avengers

Sunday, February 12, 2012

More Of This Please

Dear game publishers:
Give us art that's good. I could give a fuck what's in it.

(yes, that's one of mine)

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Let's Play DMG Roulette!

Random page.

Type I DMG

Type IV DMG

3.5 DMG

"(A chapter about mining)

As Dungeon Master you will be interested in the subject of dungeon building for two reasons. Most important is the work will take place in various underground settings you devise for your players. Work will probably be in progress prior to their venturing into the labyrinth, during the course of their adventures therein, and even after they have moved on to some other project or task. Later, high level player characters will build their own strongholds, and they will desire some dungeon mazes thereunder."

"Gaining a level is the most significant reward the game has to offer, but even that reward has its own tidal rhythm. Characters gain new attack powers at odd-numbered levels, and they gan new feats, ability score increases, and global adjustments to all their attack and defenses at even-numbered levels. both are exciting, but they feel different." (Facing page: picture of leafhippie)

"Epic Ranger

Whether cunning protector of the wild or cold blooded hunter of the weak, the epic ranger is one with the wilderness, moving with deadly grace and keen mind through the natural world"

_______

Round one:

Rather than emphasize the differences between these passages (easy to do) instead I'm thinking about the similarities:

All these passages are fucking pointless

The first one is, at least, subjectively useless (and funny), while the last two are absolutely redundant. Why do they even make DMGs?

Round one to Gary.

Ok:

_________

"When the paladin reaches 4th or higher level, he or she will eventually call for a warhorse. It will magically appear, but not in actual physical form. The paladin will magically "see" his or her faithful destrier in whatever locale it is currently in, and it is therefore up to the paladin to journry to the place and gain the steed. As a rule, of thumb, this journey will not be beyond 7 days ride, and gaining the mount will not be an impossible task. The...(and then a bunch of adventure hooks)"

"The basic nature of puzzles--that they rely on player ability--is the reason that some people love puzzles in the game and some people dislike them. players who enjoy puzzles and are reasonably good at solving them generally like running into them in the course of an adventure. players who don't like puzzles, or who balk at the idea that a 25th-level wizard with a 26 Intelligence can't solve a simple number square, find puzzles an intrusion into the game. Looking at the motivations of your players (see Chapter 1), you'll find that puzzles engage some explorers and many thinkers, and they can grab a surprising number of watchers, but instigators, power gamers, and slayers quickly get impatient with them. If your group consists mostly of the latter types of players, it's best to steer away from puzzles."

(Related from the same DMG: "Some D&D adventures feature puzzles. Some DMs believe puzzles should test the characters, and see puzzles as a form of skill challenge. Others see puzzles as a challenge for the players, and welcome the variety and hands-on nature of puzzles that they can solve personally or as a group. Use puzzles as either sort of challenge in your game.")

Dust of Appearance

This fine powder appears to be a very fine, (one would assume) very light metallic dust. A single handful of this substance flung into the air coats objects within a 10-foot radius, making them visible even if they are invisible. It likewise negates the effects of blur and displacement. (In this, it works just like the faerie fire spell). The dust also reveals figments, mirror images, and projected images for what they are. A creature coated with the dust takes a -30 penalty on its Hide checks. The dust’s effect lasts for 5 minutes.

Dust of appearance is typically stored in small silk packets or hollow bone tubes.

Faint conjuration; CL 5th; Craft Wondrous Item, glitterdust; Price 1,800 gp.

____________

These are all more interesting:

Gary gives us an adventure in a box, the 4e DMG talks about the central 4e issue (player skill vs character skill), and the 3.5 gives us an 1800 gp magic item that works exactly like a keg of baking soda. What a strange world.

I'm giving this round to the 4e DMG, for being straightforward.

