4e Dungeons & Dragons: A Party of Knights

Sir Mars: "Er...we should click something."
Sir Greebus: "What if it breaks?"
Sir Ted: "This is some nerdy %*&#!"
Sir Valiant: "Sir Ted, watch your language. This is a quest!"
Sir Greebus: "Yeah, chucklehead, what he said."
Sir Ted: "This totally sucks."
Sir Mars: "What did you expect?"
Sir Valiant: "What do you mean?"
Sir Ted: "Yeah, what did you mean, chump?"
Sir Mars: "Well..."
*the other knights lean in, their gauntlets rest on their sword hilts*
Sir Mars: "...this is what we get for dumping Int."
Sir Greebus: "Ha!"
Sir Ted: "*&%$!"
Sir Valiant: "Prepostery! Veritable tomfoolery!"
Sir Mars: "I'm just saying that maybe we all shouldn't have an 8 Int!"
Sir Ted: "Int is for dorks!"
Sir Greebus: "What are you, a wizard lover?"
Sir Mars: "No, but..."
Sir Greebus: "Wizard lover, wizard lover, wizard lover--"
Sir Valiant: "That is enough Sir Greebus, perhaps we shouldn't have fired that Eladrin knight."
Sir Ted: "He was lame. He wore a pocket protector on his plate mail."
Sir Valiant: "Quite right. Most lame. Then perhaps we shall endeavor the courage to conquer our foes, and carry forth into the breach mine friends. Righteousness and honoratiousness will prevail!"
Sir Mars: *under his breath* "I don't think that's a word."
Sir Valiant: "What was that?"
Sir Mars: "Nothing, nothing. Oh look! Charop! That looks promising! I'm going to start a thread. That seems like a webby thing to do. Clicking. Now!"
Sir Greebus: "Oh no!"
Sir Ted: "OMG WTF BBQ!"
Sir Valiant: "Duplicitumus! We have entered the internets! Whatever shall we do now?"
Sir Mars: "Simple, my good knights. We wait for trolls...and then we slay."

4e Dungeons and Dragons: Bah, Eladrins!

Dwarf: "Hey, you!"
Eladrin: *sigh* "Yes...?"
"Go elf the walls!"
"I'm an eladrin."
"Pointy ears, pouty demeanor, likes trees and badgers...I don't care what you are, go elf the walls!"
"I'm a knight."
"Right, and I'm an orc. If you can't elf the walls, then what good are you?"
"I can use my superior intellect to calculate the precise trajectory--"
"--so you're a nerd. Not only are you useless, you are also a book-reading, four-eyed dweeb. Listen Einstein, can you even cast spells?"
"Well, no but--"
"Okay super smarty pants, you have a huge brain, and you were too dumb to learn fireball. I'm sure your pansy prince was totally thrilled about knighting an egghead."
"I'm out of here. Farewell!"
"Good riddance, freaking elf tin can. Bah!"
*eladrin teleports away, while dwarf continues down passageway, which triggers an explosion trap*
"Why didn't he sodding elf the walls?!?"
*dwarf dies*

What RPGs Should Learn From Movies

As you know, I'm currently playing Dragon Age: Origins, and while I'm certainly enjoying myself, I'm also bored out of my mind. I think this game would have been far more effective as a storytelling platform had it taken a thing or two from another medium.

My BA was in Creative Arts with an emphasis in film, while I'm not trying to toot my own horn here, I do think that I've been exposed to a fair amount of quality narratives in not only the movie structure, but in literature and fine arts as well. I am a holistic artist, which is why I have such an interest in video games in the first place, considering they combine all aspects of every other art form in existence already. I'm not writing this post because I despise video games and think they can never be art, but because I am passionate about them, and am absolutely convinced that video games are art.

So here are the places where I think Dragon Age fails, and hopefully future video game narratives can pick up the slack:

1) Video Games Should Reward You For Conflict. Way back since dudes in togas, we've understood as artists that conflict is compelling. In fact, I would almost be inclined to say that you can't have art without strife, but I'd rather not derail this post. Suffice it to say that the most common form of artistic expression demonstrates forces in opposition.

