In which an interesting weekend is described

Friday 2nd: My birthday. We went to a Japanese restaraunt first, and then to the pub, where fun was had.

Saturday: Gaming was done...all day. I tried Tribe 8 for the first time. A post-apocolyptic science-fiction fantasy horror mish-mash....SET IN CANADA! Actually it's an astoundingly good game with a tight system and a rich setting. I will almost certainly try to get my hands on the rulebook at some point. A mammoth game of Arkham Horror was also started. And Arkham Horror is always good, although it steals your time and life away, much like the actual Cthulu.

Sunday: Mostly played Iron-Man DnD. Rolling 3d6 down the line has never been so entertaining!

Monday: The highlight of the day was without a doubt Classroom Deathmatch, aka Battle Royale the RPG. A class of Japanese schoolchildren dropped on an island and told to kill each other. The mechanics are geared for co-operative storytelling more than anything. Each character has a best friend and a rival. If you succeed on an action, your best friend describes the results. If you fail, your rival does it. There are no real limits on what can be described, so death is very common. But that's ok, because that's how it works, and you can always quantum leap into a new student. Scenes are set by all the players, even those whose characters aren't participating, and flashbacks can be used to get bonus dice. The only problem is that it is most definitely a one-shot game. The mechanics as they stand would not work for anything longer than that. Oh, and avoid the swim team; they're lunatics!

In which I apologise for being a closet powergamer

I was statting up Star Wars characters today, as one does, and my train of thought actually caused me to stop dead. There I was putting together some kind of Zabrak fringer (I had the model, okay? It seemed appropriate) and I envisioned him as a sort of Scout/Scoundrel mix. So anyway, halfway through I realised that I was actually statting the character out for optimum efficiency. You know, I'll take this feat because it stacks with this talent allowing me to leap out of cover, shoot, and dive back it, all while never exposing myself to counter-fire. Isn't building a character like that, you know, being a munchkin?

Well not wanting to be thought a munchkin, I desperately tried to justify it. Perhaps min-maxing was ok, as long as you roleplayed properly. But wait, I hadn't even thought of a personality for this guy yet. Perhaps as long as I made sure the mins were there as well as the maxes. But wait again, that's what a min-max is. In the end the only justification I could come up with was that perhaps as long as I didn't annoy the others it would be fine. But that's a pretty lame justification. So in the end I did what anyone would do. Seek out the biggest powergamer I know for advice.

So he gave me some interesting things to think about. Principally that there is a difference between powergaming and being a munchkin, and I had to work out what that line was. So I admit it world, I am a powergamer. I love being effective in combat. I love stacking feats to create an unstoppable badass capable of offing stormtroopers and dark jedi in a single shot. I like being impossible to hit. Because you know what? Being a non-combatent sucks in a game designed around combat.

Powergamers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your dex bonus!

White Wolf, what the hell?

As a lover of both World of Darkness and Exalted, you would think that I would love the publishing company, White Wolf. In truth my relationship with them is very hit and miss. I love their games, don't get me wrong. Some of the Old WoD stuff wa sub-par, and I think nWoD has a much better feel to it. Also, Storyteller 2 is a much better system than Storyteller. On the whole though, I love all the games of their that I've played. So why do I not like them so much?

Mostly, it's their arrogance. White Wolf can be incredibly pretentious at times. Just read the storytelling chapter of Changeling: the Lost and you'll see that in a hearbeat. Look at this section of it:

Imagine an artist's palette, first of all, a color-box from which you, as Storyteller, will "paint" your chronicle: the locales, the characters, the weird quests and dream-remembered promises. Don't consider the actual colors yet, though. Instead, think about the properties of those colors. Imagine the bleak, painterly neutrals of the Hedge and the sharp, dry-brush edges of the thorns. Imagine the oversaturated, high-contrast variety of colors present at an august Court function. Imagine the textured patinas of a lost artifact unearthed, an untarnished metallic luster yielding into verdigis, or perhaps the luminous nacre of a pearl plucked from between a dead man's chalky fingers.

What the hell does that even mean? Seriously, it's pretentious wank that tells you nothing in practice about how to GM a game of Changeling. (Incidentally, I wouldn't mind so much if Changeling wasn't in all other respects a fantastic game, probably my favourite of the nWoD line). So yeah, White Wolf can be arrogant as hell at times, but this takes the gold in stupid things that they've done.

