* Power 16 II continues! This week is the final round of the Shadowrun League.
* Be sure to get signed up for our Gencon guerilla event list.
* Chad’s random aside on industrial music.
* Five upcoming movies we’re looking forward to: Surrogates, 9, District 9, Zombieland, Where the Wild Things Are.
* Epic player quests.
Hosts: Chris, Chad, Dan, John, Pat
* Learning a little more about Pat.
* Power 16 II rolls on! This week is the second round of the Denny’s League.
* Can’t Stop the Serenity charity.
* Some mathematical facts about 153.
* Reverse picture-preview episode. The 10 pictures forum users submitted to inspire this episode can be found here.
Hosts: Chad, Dan, John, Pat
Back before the days of Ultima and Everquest, role playing games were known amongst players as a “do anything you want, be what you want to be” form of entertainment. Within the boundaries of the system, players could become ancient warriors, mystical wizards, or cunning rogues. But when Ultima Online came out in the mid nineties, RPGs were no longer limited to the table. Players could team up with friends, battle foes, and pursue epic storylines in hopes of fame and fortune.
Fast forward to the emergence of “Sandbox RPGs” and the global popularity of “Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games.” Open and “do what you want” gameplay is the standard. So where does that leave rpg’s? Tabletop rpg’s helped influence the first video games, and now in some cases, video games are influencing tabletop rpg’s. An excellent example of a MMORPG inspired rule system is the fourth edition of Dungeons and Dragons, and more specifically, its power system.
MMORPG’s standardized method of giving all the players activatable powers that will do everything from swinging a sword to casting a spell makes using the interface simple, and quick. Dungeons and Dragons took a page out of this book and made all character abilities “powers”, making it easier for players to pick up new classes (because they didn’t have to learn how a magic system worked), but still kept the classes unique.
Another example is from more free form video games, like Morrowind, and their effects on games such as Savage Worlds. In Morrowind, while initial stat choices will have a major influence on how well you do certain tasks, the system allows you to still develop skill in other areas. Fighters can cast magic, Wizards can wear heavy armor, Morrowind’s rule system allows for full customization, given a little time. Savage Worlds does similar things with its own system. Through gained experience, characters expand their skills in any field they want, there is no restriction of a “class” system.
Now lets discuss the influences on the actual stories. I consider my gaming streak to be a colorful one, and one common trait I have found in most games is that there is a Morrowind style of plot development. While the entire campaign is “open” to the players, there always seems to be one major plot that the characters are meant to follow. When the players break away, the missions tend to be briefer and easier to accomplish. This may predate Morrowind, or even video games, but this has certainly become increasingly popular as more people claim to be “Sandbox GMs”. Another variation of the typical “Sandbox GM” is more of a MMORPG style of games, very brief quests with no larger plot arcs to be seen.
So what does all of this mean to the respective hobbies? I have only been playing long enough to get a glimpse of the pre-MMORPG era, but I think that tabletop games have gained many improvements from their video game counterparts, and have made cousins in the geek culture. As technology becomes increasingly sophisticated, we may continue to see ground breaking concepts come up that can be readily harvested for the tabletop community.
* You can find Chad’s Twitter feed here.
* Power 16 II, round 2 of the Shadowrun League. Get your votes in! You can find the on-going bracketology thread here.
* When is it too soon?
* Handling failure as a Game Master.
Hosts: Chad, Chris, Dan, John, Pat
All the limitations of our busy schedules, and the fact that not everyone can make it to every session, are reflected in the types of games we run and how they play out. We tend to have a lot of “group thought” – collectively deciding what to do and moving forward. Parties almost never split up. There is rarely any inner party conflict. When there is, it’s generally tied up in deciding what course of action the group should follow. We’ve never really been into deep role playing so the extent of our in-character philosophical discussions rarely get beyond “should we kill him or try to capture him?”
Story has the most emphasis. Our games are like a story where the protagonist is a varying group of characters instead of a single one. Characters don’t develop in the literary sense. If Blasto the 1st level wizard is an overbearing oaf, then Blasto the 16th level wizard is likely to still be an overbearing oaf, just with a lot more firepower. It’s unusual for a character’s personality to change over time, but it has happened.
With good games, plots are malleable with different threads to follow, each emphasizing different skills of different characters. If the fighter is missing that evening, then the party may chose to wait until next week to try and invade the orc’s lair. Instead, the bard may want to investigate the murders down by the waterfront. It’s like a buffet table of fun activities. There’s always something there you want to try.