_____________

If any cleric was more powerful than the renowned Dahlver-Nar, histories do not tell us. The gods themselves gave special powers to him, and these have passed on to others by means of the great relics of Dahvler-Nar, his teeth. Each of the Teeth has some power, and if one charcter manages to gain a full quarter, half, or all of them, other grand benefits accrue. In order to gain the power of one of these teeth, however, the character must place it into his or her mouth, where it will graft itself in the place of a like missing tooth. The teeth can never be removed once so emplaced, short of the demise of the possessor. Their powers/effects are:

If none of the characters in your 6thlevel party uses a long bow, don't put a 10thlevel longbow in your dungeon as treasure. A great way to make sure you give players magic items they'll be excited about is to ask them for wish lists. At the start of each level, have each player write down a list of three to five items that they are intrigued by that are no more than four levels above their own level. You can choose treasure from those lists (making sure to place an item from a different character's list each time), crossing the items off as the characters find them. If characters don't find things on their lists, they can purchase or enchant them when they reach sufficient level. Each set of ten treasure parcels includes one less magic item than there are characters in the party. That's not meant to be unfair, just to make sure that characters gain magic items at a manageable rate. Make sure that over the course of several levels of adventuring, you award items evenly to all the char acters, so that over the course of, say, five levels, every character has acquired four useful and exciting items.

______

Sometimes, however, players come to you and say that they like a certain class, but they want to change a single feature or two. Michele might want to play a ranger with no desire to obtain more than one favored enemy. She wants to play a beast-slayer, and her character hates dire wolves. She’s also interested in the paladin’s warhorse. You can decide, as a DM, that it’s acceptable to trade those ranger abilities for the paladin’s mount. In fact, you might decide that it’s not a fair trade, and that Michele’s character can have the detect evil ability as well. (She is, after all, giving up an ability usable at 1st level as well as one that comes into play later for one that she can’t achieve until 5th level.) Allowing a player to play the character she wants to play is always a desirable goal. Sure, sometimes it can’t be achieved--the player asks for too much, or what she wants doesn’t fit with your campaign--but the effort to accommodate reasonable modifications is almost always worth it.

______

Mmmmm...this round the 4e DMG definitely loses, but who wins? Magic teeth are cool, but the 3.5 DMG advice is solid and probably more often useful than the teeth which, being insanely powerful and possibly very silly, will only be as cool as they should be 10% of the time. Plus this totally sounds like something Michelle would actually do.

Round 3 to 3e...

____

Oh it's a 3way tie.

Tiebreaker round:

______

"While there might be as many as 25 or more prospective henchmen in the city of 25,000 cited above, the player character desirous of locating one or more for service must be able to reach the NPCs in order to let them know there is a henchman position available. In order to get this sort of information around, there are several methods which can be used singularly or in combination:" (and then a chart with costs and percentages)

"An artifact's concordance score measures the artifact's attitude toward its wielder. The scale ranges from 0 (angered) to 20 (pleased). When a character takes possession of an artifact, it starts with a concordance of 5. (The owner's race, class, or other characteristics might adjust this starting concordance.) Various actions and events increase or decrease this score as long as the character possesses the artifact. When the artifact is pleased with its wielder's actions, its concordance goes up. When the wielder acts contrary to the artifact's desires, its concordance decreases. The wielder knows of the factors that alter the concordance--it's in the artifact's best interests to communicate its desires and expectations. But keep the artifact's concordance score a secret, telling the player only if the artifact's powers or properties change. The player shouldn't ever know exactly how close the artifact is to changing its attitude."

"Obviously any stat block you create for your own use can be as sparse or as detailed as you need it to be. If all that relly matters for an encounter is a creature's hit points AC and attack bonus, then those are the only characteristics you need to make note of.

Use your own stat blocks to streamline the action during play by enabling you to have what you need at your fingertips--but don't feel that your stat blocks have to provide every single conceivable statistic for every creature (unless that's what you want them to do, of course)."

_______

Sorry AD&D DMG: nobody uses that system and even if they did, it's way too cheap and if you fail, then what? Go without? No. you have enough gp--you just do it again and cross off game weeks? Give me a Jeff Rients henchgenerator over that any day.

