Ill-Fitted Suit

Before getting into what I want to whine about, talk about Virtual True Dungeon 9.

I did four runs.

Friday, solo Hardcore, Druid.

I still am gunshy on solo Nightmare even more so as first run of a dungeon.  So, I went HC and went with AC42 in a missile build.  Basically just murdered things with a hammer, usually big, sometimes small.  I cast three spells:  Neutralize Poison, two cures where I didn’t really need to cast either.

It’s so different when dungeons end on a puzzle room.  My general takeaway was that Butterfly Cloak becomes massively more useful as just need to limp into room 7 in order to have chance at win.

Solo remains really awkward as DMs are used to hanging out with a group of people rather than just one person for a long, long time.  I figured out first puzzle, which was ludicrously simple, and third puzzle, which was much simpler than what I expected.  Second was more challenging because I wasn’t given any real idea of what I was trying to do.

Friday, Gilligan’s Island Nightmare, Monk.

We didn’t organize well our group runs.  At last hours, people threw together Gilligan’s Island themed builds.  Our bard was the radio.  DM worked with us well, doing things like having commercials between rooms.  My Mary Ann build was intentionally “envious” – underpowered, yet monk is powerful and room 7 puzzle means party strength matters way less.

Saturday, Epic, Paladin.

I went with AC49 paladin Guarding two (barbarian, druid).  We did fine.

Sunday, No Spellcasters Epic(!), Dwarf.

I continue to try to run Butterfly Cloak, after all, only one save mattered.  AC45.  Usually we do Nightmare, but Epic made sense when we didn’t have to deal out massive damage in order to win.  It was fine.  Room 7 was boring at this point, and our acting was terrible as we wanted to fail.

Lot of the same complaints as VTD7 and VTD8:  why aren’t we underwater?; why don’t we have to save against charm?; saves largely don’t matter and Reflex and Will don’t matter at all.

On the other hand, I liked this dungeon much more.  I don’t have a problem with animated monsters, and I thought the visuals were strong.  The thing with wings should have had some flight ability to force ranged attacks, though.  The room 6 monster had all sorts of interesting curses to unleash upon the party.  They should have involved saves at times, especially Will saves, but it looked cool enough and did interesting things.  There were effects that didn’t do damage or kill folks but reduced to hit, which was a nice alternative.  Didn’t have the VTD8 problem of rooms seeming too similar to each other.  Didn’t have the VTD7 problem of puzzles I didn’t care for.

Was a decent TD weekend …

And, then, I played in our Aberrant campaign, though I use “played” loosely.  I fell asleep at one point while we were staking out a building.

Which got me to thinking about character roles/types and how superhero play may vary that.

My character doesn’t do investigating well.  He doesn’t do intrusion well.  Yes, he actually has a good Stealth dice pool, so he can stealth some, but … he wears a costume.

Superheroes are meant to be identified.  They are public figures.  They show up on the news.  So, great, hide for a bit, then somebody sees you and … reacts.

Now, two of our party don’t have separate identities, though they also don’t look human.  They do look like animals and a plant, respectively, so they can blend in.  Our roguish character is good at intruding.  I have a secret identity where taking off a mask makes no sense.  Routinely, whether in the old days when I hung out with the flying brick military dude or now where I just kind of do my own thing, I don’t do anything while the intrusive sorts intrude.  Then, they get into fights while I’m elsewhere and I never impact their battles.

Is it ironic that the most team oriented character thematically is the greatest loner of the party?

So, of course, GMs can have set ups where supers super rather than play like in a supernatural investigation game.

What does that mean?

What distinguishes superhero play from other play?

Again, public figures, but more importantly:  Supers are distinguished by their power sets.  They can overlap some, like multiple bricks or multiple energy projectors or whatever, but the idea is that characters have unique powers.  Now, if you play a WoD vampire or whatever or play pretty much anything, you are going to look for niche protection and having distinct abilities from other PCs, but supers … in my mind at least … are specifically about having extremely distinct powers.  Even if you can do the same things as other characters, like fly or blast stuff with energy, you do it in a unique way that informs the narrative.

I rarely use my abilities.  Even when I do do something, it’s often like research … when another PC is smarter than I am.  Meanwhile, the sentient bee hive constantly uses his powers.  His powers inform play.

What is my character supposed to be doing?

Electrocuting things.  He’s not all that good at that, as the Gambit-y character does way more damage firing charged poker chips.  Getting blasted by energy.  That happened not that long ago when I was testing Force Field and realized there was no real way I was going to get hurt because of that power.  Otherwise, pretty much never get energized, where I have additional defenses.

Not be Invisible Woman of the party as I arranged to cut my FF’s power level in half because it wasn’t supposed to be a primary ability and I’m not going to lean into it to protect other people … or will I?  My powers are half electricity, half weather control.  Protecting others with weather effects actually makes some sense.

