Easy Saturday Scattershooting

• I may have written more at Barking Alien's blog this week than I did on my own. He has some good stuff on sandbox vs. story vs. both so check it out here.

• Nothing directly to do with gaming but big stuff for Lady Blacksteel and I on TV recently has been Mad Men, Walking Dead, and Boardwalk Empire. we finally caught all of Season 5 for Mad Men last month, we caught up on Walking Dead in time for the "midseason finale", and watched Boardwalk in real time, which ended a week or two ago ... and it feels like I'm out of TV now! There's nothing I feel compelled to watch on Netflix or DVR. We try to always have a show we watch together and right now we really don't.

• Paizo is working on a Pathfinder Megadungeon and the writing line-up looks pretty strong. It's certainly another reason to consider putting a little bit into the Pathfinder Online Kickstarter. Have to think about that one.

Hobbit Friday

Beyond Sinbad movies, Robin Hood & Three Musketeers movies, Greek and Norse myths, and various fairy tales, the animated Hobbit is what got me really fired up about fantasy in general. After I saw it, and found out there was a longer sequel in the works, I sought out the books (all 4 of them) and acquired them thanks to an encouraging aunt of mine and that was pretty much what started the whole thing. It was the spark that lit the smoldering mass into a full-on flame. For years afterwards I read the whole thing over again every year. Within a few more years I had discovered D&D, then later Conan and Fafhrd and the Mouser and Sanctuary and a whole bunch of other books and games and all those same bad movies we all watched back then. It also led to Warhammer and that whole miniatures addiction thing that takes up an interesting amount of space around the house to this day. A few years ago I discovered it all over again when I started reading it to my kids as a bedtime story, one chapter per night.

What makes it so good? Enough has been written that I'll keep it short: For me it starts with a low key hero (no special bloodline, prophecy, power, or skill) who is dragged into an adventure where it seems like everyone else knows more about what's going on than he does, which is not a bad metaphor for several stages of life in my experience. Once in this situation, while he doesn't seek danger he doesn't automatically run from it either. Instead he deals with it as it comes, to the best of his abilities, and in the end he makes it through with some new friends and some good stories to tell - who doesn't want that?

As far as movies go, while I'm sure some hate it, the animated version all over this post pretty much defined the look of a lot of fantasy creatures for me. From Gandalf, to the dwarves, to those goblins (!) and Smaug, I still find myself picturing things in this style from time to time even now. It's very distinct and one that's never left my head or been totally overwritten. I had the animated movie eventually but before that I had the book & cassette and saw the filmstrip - remember those, kids?- in school more than once. So it was around a lot.

 I'm sure the new movie will be good, and it will be a nice way to introduce people to the book with a modern look. I loved the LOTR movies and trust Peter Jackson to handle it well. I am concerned about the decision to make it into 3 movies - even with the appendices and all I think that may be stretching the material a bit thin. We'll just have to see. I am looking forward to the big release today. I probably will see it later in the weekend but I will be there, ready for the latest version of a story I have been following for a long long time.

The Local D&D Update for December

• With Apprentice Red getting his first job this week* and being remarkably busy with theater and other school activities, the ToEE campaign has slowed way down. This is somewhat frustrating for Apprentice Blaster - and for me too - but it's just how things work. If we're lucky we will get some time in during the holiday break but how much remains to be seen.

• In contrast the Impiltur campaign as been zooming onward with the speed of regular weekly sessions - yes "weekly", not "bi-weekly", or "monthly" or "hey when are we going to play again?" - This means we're up to around 16 sessions now and about halfway through the Red Hand of Doom. Everyone seems to be having a good time with it and hopefully that continues. Additionally, somewhat to my surprise, the players were wondering where their recaps had gone. I noted that they rarely read them, and were even less likely to comment on them, so I stopped doing them. Apparently at least some of them think it's a big deal, so look for some catch-up summaries on the Savage Swords of Impiltur campaign this month.

