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Post by arturick on May 14, 2013 14:35:11 GMT -8
Listening to Stu talk about "making magic items magical" made me think that some concepts, just maybe, don't endure over the life of a roleplayer's career. Repetition and diminishing of a concept cause an inevitable decay in your ability to get excited about a thing. By way of example: A medieval Christian peasant finds a photo-realistic image of Jesus the size of a postage stamp. This becomes the town's holy relic. Centuries later, my grandmother throws her 100th "begging letter" from *insert Christian charity she used to give to here*, without the slightest bit of thought for the tiny, photo-realistic portrayal of Jesus on the envelope. Similarly, I remember getting excited as a 15 year old when my fighter got a pair of Gauntlets of Ogre Power. Now, 20 years later, I certainly appreciate things that boost my character's effectiveness, but I'm not going to call my nerd friends and gush about getting A MAGIC ITEM!!! I have had DM's who wanted to "make magic items special" since I was 15, and I increasingly don't care. If the DM tells me that magic items will be rare, I hear him saying, "I've arbitrarily decided that +1's will be hard to come by, therefore your opposition will be defeatable without magic items. Enemies that require a particular magic MacGuffin to beat will be preceded by quest to get the MacGuffin." A DM truly desperate to make me "appreciate" a magic item will get me to humor him, maybe, but it's kinda pathetic. Likewise, I think many gaming experiences seem much more evocative when they are a "first," but aren't going to be interesting 20 years later. 15 year old me: "A goblin! Wow! What do they do?" 35 year old me: "A goblin. This will be over quickly if it doesn't have class levels. Yes... yes... I know... it's dumb and arrogant... also smelly... gotcha. I stab it." Now, I definitely get excited about various aspects of gaming. I love to roleplay an interesting character and see other players doing the same. I love a good, compelling story. I like a challenging fight that makes me think. As a player and DM, I know that these things can be difficult to do. I have to wonder, then, if some DMs are trying to demand that experienced players hoot and holler over getting a +1 Flame Tongue because they aren't getting excited for the story you've created.
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Post by jazzisblues on May 15, 2013 5:08:11 GMT -8
You have hit on something VERY important arturick (cool name by the way). It's really not the shinies that make the game, it's the characters and the story that make the game. An item any item is made important to the story (and therefore to the player characters) by its contribution not to their ability to smoosh goblins, but by its contribution to their story. Which is why I am such an advocate of giving things names and stories of their own. It doesn't have to have power, it has to have a story to make it interesting.
Just my 2 krup ... You know the rest ...
JiB
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Post by Stu Venable on May 15, 2013 6:47:40 GMT -8
Firstly, I think it's valid to lament that "lost magic" we had when we started gaming, and I don't think trying to recapture that uniqueness implies a mediocre GM.
That said, this is EXACTLY why I wanted to run an L5R game.
All of our fantasy tropes come from a vaguely medieval European construct (Middle Earth). It's a type of fantasy that done over and over again and done to death.
With Rokugan, I was able to play a medieval fantasy game based on an entirely different culture. ALL assumptions got thrown out the window. When the party fought an equal number of zombies, they realized, "holy shit! These things are tough," and they ran away.
When they defeated an undead revenant, they took his sword, which had the markings of an ancient sword maker from a different clan, and hid it away, afraid to use it or touch it until they know more.
But to get them to throw out all these assumptions took a HUGH change of scenery, and quite frankly, I don't think it's something you can repeat very many times.
