lategaming

Every now and then, someone asks on the RPG.net forums…

What’s the best supers game?

and every time the Mutants and Masterminds people come out of the woodwork to tell us that M&M is not a d20 game. It doesn’t have levels, hit points or attacks of opportunity. Now…this last one is a D&D specific thing but Levels and Hit points are a staple of D&D games.

Mutants and Masterminds has ‘Power Level’ which affects the following:

• Attack Bonus
• Defense Bonus
• Save Difficulty
• Toughness Save
• Fortitude, Reflex and Will Saves
• Skill Rank
• Ability Scores

It also tells you how many points you can spend on powers.

Also, on page 25…

As the heroes earn additional power points through adventuring, the GM
may wish to increase the campaign’s power level, allowing players to spend
some of their earned power points to improve traits already at the cam-
paign’s limit. Not raising the power level forces player characters to diversify,
improving their less powerful or effective traits, and acquiring new ones,
but it can make the players feel constrained and the heroes to start looking
the same if it isn’t raised occasionally. Increasing power level by one for
every 15 earned power points is a good rule of thumb, depending on how
quickly the GM wants the player characters to improve in overall power.

Hm, so it has levels, but they’re not used in the traditional way. You start out at a certain level and ideally fight foes of a similar level. It’s a bit like starting out making D&D characters at a certain level so you can play a particular scenario and then never really bothering about the XP thing. I dislike XP systems a lot.

As for Hit Points. It seems it’s true. There’s no Hit Points. There are ’saves’ against damage ad things called ‘Damage Conditions’ but without buying the book, I’m unlikely to find out what they really mean.

I’m still not struck on the Feats but it has improved since M&M1e. For my money, however, I’m going to stick to trying to use Wild Talents.

mj: I do wonder how superheroes pay their way
aidan: Ever see ‘Dead Like Me’ ?
mj: one or two eps
aidan:They addressed that a bit.
mj: didn’t they all have to have full time jobs?
aidan: Pretty much
mj: See, that would suck…
aidan: shrug
aidan: But it’s realistic
aidan: In my character’s case, his wife probably earns a substantially larger wage.
mj: We know our Solo works at Borders. But wife is ‘generic lecturer’
aidan: Yes.
aidan: Let me pick a subject.
mj: I reckon we should attach the R-map as a graffle on the page as well. Thought is that when we add new material we can update. I’m going to want to add in stuff is all.
aidan: Yes.
aidan: Economics.
aidan: http://www.econ.lsa.umich.edu/econ/
aidan: She’s not tenured.
aidan: His daughter is in Kindergarten.
mj: What ages are you?
aidan: He’s 35, she’s 34, daughter is 5.
mj: what else do we need to cover? Siblings?? Living family? Best friend?
aidan: Yep. He has an older sister. Parents are both still alive.
aidan: Friends: he has a good relationship with the other staff at the store, but not much beyond normal colleagueship. His best friend moved to Los Angeles after college, to practice law. They were both law students. My character didn’t want to be a lawyer after going through law school. He got involved in the 1994 congressional elections toward the end of college. Which was how he met his wife.

Next, we give them all names…

SI 1995/3297, also known as “The Duration of Copyright and Rights in Performances Regulations 1995″, this UK law came into effect on January 1st 1996. At its most basic, it extended the copyright for any written work from 50 years after the author’s death, to 70 years. Any work which had already become public domain prior to 1st January 1996 remained public domain.

H. G. Wells died on the 13th August, 1946. All of his works thus missed becoming public domain in the UK by 225 days, and now remain copyright to his estate until 2016. Bizarrely, his works are public domain in the USA.

We’re currently investigating whether it is still feasible to publish War of the Worlds: Earth after learning of this curious quirk of legality.

This post surprised me

But I think I’d have a real ethical problem role-playing in a world that was Christian-realist. - some dude on RPGnet

There are reasons why I find this odd.

Most gamers will play in a setting where some sort of religion is real. Think about it, this covers any fantasy setting which refers to gods from which player characters can draw magical power or where faith in a god has a direct effect (I’m thinking D&D, Runequest and Ars Magica here)

Ars Magica is certainly as “Christian-realist” as Testament. As are most of the World of Darkness settings.

As someone who would self-describe to humanism (note the lower case ‘h’), I don’t believe in any religions per se because I don’t believe in supernatural mumbo-jumbo that can’t be measured or experienced by me. I’m willing to subscribe to the doctrine of faith in science because a significant amount of science has been demonstrated to me first hand, I’ve practiced it’s lore and, perhaps the best reason of all, it is peer-reviewed.

Why would someone have problems with playing in a world that was Christian-realist?

Well, it has to be some deep seated bigotry there. Why else would someone have that reaction? Did someone persecute him? Or did he just look at the atrocities performed worldwide for the last two thousand years in the name of Christianity?

At it’s fundaments, Christianity isn’t a bad idea. It’s essentially ‘love god, and love other people’. It’s a social religion in that aspect. But like all good ideas, humans manage to fuck them up.

