“What? This game makes sense?”

(First things first: Sorry about the lack of commas in this post. I’m typing it on my laptop’s internal keyboard in which the comma doesn’t work. Thus I need to use both my imagination and some pretty unwieldy sentence structures.)

Sometimes it’s the act of playing a game that gets one thinking. For example: “Most of this MMORPG’s quests are sensible when given as such… But when several characters are supposed to do them they’re as insensible as the Time Cube.” And that lead to “What would an MMORPG world where the quests and such were sensible be like?”

The first thing I thought of was the meaning of  “death”. As both PCs and quest-target NPCs wouldn’t lose anything (or lose just a little bit of exp or money) and would be able to walk and fight again in (at the very most) a matter of hours their “death” would be hardly significant. As such death sentence would be nonexistent or delivered as a form of minor punishment… A little more harsh than a fine. That also means that anyone could threaten to kill anyone and go through with it with very little consequences. Killing someone might also be result of almost any mishap a lot easier and to lot more people than in real life.

Another thing about quests is that how do the same guys always get themselves into the same trouble in the same place? Don’t they ever learn anything? There are a few things that would explain that but I’m not sure how well they’d work. Sheer stupidity and cinematic amnesia would be the easiest ones. The latter could actually be combined to a (semi-)rational explanation to experience loss upon death. That means that every time a character dies or maybe suffers something else mind-shocking they lose a little bit of their memories.

How then would the (less-than-human-sized) monsters would be able to carry human equipment? By eating adventurers? By giving up hints about their secret lair? By digging up stuff? Err… No. To this I can think of no rational explanation. Slightly easier but more boring solution comes to the fact of monsters carrying money: The “cash” is actually some parts of the monsters that are really sold or converted to their value of money or something like that. But as I said that’s boring. More interesting variant might be the game world using monster parts as actual money (as in Kingdom of Loathing).

And yet another thing: How the hell has as big a percentage of that world’s population ended up as adventurers or mercenaries or something like that? I can only guess that there’s not much else to do in the cities. Hmm… Actually… With the consequences of death that low it’s not much of a risk. And that would lead to real world’s “risky” occupations to be in no special position. Including that of the adventurer. And while the adventurer’s income depends almost solely on their ability and activity it would still be quite high.

But where do all those adventurers disappear to when their player logs out or changes character…?

New game leads to new problems

Some weeks ago (in Ropecon, actually) I acquired myself a new RPG: Savage Worlds. Just by reading it, it seems to fulfill most of the things I’ve been looking for in an RPG. Simple and fast rules: Check. Rules knowledge or strict following of rules not needed for play: Check. Genre genericity (Is that an actual word, or did I just make it up?): Check. Combat does not use a separate (or additional) set of rules: Not check, but this is the single hardest point on this list to find in any game… And the combat rules still are simple enough. No actual calculating needed after character creation: Apart from simple addition or such, check.

And as an added bonus, it uses several types of dice!

Then again, there are a few annoyances. The most visible one, the one that irritates me the most, and (ironically enough) the easiest to repair is that the game has a heavy presumption on using figurines. That is, heavy enough to give any distances as scale inches. Luckily, they also provide a simple conversion rule for the distances, but, well… Oh, and instead of providing a simple radius for explosions they have downloadable templates for them in their web site.

Another trouble is one that has nothing to do with the game itself, and all with the material its printed on: My book started to come apart almost as soon as I started reading it.

Then again, this is all based only on reading experience. Despite trying, I haven’t been able to test-play yet. I’ve got two players and their characters but thrice now one of the players has bailed out from actual play. He is still my friend, but I don’t think I want to invite him to play much anymore, and I’m also thinking of recruiting another pair of friends for this test play… But I guess we’ll see that later. As we will the answer to “Does Savage Worlds actually stand up to my standards in play?”

BIPD Gold

Before, I’ve told how many of my ideas come up when I’m cycling or walking. Well, another good idea-giver is that state when you lie half-sleeping in your bed, awake enough to register and somewhat control your thoughts, but asleep enough that those thoughts are not hindered by your active ones. This morning, something I thought was worth writing down here popped up.

I don’t know how I ended up thinking about it, but I guess it somewhat circled around cop shows. You know, both those soap opera -style ones and the more real ones. I thought of an RPG campaign in that style, focusing at first on the cases that come up, then watch the heroes go higher in rank, and at last watching them manoeuvre in the social network of the precinct and other high-ranking officials.

Then, my mind pulled up Exalted. Again.

