|
Post by henryhankovitch on Dec 27, 2012 21:33:18 GMT -8
On the defensive, a tank in an urban setting will probably bunker down, especially in a camouflaged position with a good field of fire. Basically, it acts as a mobile pillbox, waiting for enemy troops or armor to enter its kill zone before opening up. In this situation too, it would have infantry to guard its flanks, alert the crew to targets, etc. In this case, it can provide a diabolical surprise for the players. They're just going down a quiet street, and then all of a sudden it's TAAANK!
On the offensive, a smart tank crew will be really, really cautious. Their best role is to hang back and provide fire support to the infantry, using the main gun to take out enemy positions when the infantry identifies them. If your players are on the defensive, this can create a good way to force the players to change their plans. They're set up to repel infantry, and then all of a sudden they have a tank lobbing shells at them. That forces them to figure out a way to attack the tank, avoid it, or retreat.
|
|
|
Post by henryhankovitch on Dec 26, 2012 16:18:45 GMT -8
One of the things I enjoy about the 40k RPGs (Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, et al) are how they use Fate Points. Each character has a fixed number of Fate Points--usually from 1 to 4--and you don't get more except by GM fiat under exceptional circumstances. You can use your Fate Points each session to do the usual bennie-style re-rolls or situational bonuses; but you can also burn a Fate Point to cheat death. So if your character takes enough damage that he's going to be splattered all over the floor, he can sacrifice a Fate Point permanently to allow his character to barely survive. You don't get away scot-free: the character is still expected to suffer consequences from the event. It's the difference between dying instantly, and waking up on a surgeon's table two weeks later with half your body replaced with cybernetics. Doubly so since when you run out of "hit points" in 40k, you don't just fall down unconscious, you start pulling up entries from the Critical Hit tables, which are full of things like dismemberment, blindness, gushing wounds, crippling injuries, and various spectacular deaths.
|
|
|
Post by henryhankovitch on Dec 26, 2012 16:06:40 GMT -8
There are a couple of factors that went into it. Firstly, this guy is the biggest combat monkey in the group. He's not a munchkin or anything terrible--he just enjoys shooty stabby characters and racking up kills. Moreover--especially from what I've seen of his characters' backstories--he can lean toward the BIGGER IS MORE IMPORTANT school of narrative. He just made the mistake of applying it to the plot and the 'friendly' NPCs rather than the enemies, making the characters the baggage-handler monkeys for the super-special NPCs. The rest of it was just a lack of preparation and a not-so-good sense of pacing.
Not sure whether we're gonna have an actual conversation about this game, or if we're all just going to pretend it didn't happen. I wouldn't mind giving constructive criticism; I don't know whether the whole group can handle it without degenerating into IT WAS TERRIBLE AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD.
|
|
|
Post by henryhankovitch on Dec 24, 2012 18:00:57 GMT -8
I knew it was probably going to be bad. But I've been promoting the idea that every player in our gaming group should try GMing--a one-shot at least. So Bob says, "hey, I want to run a Deathwatch game!" And so he did. Our group of power-armored Spess Mahreens is called in for another supar sekrit mission. Except this one is the most important. Because a High Lord of Terra had a VISION that we were to bring the FIVE KEYS to this strange planet and open the DOOR. And nobody knew what was behind the DOOR, but we we were assured it was the MOST IMPORTANT THING EVAR. So we bring our KEYS, including the most important one held by a BIGGER SPACE MARINE who was also an NPC. And we go to the planet, and drop down to the surface, into a city. And so we walk for a while. And then our psyker heard some people. And we kept walking. And he was still hearing people. And so we walked some more. And then we saw the people, and they were people. So somebody decided that FUCK IT, he was gonna shoot one. Then the people turned into a BERZERKER MOB and came rushing at us. So we shot at the BERZERKER MOB