Dwarven SEAL Team Neutralizes Terrorist DM Threat: Film At 11
Yesterday, I returned from four days worth of DDXP 2012. As always, I return with many treasured memories. I got to rub elbows with lots of game designers, bloggers, and other cool people. I got to play some great games and playtest the new D&D. I even had the honor of being Patient Zero for the official con crud of DDXP 2012. The thing I’ll remember most, though, was running a table for the Battle Interactive on Saturday night.
Behind The Screen For Perfect Strangers
As some of you who read my column already know, I’m not big on 4e combat. The decision to run some games at DDXP was born from a strange mixture of wanting to help out and curiosity about what it would be like to run a table full of strangers who weren’t used to my crap. The idea didn’t scare me too bad at first. I couldn’t be worse than some of the judges I’d had at these things, I rationalized. I didn’t realize the idea made me anxious until it was far too late. I was to run my first game on Friday morning, and I was nervous enough about it by that point that I wanted out. I wasn’t about to shirk my duties, though. I familiarized myself with the module I was supposed to run the night before, and I reported to the marshaling area at 8am sharp as ordered.
It was about then one of the staff came around and said they needed another warm body for another table. I quickly volunteered, thinking this meant the table needed another player, and I would be able to get out of running the game. On the way to the table, I asked if I needed to go roll up a character. “No,” the staffer said. “You’re running.” No worse off than before, I smiled and reported to my table. They provided me with a printed copy of the module, but I brought the module up on my laptop anyway so I could see the monster stat blocks. I started to get confused, as the pages weren’t matching up between the paper and digital versions. Suddenly, it hit me.
This was a different module. I’d just volunteered to run a game completely cold.
Pelor’s Peg-Leg Protection Protocol
It drives me insane that it’s 2012 and modern awesome digital roleplaying materials aren’t commonplace. I get nerd-rabies just thinking about it.
Please allow me a few moments to beat a long-dead horse: people pirate D&D books all the time, and WotC hates it. It’s very hard to keep it from happening because it’s easy to copy printed books. All it takes to make a pirated PDF of a D&D book is a computer, a scanner, a couple hours, and somebody patient enough to push a button about 200 times. That’ll just make an obscenely large PDF full of bitmapped images of each page. Real dedicated pirates might sit down and type in all the words on each page so the document is searchable. We’re still talking a couple hours’ time here.
I understand WotC’s apprehension about distributing digital copies of their stuff, and I understand them wanting to take steps to stop it, but they’re not really doing anything but making their paying customers crazy. DRM is a wonderful thought, but let’s face it: somebody is going to eventually figure out how to break any protection scheme, followed by copiously bittorrenting an unprotected version. All the DRM in the world isn’t going to stop it. Not offering legitimate digital copies of their books definitely isn’t going to stop it (right now there’s only one way to get a digital version of a D&D book, and it ain’t legal).
So what is going to stop the piracy of WotC’s intellectual property?
To be honest, I doubt anything will solve the problem completely, especially as long as there are print books. Ebook publishers have long used other methods to ensure books don’t get widely pirated, such as custom-generating an individual digitally watermarked copy of an ebook for a customer. I’m much less likely to distribute a copyrighted PDF I bought to random strangers with dubious intent if it has my name and email address on every page.
I’d be happy if we just got that, but I think everyone’s interests would be much better served if WotC came up with a business model where stopping piracy isn’t necessary.
Prepare To Repel Boarders
Piracy-resistant business models already exist in today’s market. What separates them is that they can offer something that you can’t get simply by copying files and data. World of Warcraft and other MMOs are an example of this. There have been cases where the WoW client and even the server software have been pirated. I hope those guys had fun questing all by themselves, because they definitely weren’t getting anywhere near all the game had to offer. Many software companies will check for a valid registration before they offer tech support, access to forums, and other online features.
See a trend there? The Internet gives us options we didn’t have 25 years ago, and WotC already has a lot of the infrastructure they’d need to leverage these options in the form of D&D Insider. The people pirating books probably aren’t going to be giving you any money anytime soon. Providing a subscription model that gives you things you can’t get anywhere else might be a way to turn these people into customers.
