Battlestar Galactica: The Beginning of the End Starts Tonight
Tonight at 10 EST, the last half of the last season of the remake of Battlestar Galactica premieres (or more simply, Season 4.5… since we all know that calling things “.5″ is an awesome idea). For those of you not caught up, I recommend avoiding this post since it contains some SPOILERS, and will probably contain more in the comments.
I know I and many others have lost a good deal of our gusto for the series after experiencing some pretty weak episodes in season 3, coupled with admissions by the head writers that they never had a real plan about whom the final Cylons would be. (Then Ron Moore parodied himself, which helped a tiny bit). But at this point, even if I were disgusted with the series (which I’m not, thanks to a few solid season 4 episodes), I’m far too pot committed not to see this through. [Read the rest of this article]
"But that's not how it went" Tokens
A few months ago, I was musing on other ways to use D&D 4e’s action points.
Since, I’ve been pondering the unfamiliar elements of Narrative Control (i.e. who decides where the story goes). Being a somewhat rigid DM when it comes to storylines and how scenes are played out, the concept of sharing control with the players is uncomfortable.
Yet, the best games we have played are the ones where players were encouraged and allowed to steer where things went.
I know there are plenty of games built around this core concept, but the ones I played so far have not.
So for my game tomorrow (yay! I’m finally playing!), I’m thinking of giving each of my players a ‘But that’s not how it went!‘ token.
What’s that you say?
Once a game I would allow each player to yank narrative control from me and establish how things would go for one single event/item/action. I’m perfectly aware how horribly this can be abused before even discussing the mechanics. Bear with me in this thought experiment (and feel free to share your thoughts in the comments).
So in my mind, I pictured players using this to salvage a missed Daily power roll (That’s not how it went, my attack hit!) to change any type of failure into a success (The Baron accepts our proposal), or it would be used to change a item of loot for something of the players choice (That Magic Orb no one wants is actually a Bastard Sword!).
As I work through the crunch of it all, I’d say that a token can be used to make any dice roll a non-critical success, maximize damage, or change a magical item for something else. It can also be used to influence a NPC to become helpful, make a death saving throw into a success, or spend an extra healing surge.
That’s pretty darn clinical … but it will have to do for the time being.
Now there’s really potential for abuse with such a rule, like all players saving their dailies for a final encounter and all spending their token at the same time to generate a ton of damage.
That’s not good, not good at all.
Now what if I made this into a Party resource? Only one token for the whole party but that eeds to be spent for the benefit of one player by a acclamation. Any player can propose to use a token, the majority needs to approve the use.
Thus, token can have a bigger effect: Critical Hit. Recover from Dying stage, ret-con a situation that went against the PCs or just plain rewrite a scene in a way that’s entertaining for the whole group, DM included.
For the token to work, I’d ask for the players to entertain me. They take narrative control, they need to make it into a narrative worth the bonus they get. So a fixed die roll = a small description… but a NPC that was hostile and turnsaround must have hide some sort of secret that I want to know about!
The idea is really rough at this point, but I’d like to try it.
Feel free to chime in with examples from other games or ideas on how to adjudicate this (complimentary to the Rule of Cool, of course… he he he).
New Feature: Character Class Reference
Just a quick announcement that I’ve put up another Feature: a reference guide for 4e classes. I didn’t have much luck finding fan-made classes, so do let me know if there are any I should add. Hopefully you find this useful when choosing your next character, or if you’re just curious about what all is out there. As always, leave a comment if you have any suggestions on how to improve it.
Book Series Review: The Malazan Books of the Fallen
Background: The Malazan Books of the Fallen is a mouthful to say, but really that’s for the best, because it’s also a whopper to read. Currently on book eight of ten, the universe also encompasses a bunch of novellas (which I have yet to read) and an entirely different author writing novels in a shared world. Steven Erikson was an anthropologist by trade and boy does it show. Everything about the different races and cultures encountered is impeccably realized and fleshed out in a story that’s scope is epic on a level of the Illiad. Elder Gods, Immortal Ascendants, Ancient Races, Dragons, and even humanity are engaged in a multifaceted struggle across three continents (thus far). For instance, the second book of the series only has a small group of five characters from the first book while the rest (at least 80% of the text) is devoted entirely new characters. The fifth book introduces an (almost) entirely new continent, cultures and plot-lines. For me, the series has yet to disappoint as it avoids the common epic fantasy pitfall of nothing happening (see Wheel of Time) and uses some genre savvy tropes to cleverly explain the common aspects of the genre while it turns some others on its head.