and moved toward a door. (Not the DOOR, just a door.) And then we shot at the MOB and moved toward the door. And shot at the MOB and--yeah, about five rounds of that. Then we were in a TUNNEL. And the psyker could hear people in the distance, so we walked some more. And then people started shooting at us from the sides, but it didn't matter because we're fucking SPESS MAHREENS and you gotta do a lot more than 1d10+3 damage to make us give a shit. So we ignored the people shooting at us and kept walking. Then we came to a gate, where some bigger guns were ready to shoot at us. So we moved behind some cover and advanced toward the gate. For five rounds. And then we shot the guys ONE BY ONE, for another five or ten rounds of combat. So then we finally get to the DOOR. But there was another MOB in front of it. So we plowed through the MOB to get through the DOOR, for about another five or six combat rounds. "What are you doing this round?" "I'm going to the DOOR." "Okay, roll a DICE." "I rolled a DICE." "Okay, you get closer to the DOOR. There are people in the MOB trying to beat you up, but nobody cares because you're SPESS MAHREENS." And then we put all the KEYS, including the most important KEY held by the very important NPC into the DOOR. And it opened, and there were WEAPONS AND SHIT inside. Lots of them. And also a stasis chamber where the MOST AWESOME SPACE MARINE EVER, TOTALLY had been frozen. So the IMPORTANT NPCs finally show up, so they can wake up the AWESOME SPACE MARINE, who will use all the WEAPONS AND SHIT to go fight the CHAOS that just now showed up. And at that point all of us stopped playing, and I told the GM that my SPESS MAHREEN was going to see how long it took to kill himself by DEVOURING HIMSELF ALIVE. This game was something like four or five hours long. By hour 2 I was realizing what a terrible mistake I had made, and was praying for the game to end. But we played the rest, because none of us was manly enough to stand up and say THIS SCENARIO IS SHIT, PLEASE STOP, I CAN HELP.
|
|
|
Post by henryhankovitch on Nov 21, 2012 18:01:02 GMT -8
I keep thinking that I'd really want a non-crunchy, narrative-heavy sort of system to handle the "intelligent magic item" game. Finding out whether you successfully Flame Burst when you're swung at a kobold just seems like the least interesting thing that could happen, so why bother wasting the majority of your gameplay/ruleset on that sort of thing? Better to concentrate on promoting your agenda through manipulating your wielder.
An additional idea: what if, instead of building/statting the item itself, each player actually creates a series of characters who will wield the item, playing their part of the item's story in turn? Treat them as vignettes in a greater story, or stepping-stones that the item-character has to put in place to get what it wants. Maybe when he falls into the hands of subsequent characters, the item's abilities have grown or changed, reflecting its history. You could explain why these different items happen to be in the same place amongst the same people as historical coincidence, or destiny: you're depicting the occasions when these items happened to cross each others' path.
I'm suddenly imagining the career of a magic item as seen through a series of mini-storylines set across a span of centuries. So for instance, the Sword of Armageddon first gets wielded by crusading knight; then we see it in the hands of a Renaissance mercenary, then it's the favorite accessory of a 19th-century general, then hanging on the wall of a 20th-century dictator. For each chapter of the story, the item's abilities reflect its role and its increasing power. The medieval chapter of the Sword of Armageddon's campaign might basically be showing how it came to be an artifact in the first place; whereas by the time the 20th century rolls around it's so powerful it can exert its will just from sitting in the same room as someone.
|
|
|
Post by henryhankovitch on Oct 15, 2012 15:15:12 GMT -8
In electronic games, "RPG" really just refers to the mechanical device of using mutable skill rankings plus randomized rolls to determine the success or failure of an action. As opposed to basing success/failure on the physical accuracy of controller input (action games) or the spatial arrangement of game elements (strategy). You can dislike that fact if you want, but it's effectively the industry-wide definition.