The 4e Concordance mechanic--you get more artifact powers the more you "agree" with you item--is a pretty good mechanic. Though, in general, artifacts don't (or shouldn't) come up that much, so if I give this one the round then I'd have to go back and give the Teeth of Dahlver Nar the round before...

Then the 3.5 comes in with totally dull but absolutely unarguable advice on statblocks that some people still at this late date have not gotten through their little pea-brained heads.

___________

Whereas if I just go for what's shiny and awesome then y'know, artifacts are cool and 4e and AD&D are tied...

Mmmm...does the 3.5 DMG wins this match with its Tortoise vs. Hare approach to DM advice?

Is there a 4e/AD&D tie?

Or do I just go back decide "Teeth of Dahlver Nar" is such a viscerally evocative name that it makes up for boring henchweeksearchbloat and just give it to Gary?

What a hopeless game.

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Law of the Presumption of Ludological Innocence

The burden of proof lies with whichever party is claiming a game isn't good.

That is all.

Monday, February 6, 2012

Hunter/Hunted

So I was reading through a mostly very good supplement and I came upon the following paragraph in the DM advice...

"Be wary of plot construction that demands characters accept captivity to gain crucial information. Many players would sooner  have their Investigators trepanned by the fungi from Yuggoth than accept even a brief sojourn in comparatively cushy confinement. Unfortunately, with this player type, you won’t get very far by pointing out that getting captured is a Pulp staple. Their attitude is rooted in a deep-seated desire to maintain emotional control, and is not typically susceptible to argument."

Ummm…what?

Players do not rebel at the idea of scenarios that "require them to accept captivity" because of some psychobabble.

They don't like it because, after the scenario starts, if there is any situation that they cannot get out of simply because the story demands that they not be able to get out of it (remember they are there "to gain crucial information" not "because they fucked up and logically would not be able to escape") then they are not actually playing the game for the length of time it takes to endure that situation.

It's like a cut-scene in a video game. Fine, have it, but don't make me press "talk" "talk" "talk" until the NPC dispenses the information.

This is why people don't like railroading. It isn't playing, it's listening to the GM tell a story, with maybe a little "Ok, when I say Free you say Bird" going on.

Now many players may like having the GM tell them a story, but it is not, strictly speaking, the activity many of them signed up for, so it is as much an interruption in an RPG as the GM stopping play to juggle for ten minutes. Hey guy, juggle, maybe I'll like it, but if I don't, it's understandable since I showed up to play, not watch you juggle.

This is followed by some not necessarily bad but frustratingly--and all-too-familiarly for GM-advice books--vague language about avoiding railroading…

--Structure can be difficult to achieve in the roleplaying medium. Guide the players too little and they lose the thread, resulting in a loose and sloppy narrative that provides none of the neat, order-making pleasure the genre is meant to provide. Guide them too much and they feel that their freedom of action has been taken away from them, and that they’re merely observers moving through a predetermined sequence of events. (As you probably know, this latter syndrome is known in roleplaying jargon as railroading.)

And then there is the typical cop-out…

--The trick to successfully running investigative scenarios is to strike the right balance between the two extremes.

No, the trick is not to balance. (Secret aesthetic law: balance is almost never the answer to anything.) The trick is to:

1) clearly define the term railroading for the GM, and then
2) provide the GM with tools to avoid it if s/he wants to.

So, how do you know if you're railroading?

Its a long fucking story, but basically it's easier to tell when you're not--here's how:

In a non-railroad the PCs are given choices that result in the PCs encountering substantially different (yet still interesting) scenarios than if they had made other choices--preferably scenarios they could potentially have seen the dim outline of while making those choices*. In a railroad, they are not.

In edge cases, it is best to ask yourself How different could this have worked out if the PCs had made different choices? The larger the difference the less of a railroad you got going on.