Setting: The series begins with a focus on the Malazan Empire, a newish aggressively expansive political body and its unique brand of soldier. From there, the reader is treated to the T’lan Imass (undead that swore an eternal vow of GENOCIDE against an ancient powerful race of creatures called the Jaghut), the Pannion Domin (perhaps the most horrifying ‘evil empire’ I’ve ever read about), the Lethererii Kingdom (an interesting combination of capitalism run amok and the old Chinese notion of empire), the mysterious Anomander Rake and his brooding ennui-riddle Children of Darkness, along with countless others. Magic is drawn from magical realms called warrens (the more modern manifestation common amongst humanity) or ancient holds (elder magic). The power of various factions is one of constant flux and even immortals fear the strongest amongst humanity. The series deals a lot with the foibles of humanity and history, but also with the helplessness of the divine in the face of demands and actions of their followers in the name of their religion.
Story: With the scope of the series it’s hard to pinpoint a single plot, but the main thrust of the series focuses on the newly re-emergent Crippled God and his destructive machinations. Readers get to see the maneuverings amongst the divine, the headstrong and clever mortals that intercede and the soldiers that just end up caught up in conflicts a bit over their pay grade. Sometimes the link to this overarching idea is tenuous at best, or even non existent, but it is the most clearly identifiable thrust common to all the stories. The characters are numerous and mostly well developed, but Erikson’s fetish for the infantry grunt can get a little tiresome when you have upwards of thirty marines traipsing around a novel (all with cute little nicknames like Blend, Smiles or Picker), it’s hard to keep them all straight. That being said, every reader is sure to find their favorites amongst a rich cast of heroes, scoundrels, and outright evil bastards.
Overall: A-. The strength of the books in their scope, depth and imagination in a way serves as its weakness as well. Accessibility and plot structure suffer a bit as a result. While not easy to pick up as a book like Mistborn, it’s a project committing to the series, but well worth the effort.
Chatty's Mailbox: Writing an Adventure
As some of you may know, I just finished writing a draft for a D&D 4e adventure to be possibly published by Goodman Games (if the editor likes it). I’ve been posting vague updates on Twitter and Facebook and such for the last few weeks and some have been following it, being very supportive.
So with adventure writing on my mind, I recently got a letter from another blogger asking precisely about that.
I’m wondering how to go about writing an adventure. I’ve generally been terrible at it but I’ve been wanting to improve.
My thing is that I’m a big improv nut when I DM. I don’t trust what I wrote down to work, so I often end up changing things on the fly. Same with monsters.
So I think a good exercise for me would be writing down something and leaving it written. Then come things like layout, additional information, and so on. Anything you can share from your own experiences?
It so happens that I have always been a very scripted DM when it comes to the home adventures I wrote for my pals. While I have used published adventures most of the time, once in a while I inject my own one/two session adventures to shake things up. Since I’m very scripted, those adventures end up feeling like published ones.
So here’s how I go at it.
The Pitch
I start with an elevator pitch for the adventure.
For example, for my Kobold Love project:
“A bunch of Kobold “ugly ducklings” go forth on a Quest to seek out the Tavern-in-the City. They are to kill the mysterious stranger that sits in the corner, giving out adventure hooks that always end up destroying their dungeon home. It’s going to be a 5 scene, semi-linear event-based adventure, filled with carefully chosen Fantasy RPG tropes. Playing time 4 hours..”
As another example:
“A cross between Retro-Stupid gaming and a reality show, the PCs are tricked and sent to the Plane of Games to participate in the “The Crawl™”. Complete with shady producers, product placement and instant stardom!”
Once I have this, I mull over it for a few days, building possible scenes in my mind. Once ideas start forming, I put down key scenes/encounters.
I then build a short adventure (a 5 rooms dungeon or a 5-6 scene adventure if it’s event based) and put my encounters in.
I usually have the following components:
Intro
This is the classic pathway of telling Players what they must do and what they gain from doing it. If I feel like doing it differently, I usually go for an ‘In Media Res‘ start where PCs are thrown into action before they can understand what’s happening to them.
The “Orc Ninjas attack you while you were in your tavern room”‘ is the kind of thing I’m talking about
The Guardian
Something or someone is trying to prevent the PCs from achieving their quest. In a dungeon setting, its the entrance encounter. In an event based scenario, its the first wave of opposition that the party finds in its path.
The Cool contraption/Playground
I usually try to make scenes that have multiple elements in them. In 4e, I especially like to mix combat and non-combat elements in the same encounters. For example, I’ll create a combat scene with and Embedded Skill challenges, or some traps, or a few pieces of interactive terrain elements like collapsible walls, fire pits and exploding braziers.
The Boss
I’m a conservative at heart when it comes to adventures, and I almost always end them with a Boss. Some sort of Elite/Solo monster with a few minions/guardians, ready to have an ultimate showdown.