Well, it seems to me that Exalted does make nearly any adventure or campaign idea ripped from somewhere else more interesting, and that seems to hold true here too. The power level is the obvious change. The social part finds more challenge if the characters are still Celestials in the Time of Tumult, with the need to keep their powers under check, and otherwise trying to hide their natures. Maybe that’d also encourage the players to find, in spite of all their characters’ magical prowess, at least some mundane ways to get ahead.

And, my mind told me, Essence score would give a nice way to tell when it’s time for a promotion. When one of the characters would raise his Essence (at least after the third dot) I’d finish the ongoing or next major adventure, then promote the characters, and skip ahead some time. Of course, the time scale would expand when moving forward, from solving a regular theft or murder case and then skipping a year or two, to working on management and PR issues on a monthly or even yearly scale skipping even a decade, to centuries-spanning planning and arranging. That is, if all goes well and the game keeps going.

Probably I will never even try to run this campaign, but time will tell. Meanwhile, feel free to rip it, but out of courtesy, tell at least someone (preferably myself) where you ripped it.

A city watch full of heroes

“Everyone knows what supers are. They’re those guys in the comics that dress up in fancy costumes and wield fancy powers.”

Not quite. You know better, for you are one of them yourself. And you don’t wear a stupid costume or fly around in the sky. You remember a couple of guys who did that. First came up the villain. Threatened to destroy the world. It didn’t take long for the compulsory hero to appear. It never went down to the “epic battle”. The villain was taken down by a single police unit, composed of ordinary people. Although you think it was lead by a more subtle super. After that, the “hero” got harassed by the press, fans, and just about everyone else. The publicity was too much, and he committed suicide. As far as you know. Those two fates were enough of a warning for you to stay hidden.

You also know that you aren’t the only one of your kind. Every now and then, when you see some certain people, you just… know that they have powers too. You don’t know them, you don’t know their powers… You only know that you aren’t alone, and that you know others of your kind when you see them.

Maybe you haven’t been forced to use your powers yet. You hope you never will. But you fear that your hope is in vain. And when you do have to use those powers, instead of a cool costume you just pull a cloth over your face and hope no one recognises you. Until that, you’ll just live the life of an ordinary man. If you can.

The above is a short intro story to a supers world of my very own devising I wrote up one boring day at work. That world was formed in my mind long before I had even heard of Watchmen, which would be closest of more known works to the power level of my setting, or when Heroes , which is closest in themes to what I had in mind, was still just a bunch of paper.

I’ve run a game in that very setting, but it stopped short after two or three sessions. I’d like to run more, but I don’t think I know of people who quite share my interests in that. I mean, yeah, I have a few friends who love to roleplay in almost any setting. But I like to throw in some references to the source materials in my games. And what fun would that be if no one got the references? And, well, low-power “super”heroes aren’t exactly what most people look for in the supers genre.

Hmm, yeah, the power level. I said earlier that Watchmen would be the closest representative of that. Well, closest, but still not quite what I had in mind, what with Dr. Manhattan and possibly Ozymandias. I’m thinking of a world where a “speedster” mignt be a guy who runs 100 metres in four seconds, not someone who breaks the sound barrier. Or a regenerating power can grow back missing digits or close wounds much faster than normal, but it still takes time and leaves scars. And maybe hurts like hell. And a Master of Magnetism would be just that, a guy who can control magnetic forces in some degree, but not stop bullets or crush cars.

On the other hand, Heroes actually captures the theme quite well. The PCs are just ordinary people, who happen to be able to do something nearly no one else can. The problems they encounter might well be something on the scale with more four-colour supers (or Heroes) but the solutions would be more mundane. No rewriting a villain’s psyche to make him good again, no time-hopping to tell someone to save the cheerleader, no blasting one’s way through a military compound (unless you somehow got your hands on a tank).

And now that I’ve said it all, I’m even more annoyed that I haven’t been able to GM more in that world.

“This GM stuff feels like work!”

During the, erm, “starting break” of my blog  I took up among other things the role of a game master. You know, the guy that sits at the end of the table in gaming comics? Ah, who am I kidding. If you are actually reading this, the odds are you know about the terms of role-playing games. If you don’t, go check Wikipedia or something.

Anyway, I took up GMing. I decided to start with Shadowrun, and with a powerful plot-like thing. Bad choice.

I’d done a few hours of GMing before, with a couple of small scenarios for a friend or two, and one four-hour “con game”. Well, they were nothing compared to this one, and I noticed I had (once again) bitten almost too much to swallow.

