Cut Your Wins

Time to ramble about losing, again.

So, we lost our first Frosthaven scenario.  I don’t read the scenarios ahead of time, so I keep screwing up the special rules.  But, it was just not all that pleasant to play.  I think on replay it will seem really easy.  I knew the big issue for me was going to be running out of cards …  Well, okay, every scenario is an issue if you run out of cards.  But, it was a 12 round scenario that was explicit about that up front, and I’m not proficient enough on how to manage rests to really maximize staying power.

As much as it wasn’t all that appealing in the specific, I still think it’s enjoyable from the standpoint of seeing different things occur.

So, I have more going on in life in 2024 than in recent years, so I’m not as mentally invested in VTD as I used to be.

VTD 23 was last weekend.

Did three runs.

Friday night was team run.  With fewer players and given recent history, decided to do Nightmare.  It was easy.  Well, NM is always easy, so *shrug*.  I played polydruid and wasn’t able to do different elemental every room.  Cheesed Trollform only in rm6.  We got all of the puzzles with zero puzzle damage.

Saturday morning was Epic Double Down.  This was easy …  I only took damage in rm7 and never bothered to get healed.  Okay, the dungeon was just sad.  I ran monk and did my two attacks a round for 60+ when they hit.

Sunday morning was Anti-Cabal.  We chose Epic for obvious reason.  Not only was the dungeon easy, but the monster ACs were really low.

I died in rm5.  Then, I died again from push damage as we were only halfway through monster.  Rm7 monster killed three of our five party members around round four.  Fighter was only one still alive when time ran out.

Yes, they tweak dungeons over the weekend.  This was not like the others.

One of our players got mad, though maybe less at the difficulty and more at *how* the room was changed.  They changed rm5 so that the two biggest damage sources against monster were autonegated.  Besides that not scaling for smaller parties – consider the solo player who can’t deal any damage at all.  This sort of mechanic has been used in the past and continues to annoy players because it works against what is actually fun in the game.

Crits are fun, even I think so and I’m a sardonic, jaded cynic.  So, monk keeps hitting for 60 multiple times a round and someone else does something unusual and does zero.  It undermines rogue’s only good combat feature – Sneak Attacking for a lot.  It punishes barbarian disproportionately as barbarian has highest base damage.

I enjoyed the last run.  I got to see the failure video!  I would have preferred and even explicitly stated “I wish this was what Epic was like yesterday [earlier in weekend].”

It was a weird weekend where Saturday’s run was pretty much the least enjoyable as there was no good metagaming to do, no metagaming actually mattered due to sadness of dungeon, and it wasn’t really satisfying.  Yet, I still enjoyed it as a game experience.  There is a reason I still try to do at least three VTD runs every weekend.

Trying to relate to topic, I’m probably happier to fail a third of my runs because then dungeons feel like a challenge *and* it gets me thinking about how to metabreak the dungeon.  If just win all of the time, who cares what one’s build is, in which case why have I spent so many thousands of dollars on tokens?

What else am I excited by failing at?

Gamingwise?

Have had a couple RPG experiences recently.  One, I didn’t fail and saved the poisoned dude.  Had second John Carter session.  Unlike the first session, the pace of play here and the flailing about not accomplishing simple things was much more akin to my typical home play in recent years.  Did I fail at anything?  Well, not really in a mechanical sense as made die rolls, including die roll I wanted to make.  I suppose narratively failed to uncover useful information while tagging along on an investigation and failed to advance plot in a meaningful way and failed to interact with NPCs in any meaningful way.  That wasn’t a good thing.

But, this post is all about how awesome failure is.  So, at other times, while a feel bad in the moment, failing leads to interesting story inflections.  I’ve said as much before, though I don’t think I’ve used “story inflections” in this blog in the last 15 years.  I keep looking for failure in our supers play – something that hasn’t happened recently – because supers failing is important to making the bad guys seems impressive.  Not personal failure, so much.  Party failure.

Anyway, failure in RPGs I’ve brought up before, so it’s more that failure in other game types can lead to more interesting results, can lead to being enthused to try to do better the next time.

So, I don’t pay for pro wrestling except the one time I went to Wrestlemania.  I read reviews of Wrestlemania’s two nights and watched various highlights plus I still follow AEW.  One of my frustrations, which may be more of an AEW thing as I don’t watch WWE regularly, is that failure is so boring.  I tune out of a number of matches now not just because I know who will win but know it won’t be interesting in how the match resolves.  We need the disqualifications, the count outs, the non-title matches, and whatever else so that the loser doesn’t just have all of their heat killed.  The way AEW works these days, losers lose square if not always fair.  Then, they make a big deal about people’s win-loss records.

