An Exploration In Gaming

I went to the Palladium Open House this past weekend. For those you who don’t know, Palladium Games made Rifts, Heroes Unlimited, Robotech (the tabletop game), and other role-playing games. The open house is at the headquarters of Palladium located in Plymouth,MI.

People from all over the country and even from other countries were there. Unlike a convention it is much smaller.  I believe the capacity was about three hundred. It looked like … well… an open house in a warehouse. There were some zombies and posters of the Palladium settings, which looked really great. It was split into two sections. One section was the main gaming place where about ten game masters ran game simultaneously. The other section was for the panels, auctions, and the costume contest. The food wasn’t expensive at all. Everything was very fairly priced. It had the usual fair, hotdogs, pizza, chili, and desserts.

I did not attend the VIP night because I am not a huge fan. Granted I like but I was not engulfingly enthusiastic. Is that a phrase? Is engulfingly a word? No? I didn’t think so. Do I look like I care? Also it was an extra $75, which I felt was too much especially for me.

Throughout the day there were different games ran by volunteers and the Palladium staff. Why would one volunteer to run games? Other than doing something you love, game masters got 30% off their purchase of merchandise, which included books and t-shirts. So many books with so many pretty covers, I wish I had more money.

Sign up sheets would be at a table and they only put them out about 2-3 hours before the game itself started.  I played in five games in those three days. Kevin Siembieda ran games throughout also and I had a chance to play in his Palladium Fantasy game, which was a total delight. Every game very great to play in and I met a lot of nice gamers.

I learned something about the Palladium Game system. It never occurred to me that it was a system that aggressively encouraged role-playing instead of number combat. The rules themselves are very loose and designed to be opened to interpretation. In some form there were always rules that were house-ruled. All but one of my game masters were very role-play driven. The only reason one wasn’t, was because he just wanted to see a blood bath. Most of my 4 hour games up to a maximum of two combats. We pretty much just chatted it up with NPCs all the time using forensics to figure out spider silk and eating cow manure. That what happens when you play the class known as the crazie.

The costume contest okay and the auction was pretty neat. There were all kinds of signed books and digital proofreader copies to bid on. For the most part a person can get a pretty good deal here.

All in all I had a really good time. This is definitely a place to go if you need a major role-playing fix.

This past weekend I concluded a campaign that I had been running for about two and a half years. We started in September `09 and only ended because three of my players were leaving. Had I had more time to prepare the ending I feel it would have been a little more final in a way. I don’t think I did too badly. People kept on coming back so I must’ve been doing something right.

Here is a short rundown of the campaign. The setting was a world called Pondera, which means balance in Latin. There is always a balance of forces. Good can never conquer evil or vice versa, if that did happen it would result in an imbalance, which would be bad in some way I haven’t thought of yet. I wanted to create a world of balance, but I don’t think I really got that point across in this campaign, though I’m already thinking about Pondera 2.0, which will focus more on that aspect.

In the Pondera the fey races lived on the western continent and most of them had a deep hatred for non-fey races especially humans. Many years ago the “outsiders” (Eberron civilization) from the opposite side of the world went to war with the fey and released a plague which decimated a third of the population, most of which consisted of eladrin and elves. As a result those non-fey who did live in fey lands were treated as second class citizens or were slaves.

The main villain was a human called Vander Osay Vindlassus, but went by only his middle name. As a boy he grew up in elven lands and joined a rebellion against the oppressive fey only to fail. His comrades in arms and family were part of the casualties. Because of these events he was determined to make the fey suffer. I didn’t want my main villain to be an egotistic bad guy with no direction. I wanted to give him reason. This is a man you could relate to that was full of passion. You can understand why he has such hate and will go so far into hurting people. He needs to utterly destroy the fey because they destroyed him and others like him throughout history.

I scattered things called relics in the world that were similar to artifacts. Each god had one which s/he bestowed upon the mortal races. The relic could be anything, a book, weapon, or even just a simple torch. They, of course, had powerful magical properties but they also had curses. Osay had Vecna’s Phylactery, which enabled him to have complete control over the undead. His curse was that he could not directly kill, which makes it great for torturing victims. My PCs used Kord’s Thunder, which they finally found after one of the NPCs, Ixen “Molotov” gave them a treasure map with clues to follow. It was the only thing that could penetrate the shield Osay had through his relic. Kord’s Thunder demands that the warrior that owns it challenge warriors. If the warrior lost his soul would be devoured by the weapon. When the wielder dies they go across the land challenging any opponent.