Our campaigns tend to have a lot of combat. Remember, we’re talking about D&D here. It is designed around “kill monsters and take their stuff” so every class has some way to contribute in a fight. They are easy to set up and they work for everyone – regardless of the party mix. In a good game, the fights have a reason for happening beyond “they are between us and the treasure.” Winning (or losing) should advance the plot. When the campaign becomes pointless combat, just an endless series of fights, it usually means that the GM has run out of ideas. That’s when I know a campaign has gone on too long.
While our sessions are short, our campaigns can last for a very long time. Only one player in our group has never sat behind the GM screen, so we have a lot of GM’s in our group. We take turns and those turns generally last for several months – until the GM decides that he is done. They usually don’t run the entire campaign in one series so it may be a year or more before they get to run the next section. We have one unfinished game run by one of the players that is currently on hiatus. The game has been on hold since 2001. We’ll get back to it someday.
While a lot has changed in 30 years, one thing that hasn’t is our desire to play. We still refer to it as simply “the game.” We started playing one night a week more than 20 years ago. I don’t see us changing our ways any time soon.
* Power 16 II continues! It’s time to vote on the first round of the Denny’s League. You can find the bracketology thread here.
* Wii Fit.
* Chad gets screwed by another video game.
* Breaking the fourth wall of electronic games. You can see Project NATAL here and Milo here.
* Player Character failure in roleplaying games.
Hosts: Chad, Chris, Dan, John, Pat
One of the tricks I use to learn a new edition of the Dungeons & Dragons game is to re-envision an old character in a new edition. Often times, I pick some NPC who got little “air time” to make it easier. He has no mega-history to worry about, and only a very basic amount of rules and story development. With the new 4th edition rules, and in particular the Player’s Handbook 2, I decided to toy around with the character builder (available through a D&D Insider subscription) to see how I can make the old new again.
I should mention that the 4th edition D&D character builder is addictive. It’s relatively quick, it presents choices and suggestions. I love it. Combine that with a love for all the options 4th edition has to offer, and I’m like a kid in a candy store.
I decided to go hard-core. I pulled out my old half-giant gladiator from Dark Sun. He was an NPC I had who followed around one of the player characters. In Dark Sun, every character gets a psionic wild talent. My character, Kalador, had this power from the Dragon Kings sourcebook titled Strength of the Land. It had two prerequisite powers that he gained automatically as well – Lend Health and Share Strength. Something about a half-giant who could give of his strength and HP to fellow adventurers seemed great. The fact that he could draw power from the very earth beneath him was just awesome.
Imagine my surprise when I got the PHB2, cracked it open, and saw the warden class. Here was a class that seemed to be based around the Strength of the Land theme! I was so excited. I also had my eyes on the goliath race, which had awesome written all over it. I knew what I had to do.
Using the character builder (Did I mention that I dearly love this program?), I transformed my old half-giant gladiator into a goliath warden. I won’t bore you with all the details, but I found a few tricks that may help you if you decide to re-invent your character. And since Dan loves numbered lists, I shall follow suit.
1. It’s okay to change the race. If a new race works out better, or if the race is thematically similar to your old one, give it a shot. Sometimes you will find some new gem, whether rules-based or fluff-based, for your character.
2. Ditto with classes and powers. In my case, I went from an arena gladiator to a primal warden. Yet they share certain similarities. I went from one defender type to another, and I maintained the Strength of the Land theme. In fact, I built upon the theme. I’m not certain yet about the other powers, but maybe PHB3’s psionic power source will have something to offer.
3. Backstory can be modified, but you can also keep it as-is and provide an in-game explanation for the change. I had a 3.5 wizard recently that just wasn’t cutting it for me. An in-game change made him into a favored soul. The cool part about this change was that it added some fantastic story to the game.
4. You will always lose something, but you will always gain something. It’s the trade-off of making a change.
5. Did I mention themes? You won’t ever get a direct translation, but you can use the themes to re-build characters from the ground up. Just remember to build them within the game system you’re using, keep your foundations, and be open to change. My goliath’s tattoo pattern, for example, is eerily similar to his old slave tattoos.
6. Above all, have fun with it. This isn’t too serious of stuff here. If the changes fit, great. If not, don’t convert!
So give it a try and see what becomes of your old characters. You may find new life to old characters, and the desire to play them once more.
* Star Trek Bridge Commander and other Star Trek video games.
* The Power 16 2 begins today! The first round of competition within the Shadowrun League will run for a week or two. Get your votes in here! Remember that we’re giving away Catalyst gift cards, so if you want to enter for those, be sure to leave your name and email address at the end of the poll.
* Aliens in television and movies.
* Humans and colonization in science fiction.
* Changing character traits mid-game.
* Over-discussing your game.
