The Space Elevator of the Ancient World

So I've had an idea for a game that is either genius or just terrible.

The game would be D&D 3.5e, using the old "Testament" setting supplement from Green Ronin (the name is a good indicator of what that's all about). The game would be set in the ancient city of Babel, and surround the Tower.

Said tower being a Space Elevator constructed by a significantly more advanced alien species, who rule humanity through their agents the Nephilim. The PCs would be cast in the role of rebels attempting to bring down the Tower, and thus end the reign of this alien race.

Of course, one fairly significant issue with that premise is that it is essentially jusr "Stargate" - replace ancient Egypt with Babylon, the Pyramids with the Tower, and Ra with Goliath, and you've got much the same thing.

On the other hand, it's an interesting premise. And "Stargate" was of course set long after the rebellion, rather than casting the PCs as the rebels themselves.

Well... it's an interesting thought, if nothing else.

Gaming in 2018

It looks like 2018 will be another very quiet year for gaming - my involvement in the Pathfinder campaign will have to come to an end in January (if it hasn't already), and from mid-Jan through to at least the summer I won't have time for any sort of regular campaign play.

That means that my options are limited, indeed singular - if I'm to play, it will have to be one-shots. But then, that's not too terrible, as a good one-shot can give a lot more focussed, and potentially enjoyable, experience than some campaign play.

The upshot is that I'm probably going to be on the lookout for some, limited, one-shot play. And it's likely that those will be my only games for 2018.

It's also worth my considering whether to look for one-shots to play, or whether I could consider putting together a game to run...

To Boldly Go...

On a rather more cheery note, I was able to take part in a one-shot game of the the new "Star Trek" at the weekend, which proved to be a much more enjoyable experience. It involved five players in a short adventure featuring all three pillars of the game - two combats, some exploration, and a very little interaction.

Truth be told, the adventure itself wasn't very good - as noted, there wasn't very much of the interaction that is so important to Trek, and the whole thing was pretty basic. But then, this was an introductory adventure intended to highlight what the system was about, so that wasn't too terrible.

(Also of note, and very important: we got through the entire adventure in about four hours. Contrast with Pathfinder's one throwaway combat in an hour and a half.)

The system is fairly light and breezy, with enough character customisation to provide sufficient interest there, and enough completity to the system to give it some bite. And it felt very much like a DS9-era Trek episode, which is probably pretty much ideal.

Finally, this seems to be another game that's almost perfectly suited to one-shot play, much like "Firefly". Given my likely availability for gaming over the next few years, or lack thereof, that's pretty ideal.

So, I'd definitely play this again, and would recommend it to fans of the setting. (Of course, if you don't like Trek, I really wouldn't recommend this game. Shocking, I know!)

Whoever Has Will Be Given More

I didn't really enjoy last night's Pathfinder game.

I should hasten to add that this was nothing to do with the GM, the style, the other players, or the adventure, and had very little to do with the system (though more below...). Rather, the source of my annoyance was one of the ongoing banes of my existence:

Dice.

The bulk of last night's game was taken up by a fairly lengthy combat, which spanned five rounds, and in which my character was able to attack twice a round. So, rather conveniently, that's ten attacks, which makes for some nice easy probabilities.

It's also worth noting that the opponents' AC was such that I was able to hit with a '7' or better on the die, which amounts to a 70% hit chance.

I managed a grand total of 4 hits in the combat, with 2 of those being the last two attacks in the combat, after about an hour and a half of frustration. Worse still, the second of those hits, which came an hour into the game, was immediately followed up by a roll of minimum damage.

(The situation is actually even worse than that. Each of the other players had a set of lavishly detailed, and therefore necessarily quite lengthy, combat actions. It therefore took about 15 minutes to get around the table. By contrast, it took me all of ten seconds to describe my action, roll the dice, and fail to hit twice.)

Sigh.

The thing is, the problem isn't that I have dodgy dice - the dice I have are quite capable of rolling high numbers, while the problem seems to follow me around whichever dice I use. And, of course, it only ever seems to apply to rolls that somehow matter.

Though in fairness, last night wasn't the worst example of the problem - the last time I played 5e I had a barbarian who would hit on a '6' or better and still missed almost every attack. In fact, there were some attacks I arranged to hit on a '3' and still missed. And, worse, because of the structure of 5e with it's Daily/Encounter/At-will powers, I ended up wasting all of my best powers on attacks that missed, which meant not only did my character utterly suck in that combat, but he'd then hamstrung his capabilities for the rest of the session as well.

There's not really any upshot to all of this - it's just a complaint about a sucky experience. Except for a couple of things...

First up, RPGs have a bad habit, and have done since the very start, of giving additional bonuses to people who don't need them. Way back on OD&D, the ability scores actually gave almost no in-game effect, except for one: if you were lucky enough to roll a high prime requisite, you got a bonus to earned XP. In 2nd Edition (which is more or less where I came in), rolling high ability scores, in addition to the benefits inherent in those scores, also gave access to more exclusive classes that were, of course, more powerful. 3e (and Pathfinder) tended to get rid of such things, mostly, but they were replaced by more situational bonuses - you got powers like "two-weapon rend" where characters who scored two hits in a single round got to do extra mega-damage. Which is great for that player... and really bloody sucks for the guy who can't buy a hit...