• Apprentice Who has inquired about playing more D&D, perhaps even wanting his own books, but that may be premature yet. I'm considering going back to Basic to keep the speed of play up, as Who hated 4E when he tried it but loved Basic when Apprentice Blaster ran it for him a while back. I'm hoping his renewed interest helps offset the loss of time with Red.

• I'm also considering giving Next another go as the alternative game for the Blaster-Who team when Red is not available. It seems like a reasonable compromise if I can convince Blaster to give it another try after rendering his verdict a few months ago.

• Apprentice Blaster prefers 4E and wants to continue the Temple campaign, but failing that he might be up for Basic. He's also been asking about giving 3rd Edition a try since he's looked at my wall of stuff for it and concluded it might be worth a look. If I can get a decent character generator up and running then he and Apprentice Who may be giving that one a try as well. I figure a few one-off sessions of various editions of D&D  should help us find a sweet spot. I may even work in a D&D-flavored Savage Worlds game, just to mix things up.

*His first day of his first job ever is working at a movie theater the day The Hobbit opens. I told him that at least he will have a nice little story to tell down the road.

Not So Recent Gaming Innovations: Presence Attack!

I could cite Champions for a lot of innovations: First effect-based system, first appearance of advantages/disadvantages, the concepts of Hunteds and Dependent NPC's, the separation of lethal and non-lethal damage as a core part of the game, and hey, the first point-based character generation system. Sure, those were all pretty important, but the one thing I think is overlooked and underrated is the Presence Attack.

What is a Presence Attack? Why it's simply a mechanical system for frightening, intimidating, charming, commanding, or otherwise imposing your will on an NPC without making an actual, physical* attack on them. Presence is a stat that all characters possess (it defaults to 10 for a normal human) and the mechanic is this: Roll 1d6 per 5 points of Presence, compare your total to the target's Presence, then based on how much your roll has exceeded their score various effects can happen, from losing an action as they hesitate to total surrender or obedience. There are situational modifiers - things like being outnumbered can lessen your chances while doing something impressive like bending a steel bar can improve them.

Yes, that's right - a game system known for number-crunching tactical combat has a system that allows a character to walk in a room and tell everyone "get out" - one that works, is fairly simple to resolve, but has rich options that reward player creativity in play - wow that sounds kind of modern! When was that published? 1981?!

I've seen this used in Champions of course, but I've also seen it work in Fantasy Hero, a sort of Rifts-Hero**, a Traveller Hero campaign, and a Mechwarrior Hero. It seems that if you give players a system for doing this kind of thing, at least some of them will try it out! Nothing makes a player feel like a badass more than having their character walk in to a room full of ninjas, say "Leave" and then watching as they do so, clearing the area for the big confrontation with the Overninja. No powers needed, no magic items needed, no special intimidate skill or feat needed - just the character's innate badassery.

There are those who claim this should be strictly a role-playing thing. I disagree. A mechanical framework for interpersonal interaction is not a straitjacket. Sometimes it's what makes certain things possible. I can tell you that without some kind of mechanical yardstick the scenario above would rarely happen in my games - I tend to play my ninjas as overconfident bad guys. I cannot tell you the lengths a player would have to go to in order to overawe a whole group of them like that. With the Presence Attack though, it's not just an arbitrary call by me - it's something a player can investigate, work towards, and invoke on their own initiative with a pretty good chance to evaluate when it's a good idea and when it is not - and those things are what make this system great.

Now I've tended to focus on the fear aspect of Presence Attacks but that is not the only option. There are other ways to use the system too ...

Yeah - that one doesn't come up as much when it's just the guys playing, but Lady Blacksteel has a tendency towards the lesser forms of mind control when it comes to her characters, which adds an interesting angle for the DM. Don't get me wrong, she likes to play badasses too, hers just have more of a curveball to them than most male characters.

