DIY meets RPG

Gaming and history are not good partners. In fantasy games, historical accuracy is tossed aside in favor of interesting interactions, choices and heroism. I completely agree with that approach. The excitement of fantasy gaming evolves from the ability to play characters who are interesting and are more powerful than your run of the mill citizen. The interesting individuals are the stuff of legends, mythology and stories. When playing, I want to be Robin Hood, not one of the Merry Men. If given the choice, are you going to play a Red Shirt or Kirk in a Trek game?

I also love historical elements and tinkering with producing medieval items. Kicking back with a history book regarding anything medieval or renaissance oriented is educational. Attempting to recreate items considered minor in most fantasy game settings is a learning experience. Even with modern tools, appliances, power, etcetera, producing a medieval weapon, set of armor or even a day to day item is very time consuming.

A DIY project like my simple medieval mace reconstruction has been eye opening. Many gamers treat armorers and weapon smiths like modern day stores. The items are dangling on the shelves and racks ready to be bought.

Adventurer: “Got plate for a 5′ 4″ human with a 44″ chest?”
Armorer: “Yep, its on rack 3. Try it out. I’ll ring you up.”

Armor and weapons were extremely expensive and very rare in our history. Armor was custom made to fit a person. Weapons were handed down as heirlooms. In a fantasy setting, wouldn’t that also be the case? If adventurers were common, our characters would be normal, not extraordinary. Gear would be hanging off the shelves because everyone would have it.

I’ve often ignored weapon and armor rarity, size constraints and other minutiae in my games. Game flow took precedence. I’ve also vetoed finding halfling sized armor in a hamlet in the middle of a human settlement. Odds of finding the right fit in the wrong environment are nil. My determination is generally based sheerly on demographics.

As I’ve tinkered with projects, time is actually the most significant factor. Asking a smith to accomplish something in a matter of days is crazy. If he is skilled, he already has back logs for items for the rich. If he’s less skilled, his business is back logged producing the needs of his community, not some hapless adventurer who needs something yesterday. An emergency on your part… You know the saying.

Should our history dictate your game? Probably not. Having some historical context is useful when making decisions as a GM. Blended lightly, history adds depth to your campaign. Skilled professionals were rare and probably are in your campaign. Do you really want a crappy blacksmith forging your plate armor or sword?

An Era Past: Usenet and RPGs

On May 20th, Duke University was scheduled to shut down its Usenet server, which provided access to a worldwide electronic discussion network of newsgroups started in 1979 by two Duke graduate students, Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis. To most, Usenet is a complete unknown. Yet prior to invention of the World Wide Web, Usenet and email were the primary methods of communication on the Internet. In many ways, Usenet was a precursor to blogs except in a more constrained, topically oriented hierarchy. Looking back, it feels quite strange and limited but Usenet continues to be used.

My earliest memories of Usenet are of RPG discussion. I arrived at college in the fall of 1988. By 1989, I had an email account and Internet access through the university. Sometime in 1989, I discovered the rec.games.frp newsgroup. Somewhat of a misnomer, ‘frp’ covered all types of roleplaying but was originally an acronym for Fantasy Role Playing since Dungeons and Dragons was the dominate system at the time. It was subsequently broken out into a number of different subgroups including rec.games.frp.dnd, and rec.games.frp.gurps among others. At the time, Usenet was the only way to post something and get feedback from others. Almost purely ASCII text, it pales in comparison of today’s communication mediums. Hearing from someone outside of your gaming group was very cool. Hearing from someone across an ocean comment on your material was exciting.

Usenet was a distributed service but also compartmentalized information within the group hierarchy. Unlike the far flung blogs of today, everything was orderly and immediately available without the need for a search engine. This lead to the creation of numerous Net Books covering a range of topics. Looking back, many of the Net Book archives have long since passed into the ether of the net. However, several of them are archived. If you search back through the various Usenet groups, you can likely find the original postings of the contributors. Thanks Google for being proactive enough to archive, purchase companies, and retain those posts.

