When Buffy and Angel came out (the RPGs rather than the series), I considered these to be extremely poor choices for role-playing settings. Not due to any great flaw in the backdrop, but rather due to the nature of the central character. Up until the last episode of Buffy, there could only ever be one slayer (actually 2, but let's not get into that). Similarly, Angel was unique, a vampire with a soul. Can't have more than one of those...
However, the other problem with the setting is that the shows focus on a central character, aided and abetted by a group of lesser characters. Although the other characters were given some time in the spotlight, they were always secondary to the star of the show. This, of course, really sucks in a roleplaying game - why would want to play a secondary character in a game dedicated to someone else's character?
Now, I haven't read either Buffy or Angel. I'm not particularly inclined to do so either. Therefore, it is entirely possible that they've found a means to solve the problem described above.
(Another parallel is the difference between the original Star Trek and the Next Generation. In the original series, it was very much the Kirk/Spock/McCoy show, with the other characters very much in secondary roles. The Next Generation was more evenly balanced, with lots of episodes focussing on Troi, Geordi, Crusher (either), Worf, and so on. As a consequence, Next Generation would make a better role-playing game - unless you have 3 players - but the original series also translates better to film, where you cannot support seven main characters, but can support two or three.)
Wednesday, 18 February 2004
Possible Party Rationales
Fortunately, Dragon magazine published a bunch of possible solutions many years ago. Issue 177 included an article entitled "Keeping the Party Going" (ah, the advantages of the Dragon Archive. I hardly ever use it, but when I do it proves invaluable), which included seven possible reasons for a party to come together, each of which provides some reason for the party to stick together. Unfortunately, two of these were near duplicates, leaving five:
This is a rather vexing issue. I always take the view that players should be able to create characters they will enjoy playing, and constructed the main arc of the campaign in such a manner that almost any group should be able to follow it (or not, if we spin off in that direction). But, things aren't looking too good.
- The party are all agents in service to the same god. Replace with guild, patron, or other agency as appropriate.
- The party all come from the same town. Having grown up together, they remain old friends.
- The party are all members of the same extended family.
- The party are true mercenaries. So, Vibius would not be a loyal servant of the empire, Jerriz would be motivated more by greed than by worship of Paso, and so forth.
- The quest party. The group was formed to complete a specific quest, and are all loyal to each other far enough to complete that quest.
This is a rather vexing issue. I always take the view that players should be able to create characters they will enjoy playing, and constructed the main arc of the campaign in such a manner that almost any group should be able to follow it (or not, if we spin off in that direction). But, things aren't looking too good.
Character Creation/Party Creation
One very common mistake, and one which looks like it might derail the current campaign, is the creation of PCs in a vacuum. Roger goes off and creates a whimling wizard, Andy a human fighter, Andreas an aspected rogue, Johannes a sloth cleric of laziness, and Craig a vaggatz barbarian. The party is then somehow expected to come together. The reality is that they come apart.
The simple fact of the matter is that I'm not really up for running five cross-cut campaigns, so if the party splits I see three options:
1) Switch to a troupe-style game, where each person has five PCs, a 'main' PC and four secondaries, one each to accompany the other players main PCs. We'd then rotate through the five campaigns, running one session of each in sequence. I'm not really keen on that, for a couple of reasons that I'm not going to go into.
2) Require the group to choose one of the existing PCs to follow, and then require everyone else to generate new PCs to fit. In effect, doing the same as 1, but ditching four of the sub-campaigns. Again, I'm not too fond of this option.
3) Wrap the whole thing up.
It's one thing to follow the antics of a split party when they're seperated in a town or dungeon, with the expectation that they'll meet up again later. It's entirely another to do the same across a whole campaign; I'm not Robert Jordan.
The problem is that there really is little reason for the current group to stay together. Already, Jerriz has been forced out, and replaced with Artax in a somewhat contrived manner. Tekkis and Vibius are basically incompatible, while Kal-Bax has his own priorities. And there is no clear direction for the party to follow next, or clear reason for them to stick together; they'd probably do better going their seperate ways.
