New Blood, and Onward to the Next Campaign

Finished up our Only War campaign, and it's rather nice to be done with it. It was fun to stomp everything that comes along, but the joy of doing that quickly passes when its too easy. My son's online Only War campaign continues, there the Guard (having gotten a hold of the better weapons like auto-cannons and Meltas) can handily curb-stomp Chaos Space Marines due to how forgiving the game system is.

We have a new player which is always fun. The whole concept behind RPGs greatly intrigued her when she heard about it, so much so that she attempted to drive into whatever game she could last week including going to one of the local D&D gatherings (multiple groups in a local hobby store) because all those books for it looked... well wonderful.  She came away saying that if that had been her first experience, it would have been her last.

Afterwards I attempted to explain the state of game design and the hobby to her. Basically it comes down to the fact that today's players want to win, and win easily. If they can get loot while doing so- all the better. Both their games and their role-playing are centered on those goals, and that's the end of their needs and desires. Thus you have games like D&D and Only War. This makes up nearly the entire market now and I've given up any hope that it will change.


We've started our next campaign, which has the traditional (for us) title of X-babies, attempts to give it a real name always fail for some reason.

It's superheroes using 5th Edition Hero System, centering on a new class of Mutants at the re-imagined school for Gifted Youngsters (i.e. re-imagined because it's really quite different from the comics or movies- which we all loathe this days) . Intended to be a fun and care free campaign it's a great introduction to role-playing with a tactical focus during combat, with a huge amount of fun and silly role-playing (in and out of battles). This is a setting we often use for new players for just those reasons.

Our next game is tomorrow and I'm really looking forward to it.

Only War is amazingly safe

For the last few months we've been playing in my Son's Only War campaign, and he in turn has been playing in an online Only War campaign (that's been going on for a bit longer). The setting was marketed as deadly and dangerous, and the fluff in the rulebook repeated that claim. So I was expecting at least a few dead PCs and mountains of Comrade corpses littering the battlefields.

In actual play however it's been one of the safest and easiest games we've ever played. In both ours and the online game there's not been one PC death, and only one Comrade has died (when I was guest GMing in our campaign).

There are a number of reasons for this, both mechanical and psychological.

From the mechanical PoV:

• The system has what is basically a D&D Style Hit Points (called wounds, typically 12 points or more). Until these are gone, your character if fully effective and 'safe'. This combined with the damage reduction provided by Toughness and Armor results in a very significant Buffer against common weapons. A well built and moderately equipment character can soak *a lot* of hits or even become all but immune to less than Heavy Weapons fire.

• The Logistics System allows characters to quickly attain high end armor and weapons further increasing their ability to suck up incoming damage while increasing their outgoing damage to levels opposing NPCs can't handle.

• The mechanics for teamwork and leadership are well done (i.e. they are suited to the genre and effective), however they amplify the above effects significantly. In any battle the PCs will defeat equally (and even better) skilled and equipped opponents due to the effect of these rules.

• If you do get into trouble, Fate Points will generally get you out of it.

Now naturally the GM is capable of throwing powerful enough foes at the characters to overwhelm them. However it's impressive just how much is required, We've seen players deal with dozens of foes outnumbering them 3 to one. How about heavily armored, conversion field protected, plasma gun armed robots of death with 60+ stats? Walked over. Three Killer Cans? Blasted into bits. Bloodletter? Tank? Shot to pieces. And this with characters who have just now reach 5K+ experience (something easily done after but 10 game sessions with these rules) and for most of the above had far less. I think the online game saw five players or so defeat a Chaos Marine and another time a Greater Demon (which just shouldn't be possible according to the setting).


This leads to the Psychological influences I mentioned. The amount of force needed to provide a serious threat is just too much for a GM to feel justified in using. For one thing, such opponents should be rare. And for another it just plain seems wrong to have your Guardsmen whacking hordes of foes more suited setting wise as Space Marine opponents.

In the end we're likely going to need to break through those Psychological influences and ramp up the opponents to levels that don't match the setting we thought the game was built for- just to feel that we're at risk.

Corporia

I was a bit surprised to get a press release for Corporia, a new kickstarter offering. I don't think I'm known as a fan of modern game design, but then again I do like urban fantasy style cyberpunk and this certainly fits.

So I looked it over,and it sparks some thought.

I *might* like the core setting concept. Most Urban Fantasy is a kitchen sink approach where anything and everything goes, but this one's focus on the "Once and Future King" elements of Camelot promises something less aimless than that. More over, there's a "fight the cyberpunk culture" vibe that is all but missing in that genre and I think it would be a welcomed addition (and mirrors my own re-imagined Shadowrun campagin).

