Many long term games are based around very long term epic storylines. In my college game we did the whole Blackmoor thing with the alien spaceship that damaged reality or whatever, but one of my memories from that is stuff from years back suddenly having relevance. It was cool, but the basic fact was that I didn't remember the 'important' stuff since it was surrounded by others adventures.
This has been my observation in other games. It is often hard to make a huge epic storyline because for most of it you are concealing the huge epic storyline and trying to reveal it in small bits. The problem with this is that it can become remote and uninvolving. My last game was Shackled City and this had a massive overarching evil plot, but the players didn't really seemed very involved in that whole story till the end....
Anyway, my point behind this post was to introduce an idea I had for my next game. I am going to use symbolism. I have three symbols that I plan on trying to repeat throughout the game to help give a feel for things. I am not sure how it will all work out, butI am pretty sure at the worst it will be mildly amusing.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
The loss of alignment!
One thing I am glad will be gone is alignment. No more stupid arguments about how 'Chaotic Whatever' should act or whether an act is lawful or not. I have largely been blessed with players who don't tend to play evil psychopaths (although most of the characters have been pretty far from saints). But I basically really hate stupid alignments arguments and hate trying to leash in players with alignment. In Doug's game I play a cleric and Holy Word is my go to spell. There is one character who doesn't have 'good' written down on their character sheet, but what they have written down is largely meanginless to the way our characters act. I play a 'Lawful Good' cleric, but I ignore a lot of church policy I find to be silly. Should I be chaotic? I don't care!
For a really spot on portrayal of stupid alignment stuff watch Gamers: Dorkness Rising. Can't recommend this enough to gamers.
For a really spot on portrayal of stupid alignment stuff watch Gamers: Dorkness Rising. Can't recommend this enough to gamers.
New Campaign Building Style
Oh alas my poor abandoned blog! I have returned to you now that I am planning on running a D&D game again and will hopefully add some observations about 4e game play.
Anyway, my new game has developed out of experiences with my last couple campaigns. My goal in what I think was my first cambridge campaign was to have a kind of special story for each character. My original thought in doing this was to give each character a unique little power boost as well as an interesting side story. It worked pretty well. One of the memorable story lines was the clones of Sojano. I also really liked a side story about how one character became a Weretiger which really confused the players when they were attacked by a tiger in the middle of the city. Unfortunately that player moved on before this story went too far.
I felt like this was such a success that I tried to replicate it in my future games having each character have some little interesting side story. I found that these side stories tended to have as much or more player involvement than the main plotlines.
I was also running a player in the traditional Dragonlance game. I hadn't read the novels at that point. Because the game was based on a novel there was a back story and our characters were worked into things. It was very cool that my character was the son of the main bad guy and it was awesome when I cut his head off! Sneak attack / power attack forcing an instant death save! Although when I realized I couldn't fail at this due to a plot point it took a little wind out of my sails. Of course, when I went back and read the novels everything was eerily familiar....
Anyway, I think what happens with a lot of games is that the game story and campaign are developed without the players. A DM or publishing company creates a world and adventure and the players create characters to jump into this story. What I wanted to try and do was not just have the characters have interesting side stories, but for them to be the main story. In a work of fiction the characters aren't random adventurers who wander into the situation they are key pieces of the situation. They are the desposed princes, the victims, the children of prophecy and so on. In the game I am currently struggling to start I wanted to instead of trying to make a cool idea in my own head, to take the characters and try and make the campaign be their story.
I am still in the planning stage of this game, but I got some mixed success. Some players gave more input and some less. The input was spread out over weeks leading me to focus on the story of some characters while ignoring others. So the central story I have now feels a little lopsided, but I like it. I think it will be more like my previous campaigns than I had planned. Each character will have a storyline. I have rough outlines for many of the characters that have been presented already. Although I don't plan on getting too detailed since who knows where their travels will take them and making assumptions about their still forming character personalities is dangerous. For example, Elymas Rell didn't really seem to care that his family had been kidnapped by demons and probably would have gladly sold their souls for power.... There will also be a central storyline that binds them. I am hoping that answering their 'personal' quests will help involve them more in the central story.
So I generated a set of questions for players to answer, but I noticed that there was a vaguely similar set of questions in the DMG2. There were more and they were more specific so maybe I will take some more inspiration from those questions in the future.