Once again, I try to make the final environment as dynamic as possible. If I bump the boss to quite a few levels above the PCs, I make sure that there are elements in the room that PCs can use (and abuse) against the ennemy. If I feel like an evil DM, I’ll do the opposite and put traps and PC-hostile elements in the room, all controlled by the Boss (that I take down a few notches to compensate.
At the gaming table
When I write an adventure for my bi-weekly group, I often don’t have time to polish it up, so most of how it goes remains unwritten and in my head. A purely roleplaying scene is often not spelled out much apart from ‘NPC goals’. However, I usually have all the creature stats, treasure and battlemap setup written down.
During the game, I usually stick pretty closely to my script. I will speed up combat when it becomes tedious and will try to accommodate players who inclined to explore outside the boundaries I wrote about (although I sometime steer the straggler back before he finds out there’s just big white space behind that secret door I forgot to remove.
For a published adventure
I did pretty much the same thing for a published adventure. Except this time, I needed to write all of the little tidbits that I usually keep in my mind when I stop prepping.
Since I had a clear word count, I made a written plan:
- Adventure Intro
- Adventure Summary
- Adventure Background
- Hooks
- Scene 1
- Scene 2
- Scene 3
- …
- Finale
- Concluding the adventure
I gave myself an estimated word count for each section and I made sure that I stuck to it.
I wrote it, over a few weeks. Then I had the adventure read by someone I trusted and got challeneged. I rewrote the adventure based on the feedback I got and sent it back. Technically I would playtest it, but in my particular case, this will occur after I hand in the draft.
So that’s about how I go at it for both!
What about you? Share your adventure creating strategies!
YouTube Tuesday: Guinness Armor Edition
What happens when a beer-chugging rock band goes up against a group of LARPers? The results might surprise you. Warning: this video is metal. (via ENWorld)
Chatty levels up to 36!
Today marks my 36th birthday!
I’m not one to make a fuss about my age. I’m a kid at heart and the number attached to my physical shell has been mostly immaterial.
However, I feel I’m at a crossroad in my life. I’ve discovered the world of writing in the last 18 months that sustains my soul and brings me a level of satisfaction I’ve rarely achieved in my professional life. On the other hand, I’ve reached a point in said professional life where I make quite a comfortable living doing things I know I’m good at.
Many hard choices are staring at me and the current economic state are making some paths look less savory than others. Thus, this year is going to be about me pondering my options carefully.
The gift I’m giving myself is self-trust, telling myself over and over again that I beleive in what I’m capable of achieving whatever it is I set out to do.
Case in point, I’ve put the final editing touches to my Goodman Games 4e adventure last night! I wasn’t sure I could pull it off, and I’ve laid awake a few nights, worrying about it. Now that its done, I know I can do it and from now on, I’ll keep believing I can do such projects!
I’m also getting Draconomicon I: Chromatic Dragons. A kid at heart needs a real gift too 
Have a great week all, mine’s shaping up to be quite a busy one.
Image Credit : DougO, taken here, that’s the awesome Dragon cake everyone talked about over the weekend.
Inq. of the Week: Oh Oh It's Magic
Two weeks ago, in the distant past that was the year Twenty Oh Eight, we asked what your New Year’s Resolution is. 23% of you answered 1280 x 1024, a traditional choice. In a very close second, 1680 x 1050 garnered 22%, a newer resolution for newer times. Only 1 solitary person is still committed to 800 x 600. Now, the question with all New Year’s Resolutions is… will you stick with it?
Over New Year’s, I took a trip down to Miami (Florida, not my alma mater) and visited with The Main Event. In addition to some Left 4 Dead and Rock Band 2 playing, we took that time to discuss and speculate on the fantasy epics that we’ve enjoyed so much (and eagerly await the next installment.) He’s more well-read than I am within the genre, and was explaining some about the Mistborn series and the Malazan Book of the Fallen series, particularly how the two handle magic.
While an interesting magic system is not enough to drive a fantasy setting, it does appear to be part of the main hook when getting readers. Likewise, in a fantasy RPG system, this provides an immediate appeal to playing the game if the magic is interesting enough. In systems like Mage: The Ascension/Awakening or Ars Magica where everyone is a magic user, it’s practically a requirement to make the game fun.
To that end, The Main Event and I compiled a short list of different kinds of magic systems. The question thus is:
Loading ...I’m sure many others have been left out, as we compiled this list just on the ones we are aware of. Are there other awesome magic systems out there, in print or otherwise? Enlighten us!
Bedtime Campaign: Pilot Nico's Battlebot!
This post is part of a growing series relating the role playing bedtime stories I make with my kids. I hope you still enjoy them.
Over the holidays, I concluded Nico’s Sword of Dream story. I’m not going to write about it, mostly because I forgot to record them and I don’t remember much from them.
For completeness sake though, here’s a summary of what I do recall before we go into today’s story.