There are a couple things I would’ve changed. I felt like I forced my PCs to fight for Kord’s Thunder, they were very hesitant about taking the weapon because of the curse on it. I don’t like forcing my players to do anything, I want them to make their own choices and for the most part it happened that way.

Promote their creativity; I tried to do this as often as I could. When they had an absolutely brilliant idea that I would’ve never thought of I let them use it. Though I wish there were some instances where I could outsmart my players. That in itself did not happen too often and that is more of a fault on my part.

The game wasn’t as challenging as it should’ve been. It is very hard to kill paragon level characters. There were not any PC deaths. The players never felt they were in danger. I think that sense of danger is important in any game whether it be silly or stoic. I completely failed on that part, but my next game may be in a pathfinder system. That might make the danger sense a little easier to make.

All in all I immensely enjoyed myself. I have always been the writer type and I loved making my own world and people. I offered to step down as dungeon master to those players who wanted to stay they said I should continue if I want. So like I said I know I’m doing something right.

Here is what I did at Pax East. A lot of this will be scattered and probably not too interesting.

The exhibit hall was okay. I don’t play too many video games these days, but I would’ve loved to have played Borderlands 2 if only the line wasn’t 4 hours long. I’ll just play it when it comes out in September.

I had the pleasure of running a lot of Dungeons and Dragons games at Pax East 2012. 24 hours worth of games is what I did. I think I’m going to pass out from remembering how many people I met. All very lovely and interesting people I tell you however. Most of these sessions were Learn To Play and two DnDNext sessions.

My Learn to Play sessions were something that’s for sure. I always enjoy teaching people how to play DnD. The realization on the beginner’s faces knowing they can do almost anything they want, how they are not restricted by a programmer’s code. Bes thing ever! As for myself, normally I am quite introvert, but when I dm I become something more. I AM GOD! Er no I’m not but it does give me the chance to become a great storyteller. It is the most comfortable position I can be in.

This is my opinion of DnDNext! I liked it. I found the ****** ****** to be ***** and **** ********. There are a lot things that have to be ******* *** however I think they are ** *** ***** ****. ****** have to be ******** a little more, but I shall see what they have at the open playtest.

I paid a visit to the Reaper booth, they have a new line of miniatures made of plastic called Bones. They are cheaper than the pewter figures and are totally paintable. Though I will always prefer pewter because the method I use to strip a painted mini is putting them in Pine Sol for 24 hours, which plastic could not last through.

I didn’t game too much. It was nice to be surrounded by so many games and to grab some neat stuff for running games, but I was exhausted. But I will do this again next year!

Normally I do not review video games but seeing that the Reckoning’s game universe and lore was created by R.A. Salvatore and the lead executive producer is Ken Rolston, who served as role playing director of West End Games. That’s right; it is the studio that is responsible for Paranoia. I figured there might be a little interest.  Reckoning was produced by Big Hit Games. Along with Salvatore, the art was developed by Todd McFarlane (that’s right the Spawn artist) and the score created by Grant Kirkhope.  You may not recognize his name though you may recognize his work. He is responsible for the popular music to GoldenEye 007, Donkey Kong 64, and Banjo Kazooie.

This was an all-star cast so expectations of the game were through the roof. The combat system looked intriguing enough to wet my appetite. The purchase of the game was made a few days after the release date.

The art work is colorful and slightly cartoony, which reminded me of a better graphically enhanced World of Warcraft game. This was expected. Initially Reckoning was to be an MMORPG. The animation quality is solid though I did run into bugs in the game, but I usually give the benefit of the doubt and wait for patches.

The combat system is really good. It is one of the better rpg combat systems I have played in a while. There isn’t any auto attack. Let me go on the record and say, Thank “insert deity here”.  I abhor auto attacking. I like my gaming to be dynamic and I had enough of auto attacking in WoW. Mindless farming ugh… I should make a self-help book on the subject.

I could not get into the story no matter how hard I tried to be interested. A good story in a game can suck a person in and make them feel like they are part of something bigger.  I find tabletop to be a better setting for a touching story, not to say video games cannot do the same. Sure waking up in a pile of corpses was fun, but after that it seemed to be blah too me. It was just another everyone is relying me to do stuff…again…

The setting on the other hand felt like it was trying to force itself on me.

By the way there isn’t any harvesting animation. I can do a drive herb pick. Hell Yeah!

A game like this only proves even though you have gathered great people in the industry it takes the right people not the best to make a good game. Reckoning felt like your typical rpg. A recommended title if you can get it on sale.