Anyway, there seems to be a popular myth that while yeah, it is easy to avoid railroading in a location-based D&D adventure, it's almost impossible to not do it a little in Call of Cthulhu or likewise horrorish scenarios and these things are really more about atmosphere and set-pieces anyway so why worry about that?

Well, honestly, if you're happy with that, cool beans and carry on.

If you are not, I am going to describe a very simple but effective way to totally not railroad people in a horror game (or really, any investigation-based game).

Note this is not the only way, but it is, like a dungeon or a sandbox, a simple, durable structure you can use that has meaningful choice built into it.

I call it Hunter/Hunted.

-The idea is simple and comes from about a million horror and cop stories: sometimes a scene happens because Sam Spade has found out about a baddie and sometimes a scene happens because the baddie has found out about Sam Spade. And, there, aside from a few stops for bourbon and kissing, is the plot of everything from Lost Boys to Blade Runner.

-Most investigative scenarios advise breaking things up into "scenes"--the idea is you have a scene, find clues in it, these clues lead to the next scene. They then usually cover their ass by saying either "if the PCs don't do this or find this clue or go to the wrong place give them a bunch of hints or a prophetic dream or otherwise nurse, nudge, or nullify them until they go to the next scene" or just give some vague advice like "hey Venice is interesting, think of something"

-Not so here. Or not exactly: Basically we keep the "scene chain" structure. If the PCs go from clue to clue in a timely fashion like good investigators they follow the scene chain. However, we also give each scene a twin situation, this twin is what happens if the PCs don't follow a given clue, follow it up the wrong path, or otherwise take too long (in-world game time) to follow the clues. In this twin situation, typically, the PCs have taken long enough to figure out what's going on that the enemy has noticed their efforts and started hunting them.

-In the twin situation, the GM decides how long it will take (in-world) and what circumstances are necessary for the enemy to be able to track the PCs and starts the clock running. The enemy then catches up with the PCs at whatever point it logically would if it was using whatever tracking abilities it has (whether this be psychic powers or enhanced smell or because Twitty says she saw Mac D talking to a cop next to the sub shop). The GM may drop clues as to their hunted status along the way.

-In situation 1, the PCs are investigators of horror or violence, in situation 2, they are victims of it. This matches rather nicely the twin roles nearly all horror and investigator protagonists have in these kinds of stories. So at each stage of the adventure you have an "i" version and a "v" version of each scenario.**

-The enemy has a locus: usually in physical space. Like: that island Cthulhu is under or the gangster's safe house.

-At each "Investigator" stage, you move closer to the locus (or finding out where it is). At each "Victim" stage, the enemy sends someone or something out from the locus to get you.

-IMPORTANT: Usually the enemy comes in a different form at each stage. You don't meet actually Cthulhu or actually Al Capone until the last stage. The first few stages feature their agents or otherwise indirect confrontations.

-Also important: at each stage, a clue is left. The clue leads to the "i" version of the next scenario.

-Example:

Opening: PCs are on their way to England on a boat to investigating the Proverbial Mysteriously Dead Uncle

1i--the nurse is clearly a disturbed woman (in the cafe) you don't know why
1v--terrifying dreams of faceless people (wherever you are) that might make you lash out at your fellow PCs (dream anagram of a doctor's name)

2i--the doctor's office is full of strange specimens (SAN check!) and tomes
2v--a(nother?) nurse is following you and attempting to drug you(wherever you are) (has distinctive uniform from a certain lab)

3i-the doctor's laboratory is filled with horrific creatures (and the doctor's in here)
3v-the doctor appears (wherever you are), a strange creature emerges from his featureless face (wherever you are) --a decent add on here is a chance that the doctor drugs a victim and drags him/her back to the lab or, if injured, runs back to the lab, leaving a blood trail. Either way the encounter at the lab--if it happens--is significantly different than if the PCs had just gone straight there and surprised the mofo

(this adventure brought to you by the lyrics to Sister Morphine)

-The "victim" role may seem passive, but in a sense the victim has more freedom than the investigator in terms of defining the terms of the conflict. Let's say we have the simplest scenario available--the PCs are being stalked by a werewolf. Even if the PCs are totally passive--they have the entire planet to walk around on. Will the werewolf attack them in a taxi, on a plane, in a hotel room, underwater? Depends entirely on where the PCs themselves go. You could even say to them: "The sun has gone down, according to what you've seen, the werewolf will be active within half an hour…". If the PC is in, say New York City, the number of resources s/he can bring to bear or changes s/he can make to the battlefield are infinite.

