Or at least, I’ve done something without precedent, for me. Yesterday I completed the main quest for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion; the reason that this is such a big deal is that, to date, I’ve played three Elder Scrolls games (Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion) and beaten one. I must say, it was a very satisfying accomplishment, and not just for this fact; I thought the ending sequence was pretty darned cool.
Not quite a personality test, this quiz tells you how you learn most effectively, breaking it down into categories and even giving you a nice graph. My results were not that surprising:
Style Scores
Visual: 2
Social: 11
Physical: 1
Aural: 9
Verbal: 17
Solitary: 4
Logical: 3
Thanks to What I Learned Today for the link. What are your results?
For a while now, I’ve had the cover art for my upcoming psionics supplement to Brennan Taylor’s Bulldogs! Now, however, I’ve been given the go-ahead to post it for all to see. The image depicts a Molodoc bounty hunter. A Molodoc is a psychic vampire, able to leech the psychic energy from a psionic being.
The above artwork is by Adam Denton.
[Edit: Corrected the link for the official Bulldogs! page.]
[Edit: Added artist information.]
If you like games (and, really, I can’t imagine you reading this site if you don’t like them) and you like podcasts (mmmm . . . podcasts), then you’re probably itching for more gamer podcasts to put on your iPod. Well, I’ve decided to link to all of the podcasts that I listen to regularly, right here on this very blog. In this very post! Some of them are more ‘geek culture’ podcasts than gamer podcasts, but we still love them, right?
Well, that’s all of them. Anyone want to suggest more? I have a long drive to work every day.
I recently started playing Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth for the PC. I’m ambivalent at this point. At first, I really, really liked it. I liked the strong sense of narration, the little breadcrumbs of information, the insanity effects, the fact that I didn’t have a gun and had to solve combats by either hiding or running away. It was great, and all very Lovecraftian. Even after I found a gun, it was pretty good; there was a nice sequence where I was on the back of a truck, dodging gunfire from cranky Innsmouth residents (very cinematic), and a pretty fair sequence in a fish packing plant, followed by an excellent, pseudo-interactive cutscene.
Then, I had to go to the Marsh Refinery. I am now carrying a pistol, a revolver, a shotgun, and a tommy gun. I have killed many, many Innsmouth residents, and the hoards don’t seem like they’re going to let up any time soon. It’s a long, ugly, boring level with a lot of combat and jumping puzzles. In short, the game has suddenly changed from something fresh and interesting into a standard horror shooter. Now, I have no idea if this trend is going to continue throughout the rest of the game (I’m really, really hoping not). And I really want to like this game; I liked it a great deal at first, but right now I just want to get out of the Marsh Refinery. And not in the Lovecraftian, “I have to get out of here before I am eaten or go insane” sense, but in the gamist, “I have to get out of here before I decide to stop playing this game entirely” sense. Oh, and I also ran into a nasty bug that made me have to either a.) retread a large chunk of the level to get back to where I was or b.) go through the rest of the game with permanent vertigo whenever my field of view dropped below looking straight ahead.
At any rate, these are my preliminary impressions. I’ll try to post a real review when (if) I finish the game. It’s starting to wear on me, though. I’d much rather be playing Arkham Horror. If any of you have views on this game one way or the other, feel free to comment. It’s free, I swear; you don’t even have to register.
Many of you are probably familiar with the Dragonlance series, right? Those of you who are fans have, no doubt, wanted to see this venerable series translated into movie format. Well, the wait is almost over. Apparently Toonz Animation, Commotion Pictures, and Epic Level Entertainment are collaborating with none other than Weis and Hickman, themselves, to create a Dragonlance animated movie, set for release in Autumn 2007. Don’t believe this is for real? IMDB has a page for this movie, too, albiet a rather bare-bones one at this point.
From The House of the Harping Monkey:
Yes, good roleplaying should be its own reward . . . in a perfect world. However, you have to ask yourself which is more important: being upset that the world isn’t perfect, or using in-game tools to aspire to something that might one day approach perfection (or, at least, good roleplaying for its own sake).
Let’s take Serenity’s plot points as an example. These points are handed out to players for doing things in-character, especially roleplaying their flaws. In turn, merely having plot points encourages more good roleplaying, because you can spend them to affect the story in significant ways. I like to think of this as a Very Good Mechanic, because it creates a sort of roleplaying feedback loop that gradually improves everyone’s ability to roleplay. And, if you really don’t like the idea of mechanically rewarding a player for good roleplaying, you can treat them as training wheels: use them a lot at first, as a roleplaying catalyst, then gradually fade them out. However, I much prefer the idea of keeping this mechanic in the game, and using it in leu of pure experience points (especially since Serenity allows you to cash some of your plot points in for expereince at the end of the session).
I think the need to have good roleplaying be its own reward comes down to a fundamental difference in the experience and viewpoint of the GM and the players. Each player plays and is responsible for a single character. On some level, a player is aware that he is responsible for everyone else having fun in addition to himself (if he’s a really good player, he’s very aware of that and takes it into consideration often), but mostly he’s trying to have as much fun as he can playing. Getting a reward for doing something that makes the game more fun for everyone makes the game more fun for the individual player, and thus encourages the former behavior.