Testament, Creed and Rapture are all about how the GOOD people are gone. These are the people who lived their lives according to the tenets of ‘love god and love other people’. Chance are, these are not your common-or-garden Christians that you’ve come to know and resent. They’re not going to be holier than thou. They’re not going to be the sort who walk past a homeless person without giving up their coat or whatever. So in essence, the people who behave badly to others, Christian or not, are still on Earth.

It’s not a game about religion. It’s not a game saying that Christianity is right. It’s about saying that something has happened to the world and the truly good people have been taken from it (by God or aliens or whatever, it doesn’t matter). And it’s just the rest of us who are left behind. Someone in the thread mentioned a Left Behind RPG. I don’t really know what that is.

Forget Iron Man.

PJ pointed me at the new Hancock trailer.
It’s true, Hancock has gone from being a “Wild Wild West” kind of camp nonsense movie to a movie I’d really like to see and a game I’d like to run. That said, Iron Man, much more than the Fantastic Four or Spider Man has always been a bit of a dick when he was Tony Stark - and I loved reading his stories for it.

(He also links to Superdickery)

Superheroes are often dicks.

In the first Watchtower game, there were really three ‘dick’ moments. None of these were bad on the part of the player and they made for some excellent role-playing moments but they represented times when the superhero did things that were unexpected.

• Gavin’s first character, Atomic III, was a non-powered descendant of a dynasty of superheroes. He worked hard, he built himself some superpower-providing devices and he started doing what superheroes do - prowling around trying to find people to pummel. In the end this played out very well as he went a little power mad, fueled by his ‘power inadequacy’ where, even though he was the most powerful of the heroes due to his devices, it wasn’t enough. He ended up becoming a villain and threw a train at the player characters (one of whom were superstrong or supertough). Then he killed their healer. Ouch. Gavin has an amazing sense of comedy for these kinds of things.
• Gavin’s second character, Wraith, was a cross between Batman and Hawkeye (but ten times cooler than Hawkeye). His actual power was the ability to be invisible and undetectable. He could sneak into places, collect evidence that was inadmissible in court and then when the criminal was acquitted, despite being guilty, Wraith would follow him home and thrash him into unconsciousness. On one absolute gem of a game, Wraith sneaked into a woman’s house (he suspected she was the supervillainess Malice) and then when nothing untoward happened (she got home, put away her groceries and sat down to watch TV), rather than sneaking out, he just turned off his power in the middle of her living room. He appeared, she freaked out and he admitted he was her creepy stalker. Turns out she was actually Malice. Go figure.
• John Dean’s character, Ebony, discovered that his teleport skill also worked for time travel. Note to other GMs: I was a lot younger and lot stupider and had never really given unlimited time travel to players before. The ‘dick’ moments came when the player characters, after traveling into the past and modifying the future just….couldn’t….stop…..going….back to tweak things to their preference. Jade Dragon lost his restaurant, then got it back. Wraith discovered he was dating and co-habiting with Malice but had no memory of their many-month relationship. I think they all deserved to be ‘dicks’ but the biggest dick of the lot was the GM. Oops.

In the more recent WatchTower game, they all had their fair share of dickery though Paul’s character, Balance (the priest with uncanny matter shaping abilities) probably had more moments which, though caused for the most part by the possession and emotion control powers of the villain, were roleplayed brilliantly. Like when he completely blasted the whole team and caused their flesh to slough off. That was beautiful. Or when he sealed mind-controlled proto vampires in an underground tunnel (rather than seeing if they could be cured). He was decisive, let’s be honest.

I like flawed characters, especially in superhero games because they can be flawed in much more effective ways. If you’re a dick in a Zombi game, then no-one cares because you could just be left outside at some point and that would really ruin your picnic. If you’re a dick in The 23rd Letter, again, there’s a damage limitation as even psychics don’t get an easy break. It ain’t all fun being an Esper.

But in a Superhero game, you’re often the possessor of a unique ability (at least within your team) and that means you’ve pretty special. When you’re pissed off and do something about it, people notice.

We (Aidan and I) going to try playing a Superhero game online in the next couple of weeks. One player, one GM (for a while at any rate). I’ve asked Aidan to think of a character and some of the things he wants to do, or components of the world we will be playing in. I’d have asked him to do it in Wild Talents colour codes but, frankly, I’m not very keen on them and also he doesn’t have the book so it would be impenetrable to him. (It does make me want to create a ‘world builder’ for superhero games. I have it in my head how to do it (and it could be done in software too - a simple web form, oh yeah!))

I wonder about the playability of a world where there is one superbeing. And he’s the player character. Who are you foes? Do we spend more time looking at interpersonals? Do we add ‘reality’ while accepting that there is one guy in the world who can chew through steel? How does he live? How does he pay his way? Handouts?

I don’t know what Aidan will bring to the table but I’m excited about the opportunity to play a bit more.

It’s always nice to get some kudos from people you respect and Balbinus on RPG.net has come through again with Creed/Testament/Rapture - queries and comments.

He has a few comments, mostly clarifications and does make me realise that the character sheet I provided for Creed was entirely inadequate. Or, if I meant something else I should have noted it by pre-filling in one of the sheets.