-Victim scenes require you to think like the monster: you are an insane doctor bent on injecting people with a "sacred" serum that makes their faces come off. You've discovered a flapper, a librarian and a drug addict are trying to interfere with your plans, What Do You Do? Where are you? What tools do you have access to? What information on them did they--via their actions to date--give you access to? Use it.

-In many adventures, there is no reason this system should not be transparent--making it clear through events and other characters that "it is vital to find Whatsitsnuts before it finds you".

--Broadly, any structure which has meaningful choice works like this: there are interesting choices leading to events, each event gives the players a unique resource or unique problem they did not have before--even if they all lead to the "same" place in the end, players end up there in the Final Chamber with different tools, perspectives, advantages or disadvantages.

-How do you avoid even the appearance of railroading? Just remind them how they got where they are. Go ahead and tell them where they'd be had they done otherwise.

-Another avoiding-railroading tip: include problems that are clear but open-ended, like: this puzzle requires you get us something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue and shove it in this slot. A real-module example is the "tooth door" in James Raggi's "Death Frost Doom"--you need to drop a tooth in a basin to open a certain door. Where you get the tooth from is your business, but the place is fairly isolated. There are a lot of graves around…but also a few other PCs…and that NPC down the mountain...

_____
*i.e. "left door or right door" is little better than a railroad, whereas "left door that, if listened at, reveals a chittering noise or totally silent right door" is definitely a non-railroad.

**Important clarification:

The Victim scenario is not nursing the PCs back on track by doing an ass-pull. In Hunter/Hunted the "Victim" scenarios are entirely logical, predictable-using-internal-gameworld consequences of the PC's failing to find the foe. i.e. if you don't show up at the safe house in 3 days, that's enough time for the goons to track YOU down. No alteration of the gameworld's internal logic or consequence chain is required. Pure cause-and-effect. the villain is not running into you by coincidence, it's because you dawdled and they managed to track you (thus the ticking clock).

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Hey You, Shy Guy, Come Out And Play

Are you smart?

Are you a big 4E fan or Story-Gamer/Indie Gamer/Whatever-It-Is-Ok-To-Call-It-Gamer or just a fan of like Mutants and Masterminds?

Post in the comments.

Let's talk.

We can talk about whatever you want.

_________

Edition warriors and get-off-my-lawners do not get to post on this one, so if you do, realize you'll be deleted.

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Please Read These You Will Become Smarter

Just got off the plane and I am too busy basking in the tits and sunshine to clean up and post any of the things I've written up recently, however, out of respect for your need for regular injections of ludological wisdom I direct you to a recent post full of mad crazy insight:

Check it Combat as war vs. Combat as sport. The best--and least partisan--analysis of TSR D&D combat vs. WOTC D&D combat I have ever seen. Read it now or be forced to follow a link to it every time the issue comes up for the rest of your life. It's a classic on the level of Matt Finch's Old School Primer.

Bonus: (Noisms on how it isn't anybody's job to give you ninja opportunities)

avengers

Sunday, February 12, 2012

More Of This Please

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Let's Play DMG Roulette!

Dust of Appearance

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Law of the Presumption of Ludological Innocence

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

This Took 15 Minutes. Try it.

Monday, February 6, 2012

Hunter/Hunted

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Hey You, Shy Guy, Come Out And Play

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Please Read These You Will Become Smarter

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