So my plans for this month didn't pan out quite as I anticipated.
Too much reality infringing on my fun as it were.
For next month I want to focus on posting more regularly once again, though I am sure there will be slow down because of all the awesome gaming and stuff I'll be doing. Here's hoping.
AD
Barking Alien
Friday, September 30, 2011
Status Symbols
Too tired to do anything truly engaging or constructive, so I decided to make this...
If you're gonna pigeon hole yourself, definitely do it with neat looking graphic icons.
Thanks to Strange Magic for the concept and images.
Later Days,
AD
Barking Alien
If you're gonna pigeon hole yourself, definitely do it with neat looking graphic icons.
Thanks to Strange Magic for the concept and images.
Later Days,
AD
Barking Alien
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Can't Think
Please forgive my slow down on posting yet again.
I am just too exhausted from work, trying to stay alive in this insane (but awesome) city and other obligations to form coherent thoughts on gaming at the moment.
I am also fighting hard not to lose my enthusiasm for Supers gaming in light of DC Comics New 52. Honestly, I've been checking out as much as I can stomach each week and...I just have nothing left in me to vomit up.
OK, I am exaggerating but sadly, only a little.
One of my upcoming posts was going to be a review of this mess but for now let's just say, "No, no sir. I don't like it."
There are a handful of good books in the mix, like tiny pearls in the mouths of oysters that can only be found by pour through tons of dead and rotten fish. Check out Batwing, Batwoman and, believe it or not, Aquaman.
Anyway, off to work as always. More to come soon...I hope.
AD
Barking Alien
I am just too exhausted from work, trying to stay alive in this insane (but awesome) city and other obligations to form coherent thoughts on gaming at the moment.
I am also fighting hard not to lose my enthusiasm for Supers gaming in light of DC Comics New 52. Honestly, I've been checking out as much as I can stomach each week and...I just have nothing left in me to vomit up.
OK, I am exaggerating but sadly, only a little.
One of my upcoming posts was going to be a review of this mess but for now let's just say, "No, no sir. I don't like it."
There are a handful of good books in the mix, like tiny pearls in the mouths of oysters that can only be found by pour through tons of dead and rotten fish. Check out Batwing, Batwoman and, believe it or not, Aquaman.
Anyway, off to work as always. More to come soon...I hope.
AD
Barking Alien
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
So That's The Fantastic?
I so didn't want to get involved in this discussion.
When I read through the first few posts on bringing the 'fantastical' back into D&D, I couldn't help but thinking I had seen this all before. This was all stuff I've mentioned numerous times on numerous sites. My whole spiel on why 'Ecology of the Mysterious Creature of Legend' is fun to read but the exact opposite of what I want in my game.
To this end I am in agreement with those who feel that a certain sense of vagueness is key to keeping the mystery of a setting and it's contents intriguing and challenging. But then we get this...
1. Never make monsters "scalable" unless they're basically humanoids with levels like the PCs and so the PCs can tell them apart as characters.
This is spot on. Nothing makes a dragon - no, scratch that, any monster - less interesting than being able to fight it at 1st level and win. It is for this and many other reasons that 4th edition D&D wins the noisms prize for All Time Most Banalifying Game System Ever.
Huh? Why? So, every time you face a dragon of a certain color, size, etc., the players will know the age, roughly the hit points or their maximum potential, how to defend themselves, yadda yadda, another boring dragon.
I've had dragons the size of a medieval english cottage that a smart, well organized and equipped party of 7 PCs ranging from 5-7th level can kill. In the same campaign the players later heard of a dragon that had ravaged the entire countryside and they set out to slay it. They were now about 8-10th level average. When they arrived on the scene they saw barley and wheats fields burnt to ash and learned that the lake the dragon drinks from is now poisoned. Cows and sheep miscarry for a day and a night after the dragon flies over and the healing powers of the local clerics only have half their normal effect. When finally confronted, the dragon was roughly the size of a Great Dane (a la' St. George and the Dragon).
There are tiny frogs in this world that can kill a grown man in seconds and larger ones that result in a mind rash. Scale everything. They will never know what to expect and the abilities of these creature will seem mysterious.
No. You should probably not make a weak dragon that can be killed by three 1st level PCs. Yes, you should make monsters variable in power. Not every legend attributes the same abilities to the same beasts.
2. Finding an NPC cleric willing to heal you is fucking hard and generally involves some creepy religious thing happening. Because miracles are rare.