The root cause for this problem is that little thought was given to how the party was formed. The characters are all interesting, and quite well fleshed out. Even Tekkis has some depth. But there's little reason for them to have gotten together, and even less reason for them to stick together.
In days of yore, this was never a concern. PCs tended not to have backgrounds or personalities; they were playign pieces, and the group was together to hunt for treasure. Sometimes, I miss those days of old-school dungeon crawls and mindless death, but never for long. Games like that get tiresome quickly now.
However, if your character has a personality, he needs a reason to be with the people he is with. No one in their right mind would trust their life to a relative stranger, and I doubt very much that Vibius or Tekkis would ever trust one another to allow the other to keep watch while he slept.
Smart games designers saw this problem ages ago, and put in mechanisms to deal with it: Vampire has the coterie mechanism, where young vampires band together for mutual protection and influence. The Sabbat and Werewolf both have the pack mechanism, where characters are bound by common cause, and also religious practice. They even had the foresight to include the multiple blood-bond in Sabbat games, to prevent people from just killing one another. Star Wars, of course, has the easy out that characters are all Rebels, banded together out their common status as fugitives from the empire.
In the media, parties come together for various reasons: The Fellowship of the Ring were bound by their common quest, the Companions of the Lance (from Dragonlance) mostly grew up together. Other parties are formed by common membership of a common organisation (Star Trek, Alias), or common support for a central figure (Buffy, Angel).
The common shorthand in D&D remains the old-school notion that characters are random mercenaries bound by their common quest for fortune and glory. I guess that doesn't work any longer.
The simple fact of the matter is that I'm not really up for running five cross-cut campaigns, so if the party splits I see three options:
1) Switch to a troupe-style game, where each person has five PCs, a 'main' PC and four secondaries, one each to accompany the other players main PCs. We'd then rotate through the five campaigns, running one session of each in sequence. I'm not really keen on that, for a couple of reasons that I'm not going to go into.
2) Require the group to choose one of the existing PCs to follow, and then require everyone else to generate new PCs to fit. In effect, doing the same as 1, but ditching four of the sub-campaigns. Again, I'm not too fond of this option.
3) Wrap the whole thing up.
It's one thing to follow the antics of a split party when they're seperated in a town or dungeon, with the expectation that they'll meet up again later. It's entirely another to do the same across a whole campaign; I'm not Robert Jordan.
The problem is that there really is little reason for the current group to stay together. Already, Jerriz has been forced out, and replaced with Artax in a somewhat contrived manner. Tekkis and Vibius are basically incompatible, while Kal-Bax has his own priorities. And there is no clear direction for the party to follow next, or clear reason for them to stick together; they'd probably do better going their seperate ways.
The root cause for this problem is that little thought was given to how the party was formed. The characters are all interesting, and quite well fleshed out. Even Tekkis has some depth. But there's little reason for them to have gotten together, and even less reason for them to stick together.
In days of yore, this was never a concern. PCs tended not to have backgrounds or personalities; they were playign pieces, and the group was together to hunt for treasure. Sometimes, I miss those days of old-school dungeon crawls and mindless death, but never for long. Games like that get tiresome quickly now.
However, if your character has a personality, he needs a reason to be with the people he is with. No one in their right mind would trust their life to a relative stranger, and I doubt very much that Vibius or Tekkis would ever trust one another to allow the other to keep watch while he slept.
Smart games designers saw this problem ages ago, and put in mechanisms to deal with it: Vampire has the coterie mechanism, where young vampires band together for mutual protection and influence. The Sabbat and Werewolf both have the pack mechanism, where characters are bound by common cause, and also religious practice. They even had the foresight to include the multiple blood-bond in Sabbat games, to prevent people from just killing one another. Star Wars, of course, has the easy out that characters are all Rebels, banded together out their common status as fugitives from the empire.
In the media, parties come together for various reasons: The Fellowship of the Ring were bound by their common quest, the Companions of the Lance (from Dragonlance) mostly grew up together. Other parties are formed by common membership of a common organisation (Star Trek, Alias), or common support for a central figure (Buffy, Angel).