Today, creating something like the Net Book of Traps would be nearly impossible. Usenet provided a funnel for the information. In the vastly distributed RPG world of today, the project would be difficult. Everyone speaks on an island and even with collation networks, search engines, etc. ideas would be missed.

Reading my ancient Usenet posts today, I marvel at what I considered long. The raw text format is plain ugly. Still, I can admire what it was at the time. In another 20 years, I wonder if everything we write will be archived. I doubt it. I’m certain the communication mechanisms of today will look as raw as Usenet does to me 20 years afterwards.

Thanks Usenet for the memories, for being the social network of the day, and sparking my career. I may not miss you but I certainly appreciate you.

The RPG Player’s Bill of Rights

1. You have the right to choose to get up from the table and leave.

Unless your country allows people to be strapped into seats and forced to play games, #1 is the only right you have. If you are unfortunate enough to be subjected to strap-down laws, I can only sympathize. Best of luck.

Favorite Settings and affiliated things

Randall, my home town boy asked what my favorite setting was. Choosing one over the other is nearly impossible because the GM, players, and plot play significant roles. Most enjoyed game is much easier to determine but far from easy.

The background genre, world, history, and other factors determine a setting. The players in the group, the plot, and the GM interaction truly bring it to life. Rule systems also play a significant role. I struggle to separate them but since he asked about settings, not game experiences, I shall do my best.

Let me start with a couple published systems I didn’t like much from the ’90s: DragonLance and Greyhawk. Dragonlance is obvious. As published, the materials essentially shoved you down a road you could never deviate from. As a setting, in the novels, I liked it. As a playable system, it was a complete failure.

Greyhawk was the complete opposite — very disjointed and open. Not bad but just not cohesive when I look at it as a setting. Far too many authors spread it out in a fashion that made it rather useless. So many cooks broke the world apart with too many differing viewpoints. Perhaps a great DM could have brought it together but as published it was far too chaotic for my taste.

Both also suffered from being “well known”. Part of the RPG experience from my perspective is the unknown. I personally want to see something new and explore it. Even in a familiar system, I want the curve balls and personal touches a DM can provide when generating their own world.

I was and continue to be jaded against anyone picking up a module and attempting to run them. Historically, the results are just bad play, bad interaction and zero setting. I’ve failed on that front many times so I choose not to take the approach again. Can it be done? Sure. By most people? Not a chance in putting out the Styx with a bubble machine.

My favorites are original settings, no matter the genre or system. The DM’s that spend the time to create them have a very comprehensive knowledge of the setting. They can adapt and expand on a moment’s notice. That makes the game. Why? Immersion. If you need to reference a book to tell me something about where I’m at, you just failed.

Personal favorites as a player:

Modern settings. It takes the power out of the GM’s hands and puts it in mine as a player. Even if they want to confine me, I have the ability to choose not to be confined. They require a very open GM to run by their very nature.

Original Fantasy Worlds: I love new takes on genres. Too hook me, you have to open the game up so I can get a feel for the world by exploring and taking missteps. If the plot confines me, I start to get bored and rub against it. I want to player a persona, not a robot.

I hate being railroaded. Even if it is limited. If I can detect it, I start to rebel even if it isn’t necessary. I dislike playing with any game master who cannot adapt and play on their feet with little preparation. The idea that we all have to do X, to continue drives me nuts.

Favorite Settings as a GM:

None. I run off the players. They depict the setting for me by acting. I have to respond and work within their goals and desires. The best sessions I’ve run have never been planned. The worst have always been based on planning.

You get what you put into it. For some, that’s planning, for me, its thinking right now. As the player’s challenge me, I consider, adapt and challenge them in response to what they want to do.

Parties, Parity and Conflict

I’ve seen numerous opinions regarding party dynamics. Many of them essentially mandating party members are friendly with each other and supportive. A symbiotic relationship is best in the minds of many. Introductory rule systems espouse the same logic: A party comprised of X, Y, and Z are necessary to undertake this adventure.

The hive mindset is unnatural to me. I think it is often limiting. I see no need to be friends with party members if they have differing goals than I do. A character can easily coexist with others for a short amount of time because it is beneficial. My enemy’s enemy is my friend….right now..