We all know of the glorious role playing game one shot. For those who do not know, a one shot is an rpg that is to be played once and unless the players or game master chooses to extend it. Usually one shots are used to introduce a new game to a group of players. However it is not unusual for players just to want to take a trip down nostalgia lane playing an older version of a game for example AD&D.

When creating a one shot you should take the following into consideration…

• Have the players every played a role playing game before?
• Has the game master ever run this game before?
• Does someone want this one shot to be extended into a campaign?
• Is the system new to the players, game master, or both?

Once all this is figured out then we can move on to other tasks such as creating the actual adventure and the characters.

One shot adventures should be simple especially if the players have never played the game before. Also let’s face it players (unless there is some kind of epiphany moment that suddenly springs up in their brain) are a little dense. In most settings the person who cares about the plot of the story most is the game master. The story is our baby and sometimes you have to beat your players with the baby to get it through their heads!  (Verycutegm does not condone beating people with babies.) Keep it simple so frustration doesn’t run rampant in your game, because you already have limited time as is.

Pregenerated characters are characters that are made for the one shot.

Making characters involves a lot of time, time that could be used for other things like calculus.

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Though more likely it gives your players more time to do this…

Keep in mind when making these pregenerated characters is that their skill set should be comply with the adventure so everyone feels useful. Alternatively you could give a skill to a character that seems to be useful, have them use it, and frustrate them without end…Which is pretty hilarious, but isn’t  recommended but it’s your game and if you are never going to see them again experiment (I’m joking). Making simplified character sheets could be helpful if the normal character sheets are a million pages long because we all know it takes a bazillion years to look up things on the sheet unless you are familiar with the game. This is especially recommended in a convention setting.

When the game master has never run this particular game before a cheat sheet is recommended so it doesn’t take you a quadrillion years to look up a rule. If you cannot find a solution to the problem let the players know and try to improv a quick fix that seems fair.

Other things to keep in mind is that may seem to be no brainers are telling your players what materials to bring, giving general information of the game, and having fun.

Now go have fun!

“Hello, I’m Frederick Vonjingle Epperstein,” The distinguished gentleman with the moustache and monocle said.

“Hello Fred,” said everyone else.

“I have a problem. I am evil.”

Today’s subject is evil characters. We all know the evil character. It could be one of your PCs, a villain, or that guy at the party who ate all the doritos.  I’ve always been intrigued by the evil character. I remember when I went downstairs on Saturday mornings to watch cartoons my mindset was bad guy bad, I hope the good guys win, and why is he so bad?

This mindset continued into video games. It wasn’t until I picked up my first bioware game, Dragon Age Origins that I thought otherwise. Bioware’s games have a lot of moral choices in them. I could have been a total jerk if I wanted to. Of course I played a chaotic good character first then the badass. I didn’t really think about it at the time, but it really gave me that warm fuzzy freeing of WREAKING HAVOC.

When I play an evil character I love to cause chaos and destruction, but I feel better when my character has at least a semi good reason for it. Most of the time I go with I was abused by group x growing up and now I want to cause mass genocide. That might seem like a narrow concept but it comes up a lot more than you would think. An evil character without any substance I feel is fine if you are playing an one-shot. However if you are playing a long term campaign especially a serious one then if helps to have an evil pc or villain have reasons, to screw up (cause he’s human), or to just have him show emotion. Unless the case if your evil pc/villain is a sociopath.

On another note, does anyone notice there are a lot of villains have mommy issues?

I do like my evil characters. I like them complex, human, emotionally, and passionate sprinkled with a touch of insane and smothered in murderous rage!

There is some appeal playing an evil person. Oh how I enjoy the thought of doing every immoral thing in the book and get away with it. There is a certain spark when pretending you are so totally not.

So…yeah…I honestly don’t know where I was going with that.

::Force Lightning:: UNLIMITED POWER!!!

I just really wanted to say that.

Who doesn’t know what Paranoia is? In case you don’t know, Paranoia is a dystopian science fiction tabletop rpg written by Greg Costikyan, Dan Gelber, and Eric Goldberg and published under Mongoose Publishing. In this setting society is run by the Computer. Players play to win the Computers loyalty by killing traitors, commies, and mutants. However players are also part of a secret society that usual oppose the computer and they have mutant powers. Kill or be killed but in slapstick humor way.