That, to me, is pretty powerful stuff.
The D&D Book Of The Future
Remember all that business with the server I was going on about last week where it could spit out lots of cool data? Here’s one idea where that sort of thing would really shine:
Imagine having a digital copy of a D&D book. It’s searchable. Woo hoo and all that. I know you guys are thrilled. We’re at a quality level pirates can provide to us. Now let’s make this thing epic.
All of this stuff would pull in the most recent data from DDI, effectively making each book a living document. We could start by having the book automatically update itself with the latest errata. Handy, but not earth-shattering. Now let’s throw in some tools that make the book’s content easier to use.
There are a lot of little tables in D&D books, and most of the time you’re looking in those either to figure out what you get at X level, or rolling up something random. We could not only take the work out of this, but always have the latest options to choose from in these tables courtesy the data from DDI. Imagine, instead of “Table 1.8: Random Treasure Rewards”, having something that could take in the party’s level and it tells you what they got. The DMG might come with tools that let you do simple things like rolling random encounter tables, or it could randomly generate a whole encounter for you (including a unique map), complete with options you could tweak.
I like the idea of little boxes and apps that perform useful functions, but the real magic in this is these materials could be available right there in the relevant section of the book. For instance, when you’re selecting feats, spells, and other abilities, the PHB could read your character sheet and filter its content or make suggestions based on what prerequisites your character meets. Sure, the Character Builder does some of these things already, but this would give you that kind of power while keeping things in a more human-friendly context. How awesome would it be to look through a spell list in the PHB and drag your choices to your spellbook in the Character Builder?
The magic is that you could do all these cool things, but still use your D&D books in a very similar way to what you’ve done since the late 70′s. And there’s certainly nothing that says these tools couldn’t be all indexed in one place for easy finding, or that hyperlinks couldn’t be made in various parts of the book to access relevant materials. I’d especially like to see these books able to print and export the things you create so your prep time is diminished.
I could go on for hours just coming up with random neat ideas. The possibilities are wide open.
In The Year 2000
This isn’t science fiction. The technology to make this happen already exists. The use of laptop computers and tablets these days is very widespread, even at gaming tables. PDFs can have custom code in them that allows them to access data remotely, as can proprietary ebook formats like those the Kindle, Nook, and iPad. (Though, when doing this, it will be necessary to keep cross-platform compatibility firmly in mind.)
One thing I’ve never quite understood about the D&D Compendium in its current form is that (with your subscription) you get access to information from every 4e book out there regardless of whether you own it. Sure, I like having access to it, but in a situation where you’re trying to get a decent revenue stream, it seems to me like you could mark data on the server with what source it came from and restrict content to only what a given user has purchased (and registered). A strategy like this would incentivize new purchases since all your books (and 3rd party DDI-powered applications!) would update with new material every time you got something new. I understand there are some challenges that have already been discovered about linking physical purchases to unlocking online content, but this might be worth revisiting if the benefits outweigh the problems.
Will it take lots of development work? You bet. But if a lot of the magic happens server-side and requires a DDI account to utilize, you could pirate it all day and it would be largely unusable. Are there some tradeoffs? Sure. Some people won’t like needing an Internet connection to use the books, and there are doubtless other technical considerations and pitfalls. Past those, though, you’ve now got a version of your book that keeps itself current, links itself up to all the other legit D&D products you own, and will be a lot more desirable to have than a pirated 40mb unsearchable PDF file that takes forever to load each page and crashes most tablets.
Don’t try to stop piracy. Make it irrelevant.
Pixellated Hopes For A Digital Tomorrow
I realize I have just pipe-dreamt up an enormously tall order that probably won’t come into being anytime soon. Nobody has what I’ve talked about above, and I sincerely doubt I’m the first to think of this. Whether the piracy-resistant nature of a system like this will make a tabletop gaming company invest the money and manpower into developing and maintaining it remains to be seen.
I have hopes that we’ll see something like this eventually, but I’m not holding my breath. I think effective use of DDI will be the key to WotC’s digital success, digital books or not.
Ultimately, though, I hope I’ve nudged a few minds toward the notion that a company can keep its intellectual property safe in a way that encourages business and greatly increases the user experience of their customers. I hope that’s WotC ultimately shoots for, no matter what solutions they decide to go with.