Yet, in Dragon Age: Origins, when I talk to my companions, I get points for agreeing with them, and I lose points for disagreeing with them. If I disagree with them a whole bunch, they get pissed off, and will leave my party. This means I am rewarded for passive behavior, and punished for instigating conflict.

Here is a perfect example where gameplay and storytelling are at odds with each other, instead of working together to keep the player involved in the world. The designers have set up a Catch-22 where if I want the most points, I'm bored, but if I seek to end my boredom, I lose points.

Future games, if they wish to be taken seriously as narratives, must switch this dynamic around to something counter-intuitive: players must be rewarded for disagreeing with companions, and punished for agreeing with them. Then not only is the player happy with their bonus points, but they are also excited by the conflict in your story.

2) Cut Out Your Exposition. Or at least, if you absolutely must have it, stick it in an obscure place that players never have to experience, and do not reward players for reading it. No one gives a crap about the country of Ferelden, or the Ash Warriors, or the history of your fantasy land. It is crap. It seriously is. Audiences want a story, and a story is conflict, not a history lesson.

If the exposition does not flow from conflict, then it should be cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. If you don't show it on screen, then it is unimportant, and is actively hurting the immersion of your players. And by "show it onscreen," I'm talking about the old but true "show, don't tell," which RPG designers seem to feel doesn't apply to them. Bull shit. Your explanations disguised as dialogue are terrible, especially when you make me read them to gain points for agreeing with your NPCs.

Don't treat me like an idiot. If you want me to know that mages can become abominations through demonic possession, then freaking show me a mage getting possessed by a demon. Don't make me listen to voice actors tell me about it. Fail.

In short, show me your world through scenes of conflict. That is the first thing beginning film scriptwriters learn, and it is a lesson every game designer needs to know.

Dragon Age and the Tea Cups

Whenever you make a character for a roleplaying game, it's a part of you. You pick a name, you generally pick the appearance, and you might even go so far as to pick the personality or profession of the character. This means you are emotionally invested right out the gate, unlike a movie or book where you have to learn to care about the characters involved.

So when I played Dragon Age: Origins (yes, I'm a cheapskate and waited until Steam had the "Complete Edition" for $25) and my male elf mage was able to choose to have sex with a male elf rogue, it effected me more than I thought it would.

I mean, a part of me chose to have sex with a virtual male. That is a pretty big deal for me. I mean, I have no choice when the dudes in Brokeback Mountain get in on, because I'm a passive observer, but here I am, actively choosing a virtual homosexual relationship. Here's an analogy:

Say we are at Disneyland. I don't like the Tea Cups. Don't get me wrong, if other people ride the Tea Cups, that's fine with me. That's their business. It doesn't hurt me when they ride the Tea Cups, and it doesn't seem to hurt them, so I respect it. I don't hate the Tea Cups, I just don't like them. Vice versa, if I like the Matterhorn, I wouldn't expect the people who like the Tea Cups to absolutely like the Matterhorn, but I would expect them to respect that I do.

So here I am, playing a game, and bam, a part of me chooses to ride the Tea Cups. (Of course, it's not the same thing, since it was more akin to watching a home video of someone who snuck a camera on the ride, but you get the picture.)

While I was watching two male elves have sex (one of whom was me!), I felt aversion. Now don't get me wrong. This wasn't hatred. I just didn't like it. In the same way that I would get nausea from riding the Tea Cups, and not like that experience, I also did not like this experience.

However, I am not the type to start carrying torches and berate Bioware and Electronic Arts for putting homosexuality in their game. Far from it. I'm self-reflexive enough to wonder why I felt the way I did. Here are the two points I took away from that experience:

• If a part of me chooses to be homosexual, and I don't like it, then that means I'm not homosexual. Which sounds obvious, but we are treading into the future, and these virtual spaces we have set up can blur the lines, and it is better to explore these concepts, rather than ignore the elephant in the room. Especially when other fellow heterosexuals often turn their aversion for homosexuality into hatred, which is counterproductive to society.
  
• Second, I wonder if homosexuals feel the same aversion whenever they make an RPG character and choose to have a heterosexual relationship. If that is the case, then I'm sorry that there are an overabundance of heterosexual relationships in RPGs, and I wish for a future where there are more games like Dragon Age, not less.