First, it’s hard to keep going and take the game where you want when you have planned it as much (or rather, little) as I. Especially when you still want to avoid railroading. Having close to no prior experience behind the screen doesn’t help. Another thing adding to this is lack of obviously usable character hooks in PCs.

Second, one should really know the system he’s running. I didn’t (and still don’t too well). I had picked Shadowrun as a replacement for Cyberpunk 2020, which, while smooth and relatively familiar – mostly, still has quite a lot I don’t like both as rules and a setting. This was a mistake in two ways: It’s hard to stat adversaries when you’re not really sure what your PCs are capable of, and play (especially combat) tends to bog down when the GM has to check the rulebook every other round.

Third, it takes a surprising amount of work to make up even one game session. And with my condition… Well, I have hard time keeping my apartment tidy or writing here, and those are merely physical work or rather relaxing, in that order. Nevermind the fact that I still have hard time matching power levels of the PCs and their opponents.

Fourth, one should write much more notes than I. It’s often hard enough for me to remember what my own character can do in a given game, let alone three PCs and a bunch of opponents. Being slow to do mental arithmetics isn’t actually helpful in this one either.

Several of the previous points also overlap somewhat and affect each other, and that complicates matters further.

Luckily, the experience hasn’t been wholly negative. I’ve gained new insight into both gaming and myself. I’ve learned more of my personal limits. Through learning about the amount of work required, I’ve learned to appreciate that of other GMs. And finally, I know that most of the points I’ve given can only really be learned by GMing, and that’s what I’ve been doing. Learning was a big reason for me to start that SR game.

Afterwards, I’ve also noticed that apparently I’m not quite as bad a GM as I feel. No wonder, since I tend to keep my expectations on anything I do too high. Both in that specific SR game and other games I’ve since GMed I’ve gotten mostly, if not (nearly) solely positive feedback. It appears people have fun in my games after all, and I guess that’s the most important thing.

I think that I had at least one more point to make on the difficulties, but I forgot it while writing the others… Maybe I’ll add it later.

New thoughts, old thoughts

Sorry for the long pause, readers (though I know there aren’t too many of you). Having a girlfriend, moving to live on one’s own and generally arranging one’s life takes up a lot of time and energy. Enough to almost forget about one’s blog, it seems… But not nearly enough to stop me from thinking and developing both old and new ideas.

One of the new ones came up after  I started to read SLA Industries a second time. That’s one of those table-top RPGs I’ve read and tried to make a character for, but never actually even tried to play.

The idea formed itself around a little twist on magic in an otherwise undefined fantasy world. It remains to be seen if that world defines itself some more through its magic, or if it stays as just another half-developed idea, but as I’m equally glad if someone gets kicks out of my ideas as when I see them to their (bitter) end, I’ll write up that twist here.

Magic in this world is certainly a force many people utilise. But it is not the only way to view it; it can also be seen as an entity in itself, a creature. Let’s call that creature, for a lack of a more unique term, mana. It lives everywhere, as several parts but still a single creature. It draws sustenance from everywhere around it, especially from the minds of those who use it and those on whom it is used. It has – or is – a terrible power but it is only very rarely when it uses that power on its own. A lot more often, that power is wielded by others.

But wielding that power also means taking a bit of the symbiote/parasite (whichever way you want to see it) called mana into oneself, and that affects the user. The effects appear in three ways: As immediate visual effects, as long-term changes in appearance, and as more subtle mental effects. In a lot lesser amouts these are also noticed in the targets of magic, but only mage-hunters are exposed on that enough that any of the long-term effects show up.

The immediate visual effects show up as a glow around the mage’s body parts appropriate to the spell cast, the mage’s emotions and the associations of the mage and his culture. For example, a flamboyant mage casting a large but low-burning fireball on his hated enemies might gain a fire-red glow around his whole body, while a cunning and jealous money-maker putting a spell of generosity on his more succesful rival just gets a slight flash of green in his eyes.

When one uses a same type of spell or casts a lot of spells under a similar emotion, the color of that emotion starts to stay on him, even when not casting a spell. These are the long-term appearance changes, and by them it is very easy to recognise an experienced mage. Often, these colours are used to describe a group of mages, but don’t let it mislead you: As mana takes its color associations from the mind of those it affects, a “white mage” might be a saintly healer – or a brooding antagonist dealing with spells of death, depending on their culture.

Lastly, as mana takes its energy and sustenance mainly from emotions of sentient beings, it tends to make those beings more susceptible to strong emotions. This might not be easy to notice, but a wrathful red mage is a lot more likely to burst out in anger than a healer with hair of gold – or a berserker barbarian either, for what it matters.