80s NWA, I expected heel champ to lose by disqualification a lot to hold on to the title but put over the face.  Now, you just see losers as losers and wonder why the other stars who aren’t allowed to lose outside of a PPV don’t get title shots for all of the various belts.

It’s just so extreme, when the value in success and failure is that there’s a slim margin between the two.  You know, like how sports is entertaining because upsets happen but not all of the time.

I don’t want to lose Frosthaven scenarios because they are stupidly hard – I want to lose when I don’t play as well as I could have.

I don’t want to lose TD runs because I don’t have every token in existence – I want to lose when I don’t play as well as I could have.

I don’t want to lose CCG matches because only five archetypes are viable – I want to lose when I don’t play as well as I could have.

I don’t want to lose in RPGS … hardly ever because real life is so good for losing, and it’s not a competitive game type, and being an expert in RPG play is not something I really aspire to.  But, it loses impact to succeed all of the time.  My understanding of modern D&D is that every encounter is supposed to be won, just a matter of how many resources used to win it.  That just sounds so hollow … that I have to mention this for a second time in this blog.

Getting Frosty

After abandoning Solomon Kane (boardgame), we moved on to something else I got through Kickstarter and hadn’t unboxed.

Yup, Frosthaven.  To show my level of preparation, we got together at 8AM (on a Saturday) and spent 2 hours punching stuff out, reading the guide, removing shrink wrap from cards, etc.  My friend, who introduced me to Gloomhaven, is much more of a boardgame person than I am and much more of a Gloomhaven person, where he’s reviewing Crimson Scales.  But, since this is my stuff, he let me waste a lot of our time.

We did two scenarios between 8AM and like 4:30PM, with a lunch break.  I’ve since done some reorganizing (can even close the box, now!).  Thought we would do two more scenarios yesterday, but we had to cancel.

I’ve read various reviews.  I’ve even done stuff like watch a video on buildings as what you are supposed to build or even what you can build was a mystery to us.  So, my opinions on the game are colored by other people’s.

I really enjoyed playing Gloomhaven.  I enjoy playing Frosthaven, and setup and breakdown will not be nearly as bad next time.

Can see from that picture that I’m running Deathwalker.  I was extremely rusty on how play works.  I played very questionably in scenario 1, yet we completed just before I was about to exhaust.

My friend is playing Drifter.  I felt like I had too many shadows in play this scenario.  Second scenario felt like I didn’t have enough.  I think after some research that I have a much better idea how I want to play this class.  Because of my poor play, we had to leave a lot of loot lying around.

I don’t need the amount of components this game has, and I’m inclined to believe that many newer games have too many components.  The basic engine of do scenarios and play cards you choose just works really well for us without worrying about the townbuilding.

Now, on a tangent, townbuilding is something that isn’t done enough in RPG play.  How do I know?  Because I keep thinking about running such a campaign, in various settings.  Because I had a recent conversation with a friend about how she wants to do more of it.

It’s nice to just play something fun without baggage.  Sure, it involved 3 hours of setup and breakdown, which is suboptimal, but we have the time.  Hopefully, we play regularly.  Maybe even start building buildings when get enough gold.

DunDraCon 2024

My triumphant return to DunDraCon!

No pictures of the con as it didn’t occur to me to take pictures of any of my games besides the game I can’t share (see below).

I bought a badge.  Been ages since I bought a badge to local con, as I just run stuff.

And, that has been the problem.  Local cons have felt like chores.  I run stuff part of the time.  Help out other events part of the time.  Don’t sign up for events.  Don’t end up playing stuff.  Or, like play a pickup game I don’t care about that I could be doing outside of a con.

So, I made an effort to do stuff at the con.

And, I did.

I submitted my prereg choices like first or second day I could.  I don’t get into either of my Friday afternoon choices.  So, I crash a 2PM game.

Exalted

GM intended a 10 player game for 10 hours where we fight a god.  We have five players, so the adventure gets modified.  Which I think was a good thing in multiple ways, but it did have a problem.

We are Exalted heading to Cadun to find work.  Cadun is looking for superior adventurers to go steal Hephaestus’s hammer.  We talk about just going to find Hephaestus and act as liaisons between the city and him to achieve what city truly wants, which is to be an exporter of manufactured goods rather than raw materials.