Photo Credit
Recompiling Digital D&D
A common complaint with 4th Edition has been the online tools that go with it. Now that we have a Next Edition coming, WotC gets another shot at getting their cyberducks in a row. The best part is, this time out they’re asking all of us what we want from D&D. Guess what? I want better online tools! Furthermore, I have a few suggestions. WARNING: Some programmer jargon ahead. Proceed with digital caution.
From The Ground Up
One of the most annoying things about 4e’s digital offerings is one that need to get addressed in the new edition immediately before all the decisions get made: the choice of development platform. 4e’s online tools were at first a PC-only application, then went to Microsoft Silverlight — which caused a lot of issues, especially for gamers using Mac or Linux. The programs themselves were far more bloated and slow than they needed to be, and they weren’t particularly stable.
The new D&D needs to choose something light and scalable to create their next-gen digital tools, and they need to keep cross-platform compatibility and various device form factors in mind. PCs and Macs need to be able to use this stuff, and both iOS and Android smartphones and tablets are common now.
With so many devices and possible configurations of machines using these tools, One Frontend To Rule Them All is going to be unwieldy and unpleasant to use. Developing for multiple platforms can be time-consuming and expensive.
One way to address this issue is to develop an extremely robust backend system to serve out data (using XML, JSON, or some similar format) to a series of relatively lightweight frontends designed for each platform. Especially with a system that’s probably going to rely on pulling data from the Internet, it makes a lot more sense to do the heavy lifting server-side instead of replicating similar functionality for each individual client program.
With a good backend system, developers are now free to write platform-specific apps using tools appropriate for that platform. It also means that when the game rules change, it’s much likelier that a program needs to get changed only once (on the backend) and the client apps may never know the difference.
In simpler terms, I want a giant WotC supercomputer in the sky that programs can ask for things over the Internets. It does the math, and sends the results back to the program. That means the apps we use on our smartphones and tablets don’t have to do much aside from knowing how to ask for data and how to process what it gets back, and that means they’re easy (and cheap) to develop.
API IDSPISPOPD IDKFA
As a software developer, it is my natural tendency to want to make things that are fun and useful. Especially in this day of Internets-capable mobile devices that I can have with me at the gaming table, I’m perfectly happy allowing the tiny computer in my pocket to handle lots of math and randomly generate a level-appropriate encounter at my whim. I like the idea of searching for a game mechanic in multiple books at once, cutting down on research time and reducing the Rules Lawyer Filibuster to only the length of time it takes to argue something pointless.
D&D is a very complex beast, and there’s an awful lot of data associated with pretty much everything. To make tools that are really useful, we need that data in a form we can find quickly.
That big WotC sky-computer I was talking about before? It already exists (to a certain extent). Problem is, we have trouble talking to it.
With D&D Insider, WotC made a big giant database full of monsters, abilities, and items (which many of you access today). To their credit, they’ve been really good about keeping this database up to date with all their latest materials. They also provided us with an API (application programming interface) so code-monkeys like me could query their database for stuff using our own programs. Unfortunately, the API was never very well documented, and seems to have been abandoned at some point. This means it’s really hard to make apps to use with 4e, and the data you can retrieve is pretty limited. There have been some cool hacks out there, but (especially in a community as creative as ours) it’s really hamstrung what we have been able to do.
I think a powerful, easy to access backend system is pretty essential to the success of any digital products for the next edition of D&D, both for internal and 3rd party tool development. I hope it’s at the forefront of their digital team’s minds this time around.
Project Hive-Brain
Everybody has their wishlist for the upcoming edition. I have a few bullet points on mine, but only one that I really want to stand up and fight for:
I want WotC to shore up their digital offerings by encouraging the community to fill in the gaps.
Official polished D&D apps created by WotC would be extremely nice. If I can’t have that, I want WotC to let us ENCOURAGE us to make them.
Ideally, I’d like to see WotC showcasing popular D&D apps — even buying out/sponsoring/giving its blessing to/unofficially adopting really good ones that provide for its customers’ needs. It would spur a lot of development and raise the morale of the community, and in return their game could now do things it couldn’t before. If WotC needs them to a particular specification in order to get the Official D&D Stamp Of Approval, my guess is a lot of developers would comply.