Why Star Wars Sucks as an MMO

Star Wars is a great space opera. The original movies, regardless of whether they ripped off Akira Kurosawa or Battlestar Galactica, are as fresh today as the day they came out. The extended world works for people, as do the prequels to a certain extent. Single player video games have the potential to be awesome when set in the Star Wars universe, as evidenced by Knights of the Old Republic. They can also be pretty bad, as Force Unleashed 2 proved.

However, there are two major hurdles that any Star Wars MMO must overcome in order to be a successful when multiple people are involved, and both of these obstacles are inherent to the game world itself. I first experienced these when playing the old tabletop d6 RPG, and they will continue to be true even as Bioware releases a shinier version of the same concept.


1) Star Wars is a Dead World.

This means that anything that happened in the movies, books, or the extended storylines is unchangeable. If you decide you want to kill Darth Vader, or go out with Princess Leia, you are on your own. Anything set around the same time period as the movies must somehow adapt to that history, or it "doesn't count." This means that your character is bound by the vision of the developers, and the developers are bound by the vision of George Lucas, and even Lucas is bound by the layers and layers of history that have already been told about the Star Wars universe.

Anything not set around the time period of the original movies is fair game, however, which is why an MMO set either way before or after the movies could possibly work. However, this too is a gamble, as a developer has nothing in the game world to work with, since Luke, Leia, Darth Vader, etc...are either not born yet, or dead.

The Bioware MMO is taking that bet, by releasing a game set in the far past of the Star Wars universe, where they can make up whatever they want, with the downside that none of it has any relevance to the content we are used to. (For example, we can't go hang out with Han Solo.)


2) The Force Sucks

I'm sorry to say, it does. It's great for movies. It is absolutely horrible in a game.

Oh, they've been trying to spruce it up, make it flashy for the kiddies. They've been upping the ante on the Force, where at first it was really hard to chuck some rocks, while now Force users can jump around like rabbits or make people explode.

However, you've got this science fiction world, you don't have magic, or psionics, or mutations, or any cool alien races. Instead, you have two factions: dudes with lightsabers that are OMFGWTFBBQultrapowerful, and wimpy dudes with blasters. Like when Darth Vader pwns Han Solo without even trying.

Now that said, in a game they can easily tweak it so that lightsaber characters are as strong as blaster characters, but that is not entirely the point. Force users get all sorts of neat abilities that non-Force users don't get. What do the normal people of the world gain in exchange? Yay, they can repair a droid, use a jetpack, or ride a tauntaun. Woo.

The Force is further limited by #1 above, because the game developers can't let it do anything. They can't let you shoot fireballs, summon monsters, teleport, time travel, go invisible, or one of the many, many things that you haven't seen in the movies that don't fit the "vision" of the world.

Not to mention that any discussion of the Force is inherently linked to the morality of the Force, because that's the way the game world is set up. Like you can't use Force lightning without being a bad guy, because that is a bad guy power. Even though hacking people in half with a laser sword is just fine. I mean, you've got a bunch of so-called good people that can't be emotional at all, can't have sex, can't have relationships, and there are plenty of those dudes running around. Then you have the evil dudes, who constantly let their desires run rampant, and none of them got it on with a hot Twi'lek? Right.

...

In short, everyone wants to play a kickass Jedi/Sith with awesome powers and a lightsaber, and nobody wants to play a second-class normal person. You've got a crappy source of "magic" with crappy rules attached to it, in a dead world where everything neat has already happened, and your character plays second fiddle to the NPCs, and you play third fiddle to other players if you happen to play a non-Force character.

What I Was Going to Post

So I was writing on the Dungeons and Dragons forums, and a troll appeared. He said this:

"but by that you do admit that knights ARE indeed optimizable, therefore the basis of your argument is false and as my esteemed colleague states www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrjwaqZfjIY"

My first instinct was to write this, which I think might have been against their code of conduct, so instead of replying with it, I'll instead post it here:

Your esteemed colleague failed at reading comprehension, and now you are implying that knights are only optimizable with builds that contain one race and/or one feat?