The common shorthand in D&D remains the old-school notion that characters are random mercenaries bound by their common quest for fortune and glory. I guess that doesn't work any longer.
Tuesday, 17 February 2004
Organising that Campaign Material
Archived thread started by Andrew:
I've been working on various campaign ideas for a while now, from a La Femme Nikita/Alias-inspired Cyberpunk 2020 game set in Neo-Soviet Russia to a Forgotten Realms campaign set in my own version of the Moonshae Islands, yet I can never seem to get organised to sort it all out. Have any of you got any tips for doing this? I've looked at various releases like the FR setting book and the Brak Sector sourebook for WEG Star Wars but never seem to get my own ideas sorted out. How do you personally go about it? Or is it just a matter of self-discipline in typing the material out?
I've been working on various campaign ideas for a while now, from a La Femme Nikita/Alias-inspired Cyberpunk 2020 game set in Neo-Soviet Russia to a Forgotten Realms campaign set in my own version of the Moonshae Islands, yet I can never seem to get organised to sort it all out. Have any of you got any tips for doing this? I've looked at various releases like the FR setting book and the Brak Sector sourebook for WEG Star Wars but never seem to get my own ideas sorted out. How do you personally go about it? Or is it just a matter of self-discipline in typing the material out?
Monday, 16 February 2004
Alignments
Alignments is a problem, people only play to their alignment when it suits them, and short of giving XP penalties, which we already have established is 'Teh Bad' what can you do to stop them? Well, change their alignment to whatever suits them best, but then they'll start breaking their new alignment by playing more like their old one. Someone is acting evil and mean all the time, you switch their alignment to evil, suddenly they’ll start behaving very well, because they don't want to get arrested for being too evil.
Everyone should just bloody well write Chaotic Neutral on their sheets and be done with it, because lets face it, this is what ever single player I've seen lately is playing. Or rather Chaotic Slightly Evil, an alignment which is sadly lacking from D&D. But on a more serious note, unless there is an incentive to play to your alignment people seem to forget all about it and do whatever they feel is right in the situation they are in, which defeats the point of the alignments in the first place.
Problem? Yes.
Do I have a solution? Nope, none what so ever. I just like ranting about it.
Everyone should just bloody well write Chaotic Neutral on their sheets and be done with it, because lets face it, this is what ever single player I've seen lately is playing. Or rather Chaotic Slightly Evil, an alignment which is sadly lacking from D&D. But on a more serious note, unless there is an incentive to play to your alignment people seem to forget all about it and do whatever they feel is right in the situation they are in, which defeats the point of the alignments in the first place.
Problem? Yes.
Do I have a solution? Nope, none what so ever. I just like ranting about it.
Making Ability Scores Useful
The uses for Strength, Dexterity and Constitution are obvious - you never need to worry about making them relevant to players. Similarly, Intelligence is of relatively high importance due to its impact on skill points. However, Wisdom and Charisma tend to be underused, and as a result become the dump stats for powergamers.
Of these, Wisdom is the less-abused stat, because of its role in Will saving throws. However, Will saves tend not to come up too often, as you never see a lone spellcaster as an opponent, but always with melee minions, and yet you can see a lone melee opponent, rendering spellcasters less common as a threat. Since they are the most common source of Will saves, this becomes the weakest of the saves, and hence Wisdom a less important stat.
Now, there are some DMs who will suggest that you should enforce low-Wisdom play by giving XP penalties to players who consistently fail to play their characters correctly. Personally, I disagree with XP penalties on principle. In fact, I hesitated before assigning an XP award for character backgrounds, but then decided that if I didn't I would never get such a thing from the players.
As far as Charisma is concerned, I think an opportunity was definately missed in D&D, in that it should be hardwired into the rules that Charisma affects the price of objects, perhaps by as much as 5% per +1 modifier. So, a character with a Cha of 7 has to pay 110% for every piece of equipment, spell and service that he purchases, whereas the character with Cha 18 pays just 80%. Once you get to buying and selling magic items, this can mean quite considerable savings.