It’d be great if we, as 3rd party developers, could work more closely with WotC on our projects. I don’t know what form this would take. It might mean giving us access to speak with their IT team, or designating someone (either in-house or from the community) to act as a developer liaison. This isn’t one of those projects where you can determine everything everyone will need at the start. Things will change, and being able to relay these changes to someone who can make it happen is a huge boon to our community. Whatever happens, better communication would be a really welcome thing and would smooth out a lot of problems.
Allowing 3rd party development to flourish means that the reasons we don’t have good digital D&D tools no longer include WotC having insufficient staff, time, or budget to make them. Our hobby has a stereotype for a reason. The sheer amount of computer science in our community is staggering. Let’s put it to good use.
End Of Line
I find it amusing that the R&D team keeps talking about the new D&D as a core system that you can attach modules to so you can play they game you want to play and it’ll all work together.
That’s basically what I’m proposing with this whole big backend/little client idea. I’m sure everyone would accept the idea based on nothing but how accurate the analogy is, but I do really think it’s a good idea (and a commonly used practice). It is, though, just one idea and I’m certain there are those who will disagree with me. If you do disagree, or if you have some other ideas, let’s hear them.
At the end of the day, I just want WotC to make sure their digital offerings help them to make D&D Next the game everybody wants to play, rather than being annoying. With so many potential play styles and other factors in play, having something that can do the work for us is going to be necessary.
TL;DR beep beep boop 110011010011
It Slices, It Dices, It Possibly Does The THAC0
I’m sure by now you’ve heard the news. Beyoncé Knowles has given birth to a new edition of Dungeons and Dragons, and the Internets are ablaze. The epic ears of the Wizards of the Coast are now listening to user feedback more than ever before, and in their direction everyone’s hopes and dreams for their favorite game have been launched. The system is rumored to be many things, two of the most common of these being “just another money grab” and “modular”. As my experiences with the R&D team over the past couple years have not included any signs of them being were-packrats who hunt shinies when the moon is full, I can only speculate about the game’s modularity. As it happens, that is the thing that gives me the most hope and the most worry about the upcoming changes to D&D.
Recycle, Reduce, Revenant
When the day-star shines, I am a computer programmer. People of my class are usually pretty familiar with the concept of modularity. Those of us who are not tend to either be unemployed or promoted to management positions. I love writing modular code, and there is a very specific reason why: I am incredibly lazy. I want to write something I can reuse a bunch of times in a bunch of different situations. I want other code I write (or *gasp* code someone else writes!) to be able to use this thing I made without having to modify anything. I hate redoing things for no reason. It’s why I don’t much care for MMO’s.
If I want to stick the same menu at the top of every webpage I write, I’ll write the menu code once and put it in a reusable module. Of course, to do this, you need to make your code ready to use modules, and that means you’re probably going to have to lay down some ground rules. These would include things like knowing what to give the module to make it do things, and knowing what to expect the module to give back when it’s done. It probably also should include some means of keeping the module from accidentally blowing everything up if you get back something completely unexpected from it. It’s kind of like loaning a car to your teenage son, and when he brings it back it’s full of zombies. He is SO GROUNDED.
One major advantage of writing code in this way is that it’s possible (although frequently not easy) to pop off an existing module and put something entirely different in its place. It likely will do similar things, and it may work much better for whatever purpose you had in mind. However, changes to the programs that used the old module might need to get made in order to accommodate the new module’s use. It might expect different things from you, or give you different stuff back. This time, the car might come back full of zombie mermaids. Where the hell does your son go at night?
This Is Not Computer Science 101 What Are You Doing
Nobody’s really quite sure what specific parts of the The Next Version of D&D are going to be modular, but a lot of the above principles will still apply regardless of whether we’re talking about computer programs or game rules.
There’s probably going to be a barebones set of rules for the new game. It may be completely playable all on its own, but I suspect that we’ll start by using a recommended set of starter modules for various game functions. One of the major questions for me in all this is how deep this particular rabbit hole goes. “Modular” could mean literally anything.