That was not quite everything I have thought of, but it should be enough information to let you see the core of my idea, and to form your opinion on that world and its mages.

Finally, hopefully the time between the next update and this will be a lot shorter than between this and the prevoius one, now that my life is finally starting to seem even somewhat normalised.

The Lord of the Elemental Rings

A lot of my ideas, both good and bad, come up when I’m cycling. Which I have to do a lot, since I am still separated from most of my friends and hobbies by somewhat over ten kilometres. This one is one example of those. Another not too original one, though, but I hope there will be some originality in it.

One day, I thought of transforming the whole story of Lord of the Rings (the book, not movies) into Exalted. Of course, it requires a lot of compromises and odd solutions. The characters among the first. Of course, some just automatically define some part of them. Like Aragorn, who’s clearly a Solar. Zenith Caste, I’d say. And Saruman and Sauron would both be Deathlords. That turns orcs into their undead armies, and Uruk-Hai into Abyssals. Trolls would be possibly necrotech machines.

But what about our smaller heroes, who don’t define themselves as easily? Of course, I mean primarily the hobbits. Dragon-bloods? Naw, I want to preserve lot of the feeling of the Cration and its history. Heroic Mortals? Well, maybe that’s it, let’s keep them mortals for now. Tom Bombadil… A weird spirit, or Fair Folk? And what about the other whole humanoid races, dwarves and elves? Well, Elves seem like Solars to me. With that, dwarves seem a little like Lunars, but just a little. Beornings would present more accurate race to be dubbed Lunars, but their part in LotR is extremely small. And, if elves are Solars, then what is Aragorn? He’s not an elf, thus, not a Solar. Gandalf fits the model of a Sidereal quite neatly, though. Probably best as a Chosen of Secrets.

What about the Rings themselves, then? Willing to preserve the feel of Exalted, which doesn’t appear to have too much powerful magical jewelry, they might be better if changed to something else. But other things just don’t have the same… feel as rings: Small, wearable, sensibly possible to enchant with various different powers… Um. Of course, one single thing that should stand out is that the One Ring or its equivalent looks like the most plain version of its sort, though bearing invisible markings that get visible when something not usually thought of is done to that item. As in, tossing a gold ring into flames. Oh, well, maybe I just have to skip that one, too.

Yeah, it really seems like that this is one of those ideas that never will be realised. Although it would be fun to get it to work… Hmmph. Too much of this stuff in my head, and nearly all of it too unclear even to myself to get it out for others to read and screw their thoughts with.

Laying out the bare bones (warning, lots of game technical speech coming up)

Exalted, Second Edition. It’s my favorite game at the moment, so naturally, lot of my ideas have something to do with it. Most of them are simple, like new artifacts or Charms. Some are more complex, but I won’t go into that now. Instead, I talk about the last type of my ideas in that respect  (Which I still know, isn’t too original either): Statting up characters of other fiction in any game system. As for Exalted… Well, some guys just call for being trasformed tho Chosen of the [pick one of Unconquered Sun, Elemental Dragons, Luna, Five Maidens, or Abyss].

Like Gatsu. Of Berserk manga and anime. Clearly a Dusk Caste. Renegade one, for that. Wielding a giant sword anyone else can hardly lift, having an artificial hand with a cannon in it, wearing a black magical armor, hunting and being hunted by demons, having unnatural strength and stamina… Oh, and of course his complete lack of respect for other people. Yeah, a renegade Abyssal.

What’re his stats, then? Well, obviously, extremely high Strength and Stamina, high Dexterity, very high Wits, high Perception, moderate Intelligence. Socially… Um, some Appearance, normal Charisma. Hardly any Manipulation.

Of course, as you may already see, there’s one thing that you shouldn’t let get in your way when statting out characters not actually designed for a certain game: the rules. Of course, they somewhat define what you’re doing, but they shouldn’t stop you from doing it. Especially the rules for starting characters.  Now, Gatsu has quite unnatural levels of Strength and Stamina, which are plainly impossible for even a starting Exalt, let alone for someone of mortal stature. The levels of Attributes I’m talking about here require, even with a bit of tinkering (namely, grabbing the 1st Edition’s Player’s Guide and picking a certain Merit), an Exalt several hundred years old. But the character’s back story puts him as no older than any normal human, though gone through a lot. Don’t care, I’m not creating an actual PC here. Or even an NPC, I’m just having fun.