Of course, you then need to watch that the group don't just give all their money and treasure to the high-Cha person to deal with, and then assign the resulting cash. I guess the way to do that is to say that a character cannot judge the quality of adventurer's gear outwith his own speciality. So, the paladin simply cannot tell masterwork thieves tools from normal ones. This then leaves characters with two choices - either their high-Charisma guy gets lots of Craft skills (or multiclasses a lot), or characters sell their own gear.
The other thing to watch out for is NPC reactions to the low-Cha guy. When playing with friends, it's reasonably easy to fall into just letting everyone who meets the PCs like them right away. This is, of course, a mistake. Instead, it's important to ensure that law enforcement is always on the back of the low-Cha barbarian, that no-one takes the low-Cha halfling at all seriously, even when he's reporting that Timmy has fallen down the well, and that the low-Cha fighter is utterly incapable of leading the troops he's been assigned to command.
The Munchkin's Guide to Power-gaming suggests that a modern-era character doesn't need Charisma, but can simply use his skill in Gun to intimidate all NPCs into silence. There is a danger that the hulking half-orc barbarian with the Cha of 3 might attempt exactly the same with random shopkeeper, or that he might use his sheer size to extract information from the captive kobold. This must also be disallowed. Sure, the shopkeeper will hand over his goods, but in a lawful society will then proceed to have the legions kick six shades of shit out of the half-orc. In a lawless society, the shopkeeper either has underworld contacts, or pays his protection money. Either way, the half-orc is in for a world of trouble.
Oh, and the notion that NPCs are there for high- (or even moderate-) level PCs to push around also needs to be confronted. The way to deal with this is likewise quite simple: firstly, the watch confronts the PC normally, and get their asses handed to them. If there's a death, so much the better; the PC is now wanted for killing a member of the watch. On the second encounter, the watch wait until the PC is asleep, and then jump him. Or they have an assassin slip him a sleeping potion. Or they get their pet wizard to Charm the half-orc, taking advantage of his low Wisdom as well :-)
Once the PC is in custody, it must be made clear that such niceties as Miranda are modern concepts. In the fantasy realm, the PC is beaten to within an inch of his life, and is probably tried and executed in short order. If he killed a member of the watch, you can guarantee that the PC won't even reach the jail alive. If the PC is going to be casual with the lives of the city watch, you can bet exactly the same treatment will come their way in return.
Of course, all of that applies to the low-Cha PC. The high-Cha PC won't even get into this problem in the first place. The shopkeeper will bend over backwards to accomodate him, tax collectors will simply go away (or charge a nominal amount), and the town watch will investigate properly. Sure, the high-Cha PC might be every bit as rude and inconsiderate as anyone else but, gee, there's just something about him that people can't help but like (or at least respect). Surely this must all be a misunderstanding?
That's not to say that the law doesn't apply equally to high-Cha characters, but it does mean that such characters should have an all-around easier time of it. And that scared villager that the low-Cha characters just can't get to calm down? No problem for the high-Cha character.
Just some thoughts.
Of these, Wisdom is the less-abused stat, because of its role in Will saving throws. However, Will saves tend not to come up too often, as you never see a lone spellcaster as an opponent, but always with melee minions, and yet you can see a lone melee opponent, rendering spellcasters less common as a threat. Since they are the most common source of Will saves, this becomes the weakest of the saves, and hence Wisdom a less important stat.
Now, there are some DMs who will suggest that you should enforce low-Wisdom play by giving XP penalties to players who consistently fail to play their characters correctly. Personally, I disagree with XP penalties on principle. In fact, I hesitated before assigning an XP award for character backgrounds, but then decided that if I didn't I would never get such a thing from the players.
As far as Charisma is concerned, I think an opportunity was definately missed in D&D, in that it should be hardwired into the rules that Charisma affects the price of objects, perhaps by as much as 5% per +1 modifier. So, a character with a Cha of 7 has to pay 110% for every piece of equipment, spell and service that he purchases, whereas the character with Cha 18 pays just 80%. Once you get to buying and selling magic items, this can mean quite considerable savings.