I don't disagree with this at all. I also don't abide by it on my own world.
Clerical healing is a part of civilization. When you are in civilization, say your home town or a friendly city-state, why not have healing available for a price. This isn't where the mystery is. This is where you're from, where you live. You then leave this safety to face the mysterious outside world. At least that's how I run it most of the time.
3. Make [the players] cross a threshold (a clear in game threshold "Are you sure you wish to travel down the secluded mountain pass") before having them fight the fantastical.
This makes sense. Of course, the fantastic can be all around you and it may be as easy as leaving a bowl of milk with some honey bread in it on your back porch. It all depends upon the needs of the adventure/story/GM/players. Read some myth and folklore for ideas.
4. Recreate monsters - especially the humanoids. Keep them physically and statistically the same, but recreate their culture.
If they are physically and statistically the same but their culture is new that's cool. If they are physically and statistically different but their culture is new that's awesome. You couldn't pay me to use D&D trolls over my trolls. What the heck are those carrot nosed, goofball looking things supposed to be anyway? They sure aren't trolls.
Again, want to get closer to folklore, myth and legend? READ A BOOK ON FOLKLORE MYTH AND LEGEND. And check out the art too. You'll be glad you did.
5. No "chain of humanoid enemies". Goblins are weird fairy tale monsters with their own empire, gnolls are slavering barbarians, jackalmen wear robes and know magic, crowmen are semidemonic and rare, white leopardmen serve a Frazettastyle ice witch and bugbears and hobgoblins and what-all are bizarre unique things you haven't met yet.
Agree in principle but again, not necessarily in execution. If goblins are weird, fairy tale monsters, why do they have an empire at all? At least why do they have one you know about? Don't they just come out from cracks in the floorboards and walls and then return to them when the lights come on?
6. The technique...of providing no standardized monsters or magic items points the way to a game system where the rules of the mundane are known to the players, but the fantastic elements are an idiosyncratic revelation from game to game. Yes, creating the fantastic is hard individual work for the DM. But the alternative, especially with experienced games, is a group of players who ready the oil when they see a troll, who can find out exactly how much every gland in every dead monster corpse is worth, and for whom the only surprise is tactical, not strategic.
We come to the same conclusion, this last paragraph and I but I wonder at how it can be achieved with some of the responses given to the earlier questions. It's almost like saying, "Do it differently as long as it's largely the same." This has always been one of my biggest issues with D&D. I've always felt that the game as written reinforces this attitude somehow.
With a few exceptions, a lot of the blog posts I read on things you can do to jazz up D&D amount to 'paint your goblins purple instead of green! Wow! Mind blowing!' or other mild variations on basic themes. Giving Orcs a culture based on the Huns is interesting but then, what are your Huns like? Orcs? Why not come up with an unusual take on Orcs or not have Orcs at all. Find some mythical creature not normally used in D&D who are attributed with strange abilities in their stories and make them the standard for humanoid enemy aggression.
Anyway, just my two coppers. I don't have a majorly vested interest so it bugs me that I actually felt the need to post this. I must be getting old and crabby.
Back to leaping tall buildings...
AD
Barking Alien
When I read through the first few posts on bringing the 'fantastical' back into D&D, I couldn't help but thinking I had seen this all before. This was all stuff I've mentioned numerous times on numerous sites. My whole spiel on why 'Ecology of the Mysterious Creature of Legend' is fun to read but the exact opposite of what I want in my game.
To this end I am in agreement with those who feel that a certain sense of vagueness is key to keeping the mystery of a setting and it's contents intriguing and challenging. But then we get this...
1. Never make monsters "scalable" unless they're basically humanoids with levels like the PCs and so the PCs can tell them apart as characters.
This is spot on. Nothing makes a dragon - no, scratch that, any monster - less interesting than being able to fight it at 1st level and win. It is for this and many other reasons that 4th edition D&D wins the noisms prize for All Time Most Banalifying Game System Ever.
Huh? Why? So, every time you face a dragon of a certain color, size, etc., the players will know the age, roughly the hit points or their maximum potential, how to defend themselves, yadda yadda, another boring dragon.
I've had dragons the size of a medieval english cottage that a smart, well organized and equipped party of 7 PCs ranging from 5-7th level can kill. In the same campaign the players later heard of a dragon that had ravaged the entire countryside and they set out to slay it. They were now about 8-10th level average. When they arrived on the scene they saw barley and wheats fields burnt to ash and learned that the lake the dragon drinks from is now poisoned. Cows and sheep miscarry for a day and a night after the dragon flies over and the healing powers of the local clerics only have half their normal effect. When finally confronted, the dragon was roughly the size of a Great Dane (a la' St. George and the Dragon).