Will they have a combat system that uses a battlemat that you can swap out for one that doesn’t?
Will there be 4e style magic, Vancian magic, and a mana point based system?
Another interesting question: does every player follow the same rules, or can individual players choose what style of [your module here] they want to use for their PC?
Whatever it is they let us fiddle with, though — there is a price…..
The Price Of Flexibility
I’ve been on several projects in which people want an incredibly wide range of deliverables. As I have gained XP in coding (and scar tissue), I have learned that building a degree of flexibility into one’s code is a very smart move that tends to save one’s butt.
However, as the complexity of a project grows, so does the amount of time it takes to develop it. I’d love to shoot for the moon and be able to tweak every little thing, but I’d like to play this game before 2050. That’s not the worst part, though.
The other problem with a complex project is the number of things that can go wrong with it — especially if you’re going to be swapping out major portions of functionality. One would think just getting something up and functional is the hard part, but the real work comes in squishing all the little bugs. So often, problems will appear sporadically and be difficult to track. This is one major reason why a nonzero quantity of my hair is now grey.
I absolutely love the concept of The Next D&D letting us swap out things we don’t like and maybe putting stuff we do in. It concerns me that every feature they do this with will have to first be designed to work with every other iteration and combination of other modules, and then it’s time to find all those little bugs. However, as I spend a large part of my day finding and squishing bugs, I know it can be done. I also know that bugs don’t always bring the entire system down, and may just be temporarily annoying. (Why the hell is that text blue?? It’s not supposed to be blue!)
One very encouraging part of all this to me is the fact that we’re probably looking at a nice large open playtest. As the Open Source community is fond of repeating, ”given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” I’m not sure I completely buy into that statement, but I do think having an army of gamers reporting in to WotC to tell them what worked, what didn’t, what was fun and awesome, and what ruined the evening BEFORE the game is launched is an extremely good idea.
Of course, then we start to run into the problem where no matter how flexible a system is, it still can’t satisfy everyone. But that is another story.
Everybody Kill Each Other
I recently started playing Star Wars: The Old Republic. Those familiar with BioWare’s other games in the last 5 years or so are no doubt used to their conversation system, in which sometimes “good” and “bad” choices can be made. There are in-game effects for these choices, in addition to simply making the NPC you are talking to angry or happy. In the KOTOR and Mass Effect series, you get what are effectively light side/dark side points. In the Dragon Age series, your companions’ loyalty to you is affected by whether they approve of what you do. The Old Republic uses both of these systems, and is differs from BioWare’s other games in that (in group settings) there are multiple people who may make diametrically opposed choices. It settles this at random, and the outcome it chooses is “canon” to your adventure (but you get points/loyalty based on your choice, not the one the computer picked).
And that, my friends, is how I jettisoned an engineer and his crew into space against my will, and subsequently got chewed out by his friend that had served with them for a decade. This is why you shouldn’t adventure with evil people with doilies over their eyes. This is also, purely by coincidence, why I am going to talk about intraparty combat.
Usually It Sucks
I have tried my best, but I cannot think of any instance in which I have had party members fight with each other and had a good time. Admittedly, I have experienced a couple fights between party members that we all look back on and laugh, but in the moment tempers were flaring and uncouth words were being used.
My least favorite of these are usually the “you did something evil, and I am sworn to fight evil, so now I have to fight you!” lawful stupid battles. Over the years, there have been several occasions in which I have wanted to pour chloroform into a dicebag and hold it over a player’s mouth for this. [Read the rest of this article]
Vanir’s New Year’s Gaming Resolutions (2012 Edition)
It’s that special time of year again. You know, the one where you run out of times of the year. This year was a significant improvement for me in a lot of ways. I got laid off from a horrible job, and almost immediately got a really good job. I got a gaming group together. I’ve had a lot of new, awesome experiences this year, and my gaming life is much improved. That being said, here’s what I plan to do this year.
Playing With My Boy!!!!!
My son is old enough to play board games now, and many of his Christmas presents this year are ones his parents get to play with him. I couldn’t be happier. I’m going to enjoy this for as many years as I can, this one included. With any luck, I won’t ever have to stop!!!!