Of course, you then need to watch that the group don't just give all their money and treasure to the high-Cha person to deal with, and then assign the resulting cash. I guess the way to do that is to say that a character cannot judge the quality of adventurer's gear outwith his own speciality. So, the paladin simply cannot tell masterwork thieves tools from normal ones. This then leaves characters with two choices - either their high-Charisma guy gets lots of Craft skills (or multiclasses a lot), or characters sell their own gear.
The other thing to watch out for is NPC reactions to the low-Cha guy. When playing with friends, it's reasonably easy to fall into just letting everyone who meets the PCs like them right away. This is, of course, a mistake. Instead, it's important to ensure that law enforcement is always on the back of the low-Cha barbarian, that no-one takes the low-Cha halfling at all seriously, even when he's reporting that Timmy has fallen down the well, and that the low-Cha fighter is utterly incapable of leading the troops he's been assigned to command.
The Munchkin's Guide to Power-gaming suggests that a modern-era character doesn't need Charisma, but can simply use his skill in Gun to intimidate all NPCs into silence. There is a danger that the hulking half-orc barbarian with the Cha of 3 might attempt exactly the same with random shopkeeper, or that he might use his sheer size to extract information from the captive kobold. This must also be disallowed. Sure, the shopkeeper will hand over his goods, but in a lawful society will then proceed to have the legions kick six shades of shit out of the half-orc. In a lawless society, the shopkeeper either has underworld contacts, or pays his protection money. Either way, the half-orc is in for a world of trouble.
Oh, and the notion that NPCs are there for high- (or even moderate-) level PCs to push around also needs to be confronted. The way to deal with this is likewise quite simple: firstly, the watch confronts the PC normally, and get their asses handed to them. If there's a death, so much the better; the PC is now wanted for killing a member of the watch. On the second encounter, the watch wait until the PC is asleep, and then jump him. Or they have an assassin slip him a sleeping potion. Or they get their pet wizard to Charm the half-orc, taking advantage of his low Wisdom as well :-)
Once the PC is in custody, it must be made clear that such niceties as Miranda are modern concepts. In the fantasy realm, the PC is beaten to within an inch of his life, and is probably tried and executed in short order. If he killed a member of the watch, you can guarantee that the PC won't even reach the jail alive. If the PC is going to be casual with the lives of the city watch, you can bet exactly the same treatment will come their way in return.
Of course, all of that applies to the low-Cha PC. The high-Cha PC won't even get into this problem in the first place. The shopkeeper will bend over backwards to accomodate him, tax collectors will simply go away (or charge a nominal amount), and the town watch will investigate properly. Sure, the high-Cha PC might be every bit as rude and inconsiderate as anyone else but, gee, there's just something about him that people can't help but like (or at least respect). Surely this must all be a misunderstanding?
That's not to say that the law doesn't apply equally to high-Cha characters, but it does mean that such characters should have an all-around easier time of it. And that scared villager that the low-Cha characters just can't get to calm down? No problem for the high-Cha character.
Just some thoughts.
More on Ability Scores
I definately prefer point-buy to random rolls in character creation. The only real problem that I have with it, at least in d20, is that not all the stats are equal. Simply put, unless you have a character who needs Wisdom or Charisma for his class, there's little point in assigning points to these attributes. (Similarly, in Storyteller, the Mental attributes seem to be the weakest by quite some distance.)
The other concern I have with point-buy is that no-one will ever create a character with a penalty to an ability score. Or, perhaps they will, but the penalty will be in Charisma (maybe Strength for wizards). At least with random-roll, there's no guarantee that you can avoid a penalty. I'm not convinced that having a penalty is necessarily desirable, but it does piss me off somewhat that you never seem to see them under point-buy.
(The same is true of the Lawful Good alignment, which you never see except in paladins. And even then, you get the constant whining of people who want to see a non-LG paladin class. It seems people are perfectly happy to play NG, LN, or even LE characters, but they'll jump through all kinds of hoops just to avoid LG. Again, I'm not of a mind to force anyone to play any alignment, but it does bug me that you never see that one alignment unless it's forced. Oh, and don't get me started on the people who play paladins, have LG written on their sheet, and then play their character as anything but LG...)