We get joined by an all-knowing NPC.  We go through Hephaestus’s labyrinth (a very extensive dungeon).  Our challenges are all puzzles.  We meet up with Hephaestus, talk a bit, become his smith lieutenants piloting fantasy mechs.

So, what was good?  The ending was amusing.  Didn’t bother me that it got very wild.

Cons?  So, this is Exalted.  I’ve played very little Exalted, but Charms are kind of important to making you feel like a demigod.  None of our Charms mattered.  We never got into combat having a slew of combat abilities.  Expectations fail.  I would avoid all-knowing NPCs.  I’ve played very little Exalted, and I still don’t really know anything about the world.  It’s such an opaque setting to me.  And, I own the game!  I just don’t care enough to read more than what I’ve read in the past.  And, it’s a White Wolf resolution system, and those are bad.

Saturday morning, I got into my first choice.

Feng Shui

I have some misgivings about Feng Shui convention games.  Last one I did wasn’t fun.  Too many are just Big Trouble in Little China either as complete replays or essentially the same thing.

This was very good.  The adventure was based on years of a home campaign, so there was lots of content, content I didn’t already know, and it was coherently put together.  The GM knew the genre, so scenes went like they should.

We are all gang members (including the cops, who are functionally a gang in San Francisco).  We are at a sham wedding, where ninja attack.  The whole point of the wedding was to trap a sorcerer who was trying to sacrifice lovers for power.  We take that sorcerer down.  Our cop friend who set the trap dies mysteriously offscreen later, so we reunion to go hunt down the killer.  We uncover a conspiracy to do some magic stuff, with a giant snake shapeshifter being used as an assassin.  We take out a drug kingpin, the snake, and, finally, “The Necromancer”.  They may have been trying to bring back Gao Zhang, but this game wasn’t about the setting’s time war.  I played a sorcerer and got to lean into doing thematic wind magic stuff.  I’m in favor of my convention one-shot characters getting to do things that are interesting.

There was only really one con – Feng Shui system is bad.  I used to love it.  Oh, I thought some parts of 1e were ridiculous.  I thought 2e just made things worse by losing flavor from 1e and for really not being designed for anything besides one-shots.  But, having argued for years on how bad d20 is as a resolution system, how bad percentile is, how bad 3d6 is, up die/down die is just bad.  It’s just not fun.  It feels a system of failure in a genre when failure should be of the botch sort where things explode when you don’t succeed.  The initiative system sucks (and always has).  Attacks are boring.  It plays slow, which is the opposite of how FS should play.  2e schticks are boring.

There’s a reason I created Feng Shui Tu Huo, my homebrew Roll & Keep system to play a FS game.  What system would I use for FS play if not some homebrew?  I don’t know.  I think most systems are inferior.  One of my goals is to play more non-L5R … so that I can remember how much better R&K is than almost every other system.

1e’s schticks are so cool.  I get the IP.  I can tolerate the system when good GMs are doing stuff.  But, this sort of game shouldn’t be saddled with a system that is worse for action than various other systems I’ve played.  I can believe there’s a d20 system that is better for this genre.  It’s possible Mutants & Masterminds is better for this genre; maybe I’ll find out in coming months.

Saturday evening, I didn’t get into my prereg choices, so I went home.  Being old and decrepit, this worked well.

Sunday morning, I got into my first choice.

John Carter of Mars

Our Conan group tried playing Modiphius’s Conan.  We kind of hated it.  The oppressiveness of the metacurrencies was ridiculous.  We could just play d20 Conan, a d20 game I enjoyed despite it being d20 resolution, so why do we need to deal with Momentum, et al?

This was mechanically okay.  Maybe being a one shot and not being Conan, a game we played for 7+ years, helped.  Maybe having individual Momentum pools rather than a single Momentum pool helped.  Okay.  I still find all of these games that pull the player’s attention away from thinking as a PC and thinking like some GM/PC hybrid to be completely unnecessary.

Our group was really slow to do things.  However, the things we were doing were generally fun and mostly appropriate to the setting.  One thing this game brought out is that some of us really like the setting.  It’s really sad that some people only know JC from the movie, a movie I can barely remember which got his personality completely wrong and did some jarring things with the setting.