Anyway, my new game has developed out of experiences with my last couple campaigns. My goal in what I think was my first cambridge campaign was to have a kind of special story for each character. My original thought in doing this was to give each character a unique little power boost as well as an interesting side story. It worked pretty well. One of the memorable story lines was the clones of Sojano. I also really liked a side story about how one character became a Weretiger which really confused the players when they were attacked by a tiger in the middle of the city. Unfortunately that player moved on before this story went too far.
I felt like this was such a success that I tried to replicate it in my future games having each character have some little interesting side story. I found that these side stories tended to have as much or more player involvement than the main plotlines.
I was also running a player in the traditional Dragonlance game. I hadn't read the novels at that point. Because the game was based on a novel there was a back story and our characters were worked into things. It was very cool that my character was the son of the main bad guy and it was awesome when I cut his head off! Sneak attack / power attack forcing an instant death save! Although when I realized I couldn't fail at this due to a plot point it took a little wind out of my sails. Of course, when I went back and read the novels everything was eerily familiar....
Anyway, I think what happens with a lot of games is that the game story and campaign are developed without the players. A DM or publishing company creates a world and adventure and the players create characters to jump into this story. What I wanted to try and do was not just have the characters have interesting side stories, but for them to be the main story. In a work of fiction the characters aren't random adventurers who wander into the situation they are key pieces of the situation. They are the desposed princes, the victims, the children of prophecy and so on. In the game I am currently struggling to start I wanted to instead of trying to make a cool idea in my own head, to take the characters and try and make the campaign be their story.
I am still in the planning stage of this game, but I got some mixed success. Some players gave more input and some less. The input was spread out over weeks leading me to focus on the story of some characters while ignoring others. So the central story I have now feels a little lopsided, but I like it. I think it will be more like my previous campaigns than I had planned. Each character will have a storyline. I have rough outlines for many of the characters that have been presented already. Although I don't plan on getting too detailed since who knows where their travels will take them and making assumptions about their still forming character personalities is dangerous. For example, Elymas Rell didn't really seem to care that his family had been kidnapped by demons and probably would have gladly sold their souls for power.... There will also be a central storyline that binds them. I am hoping that answering their 'personal' quests will help involve them more in the central story.
So I generated a set of questions for players to answer, but I noticed that there was a vaguely similar set of questions in the DMG2. There were more and they were more specific so maybe I will take some more inspiration from those questions in the future.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Strand of Prayer Beads
The Strand of Prayer Beads is one of the best magic items out there. Why? Because it provides a +4 caster level bonus for 10 minutes. Very few items provide this kind of bonus. Another aspect of this item is that is does not take a magic item slot so you can have and use multiple strands. Combine this item with one of the best offensive divine spells, Holy Word and what do you get?
Any opponent with fewer hit dice than your level is instantly defeated with no saving throw (aka paralyzed at least a minute). Any opponent that isn't at least 4 levels higher then you is blinded and this typically means they are severely limited. Sure, they get spell resistence, but you have that extra +4 to overcome it.
It seems the primary reason people don't use Holy Word is that it will hit their own party members that aren't good aligned. Simple solution: screw em. Eventually they will convert.
Any opponent with fewer hit dice than your level is instantly defeated with no saving throw (aka paralyzed at least a minute). Any opponent that isn't at least 4 levels higher then you is blinded and this typically means they are severely limited. Sure, they get spell resistence, but you have that extra +4 to overcome it.
It seems the primary reason people don't use Holy Word is that it will hit their own party members that aren't good aligned. Simple solution: screw em. Eventually they will convert.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Designing a Campaign World
One aspect of the gaming hobby is world creation. This actually stems from a literary tradition started by authors like Tolkien. Tolkien created a rich fantasy world in which to set his story. Other authors have followed suit and you will now rarely find a fantasy story that isn't set in an alternate fantasy world.
The reason for this is because the world can be a story element in itself. In fact the setting can provide a great deal of the story as well as background color.
Dave Arneson was one of the gaming pioneers who took this world building element and moved it into gaming with the development of Blackmoor. Greyhawk and Mystara followed and it became commonplace for game masters to have a fantasy setting to set their games in.
Now a setting could be something as simple as some names for coins, months, towns, kingdoms, and gods or it could be as complex as a long history. One very rich game setting is Battletech. They published several books that were essentially just histories of the various empires. I remember reading these and being incredibly impressed by the depth of the history.