Sorry about that aside.
It turns out that my stat-generation system for the current campaign has been somewhat of a failure. My theory was that you should be able to take any of the cards and create a decent character of any class. The 'better' stats were also supposed to provide a difficult choice to the player - accept a weakness for better average stats, or take weaker stats but get to assign them as you want.
What actually happened was that players looked at the best set of stats, and tried to decide what class they would best fit. They then decided whether they wanted to play that class. If not, they looked at the second-best set of stats, and calculated whether they could twist them to fit their chosen class (and get that pesky 7 into Charisma). If not, the whining began.
Of course, this wasn't true of everyone. However, it is telling that of the five characters (actually six, if you include Jerriz), two (three) have a Charisma of 7. Two have Wisdom penalties (7 and 5), leaving one character with a Wis of 5 and a Cha of 7. Only one (two) have a penalty in any of the physical stats.
I guess it's the nature of the game. I know that whenever I create characters for Baldur's Gate or the other CRPGs (I generally create characters, then never play the games, alas), I go through exactly the same process, first reducing the mental stats to the minimums allowed, then boosting the physical stats as high as possible. In NWN, assuming a fighter-type, the priorities are definately Str first, then Dex and Con, and then Int. Wis and Cha are either left at their minimum values, or perhaps Wis is boosted to 10 to avoid a Will save penalty. It's just depressing that the same mentality pervades the tabletop game.
Of course, the solution to my problems with ability scores is to make it very clear at the outset that all the ability scores will be equally useful, and then make damn sure to enforce that. I have some thoughts on that, which I'll post seperately.
The other concern I have with point-buy is that no-one will ever create a character with a penalty to an ability score. Or, perhaps they will, but the penalty will be in Charisma (maybe Strength for wizards). At least with random-roll, there's no guarantee that you can avoid a penalty. I'm not convinced that having a penalty is necessarily desirable, but it does piss me off somewhat that you never seem to see them under point-buy.
(The same is true of the Lawful Good alignment, which you never see except in paladins. And even then, you get the constant whining of people who want to see a non-LG paladin class. It seems people are perfectly happy to play NG, LN, or even LE characters, but they'll jump through all kinds of hoops just to avoid LG. Again, I'm not of a mind to force anyone to play any alignment, but it does bug me that you never see that one alignment unless it's forced. Oh, and don't get me started on the people who play paladins, have LG written on their sheet, and then play their character as anything but LG...)
Sorry about that aside.
It turns out that my stat-generation system for the current campaign has been somewhat of a failure. My theory was that you should be able to take any of the cards and create a decent character of any class. The 'better' stats were also supposed to provide a difficult choice to the player - accept a weakness for better average stats, or take weaker stats but get to assign them as you want.
What actually happened was that players looked at the best set of stats, and tried to decide what class they would best fit. They then decided whether they wanted to play that class. If not, they looked at the second-best set of stats, and calculated whether they could twist them to fit their chosen class (and get that pesky 7 into Charisma). If not, the whining began.
Of course, this wasn't true of everyone. However, it is telling that of the five characters (actually six, if you include Jerriz), two (three) have a Charisma of 7. Two have Wisdom penalties (7 and 5), leaving one character with a Wis of 5 and a Cha of 7. Only one (two) have a penalty in any of the physical stats.
I guess it's the nature of the game. I know that whenever I create characters for Baldur's Gate or the other CRPGs (I generally create characters, then never play the games, alas), I go through exactly the same process, first reducing the mental stats to the minimums allowed, then boosting the physical stats as high as possible. In NWN, assuming a fighter-type, the priorities are definately Str first, then Dex and Con, and then Int. Wis and Cha are either left at their minimum values, or perhaps Wis is boosted to 10 to avoid a Will save penalty. It's just depressing that the same mentality pervades the tabletop game.
Of course, the solution to my problems with ability scores is to make it very clear at the outset that all the ability scores will be equally useful, and then make damn sure to enforce that. I have some thoughts on that, which I'll post seperately.
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