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D.T. Pints
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Post by D.T. Pints on May 15, 2013 7:38:54 GMT -8
The "what the hell is that ? and what the fuck do I do now ? oooh whats that shiny thing ?" feel I've gotten playing L5R in Sir Guido's game is definitely one of the real pleasures in such a vast shift in setting. I played Oriental AD&D back in the day and even dabbled with TETSUBO (a never released Warhammer asian themed RP game), but L5R is certainly its own deal. As we explore more as characters I read a bit more as a player and the metagame monster is much easier to deal with. Playing a Crab Clan character who's duty is wrapped up in battling the shadowlands my character might know a thing or two about what lurks past the wall...but as a player I actually get a bit freaked out about what it might be like to head out there having only played in lovely, courtly cities. I have an image in my head of what might be out there and my imagination does a great job of making the unknown scary and interesting. However, I don't think its too hard to take a trope filled setting that most know like medieval fantasy and turn it on its head. My Pathfinder campaign steals a great deal from Darksun which as a setting was a great departure from most of the other D&D settings while still having dwarves, elves, etc. I also borrowed from islamic culture (moors, turks, arabian, egyptian) to bring aspects to the game that have a historical basis but most "westerners" aren't nearly as familiar. Finally with regards to keeping the magic "magical" I talked about aspects of that with my wizard on this thread... happyjacks.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=pathfinder35&action=display&thread=1775The gist of which is I take the idea of "spell components" seriously as I feel they bring real flavor to the magic of the world. I make nearly all spells require some material component and also some ritual description. Then I encourage my magic user characters to 'modify' such spells by modifying the ritual in some way. When magic users cast spells I try to get my PCs to refrain from saying "I fireball! I lightning bolt! I unleash my backlog!" but instead for example the spell Circle of Protection: (taking a nod from Harry Dresden) "I take out my precious bag of silvered powder and sprinkle it in the lines of my hastily inscribed wards and try to check each of them as the spectral undead approach." (this is the RP I try to motivate) Finally, as a GM I like to take player assumptions about how the world works and fuck with them. ME (The Benevolent GM): "Yeah these iron bound, rune encrusted, heavy black gauntlets give you a sense of strength like you've never had before..." PC : "Cool Gauntlets of Ogre Power! There on Page 127 and my strength is now a 20!" (this is no longer how my PCs typically react) ME : With this sense of vastly increased strength comes a twinge of hunger like you could eat a horse, and for some reason you're starting to feel very...very ANGRY. (Gauntlets of Ogre power when I used them in my game gave you ogre strength but also ogre hunger and ogre passions. Power with a price...) Keep 'em guessing thats what makes it magical! Cheers.
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Post by arturick on May 17, 2013 13:10:22 GMT -8
Stu,
1. I certainly don't mean to imply that you're a "mediocre GM."
2. I would say that you have done well getting your players engaged in the story of L5R not by "recapturing lost magic," but by drawing them in with new elements. You aren't getting them excited about a D&D Flaming Sword, but with unknown and unfamiliar stories.
DT Pints,
I hope you also screw over casters in some fashion. I get very irritated when one guy in the party blows up a room full of goblins with dust and batshit, and one guy has to argue with the demons that live in his sword in exchange for +1 to hit.
I must admit that your approach wouldn't really do anything for me as a player. If my character receives a magic item, but it screws him over, then what was the point? A "magic screws you" campaign is the same as a "low magic" campaign at the end of the day. Players won't use it except when Bad Guy With Weakness to MacGuffin shows up or Disruption Dan wants to put on all the magic items and attack the party while screaming "TETSUUUUUOOOOOOOO!!!"
That is a cool description... once. My whole point with the thread is to consider what gets old. If the party wizard fireballs in every damn fight over a long campaign, an extensive ode to fireballs just isn't going to grab anyone's attention after a while. There is a line between cool roleplay and the Team Rocket speech.
I also don't want to accuse anyone here of being a mediocre DM. I just think that, after reading (from all around the intarwebz) GMs whine that their parties are not engaged and blaming the gosh-danged vidja games for ruining the table top experience, maybe a DM should step back occasionally and ask themselves "is this still actually interesting after 20 years of gaming, or am I beating a dead trope and expecting a reaction from genre savvy players."
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Post by Stu Venable on May 17, 2013 13:45:04 GMT -8
I didn't think you were aiming it at me.
I just think that striving to create that feeling of wonder is something we *should* strive for.
And I think that's a good reason to play other games/genres than the typical D20/Fantasy once in a while.
Sure there are old, tired tropes in every genre ... but they don't become old and tired until you've played through them. The first time you see an army of clockwork, cybernetically enhanced gorillas with jet packs headed your way, you're going to freak out.
As for magic specifically:
One of the reasons I like the shadowland taint mechanic in L5R is because if you decide to mess with Maho (very powerful blood magic) it comes with a price.That price in game terms is very small at first, but it adds up, eventually turning you in to the monsters you're fighting.
The interesting thing is the power it offers is way stronger (and easier to learn and more accessible) than anything you can find on the "good" side of magic.
So yes, it's magic that screws over the player, but that's a very long-term screwing and could make for a compelling story.
One a party knows about Ogre Strength Gauntlets, providing a set that give them even higher strength, but maybe some of that ogre-like hunger and passion lingers even after you take the gloves off. Could be interesting.