So many examples come to mind. I’ll start with party balance based on classes within D&D. Basically, all the published material espouses the need for class balance within a party. You need a thief, mage, cleric and a fighter at a minimum to achieve parity. Why? Running games based on the recommendations is easier initially from the balance. It’s also rather dull after a few years.

From the player perspective, the balance approached has been indoctrinated. Most games we play require it to achieve success. GM’s reinforce the balanced approach because they start by requiring it from lack of experience and then are obligated to keep all the characters involved so balance the adventures. The feedback cycle continues until it is ingrained.

More egregious, most DM’s force goal alignment down the throat of the characters. Doing so can snuff the life out of developing a character based only upon your planned campaign. Plans are only good up until implementation. If the players sit down and create 6 dwarves with intertwined backgrounds, can you honestly send them into battle against dwarves that are rising up against humans? Unlikely to happen if you constrained the choices available before character generation but plausible if you put them in an open sandbox.

Many systems, and GM’s also suggest or mandate that the characters all be white hats. The characters are going to undertake the campaign because they are the good guys and some bad guy needs thumped. Let me get out the scissors and carve some cardboard. Alignments in D&D propagate the idea.

Well, I’m lawful good, so I always have to play that way. Nope. If I’m playing a lawful good character and the DM has bad guys kidnap my daughter, I’m going to respond based on raw emotion, not ideals. I’ll hope my chosen god supports me along the way or forgives me in the end. There is no fixed bucket to what a player should be allowed to do or negative impact if she exceeds a certain limitation. You can judge based on overall interaction but the instantaneous, emotional response defies bucketizing.

Party conflicts are often quashed by many GM’s. Why? Is it really necessary to mandate? I played in essentially a 2-player campaign where my cohort was so paranoid of my character killing him, the other party put a massive amount of effort toward thwarting any intrusion into his home. Granted my character used whoever he could to achieve the goals he desired…not the party goals. I’d never considered turning against my party member but in the back of his mind, it was likely.

The same player later played a guy in a campaign who was wretched toward other player’s characters. “What have you done for me lately?” was the question always in the back of his character’s mind. So many PC’s died at his hand, I cannot count them. Yet, those same players kept making new characters and playing. Or trying to play again and again.

The best party dynamics I have experienced come not from planning but from differences. Kevin’s Top Secret campaign is an example. We generated characters based on a blank slate. In the end, the players within the party were very intertwined but also very self reliant. Rarely did we call each other for support. Instead, we called in the others to maximize impact.

Take the opportunity to thumb your nose to the expected and play purely off the players. You will be rewarded.

Are we powergamers by nature or by knowledge?

I had a random thought the other night about system knowledge and the ramifications it has. The origin of the idea is completely decoupled from role playing games. Instead, it based on the knowledge and insight provided by an online game. The game in question provides a pretty significant level of information to allow the players to mathematically defeat every foe. Randomness provides a bit of risk within the system but its marginal. It is possible to not only mitigate the risk directly but to also to mitigate it via secondary and tertiary actions.

Within RPGs, players tend to do the same. Odds are everything flows to specific attributes, skills, and advantages that can minimize risk for a particular system. Certainly, I’ve used ill conceived system design to my advantage. Is that bad? Hardly. The rule designers give us choices. Many of the choices can be idiotic and completely useless. So a trend to using the useful is natural.

Online games only have 1 discriminator: the random number generator. RPGs have at least two: dice and the DM. I’d add other players in there as well because they introduce a crazy factor but statistically, I’d wager that impact is marginal. The randomness of dice efficiently eliminates the random number generator.

Many of the choices we make are driven by experience and to exploit the system. Each and every time I’ve been introduced to a new system, the knowledgeable players point out a subset of choices to utilize — maximizing benefit but often ignoring the lesser choices.

More often than not, the core selection is chosen to maximize effectiveness in combat. The alternatives are discarded because they do not appear to have as much impact. Everyone I’ve played with are apt to select the high effectiveness options rather than the lower powered alternatives.

Why? The GM has to amp up the game to counteract the unbalanced options. Doing so makes the other choices even less desirable. At least in a sheer numbers sense.