He can power stuff that uses electricity – that has happened like once.  He can change the weather – this is the only time he feels like he’s doing anything superheroic.  Almost like I should abandon blasting and just focus on weather control effects that don’t accidentally murder people.

He’s extremely Wits-y, yet I only recall rolling a skill with Wits like three times in 35 sessions.  He never rolls Rapport.  He never rolls Biz in any meaningful way.

But, that’s also part of it, even when rolling skills, which is something that used to feel like a strength and used to feel productive, it just doesn’t feel like any rolls matter to my character.  Now, this isn’t a character role problem, specifically, though maybe it ties into having no real role in the party.

He’s not perceptive.  He’s not particularly social, though he also barely rolls any social skills other than Subterfuge.

So, this is a personal problem, but is there a greater truth?

I think there is.  I think superhero play needs to lean into how powers interact with each other and the world.  If just going to be superpowered investigators or whatever, could be playing any of a ton of modern supernatural games.

Identity should matter.  In that it should be easy to maintain separate identities.  If not going to have a secret ID, then just start being more like other games.  It’s one of the most troperiffic tropes.

Stuff should happen to superheroes.  Supers defend the world.  They are inherently reactive.  And, that stuff should happen constantly.  There shouldn’t be time spent researching – that’s what Call of Cthulhu is for.

Supernormal stuff should constantly be happening.  The mundane world exists, but it’s supposed to be a background for wild and crazy stuff happening, like alien invasions or citywide destruction or teleporting to other worlds.  The GM used my character’s civilian background to set a session against a different backdrop.  But, that backdrop didn’t really matter; all the situation did was yet again isolate my character from what everyone else was doing and limit the use of my powers.  That obviously wasn’t the intent, and it would be more appealing to have things like that happen if my character felt like he was a superhero.

He basically just feels like a guy in a costume who happens to have powers that don’t really matter.  Not all of the time.  A lot of the time.

There should be a soap opera going on with NPCs.  Sure, I like soap opera with NPCs in every setting, but the supervillains being related to the superheroes, the coworker in civilian life being a love interest or foil, etc. are genre defining.

While it’s true that every PC should be involved in what’s going on in any genre, in supers play, there should be background specific interactions.  The alien super should have alien politics going on.  The mystic super has supernatural stuff going on.  There is a new supervillain that’s supposed to be my nemesis, so the effort is there.  But, in a party fight, it just doesn’t matter.

Which brings me to:  while it’s important to have group activities because this is a group game, it’s important in supers play that things happen to individual characters that highlight the differences between the characters and highlight that all supers are supposed to be vastly more competent than normal people are.

Part of my being so discouraged is that I play in another campaign where I’m just as irrelevant to what’s going on.  It’s just tiring watching other people play games that I should love.

On the positive side, because I’m all about positivity, I played a HoR4 module last night, and it was fun.  The mod could have been better, but I like it, and the specific experience was rather enjoyable.  Given how discouraged I am with HoR4, it’s a nice counterpoint.  Though, I actually enjoyed other recent intro mods; it’s the recent mods that are mid/high or high that just fall flat to me as whatever they are trying to do isn’t something I care about and they don’t do what I do care about.

See, positive.

Shifted Sands

Was out of town for the weekend.  Played some boardgames.

Chinatown

I don’t know if I’ve played this before.  It could be that it’s similar to something else, but it felt vaguely familiar.  So, Eric pitched the game as the parts of Monopoly his family liked – the dealmaking.

Dealmaking isn’t really my thing.  Diplomacy isn’t my kind of game.  I made a number of mathematically poor deals that helped someone else win.  Obviously, you don’t know the numbers in a game that you aren’t familiar with, but it’s not like it’s that hard to calculate income from builds.

I’m not that into PvP (and, yet, not into coop boardgames).  So, a game where you can’t do anything that’s your own thing isn’t well suited to me at all.

Then, you just keep doing the same thing over and over, where the building element of the game doesn’t produce interesting developments like, say, a Princes of Florence.

Dune

Once upon a time, I had a 100% win rate at Dune.  I’ve lost my ability to brag about my mastery of this game.

I was given Atreides.  I virtually never bought any Treachery cards as I didn’t have any sense of the economy of the game.  So, I lost nearly every fight and lost all my leaders.

Because the thing that interests me about the game is predicting who will win, even though I didn’t play Bene Gesserit this time, I made a prediction.  I got the turn very, very wrong.

Harkonnen almost won in the first three turns as several of us didn’t really understand what we were doing.  But, they got regulated.  Fremen got strong as the two fighty factions got crippled, and the money factions couldn’t project military power, either.  Spacing Guild was set up to eventually win unless Fremen did.

What about alliances?  First alliance opportunity was on turn … 9!  I allied with Fremen, though I had no useful military.  Spacing Guild allied with Harkonnen even though they had no forces.  Because we couldn’t get into a fight between Emperor and Guild, we couldn’t satisfy Fremen win mechanic at end of game, so Guild alliance won.