Hosts: Chad, Chris, Dan, John, Pat
We’ve had to adjust our games in several ways to accommodate our busy schedules. Frequently, not every player can be at the game.
The biggest thing we had to change was having major plot points that were derived from individual character backgrounds. Darth Vader being Luke’s father is interesting but if Luke only plays six games out of ten, then timing that big reveal is difficult. What if Luke went on a business trip after his training with Yoda and didn’t return until he knocked on the door of Jabba’s palace?
Encounters have to be scalable. The big fight against the gnoll horde might involve anywhere from two to five PC’s. The prescription for scaling a horde is easy – just add or take away gnolls as needed for pain. Scaling something like a dragon is not. Make it too small and, though it may be a tough fight for two PC’s, it looks too small to have been the big menace of the story. Make it too big and its breath weapon kills everyone in the first round. Sometimes you just can’t, or shouldn’t, scale an encounter. If you are setting up campaign’s big finish, you might have to tread water for a session or two until everyone can be there. The trick is to make it look like you aren’t really treading water. I often keep extra encounters in reserve in case I need to pad a session enough to postpone the big fight until next week. It’s hard to pull off without frustrating the players. If you drop in an extra encounter of some type, you have to make it look like it’s been waiting for them the whole time, not just something that appeared suddenly out of nowhere.
Every obstacle has to have multiple solutions. While this is true in general it becomes much more important when you don’t know which players are going to be there. Getting past the trap you designed for the thief is harder when said thief is stuck at home with a sick kid. You need to make sure that if there isn’t any way past the trap, the party at least has some other place to go. (Consider this another argument against using a railroad plot.)
Plot elements have to be short and portable. Having an encounter with the wizard’s long lost brother is fine, as long as you can drop it into any session and conclude it in the same session. If you span sessions, the wizard’s brother may end up wondering where the wizard went. This is easier in a sandbox style game, but the more linear your plot, the more difficult this becomes.
All these limitations may sound like they suck the fun out of our games, but they don’t. We wouldn’t put so much effort into continuing our gaming if we weren’t enjoying it. Next up, I’ll talk about how our games play out.
From the beginning City of Heroes has not been like other MMORPGs. At launch City of Heroes did not have any form of crafting, PvP, or drops that could not be purchased from an in game store. The character creator was the most versatile of any MMO to date and new enhancements would not change your characters appearance. Most missions were instanced and scaled to the size of the team allowing for soloist and large teams to experience the same content. City of Hereos also had no end game content to speak of and focused more on creating new starting content so new characters would have a different experience. With the exception of City of Villains; which was intended to be its own stand alone game, all expansions have been completely free.
Over the years City of Heroes has had to adapt to the market and fan requests. PvP, crafting, and special drops were all added to the game in a manner that allowed them to be completely optional. PvP was first introduced as an arena, and later as zones dedicated to that purpose. Crafting was introduced as something to expand your Supergroup base and has expanded to enhancements, temporary powers, and costume pieces. With crafting came rare drops, an auction house, and an in game economy.
The developers of City of Heroes have introduced some truly innovative game mechanics in response to fan requests.
So innovation is nothing new to city of Heroes, but with their latest free expansion “Issue 14: Architect” they have introduced a feature that is truly unique among MMOs. The Architect system allows players to create their own story arcs and publish them for other players to experience. A player creating an arc chooses the number of missions, the objectives, and all text associated with the missions. This allows a player to create anything from a single mission to an Epic Taskforce. The arcs are not limited to in game villains and villain groups either. The innovative City Of Heroes character creator is available for players to create their own custom villain groups to inhabit their missions. You can adjust the look, difficulty, and powers of these villains while creating your story arc. Also as an added incentive to play other users missions you receive tickets that can be turned in to unlock additional content for your own missions.
While City of Heroes may not fit what everyone is looking for in an MMO with this issue it continues to provide features that other development teams would be wise to pay close attention to. COH has a strong community and while it might not have as many subscribers as some other games, its fans are easily more vocal and supportive. That is in no small part due to the creators focusing on ways to expand on that community. Early in the game’s life one of the developers spent some of his off time to code a dance club because players were requesting a save non-combat location to meet and just hang out with their friends. Costume contests, trivia games, and hide and seek are events frequently run by super groups in the starting zones. This new Architect system just expands on those concepts. If you have a group of people that love your product and spend a lot of time thinking about it they will keep the game interesting if you just provide them the tools and get out of their way. The true key to being successful in the MMORPG business is to make your players feel invested in the game so they don’t want to leave.
If this blog has interested you, you can try a free 14-day trial of City of Heroes.
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