I think the key with having a double edged magic item is to make the good part of it almost irresistible. Get the *player* to start rationalizing, "I'll use it just this once. This particular monster is really tough..."
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Post by Deleted on May 17, 2013 14:52:02 GMT -8
See I never had this problem because I don't have magic weapons with +1s, +2s, or anything of that sort. Even in D&D my magic weapons were always named items with long histories and spells attached. And usually the players didn't know what magic a weapon had, if any, until they used it or they researched it.
I also don't name monsters. I describe them, and the party can figure it out or not. I've watched players get slaughtered by Goblins because I rolled well, they rolled poorly, and they never realized what they were fighting because it was in a dark cavern and they never got a good look at them.
Of course I also don't give out XP either, the players level or spend points when its story appropriate and I also track their HP for them, telling them when they are hurt through descriptions, but they never know how close to zero they actually are.
I'm a very story based GM though, I hide the mechanics as much as possible so player decisions are based not on how many HP they might have left, or knowing the stats of the monster, but on what is actually happening in the story of the game. As a result when I drop an item that screams magic my players get really interested real quick. I've games go completely sideways as my party dropped the big quest they were on to find out everything they could about a brooch they found that seemed to have magical qualities.
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Post by rickno7 on May 18, 2013 21:57:38 GMT -8
See I never had this problem because I don't have magic weapons with +1s, +2s, or anything of that sort. Even in D&D my magic weapons were always named items with long histories and spells attached. And usually the players didn't know what magic a weapon had, if any, until they used it or they researched it. This is similar to how I do it. I create my magic items and don't even bother trying to fit them to spells in the book. I don't count up experience points it would be worth to craft an item, and I don't generally care where the book would say it would fit into the power level of a campaign. I CREATED IT, its as powerful and as weak as I, as the GM, declare it to be. I love making fantastical items, or even ones that some D&D diehards would call useless, just because I want to see how the players could think of how to use it. Some people scoff at this. Some people freak out and say "how do you balance it? what if you give them something too powerful?" and to that I say "relax, its a game". As for monsters, I generally have some way of the players knowing what is local folk lore, what is common, and what is never seen before. If I tell my players "you guys have no clue what a goblin is" they somehow magically take my word for it, ignore their years of playing or (gasp) player skill learned from killing thousands of them in previous games. I don't know how they do it, but I sense its because they know how to play roles that aren't themselves. I can generally make up a monster or find some obscure monster in other bestiaries that surprise my players. They just are not the kind of people that read every source book out there.
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tomes
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Post by tomes on May 20, 2013 21:01:39 GMT -8
I'm with these guys. I really don't think when they say "magic item" with certain disadvantages that they are saying, what I assume you feel: "it's cursed." This isn't a -3 sword that you can't get out of your hands, we're talking about items with PERSONALITY. I mean, they have some real advantages, but there are sometimes costs.
This isn't "screwing" your players, it's getting something FUN happening. And THAT'S the feeling I used to get when I found a +2 longsword in a chest, when I was 10 years old.
Similar to the mobs, just tweak them. Make your world YOUR world. In mine Kobolds have lots of magic in a magic poor world, so they are quite powerful, just physically weak and small in numbers. That's why they've survived, they can be quite strong when you run into their 'priests'.
Lizard men, their larger cousins, are physically quite strong, and make technology our of biological creatures which they gene mutate, so they have "dragons" to ride, large dinosaur beasts to use as transportation, and mutated frogs that serve as microscopes so that they have advanced biological technology (and weapons).
Dwarves have ruin magic (which is really based on certain mineral/chemicals and effectively circuitboards that store "magic" (a type of radiation energy) that funnels it in certain ways, whether to harness heat/fire, or make very effective projectile weapons ("guns"). Their whole culture revolve around a "church" which is effectively engineers trying to fix a large starship system with the help of old scrolls (starship engine plans) to rebuild this great "portal" that will help them return home. (The current dwarves don't even know what this means, it's just religion at this point, except that they consider it "science" because they do ruin magic and it works, so obviously these plans must be real)
All this stuff you introduce to the characters in bits and pieces, and it changes their perceptions of tropes and the stuff that's in the rulebook.