Okay, great! Good answer! Of course, I already knew that, and nowhere in my post is the assertion that knights are not optimizable with a half-elf or mark of storm, but of course, that would require reading, which I realize is an ambitious request in this day and age. Perhaps I could flash a lot of bright lights, maybe bang some drums, and then it will be easier for the inattentive among us.

Or perhaps you aren't saying that, and are instead jumping to conclusions, because you would rather see the simple answer rather than anything complex. Which I understand might be taxing on a brain's mental processes. Whew! Let's not think too hard! This is exhausting!

Or maybe you are trying to start an argument, which won't work either, because I'm not particularly prone to caring about what other people on the internet think about me or what I think, though of course, the more you can show me that you can spend more than 5 seconds considering something I've said, then I might be willing to entertain the notion of exchanging information with you.

Of course, I did not follow your youtube link, just as I didn't follow your colleague's link, because I lack a sense of humor, and because one day, in the distant future, all communication might one day be like this.

Though I'm sure your link is humorous!

Why PCs Shouldn't Summon Lackeys

Written for this thread.

Picture this:

You are sitting around the gaming table. Through the dim light you see Big Dean toss his d20 with one meaty hand, and growl, "My dwarf rolls a 19. I hit AC 27. Eat that goblin scum." Smoke flitters past the table fan as a puff of light shines from behind the DM screen.

Pages rustle as a raspy voice grates across your ears: "You hit. The goblin's eyes widen as the blade of your axe severs his head from his neck. The body crumples to the floor as the head rolls several feet, and the beady red eyes blink in amazement, then peer into oblivion." The DM coughs, and puts out his cigarette. He reaches out from behind the screen and places something on the battlemap.

It fills up a 3v3 area. That is huge! As his bony hand slowly creeps back, you hear a gasp from Christina. You turn your head to figure out what the commotion is, and your eyes are mesmerized by the miniature. It's a red dragon! It has fire coming out of it's mouth and little plastic grass that has even been scorched. Little bits of body parts have been strewn across the base, and you see blood. Blood everywhere.

All eyes turn to you as cast your gaze down to your crisp new character sheet. You preordered Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms, just so you could atone for your last three characters that have died. (Two of those times weren't your fault!) This time, yes this time, you will conquer. You will prevail. This must be overpowered, right? It's new afterall. WotC wouldn't sell new stuff that's suboptimal.

You will show Big Dean with the hairy arms that you too can read message boards and select optimum feats and items. You will show Christina that you too can roll high when the situation demands it, and when she sees the imaginary bloodied carcass on the ground, she will know that it was you that tipped the miniature over, and maybe she will draw a picture of your character in her notebook.

Finally, you will show the DM that his miniature, that he probably bought off of Ebay because he's a cheapskate, is worth less than the might of your newly printed character.

You turn the page with triumph, and as you slide your fingers down the page, you stop and read your saving grace, your redemption...

"Todd." The skeletal DM hand gestures toward the miniature. "It's your turn, dude. Go."

You look up. You see Big Dean, eating a chicken salad. You see Christina, dear Christina, who is texting (probably her boyfriend), and lastly you see the gleaming miniature, as the cigarette smoke caresses its ghastly claws.

You say, "I summon...I summon...a Spined Devil...Lackey."

Big Dean snorts, "A spined devil what?"

You deflate, "Lackey."

"Couldn't you cast something more, um...useful?"

"It is useful," you are getting pissed. You glance at Christina. Is that pity in her eyes?

The DM says, "Just let him cast it, My raid starts soon."

You place your puny miniature under the nose of the red dragon, you pick up your faded d20, and you think, "Please, please, please, let this be the time. My time. Let my lackey pwn this boss."

You roll, and the die spins, and everyone at the table leans in, and it finally stops on...

A 1. A freaking 1.

You stare in disbelief as you vaguely hear dice rolling from behind the screen, and it's as if you are underwater when the DM says, "The dragon eats your lackey. Christina, your turn."


...




That, my friends, is why Hexblades should not summon lackeys.