Trying to define video RPGs by relating them to actual role-playing simply will not work. Video-game RPGs that make allowances for role-playing are nice, but it's not necessary or even commonplace in the actual genre.
|
|
|
Post by henryhankovitch on Oct 12, 2012 16:02:36 GMT -8
www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/11/spoilers-study_n_924413.htmlI'm going to commit Internet heresy here: People who whine about spoilers need to grow the fuck up. Okay, there are a few properties-- Fight Club, The Sixth Sense, arguably The Usual Suspects--where knowing the outcome takes away a very specific part of the watching experience. These are works where the revelation of the plot twist casts the entirety of the work in a completely different light. The vast majority of details labeled as spoilers have nothing like this sort of importance. Where were you when you learned that Darth Vader was Luke's father? It most likely wasn't while you were sitting in a theater seat eating popcorn in 1980. According to spoiler logic, this means you have been robbed! You have not had the "pure" movie experience--you didn't learn this plot detail at the same place and the same time as all those people who did. Now let's say that the day before you see the movie, someone mentions to you Vader was Luke's father. Your reaction is likely to be "what? That's nuts. How the hell does that work? Hmmm..." But if you learn that detail while watching the movie, what is your reaction going to be? Something like "what? That's nuts. How the hell does that work? Hmmm..." It's effectively the same reaction, you're just having it at a different time and place. More importantly, knowing that fact in the abstract does not actually give you the experience of seeing that scene. The importance of that element of the film goes far beyond the plot detail in and of itself. It's not just about changing what we think we know about Luke, Obi-Wan, et al--it's about seeing Vader as he says it, seeing Luke's reaction, the fact that it's a capstone on a long-building scene of physical and emotional struggle. Spoiler whining is a trained response, like a kid who's learned to throw a tantrum every time he bumps his toe. The Internet has turned a minor part of everyday life--learning facts about media we are thinking about consuming--into some kind of horrible, emotionally-scarring experience that must be shouted down with extreme prejudice. The entire reason that trolls enjoy trolling with spoilers is because it's guaranteed to provoke some horrified outburst from an Internet manbaby. Grow the fuck up. (Or not. Sorry. Jeez. I'm just trying to, you know, make a point. Don't hurt me.)
|
|
|
Post by henryhankovitch on Oct 12, 2012 15:14:50 GMT -8
I really like Obsidian Portal. It's not that it does anything that you can't get from other sites or services, but it's a whole bunch of useful tools all in one place. Message board, campaign map, adventure log, wikis, character pages, private messaging. Makes it very easy for players to add content or write background fluff if they like. (I actually have a houserule where I give a temporary Fate Point--a bennie, more or less--to any player who writes some sort of adventure log post between sessions.)
And it's free! There's a subscription mode, but all the useful features are unlocked for free users.
|
|
|
Post by henryhankovitch on Sept 26, 2012 18:58:47 GMT -8
So in other words, you don't want to play my Civil War era Call of Cthulhu game, because you won't meet any historical generals, and you won't change the course of the war--at least, not in any form in which "state's rights" is a concern afterward.
;D
|
|
|
Post by henryhankovitch on Sept 26, 2012 18:33:44 GMT -8
Stu's last point about World War II struck a bit of a nerve.
Okay, so unless you're going the Inglourious Basterds route, we all "know" what the end of WWII is going to be. But "winning the war" is almost never the point of a WWII story, whether we're talking games, novels, or movies. When you watch Band of Brothers or The Pacific for the first time, you may know that the 'muricans are gonna win the war; but you don't know what's going to happen to any of the characters you're watching. And that's the interesting part of the story anyway. In The Pacific, the Iwo Jima sequence is all about watching Basilone go back to a war that he had a golden ticket out of. It's not about showing Iwo Jima being conquered.
Moreover, a certain level of potential counterfactualism has to be allowed whenever you play within a known timeline. For it to be interesting, you may have to imagine that things could go differently in your game's story. This is the most basic part of historical wargaming: you can't play Axis & Allies if the game forces a single outcome each time. The game uses the canonical timeline as the setting for the beginning of the game, not to determine the course of events throughout.
This means as well that you may have to imagine and play a character who does not actually have the historical perspective we do; that he will have to act as though the outcome of history was yet undecided. There's a term for this sort of imaginative play, but I can't quite put my finger on it...