It also doesn’t hurt that this is going to get my wife playing some games too. I’m certainly not going to pass that up. I always loved playing board games as a family when I was a kid. I suspect I will like it now also.
More Small Systems
Phil and Dave have been encouraging me to try out some non-D&D RPG systems for some time now, and this fall I got to do just that at DC Gameday. I tried out Microscope, Fiasco, and a couple variants on the Cortex+ system. 4e and I have had some issues for a while, so it was pretty reinvigorating to see some other approaches to both roleplay and combat.
This year, I have a hitlist of games to try, in no particular order:
- Lady Blackbird
- Pathfinder (I just wanna see if it really does feel like 3.75, because I loved 3.5 so)
- Leverage
- Dresden Files RPG
- Don’t Rest Your Head
- LOTS OF OTHERS
Prep Prep Preppity Prep Prep
I had more than a couple days this year where I asked the group if board games would be OK instead of D&D. Sometimes it was just that I was fried and didn’t feel like anybody was going to have a good time if I ran the game, but there was a lot of procrastination in the guise of “writer’s block” that found me the morning of game night (game morning?) without the vaguest idea of what to run the party through.
I realize it’s probably not a good idea to plan the story out too far in advance (as the players frequently have other ideas), but having some combat encounters prepared might not hurt. Having NPC’s with basic talking points, motivations, and other important info written down for when one of my players manages to catch me off guard is another place I intend to do some work. I’ve also seen some excellent suggestions from our readers on coming up with a battle plan for monsters so as to make better use of their powers, which will hopefully ease my “the players kill everything I throw at them with ease” problem.
Get More Experience Behind The DM Screen
I’ve had the good fortune to run a fairly regular game every other week for almost a year now, but I still frequently feel like a complete novice. Admittedly, I have a group packed to the brim with wildly creative players with an uncanny knack for finding something that causes me to rethink everything on the fly. I love playing with them this much, but I do occasionally feel like I’m DMing in 10x gravity. We’ve all been together long enough that they know how I run the game, and I am starting to get a sense for what form the Destructor will take (even if I can’t stop it). My players endured a lot of my strange experiments and indulgences over the past year. This year, I want to take these experiences and start making adventures that are fun for them to play and fun for me to run.
I’d also like to try my hand at running some convention games this year. I’ve been in karate since I was a teenager, and in my mind this feels like a tournament: nothing shows you where you need work the most like putting yourself in a situation where you need to use your skills against complete strangers. Hopefully, this time, failure doesn’t equal a boot to the head. There’s also that bit where I get to meet and have fun with new people and support the conventions I love to attend each year. Admittedly, I am pretty nervous about running con games. However, I think back to some of the really terrible ones I’ve had over the years, and I’m pretty sure I can’t possibly be that bad. I hope.
Surround Myself With Inspiration
One of the worst feelings as a blogger or a DM is to scan your internal database for ideas and find none. Usually all it takes is just to see a cool idea I can build upon or to talk to someone and I can go from there, but getting that initial spark going is painful sometimes.
Simply put, I’m going to read a ton of books. I’m going to catch up on all the movies and TV shows that I’ve been “meaning to get to”. I’m going to try to get more involved in the RPG bloggers’ community, and throw my hand into creating and building cool things. If it’s anything like writing, there’s a great deal of inertia involved. I’d like to move forward, and always have some ideas in the chamber.
Confidence!
Ultimately, I do have an ulterior motive behind wanting to do most of the above — I want to be able to relax and have fun behind the screen. I want to be able to sell my NPCs and hook my players into my story. I want to run combat and not worry about if I’m screwing something up. I want everybody at the table, including me, to be excited about what’s going on.
I’ve noticed it’s hard to do any of these things when you’re self-conscious about everything you’re doing.I want to settle into this role so this sort of thing can live in the back of my mind instead of the front.
Remember The Point
It is awful easy to get embroiled in trying new games and organizing things and learning other things, completely forgetting why you do any of this. I want, this year, to remember why I play with others — I want to spend time with them. I want to bond with them and share awesome experiences with them. I want to have fun with them. This goes for my son, my wife, my gaming group, my Internets friends from the Bloggerlands — everyone.
