one of these small ships (51 points of damage after Hardness). Is that about right?I’m not quite sure yet because I haven’t finished coming up with stats on other ships yet, but this struggle is another story for another blog post.

Oh man, converting real world ships into D20 system ships is bringing up a whole new host of problems and is a wonderful challenge. This is gonna be a lot more effort than I originally thought. Ever try to figure out how to make a 50+ cannon broadside against a ship that has 337 hull sections (destroy 84 to sink it, each section has 240 HP) work with the narrative naval combat rules and not make you insane while trying to keep track of each shot? (By the way, it’s the HMS Victory I’m converting as an example, this example is all based off of real world statistics. The freaking thing is a 104+ gun, triple decked ship designed with a crew of 850+ people on board.)

Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy and gaming

I recently finished watching the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy and its attempt to launch a sequel trilogy based off of the book On Stranger Tides. The movie series has always struck me as an odd one for Disney to do because it was truly so much grittier than most of the things you’d expect to be put out by them. 

I’m glad they did, because it really brought fantasy piracy back into mainstream thought. Which depending on who you ask may or may not be a good thing. (Oh, by the way, since these movies are so “old” and popular, I’m not going to worry about putting in spoilers warnings. If you haven’t seen them and don’t want them spoiled, don’t read this post)

The movie series at least showed that a well done movie about pirates could be done and actually do well at the box office. It might be the exception to the rule though because of the unique niche the first movie filled when it came out.

The first movie is without a doubt the best one. We all know, and quite possibly love it. The movie was original, well paced, well acted, well directed, well scored, easily quoted, and was full of fun, adventure and excitement. The special effects were very well done at the time and helped immerse you in the world they had created. 

It was quite possibly a perfect example of how well any potential fantasy series could be done if given a large budget and a good casting department (side note: after reading the nightmares that took place behind the scenes on this movie via IMDB, it could have been quite easily an awful movie and a massive box office disaster).

The second movie isn’t as good as the first one, but it’s still a very enjoyable movie with good casting with an enjoyable and unique story. There are some parts that are just too silly that break the pacing and mood but they don’t ruin it. Keira Knightley’s character Elizabeth Swan is insufferable and annoying to me, too much of the clichéd Warrior Princess with modern values thing going on there, it’s one of my pet peeves so maybe it didn’t bother too many other people. 

Some of the action scenes go out of their way to be over-the-top affairs (Water wheel I’m looking at you) and somewhat detract from the mood, but despite all of this it left you wanting more at the end when it leaves off with the cliffhanger ending. This wasn’t a masterpiece movie by any means, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t fun to watch. It served the purpose of entertaining me and was worth my time and money.

Did it bother anyone else that in the second and third movies the nameless crew members should have been wearing Star Trek: TOS style red shirts with how guaranteed they were to die?

The third movie is a different story though. Clocking in at 2 hours and 49 minutes long, you expect this movie to be an epic and potentially satisfying conclusion to the trilogy. Unfortunately it wasn’t. Between random bits of goofiness (which reek of Disney suits getting involved in the process) and an apparent literal interpretation of fan cries for “more Jack Sparrow!!!” you get a movie that has a good story with tons of potential getting bogged down by a colossal amount of stupidity and unnecessary scenes. There is at least 30 minutes you can just throw away from this movie and not feel bad about it. (Actually I would love to see someone I know who is good at editing remove that footage so we can see what it could have been.) 

Remove all of the scenes of Jack talking with himself and various scenes of stupid and yu have yourself a movie at just over 2 hours in length that is actually something worth watching. Seriously, take away the scenes with multiple Jack Sparrows and the various other scenes that are just all kinds of stupid and you have a movie that could have been great. The concept and scripting outside of that half hour were solid and enjoyable. 

Think about the early part of the movie where they go to Davy Jones’ Locker to find Jack. You end up with a 10+ minute scene where nothing important or even interesting happens. You just get to see a bunch of Johnny Depp playing a crews worth of Jack Sparrows and playing around with a rock crab (which I will admit was a pretty neat visual effect). 