Strange as it sounds, this occurs because everyone knows the rules and can mathematically maximize the benefit. Rules achieve an imbalance by their very nature. Players can also maximize benefit by knowing their GM. How he plays and rules he utilities most often.

Basically, we power game as players even if we don’t consciously attempt to do so. Evolution wired us to survive so it makes complete sense.

Are there solutions? Absolutely. First and foremost, eliminate the system power skills. If its combat, make combat less common. House rule them out if you find everyone has the same skill or advantage. Ignore the whining. In the end, it will be better.

The many options are for role play, and as game masters, we eliminate many of them by our own actions. Nix the benefit, eliminate the imbalance.

Super Heroes? Boring, stale and not for me.

The genre is enjoyable in various forms including film, print, etc. I even enjoy an occasional RPG session. Yet my interest is always fleeting. I cannot continually suspend my disbelief.

Super Hero movies are cool but not for the characters. I watch them with the attitude of seeing an action flick. The special effects, the crazy plots and the magic of computer generated imagery are what I’m there to see. I’m one of the poor extras in the movie — the normal folk who are just watching in awe.

I see super hero characters as reprints of the same tired origins. Sure there are twists on the origins of the power — innate mutant power, alien power in an Earth setting, or advanced technology of unbelievable power. Call it a mental block. All the powers have seemingly been used and reused. I have never come up with any concept that isn’t some variation of something already completely overused. When I do, they are always things which would be of little use in a game.

Super Hero games also always seem to use the good versus evil plot. A super villain plots some madness and the characters must go forth and defeat them to keep the world safe. I can taste the bile at the back of my throat. Even the guy who says “Screw this, I’m staying at home, powering down a bag of Cheetos and watching I Love Lucy.” ends up being forced into being a hero. All of them lack self motivation, goals, and desires. I’ve racked my brain trying to come up with any portrayal of anything other than a superficial personality. Even the internal conflicts some characters have are hard to believe because they are the singular element identified of a personality.

As I stated previously, the characters always seem stuck in time at the point of creation. What precisely do I mean? Often characters have a great history or back story. The problem is the history has no application to the future. They are stuck waiting for the next evil genius plot to take over the world until they are compelled to act yet again. Or they go seek revenge on someone due to a factoid in the background. Once that is over, what’s next? Managing a Burger King? Running a Fortune 500 company? Working as security for someone kicking the spleens out of mere mortals? I prefer games where I’m capable of building my character’s future not being held hostage by who he is.

Mortality is also an issue. Traditionally super heroes and villains rarely die. So even if you are outmatched, outclassed and outwitted, and get your ass kicked what happens? You go home, heal up (while flipping burgers) and come up with a new plan or a better group. If there is no risk of dying, the game is just dull to me. Self preservation is a fundamental element in all other RPGs. If it is missing, I get bored quickly and lose interest in the game. I’m guessing most game systems in the genre have mechanics for death so I am not bashing systems. I’m bashing the way the games I’ve played in have been run.

On the topic of game system mechanics, I will come back to the “stuck in time” comment. Character improvement seems impossible after a point. If a power comes because an alien ability like Superman, its capped at conception. Innate powers based on mutation also have an immediate cap. A mutation can only provide so much benefit before it is fully realized. Certainly discovery and learning can allow you to utilize a power better but at some point you hit the capacity of that ability based on the origin. Technology based powers are the one area I can fathom continued improvement. Sadly, my own background makes me nitpick the technology. I impose self-limitations on the capabilities because I find them absurd at the extremities. And if it isn’t human technology? Well, that’ll take years to understand to begin with yet alone improve. I don’t know how any system handles improvement because I’ve never been engaged enough to actually purchase or read the systems fully.

I’ll be the first to admit that my comments on the Super Hero genre could be applied to nearly any other genre. The genre just doesn’t spark my imagination. It has yet to immerse me so I’m standing in the shoes of my character and looking through his eyes. Instead, I always seem like a puppeteer pulling the strings to move my character around. Many others love the concept and enjoy it immensely. Good for you, go play and have a great time. I’ll wait for the movie.