Back to the broader point of established settings and canon, I think WWII works well as an example. The game needs to be about the characters, rather than a theme park where the characters go on pre-established thrill rides. They need to know that their actions affect the story, whatever its relationship to history or canon. Whether their story is "survive the Battle of Stalingrad" or "defeat the Werewolf Women of the SS," the greater course of the war isn't something they're going to be dealing with.
|
|
|
Post by henryhankovitch on Sept 3, 2012 17:46:18 GMT -8
We roleplayers read lots of fiction, especially in the SF/Fantasy department. The entire hobby likely wouldn't exist in the first place if it weren't for Howard, Tolkein, et al. I think the nonfiction realm tends to be underrepresented in our recommendation lists, despite how much useful and inspiring material is out there. So this is a thread for recommending nonfiction books--history, biography, science, whatever--that help stir up the creative juices.
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, by Barbara Tuchman. A broad overview of life in the 1300s, covering elements of everyday life--religion, family, trade and entertainment--as well as wars and plagues and kings. Lots of great material, demonstrating how the real medieval world was usually more varied and interesting than medieval fantasy tends to portray.
The Face of Battle, by John Keegan. The author is one of the most widely-read military historians of this century, and in this book he tries to deconstruct the war story from its traditional form, in which generals make all the decisions while faceless and emotionless soldiers execute commands (or fail to do so) in a uniform fashion. He tries to reconstruct three historical battles (Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme) from the perspective of the individual soldiers, explaining why they might advance or retreat, fight or flee. Not simply whether a particular tactic was 'smarter' than another.
Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond. This one I kind of hesitate to include. Partly because it's one of those books that people tend to recommend a lot already. But more importantly I think it's a bit bloated for casual reading. In the broad strokes, Diamond's theories on the relationship of geography and agriculture to historical development are really interesting; but a big part of the book's page-count is devoted to lengthy anthropological discussions of various tribal societies that can get tedious for those of us who aren't so excited about anthropology.
|
|
|
Post by henryhankovitch on Aug 27, 2012 15:22:14 GMT -8
I would argue that some games already institute systems for the players to cheat to improve the narrative: bennies, hero points, artha, and so on. Technically speaking, they stop becoming "cheating" once they're enshrined in the game rules; but the intent is the same as the GM exercising Rule Zero to keep the narrative flowing. They give a player a way to ignore or reverse a mechanical result in order to influence the narrative in a way they find desirable.
Now, unlike a GM fudging dice to keep the players in the game, bennies are generally used for a single players' mechanical benefit--just as a cheating player is trying to serve his character rather than the game as a whole. But also consider how they're often used as insurance against failing at a risky and improbable action which the player might otherwise choose not to attempt. In that sense, even though the player is using the bennie to act for his character's selfish benefit, the result is that he's influencing the narrative as a whole to be more colorful and dangerous.
The fact that these resources are limited maintains the narrative balance between the individual players at the table, and between the players as a group and the GM.
|
|
|
Post by henryhankovitch on Aug 21, 2012 22:08:19 GMT -8
Great scam that Game Science has: skip half the manufacturing process, charge twice as much, and sell it like snake oil.
|
|
|
Post by henryhankovitch on Aug 14, 2012 14:32:12 GMT -8
There's a term for that, which I'm sure you've heard: LFQW (Linear Fighter, Quadratic Wizard). But surely that issue wouldn't affect your ability to run a pulp detective game. "You walk into the grimy bar. The local snitch glares at you across his beer glass. You get the feeling he knows what you're looking for, and doesn't feel like sharing." "I cast Charm Person." --- "The young widow is crying into her handkerchief, and you only get the story in bits and pieces as she tells you how her child has been kidnapped, and how she fears for her life if she goes to the pol-" "I cast Divination." --- "Five heavyset thugs get up from the card table, knuckledusters and pistols in ha-" "I cast Color Spray."
|
|
|
Post by henryhankovitch on Aug 13, 2012 15:22:25 GMT -8
Apparently Gary Gygax was the gaming Jesus. Implying that His opinions may not have been the be-all and end-all of gaming wisdom is heresy, and one of His acolytes will surely be along to correct you on the matter.
For Gygax so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Modules, that whomsoever campaigneth shall perish, and be disintegrated by traps. Amen.
|
|