Following this scene you cut to the crew fresh from crashing down into the Locker showing up on the beach getting ready to track down Jack, who they have no idea where he is or what he’s doing. Suddenly he comes crashing over the sand dunes sailing on the sand using the rock crabs. It’s a very interesting scene, but totally expected and unsatisfying because of the 10 minutes we sat there watching nothing but Jack on screen. It ruined a scene with potential mystery and visual impact with a worthless scene that bored you out of your mind so by the time the scene rolls around you don’t even care anymore. 

Pretty much any scene where Jack is alone and talking to himself needed to be removed and hidden in a deep dark pit. There are better ways to go about what they were going for, and I’m convinced the director took “suggestions” from Disney suits literally just to be a defiant ass.

The fourth movie is interesting. From what I can gather, they took at least part of the script for the book On Stranger Tides and shoehorned a few PotC characters into it. I’m not sure how I feel about it. I think I can understand why it was done (money and brand recognition), but it doesn’t quite feel right. I never read the book (I really should from what I hear, it’s supposed to be brilliant) but it just seems like Sparrow, Barbosa, and Mr. Gibbs weren’t part of the same world as everyone else. 

Like the events were happening around them regardless of what they did or how they were involved. Just like the third movie there was some great potential in this story and setting but it got wasted by silly/stupid/out of place scenes and characters. The casting and acting were well picked. The characters were believable. The setting was entertaining and interesting. The plot was interesting and enjoyable. There were just some terrible decisions made based upon forcing the PotC characters into it. (Still irritated by that coconuts scene…)

I like the action and setting of the series. It really was the inspiration for what I’ve designed my campaign setting around. I’ve always wanted to play an RPG where it’s high seas adventuring and swashbuckling in a relatively low magic environment. How many things are more appealing than that type of setting? 

Everyone who’s a gamer has always wanted on some level to do a swashbuckling adventure, if for no reason other than to just have an excuse to talk like a pirate.

And because I watched the trilogy again partially as a point of research for my setting, I was taking note of various things that struck me as game mechanics. For example, in the first movie the characters are approximately 6^th or 7^th level DnD characters by the time they start recruiting a crew for the interceptor. 

I say that range because Jack clearly has the Leadership feat with Mr. Gibbs as his cohort and the usual named subjects. Jack is a Rogue/Swashbuckler, Barbosa is a Swashbuckler/Legendary Captain with maybe another prestige class, and Will is a Fighter with a level or two of Swashbuckler. I would try to speculate Elizabeth’s classes out but I don’t want to because after the first movie her character just bothers me too much to want to think about it.

The trilogy has probably the best example set I’ve ever seen for how the Leadership feat can/is supposed to work. Jack is always trying to find followers and hirelings to crew his ship, but only his trusted cohort and higher level crew members survive everything. It’s plenty hard for him trying to recruit new people and it takes time to do so. The 1^st level extras that he recruits are pretty much useful only for taking hits and crewing the ship. It’s probably the best cinematic example of the feat in existence.

I really like the way combat is done in these movies too. There’s just something wonderful when you’re seeing ship to ship combat during the age of sail. Something indescribably satisfying about it. It’s something that I have had such a massive desire to participate in no matter the style of it. I’ve played quite a few styles of this type of combat. 

Everything ranging from the various video games (which there hasn’t been a good one that is truly satisfying in ages, best I’ve got right now are the Total War series) to the Pirates collectible miniatures game (Which I loved, it’s modeled after CCGs though so it got expensive fast and next to no one played it). I want to play an RPG in that world, but no one really made a setting or supplement that I was satisfied with. They were always too high magic for my taste, it really distracted from the themes of the age of sail.

[An aside: This excites me now: Assassins' Creed 3 Shipboard Gameplay I want a game entirely built around this!!! Seriously, please. I have money and organs, what will it take?]

I want the feel of the age of sail without the stupid magic system killing off the things I love about the time period. That’s why I’ve never been able to play in a DnD style setting like that. Have any of you read through the Stormwrack book? Any ship that has a crew of a dozen or more is going to have a ship’s mage. The mages can absolutely wreck anything they come across. 

DnD also has very poor rules regarding black powder cannons and such because they didn’t design the rules around that type of technology level. On top of that the vehicle rules are rough and clumsy. The alternate Narrative Style of vehicle combat is interesting and may work better, but not everyone knows how those rules work.