I was playing a bodyguard/duelist and got to do a lot of bodyguarding stuff for the daughter of our boss.  I didn’t realize for quite a while my character sheet said Firstborn, but I think I was essentially just playing the character as a red martian rather than a black martian.  First Born would make the character’s name make more sense as it didn’t follow red martian conventions.  I got to heavily damage enemies.  I got to avoid doing other things than fighting.  … ??  Yeah, see, I may not be normally into combat that much, and I may normally be into social interaction or knowledge crap or whatever, but I also appreciate being part of a party and knowing my role and embracing it.  In this setting, with this character, the only thing I should be doing is fighting.  If I was on my own, sure, sneak around, learn crap, talk to people.  But, I’m not.  And, I enjoyed fighting or choosing not to bother when the party was just shooting some poor animal to death.

Good game.  I might play more JCoM outside of con.

Playing this game, I missed our Traveller events.  They were very busy.  This just points out how much running stuff interferes with my playing what I want.

Playtest

I hung around in the boardgame room so that we could do a three-player playtest of the boardgame we are creating.  We have a long ways to go.  What’s interesting to me about creating games other than CCGs is that I may overestimate how open-ended CCGs are.  In both the CCGs Jeff and I worked on for extensive periods, I had a sense of play from very little playtesting.  With other games, I don’t get that same sense.  Though, that could just be that I’m a CCG expert in a way that I’m not an expert on other game types.  Or, maybe it’s that CCGs are inherently a much more similar experience to each other than I think.  Or, both.

Different boardgames really try to achieve different experiences.  Agricola is not Settlers.  Chariots Lords is not an 18xx train game.

So, I was reminded of yesteryear with DDC 2024.  I got some good stuff in.  I met more gamers even if it’s unclear how impactful that ends up being.  I saw people I gamed with in the past, including a VTES player that might play in the South Bay.

Am I motivated to run a RPG?  Not so much.  I did think about what running would be like while playing, including what running at a con would be like.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get enthused.  I imagine my running a RPG at a con would be too much like my running at cons in the past.  None of these three games have systems that get me excited by the mechanics of a particular RPG.

I’m planning on running Traveller CCG at KublaCon.  But, if Kubla ends up feeling like a chore, maybe I’ll attend as a civilian more often in the future.

The Best of … 2020

So, I didn’t so much miss a deadline as much as I just forgot about my annual tradition.

One of my brothers had a wedding Saturday, so the last week plus has been kind of busy.

I actually had a plan for posting before my best of post something, but it has been hard to be concerned about normal things.

Anyway, 2020 was not a good year in various ways.  As I just start looking back at what I wrote as I write these posts, let’s see what I want to call out.

January

Fascinating.

Eleven Decks, Eleven Notes – Part 1

Somehow, this entire series … started in 2020 … ended before we stopped playing.

This is precisely the sort of thing I should do more of – build decks, talk about how the decks perform in actual games.  Of course, it’s kind of hard to play decks when there’s no one to play with.

Other parts are probably noteworthy, too.  After all, they aren’t short play reports, even if I included TV reviews or whatever in some of them.  Can get an idea how bonkers Shadowfist is by trying to describe games in partial detail, though it’s not like I haven’t done SF session reports before.

Advanced Play – L5R & Gloomhaven

I was trying in 2020 to get back to doing more analysis and less navel gazing.  Well, not that anyone needed to hear my Gloomhaven analysis so long after the game came out, but I write about things I do.  Advancing Tatakisu might have been interesting for how I both try to know how to min/max, then do something weird.

Off Court

Why do courtiers exist in a fantasy world where Hell is just to the Southwest?

I’m still playing Akarui.  Team Akarui just won an actual Winter Court event.  Obvious thing for a team of Imperial Herald, Tortoise, and Yasuki to win – shrine building.  Yup, build that shrine better than all of the other teams, which I think all had shugenja on them.

And, that’s why courtiers exist – to have multiple ranks in Engineering, to have Lore: Shrines, to have partners with a bunch of ranks in Lore: Rokugan, to have Ebisu’s Blessing and to have lots of koku koku bills to throw at spiritual projects.

February

Unstable

I almost skipped over this, but this was the most interesting thing in February.  It’s long, so it must be good.

I was just talking to one of my GMs yesterday about how contested rolls in R&K are bad because the system has too much variance.  This article is a lot about how variance creates problems with combat.  Now, maybe it’s just because L5R has lethality.  Maybe a system that wasn’t bad to begin with (most are, bad that is) with low lethality or enough metacurrency to not die can embrace variance.

March

Roll & Defeat

Speaking of the problems with contested rolls and variance …

April

Rather Not Walk

Choo choo.

ARe Wards

More direct about what players like me want and what isn’t as important.

Fiction Destruction

So, how good is my writing?  Much like my cooking, I’d say highly variable.  I don’t care much about getting better at these sorts of things as much as I just like being wrapped up in the narrative (that includes the narrative of cooking).