Now the thing that is a little disappointing is that more games haven't included a mechanic like this one. D20 games often have some kind of Bluff mechanic, but what if it's not a bluff? What if you are that good? Some of them have an Intimidate skill as well and it can work in a similar way, but few have the non-fear aspect built in as well. Sure, they have Diplomacy or Streetwise, but those have a different flavor to them than having a 30 or 40 Presence would in Hero.

To sum up: More games should have something like this! In level based games it would be really easy to do - something like level + Charisma bonus + a Feat bonus if you take the "Presence" feat, roll that vs. the target's willpower equivalent and resolve. Other games would require a more specific solution but the concept works in almost any game, and almost every game would be better for it.

*or energy - Champions humor!

** It was harmless college experimentation, I swear!

Motivational Monday

ICONS: State of the Game at the End of 2012

I've been a little quiet on this one lately but there is a lot happening now with ICONS. After a decent 2012 it looks like things are really ramping up for 2013. With Steve Kenson taking the game back under his control, and to successful kickstarters for a rules supplement (see above) and a setting supplement (Stark City!) it looks like a game that has a solid upside.

Note: All this is from the perspective of someone who plays the game (well, runs it but you get my point). I don't have any affiliation with  the people or the company who publish it, I just like it a lot.

So, what if someone was looking for a new superhero game to try out? One that handled all the things such a game is expected to handle, but isn't too complicated or too pricey to pick up - what's a good option? Let's take a look at what ICONS has:

• The ICONS rulebook - it's 9.95 at DTRPG. That's a pretty good deal for a complete Superhero RPG
• Need more? The Villianomicon is also $9.95 at DTRPG. It has some rules discussions, notes on things like natural diasaters, and about 100 pages of new villains. It's a solid choice to bulk up a campaign.
• Interested in even more? TEAM-UP is ... well it's the black sheep of ICONS right now as it was supposed to release roughly a year ago and has not appeared. 

Speaking of not yet available, there are two more major supplements mentioned above:

• Great Power is the forthcoming book on powers powers powers. I've looked at the playtest copy and it's a thorough treatment and examination of all of the powers in the game, plus some new ones, with recommendations on how to implement specific concepts within the broad framework of ICONS' mechanics.Get in on the Kickstarter and $10 gets you the PDF - that's a very good deal! 
• Stark City is the forthcoming book (or series of books) on an original city setting for ICONS

Maybe there's an era you prefer, and want to know if there's any support out there for it:

• Golden Age - Vigilance Press has a series of short adventures priced at $1 - one dollar! We've played several of them and they are easily an evening's worth of fun.
• Silver Age - Fainting Goat Games has a series of adventures that are definitely Silver Age in spirit. They run from $1.99 to $3 or so. 
• Modern Age - Ad Infinitum (taking over from Adamant this year) has a series of modern adventures that run from Silver-Ageish to Bronze Age. They run about $5 but tend to be a little longer than the others so they include more material at that price.

What else?

• Well if you like vehicle-oriented characters Fainting Goat has the Justice Wheels line that features a character, their vehicle, and some alternate vehicle and chase rules, usually for a buck or three.
• If you need more characters there are the Hero Packs from Ad Infinitum, which give stats, an illustration, and (most of the time) a background as well. Instant characters can be handy sometimes
• If you're looking for archetypes, a discussion of those archetypes, and some sample characters for each one the Field Guide to Superheroes is a very cool set of books from Vigilance Press. 
• Also, of course, there is the character bilker, er, "folio" from Ad Infinitum as well. generate a character in seconds!

So why am I plugging all of these things? Because:

1) It's a great superhero RPG, covering all of the elements in just enough detail to make it interesting, but lightly enough to keep it fast moving and understandable to new players, and younger players. This also makes it the greatest pick-up game I have ever seen.

2) It's a "light" game beyond just the rules - you don't need miniatures or a battlemat or a screen or even a printed rulebook as all of it is available as a PDF.

3) It's economical - You can pick up the rulebook and multiple adventures for less than $20 and be running a game within a day.