There are tiny frogs in this world that can kill a grown man in seconds and larger ones that result in a mind rash. Scale everything. They will never know what to expect and the abilities of these creature will seem mysterious.
No. You should probably not make a weak dragon that can be killed by three 1st level PCs. Yes, you should make monsters variable in power. Not every legend attributes the same abilities to the same beasts.
2. Finding an NPC cleric willing to heal you is fucking hard and generally involves some creepy religious thing happening. Because miracles are rare.
I don't disagree with this at all. I also don't abide by it on my own world.
Clerical healing is a part of civilization. When you are in civilization, say your home town or a friendly city-state, why not have healing available for a price. This isn't where the mystery is. This is where you're from, where you live. You then leave this safety to face the mysterious outside world. At least that's how I run it most of the time.
3. Make [the players] cross a threshold (a clear in game threshold "Are you sure you wish to travel down the secluded mountain pass") before having them fight the fantastical.
This makes sense. Of course, the fantastic can be all around you and it may be as easy as leaving a bowl of milk with some honey bread in it on your back porch. It all depends upon the needs of the adventure/story/GM/players. Read some myth and folklore for ideas.
4. Recreate monsters - especially the humanoids. Keep them physically and statistically the same, but recreate their culture.
If they are physically and statistically the same but their culture is new that's cool. If they are physically and statistically different but their culture is new that's awesome. You couldn't pay me to use D&D trolls over my trolls. What the heck are those carrot nosed, goofball looking things supposed to be anyway? They sure aren't trolls.
Again, want to get closer to folklore, myth and legend? READ A BOOK ON FOLKLORE MYTH AND LEGEND. And check out the art too. You'll be glad you did.
5. No "chain of humanoid enemies". Goblins are weird fairy tale monsters with their own empire, gnolls are slavering barbarians, jackalmen wear robes and know magic, crowmen are semidemonic and rare, white leopardmen serve a Frazettastyle ice witch and bugbears and hobgoblins and what-all are bizarre unique things you haven't met yet.
Agree in principle but again, not necessarily in execution. If goblins are weird, fairy tale monsters, why do they have an empire at all? At least why do they have one you know about? Don't they just come out from cracks in the floorboards and walls and then return to them when the lights come on?
6. The technique...of providing no standardized monsters or magic items points the way to a game system where the rules of the mundane are known to the players, but the fantastic elements are an idiosyncratic revelation from game to game. Yes, creating the fantastic is hard individual work for the DM. But the alternative, especially with experienced games, is a group of players who ready the oil when they see a troll, who can find out exactly how much every gland in every dead monster corpse is worth, and for whom the only surprise is tactical, not strategic.
We come to the same conclusion, this last paragraph and I but I wonder at how it can be achieved with some of the responses given to the earlier questions. It's almost like saying, "Do it differently as long as it's largely the same." This has always been one of my biggest issues with D&D. I've always felt that the game as written reinforces this attitude somehow.
With a few exceptions, a lot of the blog posts I read on things you can do to jazz up D&D amount to 'paint your goblins purple instead of green! Wow! Mind blowing!' or other mild variations on basic themes. Giving Orcs a culture based on the Huns is interesting but then, what are your Huns like? Orcs? Why not come up with an unusual take on Orcs or not have Orcs at all. Find some mythical creature not normally used in D&D who are attributed with strange abilities in their stories and make them the standard for humanoid enemy aggression.
Anyway, just my two coppers. I don't have a majorly vested interest so it bugs me that I actually felt the need to post this. I must be getting old and crabby.
Back to leaping tall buildings...
AD
Barking Alien
Monday, September 26, 2011
The Superhero Engine
While others were celebrating Mark Hamill's Birthday (Sorry, I missed it Mark, Happy Birthday!) and discussing ways of keeping (or rather making) D&D fantastic ( by being vague, adding mystery, making it less about knowing all the stats of a monster or enemy and generally doing stuff I first did 30 years ago)* my mind is once again on Supers...
I am not breaking new ground here but I thought it needed to be said that a good Superhero game has to be, generally speaking, a really good game mechanics wise.
Most games are developed to emulate a style, genre or particular theme that the creators are going for. Supers is no exception but rather the best Superhero RPGs can be used to generate characters and stories from a multitude of different styles, genres and themes.