What I think is needed is actually to turn that on its head - rather than getting additional fun bonuses for the player who already rolls really well (or just outright cheats), there should be more care to ensure that the player who doesn't still gets to have a decent time. Some sort of accumulating token that can then be used to buy a hit, or to reroll a bad die, or boost damage, or something.

But the other thing that really bothered me concerned character building. Pathfinder now allows players to tweak their character's concept in about a million different ways to get their character just right. Which is great, except that if you do that, and all the other players also tweak their concepts to suit them, you run the risk of ending up with a character who is utterly and completely mediocre - on paper, he looks absolutely fine, but then you find that everything he can do someone else in the group can also do, and do better. So your two-weapon fighter is overshadowed by the rogue who also does two-weapon fighting (but has the same AC and bonus to hit, but does more damage per hit - and that before you factor in your crappy dice). Your animal-training ranger is overshadowed by the horse-lord who has all the same riding skills, and does them just that bit better. And so on - nobody does everything you can do, but for everything you can do, somebody does it better. Making your character utterly redundant.

I don't really know what the solution to that one is, except to note that in a class-based system like Pathfinder there shouldn't even be a need for a solution - the whole point of having classes is to enforce archetypes and therefore build in niche protection.

To date, the only game I won't play again is Shadowrun, on account of a really bad experience I had running that game. Pathfinder is very rapidly earning itself a spot on the same list.

The Perfect D&D Movie

Many gamers like to kid themselves that their games look and feel something like the "Lord of the Rings" films.

Most of the time, a really good RPG session will look and feel a lot more like "Thor: Ragnarok". Complete with the silliness and in-jokes, but probably with rather more "Monty Python" and "Princess Bride" references.

The Oddball

In addition to my recent thoughts regarding the "PHB+1" policy and eliminating multiclassing, I find myself increasingly drawn to a position where the number of 'oddball' characters should be restricted. This is very much a matter of personal taste, of course, but I'm generally convinced that the game isn't actually helped if the party is made up of five characters who are each more specially special than the last. (And there's a reason that "Guardians of the Galaxy" introduces us first to Quill, the only human in that party, and why "The Lord of the Rings" introduces us to the hobbits first - in that story, it is the hobbits that are "us", with Aragorn and Boromir being super-humans.)

That being the case, I'm inclined to suggest that the party should contain no more than one member of an off-beat race, no more than one character with an off-beat class, and that those two should not be the same character. (Similarly, in Star Wars, you'd have no more than one alien, one droid, and one Jedi - with those three being different characters. Of course, that means there not being any alien Jedi in the game.)

There are a number of significant issues with this, of course. Firstly, what constitutes an 'oddball' race/class? Is it a non-human race? Anything outside of the PHB? Or something else? (My answer there would be "it depends". Gut feeling, especially since I'm keen to get away from the PHB races, would be non-human races and then non-PHB classes.)

Secondly, there's the question of whether the players would actually stand for that sort of meddling. As I've noted before, the GM gets to control everything else about the game - the setting, all the NPCs, and even the rules of the game itself. My position therefore is very strongly that when it comes to the PCs, aka the one thing the players get to control: hands off! This position, of course, very strongly contradicts that.

The third issue is probably the biggest, though: if the party gets to have one oddball race and one oddball class, who decides who gets that option? And surely, if two players each come with a burning desire to play a non-human PC, that's a recipe for at least one of them to be disappointed... perhaps even to the point of leaving, or even sabotaging the game.

The upshot of all this, after 400 words of waffle, is that I don't think this sort of a restriction is the way to go. Instead, I think a better approach is probably to limit just how oddball a single character can be (that is, you can take an oddball race or an oddball class), rather than limit the number of oddball characters in the party. Probably.

Fitting the Theme

I'm increasingly of the view that if I never again see another elf, it will be too soon. Same goes for dwarves, half-elves and half-orcs, halflings, and gnomes. Dragonborn and tieflings too, for that matter, although less so. In fact, any and every race produced by WotC (and Paizo) for the various editions for the game should probably be dropped.

My fundamental problem, as I've mentioned before, is that these are mostly treated as a package of powers, with the flavour utterly ignored in favour of a "human with funny nose" approach (like the various aliens in Star Trek). Which, frankly, sucks.

Instead, I'm increasingly inclined to think that a setting (any setting) should introduce the races that it needs to fit its theme, and only the races that fit the theme. And, additionally, that each of those races should come with a package of traits that is inherently tied to theme - both that of the setting and that of the race. And no ability modifiers*, since that's inevitably the #1 reason for choosing a race. Ideally, the setup should be that you choose to play a Warforged only because you want to be a Warforged, and in playing said character you are inevitably pushed towards Warforged-ness.

(This is as opposed to the approach where you say, "I want to be a Cleric", then look for a race with Wis and Con boosts, and choose that... and then ignore everything about the race except those lovely lovely stat boosts.)

* Of course, there is one alternative to "no ability modifiers" - just let everyone choose whatever modifiers suit them best. So everyone gets to choose to assign one +2 and one +1 (or three +1s) as they see fit. And that way, the race isn't chosen to fit the class since it makes no difference in any direction.

Oh, and incidentally... I was pleasantly surprised on Monday at the Pathfinder game to see an... interesting choice of PC races on show, that very much appear to have been chosen out of interest rather than exploit. Which is nice.