This is really, really long, but that just means it’s got to be better.

May

Building L5R Characters – Emerald Empire

*shrug*  If people want L5R content, I might as well write about L5R stuff.  How do I know people want L5R content?  I check what articles are getting views at times and it’s mostly old L5R articles.

Friendliness Rating

I try at times to create things for people to use.  Whether I ever use this idea I have no idea.

Gen Con – Early Years

Some Gen Cons are very similar to others.  And, yet, lot of stuff going on every year relative to other cons.

[Classic ] Gen Con SoCal 2004 [12/8/2004]

Why call out this classic post?  Charmed, I’m sure.

[Classic] Gen Con 2004 [8/26/2004]

I had seven posts in May, so it wasn’t like I chose every one.  First time playing Heroes of Rokugan!

June

Fight, Right?

Yet another take on what makes combat better or worse.

August

Gen Con 2020 – Oh, The Horror!

For posterity, the virtual Gen Con.

[Classic] True Dungeon V1 Feedback [2020-8-3]

Well, as much as 2021 was my favorite year for VTD, most recent VTD was vastly better than VTD1.

September

Card Qualit-ies

I am a CCG designer/developer.  Like a real one.  I’ve created other games, but those weren’t actually sold to people for actual money.

October

Brain Squishy

Who doesn’t want to know more about what sort of gamer type I am?

November

Midwest Gamefest 2020

As possibly the only Midwest Gamefest I’ll ever participate in, figure why not.  Besides, had Battle Interactive.

December

Camping Tools

Sure, other people have their lists.  Here’s mine.

So, 2020 was 2020.  I’m trying to get this wrapped up as family is having New Year’s dim sum lunch.  While there’s probably more to say about the year, I guess I’ll just let it go.

Solomon Kane – BG

So, I found the core game box and took this over to my friend’s place.

Some people find boxes interesting, so here’s my breaking open game I knew nothing about (in that I had forgotten anything I might have known from the KS).

After setting up and playing like two chapters, we took a break for food.

After getting back, we played through end of chapter five.  I think we spent three hours to play half the storybook.

While learning rules, I also was reading review from someone who didn’t think it was the greatest thing ever.  Our experience fit what the reviewer complained about – the game is repetitive and gameplay isn’t all that compelling.  I want to finish this storybook to have a better idea if something more interesting ends up occurring.

Here’s one of two pictures I took when we stopped for the night.  I include this pic because it shows the tiles with figures on them even though the chapter we are on may not use the tiles.

So, the dice aren’t interesting.  The deckcycling isn’t interesting.  Adding light to stuff isn’t interesting.  The one combat we’ve had was repetitive and nonintuitive.  Following the narrative is very choose your own adventure, which isn’t interesting so far.

It does play fast when you know the rules.  When I was reading that storybooks have 1-5 Acts and each Act has 10 Chapters, I figured they would take forever to get through, but a chapter might only last like two turns.  I don’t find donating or reserving dice interesting – I’ve played other games that had such, and this game’s results possibilities feel very full of sameness.  The weird way combat works just comes across as incredibly fiddly.

Part of my reasoning for backing KS was I could always use stuff, like minis, for running SK RPG.  But, I would have preferred the minis were gray or ivory, not greenish.

There are seven other storybooks and I have everything from the KS for much more content.  I think it’s more likely we would end up playing Frosthaven …

It’s never a good sign when your decisions don’t seem terribly challenging or important.  Sure, the difficulty could be made much higher, and coop games have all of the problems of coop games, and the game could be played competitively or solo or whatever, though why I’d want to spend money to play a game solo when I could just play solitaire confuses me.  But, then, there’s a reason I don’t play videogames anymore, where solo game experiences are ubiquitous.

It’s early.  I certainly don’t regret my putting money into this based on play.  I regret putting money into a bunch of KSs because I don’t even want to open rewards from KSs.  I could be playing CCGs I already have cards for, which reminds me that I need to work on VTES decks today.  What RPGs I play are largely determined by other people.

I have a lot of minis from various boardgames and I’ve never really successfully used minis for RPG play as I prefer theater of the mind.

The other thing is that people I might play stuff with also back the same KSs (or the Hasbro HeroQuest notKS), so it’s redundant.  I was hunting around for something I want to give my nephew for Christmas and came across the various boardgames I own that are covered in thick layers of dust.  I just don’t initiate play of games, so I don’t need anything outside of CCG cards, RPG pdfs, like one mahjong set (when I have like eight), TD tokens, and a deck of regular playing cards.  Will be interesting when I eventually end up moving whether I can part with so much of my stuff I don’t make any use of.