It puts me in the mood to work on something - like tidying up Creed and maybe even finishing the text for Rapture. I’ve already got so much on my plate (getting a new job, house stuff, kids, never mind working on War of the Worlds) that it should be the last thing on my mind. Ahem.

It was also cross-posted to TheRPGSite. I reckon I should hire Balbinus as my publicist.

What the fuck is this all about?

Damned if I know.

This weekend I was busy with family duties but still managed to do a bit of work on WoTW:Earth. Most notably taking the draft ideas Aidan sent through and turning them into mechanics and flavour.

Collaboration is hard.

I’m very conscious that I’m an ignorant so-and-so with strong opinions and a jeadstrong way of doing things. One sure-fire way to motivate me into completing something is to provide me with something that is not the way I’d do it. This isn’t to say that it’s wrong or that my way is actually better, but just the fact that it’s different is enough for me to work on something to illustrate my way.

Am I bloody minded enough to expect mine will be used? I’d like to think not but I think that even after all these years, I find it hard to work with others. Case in point: the lifepath systems we’re building for WotW: Earth can be done in a number of ways. I received Aidan’s notes and I wrote mine out and sent them on and I did say and will continue to say that it’s a work in progress. I don’t know, however, whether my personality (my bloodymindedness) can be put down by soliciting comment and inviting co-work. I’d have to get Aidan to be honest here about whether I am an ogre to work with.

Writing is hard

Harking back to the post on Quality of Play that I made the other day - I need to be very enthused by a game before I’d write for it (which is why I guess I don’t get paid to write - though I’ve never solicited paid writing work nor been asked). When enthused (the Solo Play part), I tend to be quite prolific and productive with writing which is why Crucible Design only published three games and they were the games that I conceived and wrote.

The irony of course is that my most productive times were when I was busy. I worked a 9-5, had a girlfriend, had a weekly game (or two) and would often have to do additional work at the weekends for my job. But I managed to hammer out The 23rd Letter. The next most productive person was Colin who had the job, the girlfriend, the hobbies and managed to do some excellent work on the Projects for The 23rd Letter. Everyone else was either in full time education (and no, it is not more work) or unemployed and getting writing out of them was impossible.

Vision is easy

What it tells me is that it’s easy to have a vision about something. It’s easy to think up a soundbite of a concept and pitch it at a small group of friends. You can wow them with some names you thought up, maybe even some basic sketches that are a subsititute for ‘real work’. The ‘Ideas’ page for LateGaming is incredibly long and I know that perhaps only 10% of them will ever have any real work done on them (and yeah, you can ask and no, they’re not all my ideas).

What this means is that in over five years of ‘writing’, we produced three books and they were the brainchild of (and written by) one person. We had plans for other books and games but none of them were ever completed and few of them got anywhere beyond the most basic concepts. Fancy playing a pirates game? We intended to write one (about 5 years before 7th Sea came out). Cowboys? Check. Corporate Superspies? Check. Commercially-minded Superheroes? Check. But I think that natural selection weeded out the weaker ideas.

The conclusion to this is going to be ‘What about Qabal?’

What about Qabal

It’s just a little too big for me and I need to get back into the flow of writing, raise the bar in terms of production values for the next books I bring out and re-learn a lot of terms. I need to ask friends who do design work for a living to help me with the look of the books and help me visualise the whole process. And all of this before I put any more pen to paper.

At the moment, I have smaller fish to fry.

I spent a couple of hours in the attic of my parent’s house excavating some old books. I have a notion to sell some of them considering that I’ve not looked at them in a decade but as I continued to browse I don’t think I could find one that I would seriously get rid of. Games like “Chivalry and Sorcery” and “Bushido”. I know the last time I looked at this pile was around 1995 because the most recent game in the attic was Nightspawn by Palladium which was published in 1995. I moved out in 1996 and the books were put into storage (and to this day I’ve still not read Nightspawn).

More importantly were the other things I found. Games and stories I wrote nearly a decade before I put pen to paper for The 23rd Letter. Pictures I drew of “SuperTeams” from my superhero games. Maybe a photo or two of the notebooks I would bring with me to school (we’re talking about the 80s here) and spend my lunchtimes and free study classes writing game materials and stories in. All personal to me.

I’m going to bore the shit out of some of you by reproducing some of them here in a new category called “Archaeology” so you can avoid them if you like.

Levi Kornelson came up with this theory and posted it on TheRPGSite:
 

1. The text inspires “solo play”.
2. Personal play creates group play.
3. Group play feeds back into personal play and pushes more group play.

The punch-line is:

The quality of solo play often matters more
to actually getting a game
than the quality of group play.

Effectively your enthusiasm for a game when reading it, or when generating characters or when making plots is directly proportional to the pleasure you will have when playing it with others and has a much greater effect than the interactive play.

I’d have to agree. The games I have run for others I enjoyed thoroughly.

Is your enjoyment of the game influenced by the ’solo play’ of others within the game? Of course it is. Other who do not enjoy the game will make their negative feelings plain and, correspondingly, the actions of the solo individual within the group dynamic have a much greater effect.

They weren’t kidding when they said that gaming was a social hobby (and not an anti-social one). It absolutely depends on the collaboration of individuals to make the best benefit for everyone.