- We explored a dungeon under the Mountain of Weight and found the 3rd piece of the sword.
- Said sword allows one to adventure in the world of dreams.
- In that world, Nico revisited characters from the stories I used to tell him before we went interactive. Some of those characters going back to Nico’s infancy.
- In the last story, I forgot about a bird NPC that was adventuring with Nico. He told me after the story that that character had been there for nothing since it didn’t do anything in the story.
Oh noes! My son has a functional fridge logic detector! Quick, inject more cool!
Time for something different then.
Chatty: All right Nico, what story do we do tonight?
Nico: Can we do a game story again?
Sure, another Super Nico the Laser Knight story?
Hmmm, maybe we could try something new? (Nico is quite conservative, so when he’s ready for change I grab it)
Chatty: How about we try something in the future?
Nico: Ooookay…
All right, what if you were a pilot of a giant Robot with lasers and weapons?
(Intrigued) And missiles?
Of course! You’d be Pilot Nico and you’d own a Mecha.
What’s a Mecha?
Its the name we give to these giant war robots (I know that mecha technically applies to all vehicles in Mangas and Animes)
(Getting into the idea) Cool!
Okay, so you’re a Mecha Mercenary…
Mercenary?
People who get paid to fight in wars
Oh, okay.
So what’s your Robot like?
I don’t know…
What if it has 2 legs and 2 arms like humans and you sit behind a transparent bubble in the robot’s head.
Lets make the bubble indestructible so I don’t get killed by weapon fire.
Good idea. What weapons do you have?
I have a big Bazooka! (Funny, the bazooka was my favorite weapon when I was his age, I think it’s the actual word that we like, plus the potential to blow stuff up).
Nice. Also, you have a laser mounted on your head and you have a gigantic missile launcher mounted on your shoulder.
Yay!
What shall we name your robot Pilot Nico?
Hmmm, Battle Robot! (Robot Bataille in French)
Great name! Okay ready to start?
Yes!
All right so you’re sitting on the ground by a campfire away from the cities. Your robot crouched behind you. You are roasting Hot Dogs on a stick when you hear your radio squeaking. It’s one of your pilot friends. What shall we name him?
I don’t know… Philippe?
How about Pilot Phil?
Great!
So Pilot Phil is calling you for help. He’s being attacked by Extra Terrestrial Pod Bots!
Okay, I climb into my robot, but before I enter the bubble, I stop.
Why?
So I can finish eating my Hot Dog
(Damn, I’ve got a natural Bad Ass here!)
Chatty: Wow! You jump into your robot and you start it. On your radar you see your buddy being attacked by 5 pods in the forest about 1 km away.
I run toward them!
Okay, as you approach, you see that the forest is on fire and that your friend’s robot is highly damaged.
I run faster and I launch a missile at one of the pods.
Your missile streaks from your shoulder launcher and hits one pod and it explodes! All 4 other pods, each bearing a red laser-eye fly toward you now.
I shoot them with my Bazooka
You hit one, two, three of them before they reach you. The last one still flying shoots its laser at you!
I dodge it by jumping up!
Okay, you jump really high and the pod flies right under you.
I drop on it and squash it!
CRUNCH! It’s now a pile of scrap metal stuck under your Mecha’s foot.
Yay!
Pilot Phil thanks you and asks you to help his mecha get to the nearest village where Jack the Mechanic can fix it.
Okay, I help him out.
Cool you get to the mechanic and Pilot Phil gets his robot fixed.
Is the story over dad?
Do you want it to be?
No, just a bit more please!
Of course, when Jack the Mechanic learns you had been fighting Extra Terrestrial pods, he asks you to go and fetch some parts of those pods you destroyed so he can study their technology. In exchange, he’ll upgrade one part of your robot.
(At the point I expected him to go back and fetch parts of robots in the wilds)
Okay… Hmmm. Oh I know! I lift my robot’s foot and give him the pod scraps stuck underneath it.
(That kid will always surprise me)
“Great” says Jack! “That will be very useful”. What do you want me to improve on your mecha?
Can I have better armour?
Sure, Jack bolts a set of Steel armour plates on your mecha’s chest!
Yay!
Good night Pilot Nico.
Good night daddy!
Critical Bits for the week ending 2009-01-10
- New DDI Updates: “Prepare for the Resolution” http://is.gd/eMtl “Fist of Mourning” http://is.gd/eMtt
- “Don’t let the XP grind you down” http://is.gd/eMtD #
- Retweeting @thewanderingmen: Planescape: Torment fans might find this interesting: http://tinyurl.com/77cawc #
- WotC updates: Sylvan Cathedral http://is.gd/eRBL Whose Mug is That? http://is.gd/eRCj Digital Insider http://is.gd/eRCl # [Read the rest of this article]