But is it useful to have this depth? Is it really that useful to use a different set of names for coins and gods? I think the question becomes, do these changes in setting actually impact your game? Some obviously do. They are important plot elements in the game. For example, one game might have no elves and forbidden magic that has dire consequences when used. This kind of thing can have a big impact on the story. So big that when you consider a campaign or adventure, you should work those changes in. Gaming is, in part, tellling a story, and the setting can have a major impact, but the setting exists for this impact. That is a key point, the setting exists to serve the story. In many ways games have lost this and game companies have encouraged this separation by pushing defined campaign worlds. Now I am not against the published settings that often have a depth and breadth that a setting made by a single hobbyist can't really compare to. These settings often offer a lot of story ideas, but it helps to hide that fact the the usefulness of a setting is primarily in helping to tell a story.
One thing I want to say about campaign worlds is that little details can also be fun in a game. I remeber during a trip to China I learned about a practice of having a stew that was constantly going with water and new ingredients added, but the pot was never emptied and cleaned out. I adapted this to a game where dwarves did this (instead of Chinese muslims) and it became a whole thing in the game. The dwarf character's family offered them the ancient soup. Later on, when their house was burning they all wanted to save their ancestral soup. Anyway, little campaign world details can be very fun even though they have fairly minor story impact.
Now that I have had a little rant about how the campaign world has to fulfill it's function of adding to the story, I want to take it all back. I think world design can be fun and interesting in and of itself. For example, all those battletech books detailing history would have very little impact on any game, but I thought they were cool. I have also had fun building and detailing campaign worlds. So world design can almost be a separate hobby, but if a world is made to support a game you should remember that the world was made to support the game and details about the world the don't impact the game aren't particularly useful.
The reason for this is because the world can be a story element in itself. In fact the setting can provide a great deal of the story as well as background color.
Dave Arneson was one of the gaming pioneers who took this world building element and moved it into gaming with the development of Blackmoor. Greyhawk and Mystara followed and it became commonplace for game masters to have a fantasy setting to set their games in.
Now a setting could be something as simple as some names for coins, months, towns, kingdoms, and gods or it could be as complex as a long history. One very rich game setting is Battletech. They published several books that were essentially just histories of the various empires. I remember reading these and being incredibly impressed by the depth of the history.
But is it useful to have this depth? Is it really that useful to use a different set of names for coins and gods? I think the question becomes, do these changes in setting actually impact your game? Some obviously do. They are important plot elements in the game. For example, one game might have no elves and forbidden magic that has dire consequences when used. This kind of thing can have a big impact on the story. So big that when you consider a campaign or adventure, you should work those changes in. Gaming is, in part, tellling a story, and the setting can have a major impact, but the setting exists for this impact. That is a key point, the setting exists to serve the story. In many ways games have lost this and game companies have encouraged this separation by pushing defined campaign worlds. Now I am not against the published settings that often have a depth and breadth that a setting made by a single hobbyist can't really compare to. These settings often offer a lot of story ideas, but it helps to hide that fact the the usefulness of a setting is primarily in helping to tell a story.
One thing I want to say about campaign worlds is that little details can also be fun in a game. I remeber during a trip to China I learned about a practice of having a stew that was constantly going with water and new ingredients added, but the pot was never emptied and cleaned out. I adapted this to a game where dwarves did this (instead of Chinese muslims) and it became a whole thing in the game. The dwarf character's family offered them the ancient soup. Later on, when their house was burning they all wanted to save their ancestral soup. Anyway, little campaign world details can be very fun even though they have fairly minor story impact.
Now that I have had a little rant about how the campaign world has to fulfill it's function of adding to the story, I want to take it all back. I think world design can be fun and interesting in and of itself. For example, all those battletech books detailing history would have very little impact on any game, but I thought they were cool. I have also had fun building and detailing campaign worlds. So world design can almost be a separate hobby, but if a world is made to support a game you should remember that the world was made to support the game and details about the world the don't impact the game aren't particularly useful.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Four Aspects to the Game
There are essentially four aspects to role-playing games. I will go over them briefly.