Not a Total Slacker

Just to show that I've been doing more things than I give myself credit for:

I've written two guides to League of Legends. If you are into that sort of thing, you can read those:

Zen Malzahar
Sun Tzu Teemo

I've also been writing random guides for Dungeons and Dragons. Things like:

Dwarf Pitfighter
Half-Elf Knight

etc...

I've been trolling random forums, stirring up the craziness in people, and periodically helping those in need of my mystical knowledge of the gaming arts.

I think that watching this video has got me thinking on how to be, if not proud of my pastimes, at least content in knowing that in the right place and time, they can be appreciated. Now the question remains, how do I get myself from where I am to where I want to be?

Puzzle Pieces

On a similar note to last post, I've always had a difficult time marrying my opposing interests in gaming and art.

(And by gaming I don't mean gambling. I'm not talking slot machines here.)

I enjoy all forms of games, including but not limited to, tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons and Storyteller, video games of all sorts, ranging back all the way to the 8 bit systems of my youth such as the NES, all the way to the games of today like Team Fortress 2 and Torchlight. I made a roleplaying game, I've tweaked even more rules than I can list, and I've made a couple card games.

I also have a Creative Arts degree, which means I've acted, made movies, written reams of bad fiction and poetry, studied music and art, what have you.

These two fields, though they have many things in common, like perspective and narrative, flow and feel, are almost impossible for me to combine in my everyday life. I'm not an artist in the sense that I don't paint, I don't draw (at least, very well), and I don't play an instrument. Likewise, I don't program computers. I'm in the middle ground of mediocrity, where I can see the specialists at both ends of the spectrum, and I'm floundering while trying to glue together disparate parts of a huge puzzle.

What do I do with my writing ability? How do I apply that to games? Or art? Or games and art? There has never been a clear path for what I want to do, and so many times I end up back where I began: with nothing.

I've been looking into things like game design, and I realize that these things are difficult. People don't do this because they are easy. I have a lot of hard work ahead of me, if anything in my head is going to come to fruition, and that is a sobering thought. It makes me want to give up, which is the worst possible place to be.

Of course, even my son knows that Elmo says you should always keep trying. Elmo is a pretty smart...er...guy?

Belated Boo!

I took a three day weekend for Halloween, which meant I worked harder than normal taking care of kids. Whether it was carrying a one year old unicorn for a mile while she's trying to keep up with the candy acquisitions of her monster brother, or I'm running a marathon at the beach with a deranged three year old in his sand-encrusted Flash underwear, I'm generally kaput most of the time.

Monday I just crashed. "That's it! Fuck the internet!" was my battle cry, and I fought a tangled war across the ravaged jungle of toys, ripped up Kleenex, and dirty clothes to flop down on the couch and read my 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons books.

Which, by the way, I have been obsessing about. I memorized all of AD&D, and third edition, so it's pretty obvious that at some point in the future I will have this rule set stuck it my head as well. It gives me something to think about when I'm picking granola out of the carpet.

Two short poems:

Apricot apricot
Better not, tater tot

and

Harmony warmony woo.
Harmony had to go poo.
She went in her diaper,
Then did I wipe her.
Harmony warmony woo.

That is all.

Makin' Characters Perish

I finally convinced a small group of suspecting and reluctant guinea pigs to be my test subjects for 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons. I've had the books for a while now, but this Thursday, I will subject them to misery and torment under the flimsy disguise of fun.

Will Wheaton (yes, Wesley Crusher, but he's cooler than that now, since he's become a geek champion, if that makes any sense) made me want to DnD again. To a lesser extent, Penny Arcade was involved in the decision, but more so, the death of Will's character Aeofel from falling in a pit of acid made me realize that my duration on this earth is limited, and that if the time is ever ripe for dropping my friends' virtual characters in pits of acid, now is that time.

Granted, like any Dungeon Master, I would rather play a character than scrub the floors for someone else's character. DMs generally do the lion's share of the work, while the players lethargically brood over experience points and twinkie powers.

Alas! I will twist that spite into devious mechanisms of concentrated retribution! Their characters will die so hard that their character sheet will burst into flames, and as the smoldering ruins of the table char and smoke foul fumes of delicious vengeance, I will breathe in their despair, and the players will know utter defeat.

Karma and all that.