Side Benefit: If you have a lot of old Marvel Super Heroes stuff lying around, it is extremely easy to convert.

So many RPG lines require multiple books, certain trappings, and a fairly large outlay of cash to pick up and run. This one doesn't. If you're at all interested in the supers genre but were maybe put off by the complications of something like Champions or Mutants and Masterminds, this is the one! Risk that $10 and give it a try! Play it with your kids! Play it with your regular group on a night when not everyone shows up. It's a good game, and a fun game and it's definitely worth a look.

Overreaction Wednesday

With EN World still under some kind of hacker attack there's a little less community out there this week. A couple of D&D-related tidbits:

• With the coming hardback compilation of S1-4 I went back and looked over my copy of Realms of Horror, the older S1-4 compilation, and there was no effort at all in that to link the 4 adventures together. I believe the A1-4 compilation made some effort at this (I don't have a copy of it) and I was wondering if either hardback would contain any of that extra material. In the case of the S modules, clearly not as it does not exist. For the A modules, I'm guessing "no" because people may prefer the original text.

• Dungeon 209 (the December issue) apparently will include a 4E version of Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan - might have to look at that one.

• Dragon 417 (also December) will have a couple of articles on the tarrasque - this interests me also. I've never used it, but I used Godzilla in a Champions campaign once and as a fan of the giant monster genre I am always interested in more material on that kind of thing.

• Update on the class mechanics for D&D Next here. My lack of playtesting this round limits what I can say here, but it's good to see that the effort continues.

Final Note: As I was writing this Lady Blacksteel commented on the cover pic up above. Looking at that cover again I know where the skull, the armor*, and the dracolisk come from but I don't think there's a female vampire in S2. There is a vampire, but Ctenmiir is a boy vampire and even for an 80's product she definitely appears to be a girl. It wouldn't be a bad idea to mix it up considering the majority-male parties I see but I've never noticed this apparent gap before.

*"no boys that's a suit of magical armor, it would be silly to put a robot on the cover of a D&D adventure" he said as he put the book away, trying to avoid spoiling a classic module that they will someday experience firsthand.

Reflections on the Closing of City of Heroes, the Cloud, and D&D

(This is what shows on the launcher program now for COH)

So, the MMORPG City of Heroes went offline early Saturday morning, the first time I have experienced something like that, and I thought I would share some thoughts. Relevance to non online gamers? If you like D&D 4 (especially) I get to that a little ways down the page. Also, if you have any interest in a CoH successor, there are efforts underway here and here to create one

Even the Amazing Aluminum Man can't overcome the power of Server Crash!

The situation: CoH launched in 2004, a short time before World of Warcraft launched and blew everything else out of the water. This means that it was a game with a) a smaller population and b) older technology compared to games like The Old Republic. Despite the limitations, it was, by all reports, still profitable.

We managed to crash one of the more popular servers. Twice. 

In the past online games have been shut down but it was fairly widely known by the time that action was taken that the population had dwindled to the point they could longer pay for themselves.I think most people understand that That does not appear to have been the case with this game. The word from the publisher  situation boils down to "it's too small and not worth the hassle".

I like cars, I like computer games, and even I could have told you this was going to fail

This is a terrible state of affairs, especially for a guy who likes to keep old things around and play with them from time to time. Something I like and was willing to pay for has been taken away from me - not because I stopped paying for it, not because I did something wrong, and not because it's being replaced by something newer and better, but because a corporation decided it just wasn't worth the trouble anymore. It's a new sensation and I really do not care for it, but I suspect this will become a more common occurrence for more people in the near future.

Now I work in Corporate America so you're not going to find some slam attack on that here ( plus the villain in this case was Corporate Korea so that wouldn't be right anyway). However, with "in the cloud" being the catchphrase of 2012 this scenario illustrates the dark side of turning things over to an invisible server: what happens when it goes away? I liked City of Heroes, it made money, it was well known in it's industry/genre and held by a good-sized company in that industry and run by a dedicated, passionate staff - then someone in a position of power changed their mind and it goes "poof" with 90 days notice!