Alphaing

Friday night, I got together with my friend I play boardgames with.  I took over an insane amount of Solomon Kane stuff only to not have gotten the box with the core game in it, as I didn’t know what was in the mailed boxes (in that I didn’t believe the labels), and I didn’t think there was yet another box of components.

So, we ended up playing Darkest Night.

It was a weird mix of expansion stuff and not expansion stuff.  We chose roles recommended by someone, so I ran knight and scout and he ran crusader and rogue.

It was too easy.  Knight was never seriously threatened by anything.  Once scout got Trailblazer, just yanked people over to me.  Necromancer conveniently in our space with no blights, and crusader got three 7’s on like seven dice.

Much like Dungeon Alliance, there are elements here that appeal to us (we both like fantasy), but it just comes across as nothing special.  Sure, we didn’t have quests and whatever that are supposed to make it more compelling.  But, you know what’s compelling as is?  Gloomhaven.  I’d probably rather play HeroQuest, as old school as it is.

Saturday, I visited friends.  I had five things I needed to keep in mind for the trip, two of which didn’t have to do with gaming.

So, of course, we played three-player mahjong – my family’s style, where Andy and Eric had played a little American Mahjong with their aunt.  Pictured is Andy’s winning hand in the very first hand.  This was worth 1600 points the way we count – 30 base, 20 in melds/flowers, five fans.  Andy won another hand later that was a nice solid two fans for 160 and pointed out that was only one tenth of this win.

We played through East, then ate lunch.

After lunch, we did something different.

My first ever play of Alpha Strike.  They had only played like a couple other times, so we threw together a scenario and Andy and I each played three mechs on one side against Eric’s painted force.  The end result was somewhat baffling, but my interest was in just learning what Alpha Strike is about.

I’m not clear how I feel about the game after one play, but, in a weirdly not weird way, Alpha Strike seemed to deliver exactly what I expected it to be like in comparion to CBT.  It loses flavor, plays vastly less awkwardly, allows for greater scale of play.  What was notable was how similar it felt to CBT in some ways.  I hate initiative in CBT, but, then, I’m not a miniatures player, so that could just be the nature of such play.  I hate rolling 2d6 for resolution – it’s the “Risk” frustration that don’t get expected results when it really matters.

I’m entirely fine with us trying some campaign play with pilot abilities and formations and coherent scenarios.  I’m not super motivated to go to the effort I did with CBT scenarios, but, then, I may not have to do that much work.

The other reason for bringing BattleTech stuff was that I had made precisely zero use of my Clan Invasion Kickstarter stuff other than the t-shirt, and they had interest in some of the stuff, so I just sold off a third or so of the mechs.  There’s a reason I don’t back Kickstarters anymore – I don’t even bother opening up what I get.

I’m a huge fan of the theme of BT as established in TR: 3025 with some interest in eras close to that.  But, I don’t care about the novels, a bunch of the other canon, and think the game doesn’t play nearly as well as I want it to.  CBT is clunky as hell.  It’s slow.  It has all sorts of weapon balance problems.

So, BT has a huge problem.  What’s more interesting than anything else is modifying mechs.  Except, once you modify a mech, it loses any personality as all player designs will converge on min/maxing.  So many weapon systems are just insane to use in most scenarios.  Every mech should have CASE.  Every 3025 autocannon should just be LB-10x (with standard ammo).  Missile systems are goofy when optimizing.  I started using a lot of canonical variants for classic mechs when I played with Gary to avoid just making optimized designs.  But, then, the classic designs we want to play of so many mechs are just walking bombs that want to dump ammo after first couple rounds.

Can Alpha Strike sell me on being able to do larger scale fights with no hexes and eliminating so many of the excruciating aspects of CBT, like asymmetric LOS, what piloting rolls are needed for all sorts of stuff, and massive damage variance but losing all of the personality of specific mech designs?

Note that we used the roll each point of damage rule to reduce swinginess.

I was running Viper Prime, Hellbringer Prime, and Battle Cobra Prime.  I set up the Battle Cobra in a centralized spot with good sight lines, and it did its job.  Viper did what it was supposed to do.  Hellbringer just sucked at hurting enemies, even when I overheated, but, then, that was because rolling d6’s for resolution just tends to suck.  Our side spread out too much, but we may have been in the winning position when we called it.  We kept trying to play around a Piranha.