The basic idea is that you send in your copy of the DnD Players Guide, and they send you a copy of Exalted in return. In itself, it's not a bad idea, especially seeing as 4th Edition is coming out soon. If they can drum up a big of interest in Exalted on the side, more power to them. It's the way that it's phrased that really annoys me. You're supposed to graduate to a better level of roleplaying.

Now you won't find me arguing that DnD is better than Exalted. I prefer Exalted, to be honest, but they're different beasts entirely. DnD is high mortal fantasy, with mortal characters in a fairly generic fantasy world. It is by no means a bad game, indeed I love it. Exalted is Epic level immortal fantasy. Your characters are, for want of a better word, gods. They are gifted with the power of deities, and capable of truly earth-shattering feats. It's at a much higher power level than DnD, and comparing the two in this fashion is simply not something that you can really do.

People who like DnD aren't necessarily going to like Exalted, and White Wolf have basically shot themselves in the foot by saying 'come and play a better game, leave those plebs who play DnD behind, what do they know?' The sort of person who would think like that is not the sort of person I want to play tabletop roleplaying games with.

That's not to blast those people who would make the swap because they are moving up to 4th edition anyway, I have nothing against them, and that's a good way to get yourself a little extra out of the bargain. But people who would make the swap solely in order to feel superior to DnD players, which seems to be what this deal is implying, you aren't welcome in my games, ever.

Now I'm sure that this has been in the works for a while, but they have done it at a truely, spectularly disrespectful time, considering that Gary Gygax only passed away last tuesday.

Shame on you White Wolf. Your games are great, we know, but stop being so arrogant about it.

EDIT: People of various forums are now suggesting that this move was done with their tongue firmly within their cheek. If that's the case, then I apologize profusely to White Wolf. Either way, I think it's pretty tasteless, but not so malicious as I thought it was.

But you're still pretentious!

RIP - Gary Gygax

I haven't been around for a week or so, firstly because I attended Minami-con in Southampton over the weekend, and then because of some personal things in the week that I'd prefer not to go into, but I was devastated to hear the news. Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons, passed away on tuesday.

His influence on the RPG industry is unquestioned and, while other people may have come up with tabletops, given time, the fact remains that he is the one who did, and he is rightly called a pioneer and father of Tabletops. Dungeons and Dragons is, and remains, the most popular and the most well-known of all of them.

Blogs and webcomics everywhere are mourning the occasion, and Penny Arcade replaced their strip with a memorial to him.

Thank you Gary, and good luck with whatever next life there is. The impact you had on our lives can not be overstated!

Points of Light, or How I learned to stop worrying and love 4th Edition

Any RPGer who hasn't had their head in the sand has probably heard by now about Fourth Edition DnD, announced at GenCon last year. I have to admit that when I first heard about it, I was very sceptical. Wasn't this just some way for WotC to make a bunch more money by releasing the same sourcebooks over again? After all, 3.5 only hit shops in 2004, and 3.0 was printed in 2000. Surely there was no need for another edition?

Well, perhaps that is part of it, especially on marketing, but everything I've read about fourth edition makes me want it more and more. So what was the turning point? Quite simple, it's summed up on the phrase "Points of Light in a big, dark world." (Article requires a free membership to view)

What does that phrase mean exactly? The site itself explains it quite well:

Most of the world is monster-haunted wilderness. The centers of civilization are few and far between, and the world isn’t carved up between nation-states that jealously enforce their borders. A few difficult and dangerous roads tenuously link neighboring cities together, but if you stray from them you quickly find yourself immersed in goblin-infested forests, haunted barrowfields, desolate hills and marshes, and monster-hunted badlands. Anything could be waiting down that old overgrown dwarf-built road: a den of ogre marauders, a forgotten tower where a lamia awaits careless travelers, a troll’s cave, a lonely human village under the sway of a demonic cult, or a black wood where shadows and ghosts thirst for the blood of the living.