I’m having to design almost everything from scratch on this. Anything not covered by a book I’m having to hunt down or build a stat for. I’m going through my historical references and creating ships and their stats based on that. I’m having to stat out weaponry and ship armor along with trying to get it to be compatible and enjoyable with the system. It’s a rough and slow process. It’s also frustrating sometimes.

There I go, getting distracted by a random tangent again. The point is, I want the game to feel like the good parts of those movies and the system isn’t setup for it so I’m looking for solutions. I’m positive that using the Narrative Naval Combat system for battle with custom ships and weapons for the setting will work and bring together the right feel for the combat that you’d see in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, but it requires careful research and balancing so that I don’t accidentally make a 6-gun sloop capable of leveling a 44-gun frigate with little effort.

It's fun to stat out these ships though. It let's me put my knowledge of history, warfare, and gaming into the same effort and enjoy myself while doing so. There's something nice about being able to let my creativity fly freely like this. 

We’ll see how it goes. I'm enjoying the creation process for the most part but that doesn't mean everyone is going to like the results. Here’s to hoping I don’t screw it up too badly!

Again with the anti-magic posts

Yeah, I know, I'm obsessed with this new toy I've been dreaming up for my campaign. Ever since writing up that last post regarding it I've been talking with whoever will listen and running options through my head of what I can do with it.

It looks like I'm starting to get the final form of it together though. I'm going to bounce the ideas off of some trusted sources and then I'll post the final form up here.

Dear god, I'm going to end up with most of a campaign book by the time I'm ready to run this thing...
Some very good ideas have been brought to my attention regarding replacment of magic weapons and items and a system needs to be developed for it, but it's a step in the right direction.

The setting needs more specifics added to it and posted for people to peruse. I don't want to fill in or create most of the specifics though so that the players can help shape the world to fit their visions of their origins.

I should also have a new description of the character creation information for this setting, which have changed from what I talked about earlier because I'm fickle and sometimes have far too much time on my hands.

Campaigns that never happened: X-Crawl

Source

Pro-wrestling meets DnD and professional sports. Dungeon Crawling is the national pastime of the North American Empire, formerly part of the Roman Empire, lead by Emperor Ronald I. Dungeon Judges (DJs) create the most elaborate and exciting dungeons for a team of XCrawlers to battle their way through for fortune and glory broadcast to every television in every corner of the Empire. Playing to the crowd is just as important as skill while traversing the dungeons. The more the crowd loves you, the more money you get.

The setting was created at the end of 3rd edition's cycle, just prior to 3.5 hitting, so it has some adjusting that needs to be done if you were going to play it today with a more refined rules set like 3.5 or Pathfinder. I suppose you could run it as a 4e game, but there's that whole inability to adapt 4e to non-WotC sanctioned environments so... yeah...

Anyways, the setting is entertaining to think about. Anything with a unique flair for the dramatic usually catches my interest quickly (see me obsession with Yu-Gi-Oh and pro-wrestling) and get's my head filled with entertaining ideas about the setting. This one, combining an alternate modern Earth setting with Pro-wrestling and fantasy gameplay, is right up my alley. Oh the things I wanted to design and play in it...

Being able to just jump right into a dungeon crawl without a real narrative attached is something I have trouble doing, but in a setting like this I can do it as an entire session just because. You can take classic crawls and make them special events. A pre-made dungeon? Easily incorporated. Random dungeon idea with strobe lights and fog machines? Done!

That isn't to imply that this setting is just dungeon crawls and roll-playing. There is real potential for international intrigue and hidden plots. XCrawlers are extremely skilled individuals from drastically different backgrounds. What happens when countries go to war? The Drow are still hidden in the Underdark waiting to take vengeance upon the surface world. Hitler could be resurrected under the right circumstances. There are entire criminal organizations running their own "basement" dungeon crawls. Sponsors and rival teams can interfere with you between Crawls. So much there.

I have wanted to play/run an XCrawl campaign so badly since I first picked up the book, but as always, my enthusiasm was rarely matched by those around me and when transitioning between different gaming groups over the years it was always more important to find the simple thing that everyone would play rather than the out there stuff that is difficult to get an established gaming group to try out. 

I don't expect I'll ever actually get to play this game at this point, as much as I would like to. I like the setting, I like the feel, but I'm not sure I'll get a group together at this point anytime within the next 10 years and there are other systems/settings I would rather play first so once again it goes on the back burner.