It’s not like my BT play historically has been bad.  It’s just not living the dream of piloting a pilot of a particular mech to glory.  Now, my Mechwarrior play has not been good, so I have little interest in trying again when the real PCs are mechs rather than humans.  Of course, I’ve played so little miniatures play that maybe miniatures anything isn’t really my thing.  It’s just sad that I compare BT to Dragon Dice in my liking the idea of the game better than the play of it.

We had dinner.  I eventually crashed, as my allergies were bothering me all day, and I had to take diphenhydramine HCL.  I drove home the next morning.

Thanks to my friends for hosting, helping with some stuff, feeding me, and letting me sleep overnight.

Sunday, we didn’t play Denver CRUSH, but it looks strongly like we are finally switching from the terrible Aberrant system to using a real supers system – Mutants & Masterminds 3e.  While only one of the group knows M&M, the chargen concepts are extremely similar to Champions, that two of us know (to different degrees).  I don’t see any issue with porting characters.  What’s going to change a lot is combat.  For one thing, I won’t have one attack that never does anything and another attack that can easily kill anyone.  I may lose force field as I no longer have to be constantly concerned with accidentally dying in combat to anything that isn’t just rolling 1d10 of damage.

Achievement Driven Play

I played a new boardgame Saturday as I return to getting together with one of my friends.

No, I didn’t take a picture – I often forget to take pictures of things as I largely don’t care what things look like.  (I take pictures of food to prove I made/ate something, not because I care what food looks like.)

Dungeon Alliance

We only did the basic game.  We spent four hours playing three of the four rounds.  It was okay.  I thought the deckbuilding aspect was done really badly.  In general, it just felt … awkward.  If want a summation of my feeling after playing, it would be “Why aren’t we just playing more Gloomhaven/Frosthaven?”

So, I thought about the topic of achievement more.  I even … as a player … communicated to one of my GMs that I could use more clarity on what my PC could achieve and more clarity on how to achieve different things.

I know – a player actually communicating something to a GM that isn’t “it was okay” or “I had fun” or whining about the rules or the dice results or whatever – how is that possible?

Because I spent a lot of time ranting to people I talk to about how important structure, including mechanical structure, is to social endeavors, it occurred to me that having clear cause and effect mechanics throughout RPG play, including with initial play setup, makes sense.

L5R has advantages like Hero of the People that suck, I mean, that meant the PC did something in the past and gets some useless benefit for that.  Why not just build mechanics into actual play that give mechanical rewards for achieving specific things?

It already happens at times, more so with living campaign play.  You win a contest because of some single die roll and you get a ship named after you.  Instead of having that be some obscure occurrence, can just build an entire campaign around “If you accomplish X, then Y will occur.  Not some vague maybe something will happen or something else will happen.  If you accomplish X, Y will definitely occur and you will even know what that is.  In fact, not only will you know what that is, you will choose X and Y.”

Yup, players select from a menu that the GM created of precise combinations of goals and rewards.

How did this highly structured format occur to me?  I’ve always found the GMing certs in HoR to be really cool.  I didn’t get a chance to get any as I never GMed Battle Interactives or whatever, and I barely got a chance to glance at them, so I don’t know quite how they worked, and, sure, that was different than this idea.  But, what little exposure I had to them made them sound highly evocative in their narrativeness.  Also, that I’ve been thinking about Gloomhaven recently likely had something to do with it.

So, the way I envision this is that you start a new campaign.  GM comes up with like 10 possible achievements (could call them quests, but some of them aren’t really quests and having PC quests over party quests sounds more awkward than individual achievements).  The players select one for each PC.  The GM creates more achievements over time.  When an achievement is unlocked, the PC gets a new achievement.

Could this create envy/jealousy among the players?  Sure.  Every way of playing RPGs can annoy players.  I get annoyed by nothing being accomplished, which is why I’ve been ranting about this for years.  The GM can be seen to play favorites in terms of what scenarios occur and how they relate to achievements.  Or in adjudicating whether the PC achieved their goal.

Yeah, GMing sucks.  Not sure why people do it.

Anyway, one of the theoretical benefits to having play so tied into non-vague achievements is that success and failure become clearer.  If my goal is to yojimbo some NPC, and I keep having my wards explode into fine red mists, then my toon is sucking at toonlife.  That’s actually interesting.  Could have there be failure conditions as well, though I haven’t written up any ideas for those yet.  Still get a new achievement goal when fail to accomplish goal.

Why is any of this necessary?  Isn’t this just what should happen in RPG play, anyway, without writing it up like you are playing some card/boardgame or the Mythos CCG or whatever?