This realization was one of the best parts of this year for me.
Hope everybody has a safe and happy new year, and I’ll see you all when the calendar looks different.
Photo Credit
The Island Of Misfit Christmas Article Ideas
It was my intention to write a funny Christmas article this week. It didn’t turn out so well.
The Ed-In-A-Box
‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the Realms
Not a creature was stirring, not even Ed Helms*
…
The dicebags were hung by the chimney with care
In hopes that Ed Greenwood soon would be there.
…
On, Mystra! On, Pelor! On, Oghma! On, Tempus!
On, Telos! On, Orcus! On, Selûne! On,Vecna!
* yes, this was my first clue something was amiss
At some point, the magical Christmas safeties were triggered, and my hands refused to type any more for the good of all mankind. [Read the rest of this article]
The Grass Is Always Greener Where The Drama Llama Grazes
LOL U MAD BRO?
This week, I’m going to try to write the column I thought I was writing last week about roleplaying better characters. Today’s topic, in particular, is how to avoid playing one-dimensional characters and how to breathe a little life into your PCs using simple tools you can find in your own home. Unless, of course, I realize I’m talking about something else.
Now In 3-D RoleplayVision
One of the most common problems I’ve seen with some roleplaying is that the characters are very one-dimensional. The player has a very limited idea of what the character might do in a given situation. On one end of the limited-idea spectrum, the player is frustrated and bored with their character who exists only to stab things with a pointy. On the other, the lawful, neutral, chaotic, and other miscellaneous unaligned stupids come out to play.
Let’s pause and give the players of these PCs the benefit of the doubt. A given <insert sociopathic tendency here> character may well not be that way intentionally. The character may only have one or two distinguishing features, or their backstory may describe a particularly traumatic event that led to the character’s eventual career choice. I will freely admit that if my parents were killed by orcs when I was a lad, I might hate orcs. Possibly forever. I might even devote my life to killing orcs whenever possible.
That being said, a lot of players with this PC might attack orcs on sight, no matter the circumstances. Metagaming to be a team player aside, I don’t think is (usually) a realistic way to roleplay a PC.
Am I A Good Roleplayer?
A couple of weeks ago, one of my players sends me an IM. This person started the conversation off a little sheepish and evasive, but eventually we got to it: “Am I a good roleplayer?” You have to understand, this player has provided for me some of my favorite moments of our campaign, and I’ve seen them hold together an otherwise disastrous game of Fiasco. My answer was something to the effect of “HAHALOL” or “U SO CRAZY”, and I meant every capitalized letter. I asked why they were pondering such a question, and part of it was just good old fashioned social insecurity (which I have plenty of experience having!). Some of it was from not having played D&D at a table having to consider the opinions of other people. I assured my player that they were, in fact, a good roleplayer.
Of course, such an assurance begs the question of whether or not I actually know what I am talking about. Let’s find out, shall we?
Roleplay, Defined
A “roleplaying game” in this day and age can mean a lot of things. A lot of videogames and tabletop battle simulations are classified as RPGs. Skill in tactical miniatures combat is cool (and perhaps more a more useful life skill if we are invaded by aliens who live by a code of honor that makes them wait their turn before attacking), but that’s not really what I’m talking about. Some would argue that simply playing the role of a defender/tank or leader/healer is, in fact, roleplaying. I would not disagree, but that’s not what I’m talking about either.
The “roleplaying” I am talking about happens when a player pretends to be their character and do things in-game that their character would do.
I Ruin Everything In The Name Of Justice
Roleplay is where the magic is in a D&D game for me. It’s the thing that can separate a particular character from every other character in the universe with identical stats and abilities. It can be done in any number of ways, which is probably why it’s so easy to do in a way that irritates the rest of the group.
Before being adopted by World of Warcraft as the official class of PvP win-lasers and invulnerability, the Paladin of D&D editions past has traditionally been the subject of choice for bad roleplaying cliche. Playing a paladin was the quickest way to get a player to see everything in ultra-high-contrast shades of black and white. The willingness to recklessly shed blood in the name of Goodness and Truth at the first sign of anything doing anything even remotely Notgood will live in infamy forever. It’s times like these that I’m glad 4e de-emphasized alignment. You give people a label to slap on something, and they’ll ride it all the way into the ground. This is older than time, and is known as being Lawful Stupid.