I think the ability of a single system or game (even those with sets of systems) that can have a 'non-powered' acrobat with gadgets and his superhuman, flying alien pal tangle with an ancient dark wizard and his cyborg sidekick is under appreciated. That is, you can say any set of stats is anything you want but few non-Superhero games give you the tools to actually make these things feel or work differently in play.
Having played quite a bit of Champions over the years (and again lately), I have to say that for my money, this is one of the greatest game systems ever developed. It has it's flaws to be sure but it also enables you to build just about anything you can imagine with distinctive details as to how the character, device, vehicle, base or whathaveyou operates.
Perhaps you have a starship with awesome anti-energy shields (Resistant Energy Defense) but they're no good at stopping solid objects from hitting (Poor or even no Resistant Physical Defense). Maybe you're a wizard who has several requirements before a spell can be cast. Your magic could be versatile and powerful (Variable Power Pool) within it's limitations (Gestures, Incantations, Limited Power: Conditional-Doesn't work under a yellow moon).
Mutants & Masterminds, while an awesomely, awesome game and one I love to be sure, is another example of a great system even if it lacks some of the detail of Champions. I am constantly arguing with my own better judgement on whether or not to add those details in as house rules. If I could just differentiate the mechanics of the powers and add in some of the limitations to get a bit more out of the game, M&M would be without a doubt my most favorite Superhero gaming engine. At the same time, it would require a lot of work on my part and would probably take away some of the charm of the simplicity of the system.**
Anyhoo, hopefully I can blog a bit more in the coming week and turn over a new leaf to blog like a mad man in October. After all, October is RECESS, New York Comic Con and the end of the first month of the unholy evil know as DC's New 52. Expect a review of a most unkind kind.
Later Days,
AD
Barking Alien
*I kid, I kid.
The articles and ideas in said discussion were really quite good.
I only tease snarkily because, y'know, I really can't stand that game.
**While Mutants & Masterminds is not a 'simple system' in the way Toon or TFOS is, it's a far simpler game to play and run than Champions is.
I am not breaking new ground here but I thought it needed to be said that a good Superhero game has to be, generally speaking, a really good game mechanics wise.
Most games are developed to emulate a style, genre or particular theme that the creators are going for. Supers is no exception but rather the best Superhero RPGs can be used to generate characters and stories from a multitude of different styles, genres and themes.
I think the ability of a single system or game (even those with sets of systems) that can have a 'non-powered' acrobat with gadgets and his superhuman, flying alien pal tangle with an ancient dark wizard and his cyborg sidekick is under appreciated. That is, you can say any set of stats is anything you want but few non-Superhero games give you the tools to actually make these things feel or work differently in play.
Having played quite a bit of Champions over the years (and again lately), I have to say that for my money, this is one of the greatest game systems ever developed. It has it's flaws to be sure but it also enables you to build just about anything you can imagine with distinctive details as to how the character, device, vehicle, base or whathaveyou operates.
Perhaps you have a starship with awesome anti-energy shields (Resistant Energy Defense) but they're no good at stopping solid objects from hitting (Poor or even no Resistant Physical Defense). Maybe you're a wizard who has several requirements before a spell can be cast. Your magic could be versatile and powerful (Variable Power Pool) within it's limitations (Gestures, Incantations, Limited Power: Conditional-Doesn't work under a yellow moon).
Mutants & Masterminds, while an awesomely, awesome game and one I love to be sure, is another example of a great system even if it lacks some of the detail of Champions. I am constantly arguing with my own better judgement on whether or not to add those details in as house rules. If I could just differentiate the mechanics of the powers and add in some of the limitations to get a bit more out of the game, M&M would be without a doubt my most favorite Superhero gaming engine. At the same time, it would require a lot of work on my part and would probably take away some of the charm of the simplicity of the system.**
Anyhoo, hopefully I can blog a bit more in the coming week and turn over a new leaf to blog like a mad man in October. After all, October is RECESS, New York Comic Con and the end of the first month of the unholy evil know as DC's New 52. Expect a review of a most unkind kind.
Later Days,
AD
Barking Alien
*I kid, I kid.
The articles and ideas in said discussion were really quite good.
I only tease snarkily because, y'know, I really can't stand that game.
**While Mutants & Masterminds is not a 'simple system' in the way Toon or TFOS is, it's a far simpler game to play and run than Champions is.
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