That's quite an interesting way of looking at things, and it does something to distinguish DnD from legions of generic fantasy games. It conjures up images similar to those from authors like Fritz Leiber, Robert E. Howard and Michael Moorcock. This is taking Sword and Sorcery back to its original, pulp fantasy roots. I really hope that it actually gets rid of the Tolkein feel that DnD has had so far, and makes something slightly fresher. I know it will keep the trappings, Elves, Dwarves and Dark Lords, but those are pretty seminal in fantasy. The feel, however, seems completely different. Characters are more powerful, combat is cooler, and enemies are more numerous. You really could see Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser adventuring in this game, you'd never have seen them in the old Forgotten Realms.

This is a real example of where the feel of the game can really get me excited about something. I had assumed that this was a financial decision to boost WotC, but it really seems like they know what they're doing here. I can't wait!

Dungeons and Dragonballs

So I was thinking about a topic that I have rambled about before. Power progression in anime, specifically Dragonball Z. How, they continuously power up until they are not just in a different league to how they were before, but playing a completely different game. In the first few episodes of DBZ, Goku gets clobbered by a saiyan warrior named Raditz, and eventually has to sacrifice himself to kill him.

Within a dozen episodes, Goku is at a level far higher than Raditz. Maybe five or six times stronger than him, all told. By the end of the anime, Raditz simply doesn't measure up. Goku is literally maybe five or six million times stronger than him. His son, Gohan, is even stronger. Goku could literally beat infinite an infinite number of Raditz clones without breaking a sweat.

Thinking back over this, it shocked me how similar it was to the character progression in Dungeons and Dragons. In DnD, there isn't a huge gap between levels. You gain a few extra hit points (3 or 4 for a spellcaster, maybe 10 to 15 for a barbarian with the rest of the classes somewhere in between.), you might gain a feat or a class ability, and you gain a few skill points. You don't go up a huge amount in terms of power.

And yet, a level 20 character is far more than twenty times more powerful than a level 1 character. It literally gets to the point where, even if a level 1 character can get an attack in before dying, they will only be able to hit the level 20 on a roll of 20, and that's only because a natural twenty never misses. Even if he hits, the level 20 will undoubtedly have some method of preventing the damage going through, or nullifying it when it has.

I have never played this out because it would take forever, but I would imagine that you would need somewhere in the region of a thousand level 1 fighters to bring down a level 20 fighter who is nominally only 20 times more powerful than they are. And you would have to be lucky.

So how does this come back to Dragonball? Well the powerups that the characters seem to get at various stages roughly correspond to levelling up. They don't always become that much more powerful, but it all adds up.

I guess it works along the principle which I will call the Einstein principle. It has nothing to do with Einstein himself, I am merely using him as an example. Einstein was more intelligent than I am. I don't know exactly how much more intelligent because to me, him being ten times more intelligent and him being one hundred times more intelligent look very much the same.

Similarly, Goku being five times more powerful than Raditz, and Goku being five million times more powerful than Raditz? It really doesn't make a difference unless you introduce someone more powerful to set a benchmark. Enter Vegeta, stage left.

Is there a point to this? Hell, no.

DnD Campaign setting

I've recently been working on a campaign for DnD that I will start DMing hopefully some time this summer. I decided not to go with any of the pre-made worlds. Nothing against any of them in particular, but I prefer to have control over the World (and critically, I prefer that the players not know everything about it). I haven't yet given the World a name, indeed I don't know if I will, but It's been fleshed out quite nicely so far. The PCs start in the country of Cavin, which for twenty years has been at war on-and-off with it's neighbours. No side now has the capability to field the vast armies that they once did, and fighting has been reduced to skirmishs involving smaller groups.

The first three adventures are based in and around a military emcampment at Helga's Hollow, which guards a vital bridging point over a large river. These are very railroaded, mostly because several of the players won't have played DnD before and I'd like to give them a chance to get to grips with the mechanics before anything really complicated happens. However, after that, I hope to allow them greater choice, and so have in many places included alternative adventures that they could pursue.

I have also introduced a mechanic for nationality. Basically, the archipelago around which the entire campaign is set was colonised hundreds of years in the past, and this has prevented the nations being based around a particular race. They have their own languages, but it isn't sort of 'this nation is elves and this nation is dwarves'. For this reason everyone must also choose a nationality, which will effect how NPCs view them and also provide some bonuses and penalties.