In much the same vein is Chaotic Stupid, in which a player roleplays his PC with total disregard for anyone’s safety or sanity. I wish I had a nickel for every time I committed this sin. “I just wanted to see what would happen!” is the battle-cry of the Chaotic Stupids. One could justify this behavior by declaring that their PC was simply mad. I hope one has a high AC and many hitpoints.
I don’t consider any of the above to be good roleplaying, even if it wasn’t sufficiently annoying to warrant being bludgeoned to death with a PHB. Why? Because the character in this case has been reduced to something very one-dimensional. It’s more of a schtick than anything else, and it tends to define the whole character.
I Ruin Everything In The Name Of Faithful Roleplay
OK, then. One-dimensional characters aren’t good. So what is?
In my opinion, good roleplaying comes from getting to know your character. Where they come from, what was their life like growing up, why they chose their career, things like that. I like writing a backstory for my character whether or not anyone else is going to read it, just so I can know my PC better and feel comfortable in his shoes when it’s time to be him.
This can go wrong too.
One problem I’ve always had as a player is knowing when to let someone else have the spotlight. If I’ve got a fully armed and operational PC with complete backstory and motives, I tend to want to wander around town and interact with people (and by that, I usually mean get in trouble somehow). This is a ton of fun for me, but perhaps not for people who don’t care how successful my advances are with the mayor’s daughter or if I can escape from the balcony using only my pants and Ghost Sound.
One double-edged sword with well-fleshed-out PCs is that they have motivations — ones that may conflict with the party’s goals. If you’ve got a good DM and communicate these conflicts beforehand, this can result in some really interesting and fun situations to play out. It can also result in the whole table screaming at each other when the rogue changes allegiances mid-battle and backstabs the ranger.
Ulterior Motives
I knew about 10 words into this article that I wasn’t going to end up writing about good roleplaying. I was going to write about being a good player. I’ll write more in-depth about roleplaying sometime soon. (Provided I don’t get distracted and decide to start talking about 3e’s grappling mechanic instead. OOH SHINY!)
Pretty much every problem I discussed above has a common thread: if it went bad, it was likely because of poor communication and/or selfishness. A good party acts as a team. If one person derails everything (Lawful Stupid reasons or not), there’s likely to be consequences. Fun is not likely to be one of those consequences.
That being said, it is fun to push the envelope a little bit. Grab the spotlight once in awhile. Gently shake the rails the plot is on.
This is still your story, after all. Just remember to share.
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Epic-Tier Anything Sucks
There’s been a lot of talk around here lately about epic tier games in 4e (and how it isn’t very much fun, and how we’d all rather have our ever-regenerating livers torn out each morning by eagles than play characters over level 20). I haven’t had any experience with epic tier play in 4e yet, but from the sound of it I cannot wait. I have, however, dabbled in the cosmos-shaking power of epic level characters in previous editions. It sucked too. Let me tell you about it.
In The Beginning
I first started regularly playing D&D when I was 13. It was a time of great fun and overwhelming stupidity. Space hamsters were hilarious, mind flayers sucking peoples brains out were hilarious,and Grease spells were ULTRA hilarious. It was a time when my friend had 2nd Edition books and I had 1st Edition books, and we decided to use them all. For a time, it was enough to roam around with low-level characters, exploring dungeons, slaughtering demihumans, and hoarding treasure. One day, one of us discovered that we could multiclass our character. My friend chose to dual-class his Fighter/Illusionist. I decided to go for broke, and go for Fighter/Cleric/Magic-User. It quickly became apparent to me that gaining levels was going to take an extraordinarily long time, as my friend’s character was far outstripping mine. I do not actually know how they were both adventuring together, as there were only two of us and I’m assuming somebody had to DM. Perhaps we got my grandmother to do it, or one of the dogs. I’m not sure.
What I do know is that we got greedy. And it was the beginning of the end. Of the beginning. [Read the rest of this article]
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