Well, then. The Abilities. Hmm… Being a Dusk, he has no problems with martial skills. Of those, he seems to possess, umm, all, lowest being Martial Arts and War and highest (of course) Melee. From Zenith’s abilities, he possesses at least high Integrity and Resistance. At least the latter of which would be also a favored Ability. From the Twilight side, maybe a little Craft, apparently some Lore and a lot of Occult. With a specialty in demons and such. Oh, yeah, Medicine too. Out of the Night Abilities… Well, Dodge and especially Athletics are a matter of fact. Awareness is a must, if only for its combat application. Probably some Stealth, too. And finally, Eclipse… I see only Ride here. As for the favored Abilities… Martial skills come with he caste. I already mentioned Resistance. Athletics is another, so there’s three more. pobably Integrity, Occult and Athletics. No, hold that. trade Occult for Ride. Gatsu doesn’t study the demons, he slays them.

Charms I’ll leave mostly alone, since I don’t remember them so well, but there’s a lot of Ox-Body Technique, a few other Resistance Charms, and a lot of Melee ones. As for Backgrounds, Artifact is a must. Also he’s gained some notorierity already, so something appropriate for that. And seemingly, he has some little Resources. I’m not quite certain if Puck would count as a low-level Ally or a high-level Familiar, though. Probably depends on how much one respects and likes him. Finally, Virtues and Willpower (Essence is six or more by necessity, as mentioned earlier). Willpower goes high, as goes Valor and Conviction. The Flawed Virtue would probably be Compassion (which is already quite low) or Conviction, as Gatsu’s devotion for his quest and its nature tends to alienate him from other people. Oh, yeah. The Brand would probably be a version of the Taint’s Warning and Permanent Caste Mark Merits. With the addition of Hunted, of course.

Sometimes, there comes another problem with statting out characters, that is quite unique to Exalted. you see, I, as a fan of the Final Fantasy series, have thought of statting out FFVII’s characters. A lot. When I finally got to it, I noticed that Cloud knows hardly anything aside from how to fight. Well, that’s not usually a problem in Exalted. But as he’s slightly more down-to-earth character than Gatsu (or many others, for that matter), that seemed to put him in a worse starting position than a normal starting Solar. Attributes can still be brought up normally, but Abilities. Well, lots of Melee. Athletics, Awareness, Dodge. A little Lore and Occult. Resistance, probably. War. Well, that’s about it. Eight Abilities, two of which come from his Caste. So there’s six more, two of which don’t qualify even close to Favored. And with points, about twenty come in there if you count the limit-of-three. That leaves eight more to be dispersed into thin air. How funny.

Somehow, I still prefer point-buy -systems for this kind of character building.

Of course, Exalted isn’t the only game great for putting known characters in. Earlier today, I had an idea of Batman in CP 2020. High-tier Corp/Solo, he’d be. Hmm, Kinda like Iron Man, though Tony’d have also Techie thrown in. What about Spidey, then? Media/Solo? And Wolvie… Okay, okay, maybe I’ll leave this “Super-punk” to another time.

And so it begins…

So, I’ve finally started the blog I’ve thought to write for quite some time now. Reason for it? As I was typing my last assignments for my professional education, I noticed that I had all too muhc things rolling around in my head, and I needed a way to get them out. But I also had decided that schooling comes first, so I had to keep all those silly ideas in for a little while more. Now, as I’m waiting for a letter from my school that should include my final papers, I have the time to write something not-quite-so-important.

As for myself, I’m 24-year-old youth and leisure instructor from Finland. Hobbies of mine include gaming, martial arts (no, not any specific art at the moment, but I’m hoping to start Capoeira as I manage to settle down), reading and anime/manga among others. Music plays around me and in my room almost all the time, to see what check last.fm.

As for my blog, I’ve put it up mainly to get all of my silly, weird or just random ideas out of my head, and where others can gain knowledge of them, and maybe get something out of them. Also, those ideas get much clearer to myself, too when I write them out in intelligible format. Far secondary is sort of a diary: I will type a few entries to tell about what’s happening in my life, but hopefully that will be rare. I’ll probably separate the diary entries from the others in the title. You may consider this one the first diary entry. Oh, yeah, there’s also a tertiary purpose: to brush up my writing skills. Partially for that (the other reason being that it’s just plain fun), I will use some weird and difficult words and structures. Also, expect also a few typos. Be warned.

Hopefully, I won’t forget about this as my need for it diminishes.

Umm, yeah. One last thing. My nickname around the ‘net is Yzneftamz. If you see that name elsewhere, it’s quite probably me. I’d be happy to know that people are reading this, so contact me if you want.

Update: I’m not waiting for the certificate anymore, as it arrived in the mail later today. Yay, I’m officially pro now!