After I got wiped from Arrakeen, I blew the Shield Wall with one of my few purchased Treachery cards.  Petty vengeance to make the game more painful.

Sure, if I had played Bene Gesserit, I could have lost every fight and still won, which is pretty much what happened in 100% of my previous games.  But, the magic is gone.  Even if I win every game as Bene Gesserit, it’s just not the same.

I pointed out to people I don’t know how to do conquest in games.  It’s anathema to my personality.  This is why Bene Gesserit worked and Atreides was doomed to failure.  I could just use my psychic powers to predict a winner and steal victory from whoever doesn’t have that power while being otherwise completely useless.

No matter what the boardgame, if it involves having to beat someone’s military, I don’t think I have much of a chance.  Now, wargames might be different, though I rarely play them, but it’s not like I do well at wargames when I do.

Yokohama

Damn this game is visually overwhelming to the new player.  But, sure, it becomes easy to play once you start playing.  I overdid a church strategy having no concept of what wins or how endgame scoring worked until too late to do anything else.  Eric, who didn’t know anything about the game either, did some orders and bought a bunch of technology and won pretty easily.

The game is fine.  I think it plays well.  I don’t know that what you do is terribly interesting, but, then, it *is* a boardgame.

Anyway, the weekend worked out well where boardgames were just one significant part.

Secret Identity

My RPG campaigns had been out for a while.  Sure, my PBP game was happening, but it’s a very different pacing.

Played Aberrant.  The set up was one based around my character, and, yet, along with another player, I had very little to actually do during the session.  I was in my nothero identity and never got into costume (ignoring that our clothes are our costumes as they are some alien material or something weird).  I almost tried something that could have been really cool, but it wasn’t necessary and it would have taken away from someone else being cool, so I never pulled the trigger.

My Aberrant character is the main inspiration for this post.

I don’t know how to advance the character.  Because I don’t know what the character’s role is.  He has an identity crisis.  Is he supposed to contribute beatdown?  There’s only one good offensive character in the party after we lost a player.  Is he a knowledge guy even though another PC has bigger brains?  Is he a social guy even though his social stats aren’t even at a superhero level?  Annoyance combat and controllish effects?  Okay, he does do that between blinding effect and weather control (which can also inhibit visibility).  I have the most interest in trying to think of interesting things to do in combat and, yet, I don’t really do anything much other than blind enemies.

I worked with the GM to rein in excessive defensive prowess to where I’m okay with where I’m at in terms of being able to survive combat (you know, a typical concern with superhero combat – just hoping not to die every fight).  There are quirky things I could do, but …  One of the more noticeable things over time is that almost none of my rolls matter.  I don’t really need to be better at anything to be as accomplished as I am currently as most of my rolls are ones with no meaningful impact whether they succeed or fail.  Ages ago, botching a Stealth roll had more positive impact than almost all of my successful rolls.

It’s not like other games where there’s no narrative.  It’s just that the narrative lacks any drama.  We still just win combats, often grinding through.  But, nothing really has any stakes.  I hardly ever roll my best skill.  From a metagame standpoint, I’m far better off getting better at things I roll that are already thematically as good as they should be.

Attempts to do anything clever run into both that they don’t really matter whether they succeed or fail and also that they take up time when other people are happy to move things along to get to stuff that often doesn’t interest me.

I actually have a plan if he was supposed to be dangerous in combat.  I have the XP to make what I think is an effective (aka can kill enemy supers … because Aberrant) advancement choice.  But, it just feels entirely mechanical just to not be useless rather than a natural way to develop.

Did not play Iron Empire as not everyone was around at start time and we realized there would be a few missed weeks in a row which would stall any momentum.  But, we did talk about what our party could do in the future, and it’s still not clear to me what we will be doing next.

Now, I did have a Shock session today – we finally got my second Shock (same setting) moving.  Shock is awkward to me, requiring a lot of being able to think on the spot and the mechanics being pretty meaningless/weak.  But, it’s funny.  I guess if you don’t want funny, that’s not necessarily a good thing, but humor is not a bad thing these days.  I don’t really care about my protagonists – weirdly, I’m much more interested in my antagonists.  They also have way more character – as they say, if you want the meaty roles, play villains.

Weekend in Rokugan is coming up this week, but it means nothing to me.  Not only am I not going, but I have stuff to do this weekend.

While things happen in the PBP play that interest me, there’s no real coherency with my character there.  We recently failed to where it was a choice whether to have a TPK or not against faceless bandits, which is far more interesting than blandly succeeding all of the time, but we don’t really have a plot, just things we do, and there are too few NPCs to have meaningful interactions with.  Well, for my character; I don’t know if the other current player perceives the same way.

I’d like to invest in a character’s journey, but all six of them either seem to be aimless, be hard to relate to due to limited play (which includes irregular play), or don’t have any real party role.  My HoR character qualifies for all three of those.