Why did I include that "might" above? Well the most familiar version of Camelot is one strongly influenced by Christianity be it the Grail Quest itself or the whole "One God coming to replace the old gods" theme. But there are older far more pagan versions. And for me much depends upon which take if any the author took in for his setting.

I would have a interest in a strong Christian version, especially given the fact that Christianity is dying in the modern world. There's an appeal to the concept of its champions returning in a near future dystopia brought about by its absence.

But I doubt this is the case. Nothing seems to point in that direction and modern sensibilities being what they are I'd bet on a completely secular Camelot, or a pagan one.


On the system side of things...

Well, it looks like a typical example of a modern non-D&D based game, i.e. a low resolution trait + skill stat vs. target number thing. Very simple and uninteresting mechanics that aren't much of a game in and of themselves (and thus why should I waste any time using them?). A quick glance indicates that it also has a strong stat bias, something I've never liked in game design. A lot might have been missing in the preview certainly, but what was included wasn't impressive.

The lack of a Death Spiral is a good thing however. So there are much worse options out there.


Meanwhile the layout looks to be par with some of the better games out these days, but the photo art didn't go over well for me. Real people are just too real for fantasy, urban or otherwise. It might appeal to cosplayers, and of course such taste is personal.

One exception to that was the shower scene with the caption "Corporia what will the flux do to you" that appears in a small frame in the preview. Likely because it's a very light focus shot. Really nice that one.

In short, if you're one for light systems and urban fantasy check it out. This might suit and provide a alternative "light in the darkness" campaign in a gaming industry that mostly sees in shades of black these days.

The new Captain America trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLWsK1ZFunA

Some comments that may be off because things might not be in context, it is a trailer after all. That never stopped me. Currently, I'm not hopeful about this film.

 


- The exchange between Fury and Cap sounds a lot like the typical Hollywood attack on preemption, the War on Terror, and heck- even having a significant military with Cap taking the role of the liberal leftist. If it really pans out that way, it will wreck the franchise. Leftists don't go to a Captain America movie, so making it for them is a  very bad idea (unless like the comics you think marketing to less than 10,000 fans is a good idea).

- Checking out IMDB, too many characters. What is it about superhero movies that cause them to stuff too many villains into the same film? Winter Soldier, OK that is the name of the move and while I personally thought it a lame story I can see... Crossbones too? Why? And Batroc? Now we're just being... Machete? Good frickin grief, who in the heck even remembers him?

The same on the hero side to be honest. Sharon Carter and Nick Fury with some flashbacks to Peggy Carter and Howard Stark is to be expected. But do we really need the Falcon in this movie too? Maria Hill? Black Widow (talk about overlap with Sharon Carter). Hawkeye didn't make the cut, color me surprised.

Too much, most these characters will get shafted and made insignificant. There's enough here for two or three movies, maybe they should have waited for those movies. Doing it right each time might make the chances of more movies in the future a better bet.

We're due for the Marvel Avengers franchise to go south. They started with movies in the spirit of the originals, and their success has made them bold enough to further modernize the characters and the stories. That will end them. Sad, I was hoping things would last a bit longer before we started getting the likes of Spider-Man 3.

How Senseless Things Continue

Richard Bartle made an very interesting post* on his blog concerning the Trinity in MMORPG design, how it doesn't make any sense in any true context, including that of desired game design- but rather came about as an artifact of limits- first of the game, and then the players.

The table-top world suffers greatly from the same type of evolution (or rather it's lack). D&D style Hit Points were a quick fix for the problem of players not wanting their characters to die- and we've (both table-top and then MMORPGs) have stuck with a nonsensical game mechanic ever since to the point where people will tie themselves into logical knots trying to justify them.

I long for the day when people will be willing to wipe the slate clean and reboot the hobby. That it hasn't happen isn't due to a lack of people offering other options- it's from the inertia of an hobby whose mainstream is completely uninterested in trying different approaches.

For the more open minded, we likely lost our best chance at it when WotC released the OGL ensuring that the core market will always be D&D. Now instead of waiting for D&D to die (something it's almost done at least twice now) leaving an opening for something new- we have to wait for the entire hobby to die.

In the meantime, we'll have to be happy with our own personal groups and homegrown rules- for they couldn't care less about the wider hobby because they don't need them. In that way, we have a huge advantage over the MMORPG world whose player base is still strongly tie to what companies are willing to produce.



*hat-tip to Vedron  over on Vedron's Potion for calling this to my attention.