Now if we're talking about a simple online storage situation you might just move your files elsewhere, but what if there was less or even no notice? What if a lawsuit was involved and froze the servers? What if it was something a little more complex than simple file storage, like, say, iTunes? What if it was an integral part of a game you play a lot, like 4th edition D&D?

Captain Transylvania awaits the end of the world in Atlas Park

That's the parallel that came to me late Friday night as I sat in front of my computer watching the announcements that the game was shutting down in 30 then 15-then minutes, realizing that I will never be able to play this game in this form, with thousands of players online, again. Unlike this online thing that soaked up a bunch of money, creativity, time, and mental processing cycles, I can go back and play the same AD&D game that I played 30 years ago. Heck, I could get some of the same players! It's the same with Traveller, Champions, Gamma World, Star Frontiers, Star Trek and a bunch of others - tabletop games never really end in any final fashion, they just peter out as we move on to to other things. Even if you ended a campaign, burned all your material, and sold off your books, a new round is only an ebay/noble knight/etc  purchase away for almost any game ever printed. I suppose that's our printed version of "the cloud".

More recent games though, are less immortal. I cite 4th Edition D&D as the main example of this trend and it's the most extreme but it's not the only one. There were ways in which 4E was MMO-like but it was not that it went to level 30, used powers with a cooldown-like structure, and had a taunt mechanic - it was that the rules were treated like a MMORPG code-base and were patched with a monthly release schedule that invalidated chunks of printed material dedicated to learning and understanding the game! There are large sections of some books that are not current because of this. Thankfully all of the current mechanics and fluff are included in the character builder and the compendium - but what if that goes away?

The original 4E character builder was a downloadable application that was replaced in 2010 by an online-only version to combat piracy and hacking of the original. The rules compendium is still online only. Ironically enough I decided to start paying for DDI to have access to this stuff about the time CoH announced that it was going away  (and about the time the last 4E books were being published) as I figured $10 a month was reasonable for that kind of support for a game when I was running two campaigns of it regularly. Having multiple CoH accounts dropping off made it a lot easier to justify too since that game went fee-less for the last 3 months.

So as of right now for something I like and find useful for a hobby of mine I am paying a monthly fee for something that is entirely cloud-based, controlled by a single corporation that has already begun working on a replacement version of the thing I like - it's sounding a little familiar. It's popular, by all accounts, but I can only see the numbers going down in the near future. Now one might argue that since there was no replacement for CoH that this is a better situation but contrary to that I think a replacement product almost demands the termination of support for earlier versions of that product. My only hope here is that the new-for-2012 statement by WOTC that they want to support all versions of the game includes the continuation of online support for 4E. If not, well, then what?

I find the character builder program essential for playing 4th Edition. I'm sure there are some out there who play without it but I would bet they are a tiny tiny minority. It is a huge benefit in understanding how characters work, how they are different (both mechanically and fluff-wise) and in just getting the math right. If that becomes unavailable then how would we play? Would we still want to play? I suspect the answer is no.

Assistance is not new - dependence is new

There is another ... the offline character builder. Yes, it was "adapted" to accept information updates by certain resourceful teams and it is just as current as the online builder and not dependent on a real-time internet connection. This is a huge thing now - whereas before it was in large part a reaction to the new approach on WOTC's part it now may become the main way to generate characters if the plug is pulled on 4E DDI support. The rebels will have become the lifeboat.

I'm not kidding - this was in Dragon in 1983

Even with that, though, time marches on. As I said above, I can pull out the Player's Handbook from 1978, roll up a character, and play in a new campaign. Will I be able to do that with 4E in 10 years? The offline character builder clearly gives a safe window independent of WOTC business decisions, but there are technical issues down the road, namely operating systems - how many of us are running an OS that is more than 10 years old? Windows XP is probably the biggest one but how much longer will it be around? With the trend towards mobile and tablets I expect the pace of change in OS releases to accelerate for a time and at some point it may be harder to find support for classic windows-style programs. This is not an insurmountable obstacle, but it is something to consider for the long haul. Will the Apprentices be able to play the version of D&D they played at 13 when they are my age the same way that I can now? Hard to say.