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Post by CreativeCowboy on May 21, 2013 13:39:23 GMT -8
Make your world YOUR world. <snip Great Examples> All this stuff you introduce to the characters in bits and pieces, and it changes their perceptions of tropes and the stuff that's in the rulebook. I am with tomes. What gets old? Playing in a book that everyone knows that everyone follows. Being confined to an author's vision without the GM having input (becuz that's not fair!) Game world canon because that's what Yoda would do and everyone is playing Yoda at the table. What is fresh? The GM continuing world development once the players are comfortable with the world as it is. It's a world with a multitude of cultures folks. The East may have Elves in captivity. the West may have Elves the greatest sorcerers ever. The South may Revere Elves. The North may have never heard of them. And there may be 10 separate countries in every direction with variation on the Elf rapport according to 40+ governments. But if you're going to play (cough*railroad*cough) DragonLance, or Star Wars, or Goldfinger or every Terry Pratchett novel, you're going to get bored playing a campaign. And you're going to be serially bored, The GM has life to create around the players: some of it changes and responds to their actions and some of it does not change but offers only consequences. With a map the size of Greyhawk (1982), the campaign should be able to go on for decades without getting stale if the GM is doing his or her job and not reading from someone else's playsheet. What gets old? Repetition. Cliche. Lack of variety. Sleep walking, mummified players (including GM, of course). Lack of engagement (during GM prep and during players play) with the world. Hack and Slash, as a fine example. Asshole players that need constant reminding there are other players at the table who deserve to be heard and to play the game. What gets old? Roll playing.
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Post by kaitoujuliet on May 30, 2013 7:49:30 GMT -8
I personally think the wonder of discovery is something that really can't be recaptured. You can't get back the feeling of excitement at getting your first magic item or meeting your first goblin. The best you can do is explore new settings, and there are certainly enough of them out there to keep a group going for years.
IMVHO, though, as much fun as the initial discovery is, it's not something a GM should spend large amounts of time and energy trying to recapture on a constant basis. In a sense, the thrill of discovery is easy--even, in some ways, cheap. It's a wonderful palate-cleanser from time to time, but I don't think a game generally thrives on a steady diet of it. There are other rewards of gaming which take longer to set up and are satisfying in different ways, perhaps even more satisfying in the long run. To name one, players who have no idea how things work or what monsters might be able to do can't really develop effective strategies; it's just trial and error. Trial and error can be exciting, but you never get the satisfaction of really being able to use your knowledge.
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Post by The Northman on May 31, 2013 5:43:17 GMT -8
That's why I think it's important as a group to give room for trying out things that are totally new. L5R is a great example of a setting and system that can take players who've been stuck in standard sci-fi and fantasy mode for their whole gaming lives and shake them up.
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Post by jazzisblues on Jun 1, 2013 5:00:25 GMT -8
That's why I think it's important as a group to give room for trying out things that are totally new. L5R is a great example of a setting and system that can take players who've been stuck in standard sci-fi and fantasy mode for their whole gaming lives and shake them up. This is one of the reasons I love Hero so much. Basically there are no magic items, there are things with powers and since you're probably going to have to make it anyway, you might as well go the extra bit and give it a story too. With d20 I basically have to talk my way around the mechanics to get to a story. JiB
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Post by Kainguru on Jun 1, 2013 10:17:57 GMT -8
To avoid or reinvent old tropes I take inspiration from the British sci fi/fantasy movement. I can't place a finger on it or explain why why the Brits are really very very good at taking an old tired genre and doing something unexpected and new. Moorcock's Elric was a reaction to Tolkienisque fantasy, Doctor Who was reinvented decades later, Blakes 7 heralded the idea of anti heroes along with Judge Dredd, Johnny Alpha, Code Name V and Nemesis the Warlock. Zenith was a selfish egotistical superhero and The Ballad of Halo Jones (that's an essay in itself and a tribute to the twisted genius of Alan Moore). . That's a very short list off the top of head. The mechanics may get old but with a wry sense of humour and a willingness to think outside of the box the stories don't have to. Turning a trope on itself it's enough, sometimes it needs a total reinvention and coming at it from an unexpected angle. Aaron
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Post by kaitoujuliet on Jun 11, 2013 7:28:37 GMT -8
I personally think the wonder of discovery is something that really can't be recaptured. You can't get back the feeling of excitement at getting your first magic item or meeting your first goblin. The best you can do is explore new settings, and there are certainly enough of them out there to keep a group going for years. Should've added: but you can only use each individual setting until it becomes familiar, and then you have to move on.
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