1) Wargaming. This is the act of creating a stimulated combat that obeys a specific set of rules. It is a tactical exercise and also involves mastering the rule set. In games it can range from rock-paper-scissors to chess to 3.5 edition D&D. For this purpose the ruleset is very important because you want this tactial game to be relatively fast paced, balanced, but at the same time to have a rich tactical depth. One thing I have noted about this aspect of the game is that it is important for the players to understand and be interested in the rules, otherwise this aspect of the game fails.
2) Interactive Storytelling. Most games have a central story behind them. While some are very free form with no structure, most center around a plot with the players playing the role of the main characters. Most players will try to fill the role of the main characters, but there are some who prefer to go their own way instead of the expected path and there are a few who delight in trying to disrupt any planned story. Games can range in terms of story structure. Some have a specific plot and the players have a fairly narrow course. Other games have less of a main plot and are more focussed on a series of character with their own motivations. It is important for the game master and the players to be on the same track when it comes to how free form their story will be.
3) Role Playing. By this I mean actual role playing, the act of pretending to be someone else. This can be as simple of having an idea of who your character is and having them act and see the world as you would think they would or it can be more intense with acting, speaking in character, and so on. This process is often fairly subtle and is largely controlled by the player. You can play most role-playing games without this element at all, but you can also play any with it.
4) Character Building. It may seem weird, but a major part of many games is making your character more powerful. Acquiring new powers and items in order to meet previously unbeatable challenges and to laugh in the face of old challenges is a part of the game. There are some games that don't do this very well. One of the successes of D&D has been that despite a poor rule set that it allowed for this character building quite well. This is also one of the key principles behind the compelling nature of many massively multiplayer games.
1) Wargaming. This is the act of creating a stimulated combat that obeys a specific set of rules. It is a tactical exercise and also involves mastering the rule set. In games it can range from rock-paper-scissors to chess to 3.5 edition D&D. For this purpose the ruleset is very important because you want this tactial game to be relatively fast paced, balanced, but at the same time to have a rich tactical depth. One thing I have noted about this aspect of the game is that it is important for the players to understand and be interested in the rules, otherwise this aspect of the game fails.
2) Interactive Storytelling. Most games have a central story behind them. While some are very free form with no structure, most center around a plot with the players playing the role of the main characters. Most players will try to fill the role of the main characters, but there are some who prefer to go their own way instead of the expected path and there are a few who delight in trying to disrupt any planned story. Games can range in terms of story structure. Some have a specific plot and the players have a fairly narrow course. Other games have less of a main plot and are more focussed on a series of character with their own motivations. It is important for the game master and the players to be on the same track when it comes to how free form their story will be.
3) Role Playing. By this I mean actual role playing, the act of pretending to be someone else. This can be as simple of having an idea of who your character is and having them act and see the world as you would think they would or it can be more intense with acting, speaking in character, and so on. This process is often fairly subtle and is largely controlled by the player. You can play most role-playing games without this element at all, but you can also play any with it.
4) Character Building. It may seem weird, but a major part of many games is making your character more powerful. Acquiring new powers and items in order to meet previously unbeatable challenges and to laugh in the face of old challenges is a part of the game. There are some games that don't do this very well. One of the successes of D&D has been that despite a poor rule set that it allowed for this character building quite well. This is also one of the key principles behind the compelling nature of many massively multiplayer games.
Following up a little bit on my last post. One of my players also pointed out a major imbalances in third edition. He found that any battle that focussed around fighting a single entity almost always was easy. This seemed especially true at later levels. Imagine a high level battle. Healing is so powerful that a major bad guy has to dish out enough damage to kill a player every round. If his damage is below that a healer character can easily negate his damage potential because healing is so strong.
One of the tactics is the final battle was for the cleirc to wait invisibily after having used a feat that would allow him to heal from a distance instead of touch. He simply readied his heal action to go off when anyone was badly injured. The big bad guy could have gone after him, but any round lost was a major loss because the players would get an action each while the bad guy got a single precious action.
This is one aspect they tried to fix in 4th by introducing 'elites' and 'solos' as well as focussing encounters as several units against several units.
One of the tactics is the final battle was for the cleirc to wait invisibily after having used a feat that would allow him to heal from a distance instead of touch. He simply readied his heal action to go off when anyone was badly injured. The big bad guy could have gone after him, but any round lost was a major loss because the players would get an action each while the bad guy got a single precious action.
This is one aspect they tried to fix in 4th by introducing 'elites' and 'solos' as well as focussing encounters as several units against several units.
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