So was this

Why does this matter? Well, it may not to a lot of people, but I like to keep and occasionally run old games. In the last two years I've run sessions of Basic D&D, d6 Star Wars and Marvel Super Heroes and come close with DC Heroes, Villains and Vigilantes, and Twilight 2000. None of those is less than 20 years old and if any of them were dependent on a computer program of some kind I don't know that I would have been able to make them work - my Commodore 64 died in a fire years ago. Going slightly more recent, Champions 4th edition has a DOS-based character builder and even getting that to be fully functional has been challenging with current systems. Heck, it comes on a floppy and out of about 10 PC's in the house, only my oldest desktop and oldest laptop even have one of those anymore. Standards change, technology changes, and introducing any technological dependence into a tabletop game puts a clock on that element of the game.

M&M in Hero Lab

Now I've mostly used D&D 4E as the poster child here but other games are stepping down this road too. A lot of people preferred to use character builders with D&D 3E/3.5 and that has continued with Pathfinder - it's a big part of Hero Lab's business. M&M is a big player with Hero Lab as well. The Hero system has its own program for 5th & 6th editions of that game. GURPs 4th edition has one. There's also been a general move towards integration between character builders and various virtual tabletops or online play aids. It's all pretty cool, especially as long as its an extra feature and not central to the game.

ICONS character folio

How do we avoid this potential issue? Well, for one thing lighter rules decrease the need for a character builder and online support. There's a builder for ICONS of all things, but it's mainly handy for instant generation of random characters and producing a nice neat character sheet. Hero Lab has a module for Savage Worlds too, which is another one I don't really see a need for but might be handy for a DM in some way. I saw a post online somewhere wishing that the new Marvel game had a character builder, and they don't really even have rules for that in a traditional sense, why on earth would you need a builder for that game? You just need a blank sheet - "here, fill in whatever you think looks good and send it to your DM"  - it would just be a form-fillable PDF! So the less the game relies on complex interactions between elements like ability scores, skills, feats/advantages, powers, and class features the less you need a builder, and the less likely we are to hit a technological expiration date a decade or so down the road.

The future?

This is not just a factor with tabletop RPG's and MMORPG's. A lot of current Xbox games have a large online component - for every Skyrim you have several Call of Duty's - in 5 years will you be able to go back and play Modern Warfare 3 with your friends? Locally, sure, if you still have the game. Online? I wouldn't count on it, just like the original Xbox was removed from the company's proprietary network, the 360 will drop off too one day. Much like the rest of this discussion, many people won't even notice, but some will.

Well it WAS "Xbox Live Enabled" - not so much anymore

The next big thing? D&D Next - with WOTC having discovered this amazing new revenue stream with DDI I expect it to continue right on into Next. I don't know how it will be integrated into the game exactly but I'm sure there will be everything from a character builder to online tools to adventures available through it. Right now Next looks a lot less complex than 4E so it may be a nice-to-have rather than essential, but it will be interesting to see how it develops, and I will discuss it here as it comes about.

Are these iOS or Android?

I know I've rambled on a lot here, but the end of one hobby kind of spilled over into another hobby and I thought it was worth some discussion. One of the things that kept me out of MMO's for a long time was that I didn't like the idea of spending money on something I didn't own. I eventually moved past that and now I've been hit in the mouth with my own original misgivings - if you don't control it someone can take it away from you. I don't like having my toys taken away for no good reason, so I know I will be more cautious about my level of investment/involvement in these kinds of things. Hopefully it will be handled better in the future.

Motivational Monday

The End of Paragon City