It’s a fun game. Expect many deaths in the game but they have clones of course. There will many explosions of fiery death, acid face melting, and misfired lasers. The best challenge to overcome if keeping your players from killing each other too much. That is right…player vs player. But unlike a dungeons and dragons game pvp is encouraged! I love it as a one shot, but I probably couldn’t play it for a campaign. There is only so much slapstick killing humor I can take

I recently ran a game of Lady Blackbird and my group had a blast. Lady Blackbird was written by John Harper and a free pdf is available on onesevendesign.com. Each character has traits and key words that describe them. When an obstacle is faced a player will be asked to roll a d6 and are able to add addition dice to their rolls if character has traits or key words that can be applied to the situation. The player has a pool of 7 6 sided dice they may use in addition to the dice they are already rolling. Difficulty of the obstacles is rated from 1-5. If an obstacle has a difficulty rating of 2, when a player rolls his/her dice s/he must have at least 2 dice with a value of 4 or higher to succeed. If this happens they pass, if they fail the obstacle increases in difficulty. The game uses similar mechanics to another game, The Shadow of Yesterday. Pool dice in certain situations are not regained unless there is a “refresh scene”, a refresh scene can be a flashback enriching the character experience.

It is a wonderful game. I am a big fan of free form roleplay. The sky was the limit figuratively and literally.  Everyone in my game played their characters wonderfully. It especially helped that we felt like we were playing a steampunk verison of Star Wars. The game relies heavily on the players rather than the game master. The gm may be able to nudge here and there but it is the players that have to “get into it”.

The only problem is that a game master like me needs at least a little prep for a game. There are scenes where Cyrus Vance, one player characters, will needed a lot, but someone like Snargle, the goblin pilot, will not be as engaged. If you cannot improvise quickly you might have a little trouble. Like any good game master look around the table, see who isn’t engaged/appears to be bored, and try to create an obstacle engage the bored player.

Those who wish for something more structure with rule heavy combat will be disappointed, but everyone lives once. Try and see for yourself and maybe one day I’ll encounter you in the wild blue yonder.

Recently, I played Red Dragon Inn one, two, and three at a friend’s house. It is a fun little card game created by Cliff Bohm and published by Slugfest Games. The idea of the game is that you part of an adventuring party staying at an inn doing what adventurers do best, drinking and gambling.

Each player has a fortitude, which is one’s health, and an alcohol content. Fortitude starts at twenty and alcohol content at zero, when your alcohol content meets your fortitude value you pass out and get thrown out of the tavern. The other way to get thrown out of the inn is to run out of gold, which you have ten of at the start of the game. Everyone plays an adventurer that each has his or her special quirk. One your turn you discard, and draw cards until you have seven in your hand. You may play an action, then you give out two drinks to anyone at the table, then you take a drink!

There are many cards that counteract actions, restore fortitude, deal more alcohol points, gamble, and etc. It is a very strategic and it more fun in play in action than explaining it. By the way roleplaying your character is optional but encouraged. It makes the game even that much more fun. I command you to GO BLOODY BUY IT!

So last week I played Rifts for the first time. For those who do not know Rifts is a multi-genre roleplaying game published by Palladium games, who also published the TMNT rpg and Heroes Unlimited. What can I say about it? I liked it.

The world is a rich one; it is set in post apocalyptic settings where the Earth after experiencing a golden age is torn apart by Rifts that tear the inter dimensional fabric. Now the world has been reformed where there are parts that that resemble the jungles of the Congo filled with fantastical creatures and other places where it looks as if someone dropped in scenes from Bladerunner.

I like how there are a lot of class opinions. If you want to be a heavy hitter a glitterboy or juicer might be for you however if magic is more of your forte a ley line walker or mystic might be in your future. There are even classes that are not combat centric at all that focus on skills such as the operator or rogue scholar. I for one like to be the rogue scientist astounding people with my giant brain power knowledge… logic thingy… of smartness… Shut up.

The combat system leaves more to be desired. Tentacle monsters definitely would reign supreme. Each class has a set number of attacks per round. Ranged combat…that gets a little confusing and don’t get me started on missile combat. I can see why a lot of people house rule of lots of the details. Don’t get me wrong it’s not as bad as Exalted rules where I can’t even slough through that stuff. Depending on whether or not you have hand to hand combat affect your ability to dodge, pull punch, and etc. Initiative if rolled after each round. But it is really easier to keep track of than it sounds.

It is very archaic much like dungeons and dragons 1^st edition. Skills are based on percentages, which I have no problem about. It reminds be a little of what I heard about the Call of Cthulhu games. But there are so many skills such as weapon expertise and languages, but you also have skills like animal husbandry, which is prerequisite for veterinary. It can be a little excessive, if I were game mastering such a system I would have a list of highly recommended skills that will applied to the game.

Would I play again? Hell yes. Would I run a campaign with it? Yeah I would, but I’m more of a medieval fantasy person so it wouldn’t be really my forte.