The GM, by contrast, has to be aware that he is responsible for everyone at the table having a good time; thus, you’re going to tend to see the GM doing more in-character roleplay, regardless of the consequences to that character, without expectation of tangible reward. The GM, in addition, has that luxury. If a favorite character dies, it’s dissappointing, but the GM can create a new one to take its place, and has a bunch more already anyway. If a PC’s favorite character dies (or is even handicapped temporarily by roleplaying a flaw particularly well), it might make the game overall more fun, and it might add to everyone’s experience, but it’s probably going to slightly decrease that player’s enjoyment on some level. We, as GMs, have to remember that good roleplaying often involves some sort of sacrifice to the alter of shared experience, a point that is far more poignant to players than to GMs.
If you’ve got a game, and you’d like to see a review on the Interweb for said game, you can send me a review copy of that game and I will review it on my website (and any other websites that you request). Note that sending me a free game does not gaurantee you a good review; rather, it gaurantees you an impartial review based on actual play.
If anyone would like further details, you can email me at the following address, which can also be found over on my sidebar:
I check that email account pretty much daily; you should know, however, that my account gets a hojillion spam emails per day, so don’t be offended if I don’t reply. Your email may have been lost in the mix. To combat this, please include the phrase “Game Review Request” in the subject line.
Now, if you’re a little leary of this request (and I wouldn’t blame you), you can read Part 1 and Part 2 of my HeroCard Galaxy review, done at the request of TableStar Games after they sent me a review copy. That’s the kind of effort you can expect on my part.
Brian
Once again, something I posted over on Treasure Tables bore repetition here. I’ll probably be doing this sort of thing from time to time.
Always, always remember that, as the GM, you are within your rights to cheat like crazy. In fact, it is absolutely your responsibility to cheat, provided that you’re doing so in order to make a better game for everyone. If the PCs are fighting a particularly difficult (or merely resilient) monster, and you either fear a TPK or a stalemate, adjust the monster’s difficulty on the fly. You can simply lower its hit points, or you can give it a great weakness, and hint at that weakness to your players (“Make an Intelligence check. Ok, you notice that, though the creature is covered in hard, chitinous armor, there seems to be a plate missing on its right side, under its arm.”). That way, the players can bypass the monster through some clever maneuvering, rather than simply beating on it forever.
As for the puzzle that just won’t stop: I think you should come up with a solution beforehand, but you shouldn’t be afraid to throw it out the window if the PCs come up with something better. A puzzle in an RPG should be challenging and satisfying, not a frustrating roadblock that disrupts the flow of play.
There is, of course, another solution: let the players cheat. Kind of. In my upcoming Iron Heroes/Eberron campaign, I plan on giving the PCs access to Story Tokens, so that they can exhert more control over the world around them. Remember that roleplaying is a collaborative storytelling art. This isn’t about you telling a story to your players, it’s about the entire group telling the story. You, as the GM, get to guide the story and have to come up with a lot of the plot points, but that doesn’t mean that the PCs can’t help you out with that.
I recently replied to a thread on Treasure Tables’ Forum, and thought that it would make a pretty good post for my own site. So, here is my reply, modified for clarity since there’s no real context.
When I start a campaign, I usually dedicate the entire first session to character generation, before I start really making notes on the adventure, itself. I usually have a general idea of things that I want to happen, but I don’t really start coming up with the good ideas until the characters are made. The reason I do things this way is that I like to build the story around those specific characters. I like to add in places where different characters get a chance to shine, and it also allows me to build a logical framework for why the PCs are together and why they’d be going on this particular adventure. This is actually a lot easier with just one player, since you only have that character to consider when you’re coming up with ideas for your adventure, but it can be a lot more satisfying with a group. Occasionally I’ll also work with individual players to create personal goals that their characters are trying to complete, and I give some sort of incentive (money, XP, bragging rights, whatever) for completion.
As for random encounters: I don’t use them. I used to, but I found that it slowed the game down unnecessarily and many of the encounters didn’t make sense. That doesn’t mean that seemingly random things don’t happen; bandits still waylay the party in transit, and they still have to fight goblins just outside of town occasionally. However, I draw a distinction between a ‘random encounter’ and a ‘wilderness encounter’ or ‘side encounter’. The former implies no planning, and no purpose. The other two terms are how I describe encounters that may or may not have something to do with the main story arc, but are still planned encounters that serve a purpose other than to give the PCs something to beat on. If your player likes story more than combat, you may want to use this approach. The thing to remember is: never include a combat for the sake of having a combat, unless the PC initiates it. If you include an encounter, make sure that it contributes to the game overall, rather than just to the PCs’ experience total. Also, I find that a random encounter is usually largely forgettable, while a planned side encounter can be made memorable in a number of ways. To make including these encounters easier for you as the GM, you can try writing up a few encounters before each session (two or three should do it), and use them whenever you think they’re necessary. A good encounter can be dropped in just about anywhere, with little modification, and if you wind up not using one then you have an extra encounter for the next session.
Finally, travel. As I said above, I do sometimes include wilderness encounters for PCs to deal with en route; this adds a sense of verisimilitude to the game, and lets the PCs know that the wilderness is a dangerous place. However, sometimes (oftentimes, actually) it’s perfectly acceptable to simply say, “You travel for six days, and finally reach the City of Splendors without incident.” Not every journey needs to include danger and excitement; sometimes you want to get to the good stuff faster, right?
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