I have also not included a pantheon of Gods. Usually in most settings people can worship a God, who is assumed to be in conflict or alliance with different Gods, much like the pantheons of ancient Greece and Rome. I took a slightly different route. There are five major religions, not all of which admit the existance of other religion's deities. Indeed, at least one of the major religions is basically atheistic, and another worships ancestors who are held to be Gods. Due to this, divine magic comes from faith, rather than definite theistic intervention. There is no mechanic to represent that, it's just one of the ways of working around the ubiquitous idea of pantheons (which I'm not fond of).

I don't actually know how the story will turn out, but I have it planned up until the point where the PCs will be level 9 or 10.

Thoughts on playing DnD

I love DnD, I really do. However, let's be honest, not a lot of roleplaying actually goes on in it. You roll up your character. Your class tells you how you kill monsters, and hence which attributes you use. If you're a Fighter, Barbarian or Paladin, you pummel them. If you're a Sorcerer or Wizard, you cast magic missile at them. If you're a rogue, you sneak up from behind and stick them with a knife. If you're a Ranger or Druid your animal companion rips their throat out. There are two support classes, Clerics to heal and Bards to buff. That's about it.

You then choose skills. There are about four skills you actually use. Spot/Move silently/Heal/Bluff. That is about it.

You then decide feats. Feats give you handy ways to increase your killing or surviving powers. Either you take a feat like Cleave, allowing you to kill another monster after this one, or a feat like Lightning Reflexes, allowing you to survive a trap.

You then fall into a pattern which goes something like this: Get plot hook, go to dungeon, empty first floor, loot corpse, kill monster, kill monster, find treasure, go to level two, kill slightly harder monster.................find dungeon boss, kill dungeon boss, go back to town, hand in dungeon boss's ear to plot hook giver, get new plot hook...repeat.

I'm kidding to an extent. I have played brilliantly scripted campaigns with exellent storylines and superb villains. However, a lot of them can still be broken down to this basic formula.

That said, put a D20 in my hand and tell me my attack bonus and damage, and that dice will be rolled before you can blink.

So, if you don't play DnD for the story, what do you play it for? Partly it's a social thing. Six or seven people sit around a table making endless jokes and snide comments for four hours. Roleplay happens, but in a jokey, lighthearted way. Partly it's as simple as the fact that many-sided dice are so incredibly fun to roll. A D20 is a lovely thing, and rolling it is almost a spiritual experience. One of the reasons why games like Neverwinter Nights can never match up to table-top is simply because of the lack of dice. Finally, DnD allows you to be nothing more than a fighter with a sword hacking his way through an endless swarm of goblins. We have always wanted to do that at some point.

Other systems are much better for roleplaying. Look at the World of Darkness Storyteller System, which encourages playing a role much more. However, none have quite the same effect on me as DnD. I don't know why that is.

Creating Characters

I don't know about you, my dear readers, but in my humble opinion the best part of playing any sort of tabletop roleplay is the creation of characters. So many stats to be decided, so many skills to purchase and abilities to consider. You start with the vaguest of concepts. For a recent Shadowrun character, for example, I started with solely with the idea of a an former motorbike-gang member. I imagined him/her doing really really cool things, like jumping on his bike off the roof of a high building, smashing through the window of an adjacent high building and laying into whatever was guarding the place with a shotgun in each hand. Of course, the characters you create never quite match up to those initial fantasies do they?

I'm sure every one of us can remember at least one time when they spent two hours looking through the Dungeons and Dragons PHB in an attempt to twink a character to do really cool things. Like you managed to create a Fighter who at level 20 could have an almighty seven attacks (plus Great Cleave, because naturally this fighter can kill ANYTHING in a single hit) a round. You envision him standing in a swarm of monsters smaking them down one after another. Of course, then the campaign starts and you get owned by a small badger in the first adventure. *Sigh* I love DnD.

I am not ashamed to say that I create about three characters a week. Understand that I will never use them at all, it's just nice to imagine how they will be used.

I think I'll treat you guys to a view of the Shadowrun character I was talking about earlier (yeah, I did create them in the end). However, that can wait until I find his character sheet!

Anyone else have any thoughts on the creation of characters? Am I the only one who takes extreme pleasure in making and never using them?