See ranting about how vague noncombat activity usually is in my play.  It’s a structural aid to make it easier for players and GMs to focus on narrative successes and failures.  It’s almost like card/boardgames with just this sort of mechanic know what they are doing.

Samples:

Achievement 1 – Ending Tyranny

Requirement: Be instrumental in the fall of a tyrannical government.
Reward: Once each session, you may reroll any failed diplomacy check (not any social check).

Achievement 2 – To Ward The Innocent

Requirement: Prevent a specific NPC from dying in combat who would be slain without the presence of the PC; must receive more wounds than the NPC does.
Reward: Once each session, reduce damage received in combat from a single source by half (round down).

Achievement 3 – Build Community

Requirement: Be instrumental in building or rebuilding a region for the use of ordinary folks.
Reward: Each year, a festival is held that honors the PC (even if the folks from that community move on, someone preserves the event even if they don’t know why it started).

…

Giving Again

Played VTES on the 13th.  Only three player game, but it was a solid game.

I rescued Arika so that my predator had a predator.  She didn’t go down again, so we eventually got ousted.  I did have a window to bleed my prey out, but he drew into additional Deflections, and I didn’t get another crack.

Got together with a friend in person for first time since pandemic started.  We had played some stuff through online meeting software.  We played This War of Mine …

… of course.  We did not come close to succeeding.  We made zero progress on first objective.  Learned that getting wounded is really, really bad.

So, one of my recent thoughts was same old, same old – I love CCGs and RPGs and a few specific things like mahjong, but there are plenty of games I don’t have the same level of enthusiasm for.

But, before getting more into that and trying to relate to something else recently, time for me to use an analogy.

I’ve seen the ending episodes of Naruto already, but they are being shown on Cartoon Network and so I have been watching those and some episodes I skipped.

Anime is anime.  Fight anime is fight anime, though Naruto has a lot more going on than Dragonball Z, Bleach, YuYu Hakusho, or a bunch of other stuff.  It’s more similar to Yu-Gi-Oh! in having a very long character development arc.  Then, lots of other things are of a similar ilk to what I’m slowly getting at.

Want to know the difference between D&D and high fantasy?  See the difference between earlier Naruto and end of series.  What inspired my thinking about this recently is Obito.  Obito’s present is a perfect example of something you *could* do in a RPG but will frustrate folks who focus on the mechanics of such games.  High fantasy isn’t about mechanics.  Well, most written fantasy isn’t about mechanics including game fiction.

It’s such a struggle … in my experience … to capture dramatic moments that occur in scripted works because the point of a game is that it isn’t scripted.  You roll or flip or allocate or whatever and you win when you weren’t supposed to win and lose when you weren’t supposed to lose, and the narrative emerges from decisions and randomness rather than being predetermined.

Um, okay, everybody already knows this.

So, let me bring up failure again.  I have a recent example that makes me want to belabor this topic as well.

In our Iron Empire campaign, we are at Imperial Winter Court.  Our Statuses are high enough that this is plausible.

There are a bunch of events going on every week.  We participated in five so far while still being in first month of three month WC.  None of the three of us have won any, and we usually don’t place at a reward level.  This is reminiscent of The Princess Police campaign, though I know one PC did well in some major event there (in a session I missed), possibly did well in a second event, and another PC might have done well in some other event.  But, then, those characters were vastly more experienced, and there were more of them.  I accomplished nothing in the events I participated in.

Our experience levels aren’t high enough to plausibly compete in contests/tournaments.  Sure, one PC has Earth 4 and Agility 4 and another has Air 4.  I don’t have any trait above 3.  It’s just not feasible to compete against multiple NPCs with traits of 4, even with superior strategy and tactics.

Which in and of itself is fine.  It would be thematically weird for inferior participants to win heavily contested events.

But, what does losing mean?  We had a 49% chance of placing in the most recent event with our final roll.  At least, I think we would have gotten some reward if we had made that roll.  But, I/we didn’t.  So, what does that mean?

Naruto (the two series) has an epic story arc, not just for the main character but also for some other characters.  Boardgames interest me so much less because they rarely ever produce any stories, which is interrelated to how they don’t normally allow for bringing one’s own personality and style into the games like CCGs and RPGs do.

When I ask what does it mean, I mean what does it mean for a character/party/campaign narrative?  It makes sense in a module that there’s only success and no failure for things like contests as they are just opportunities to shine while questing for the 4th XP.  But, why, in a home game, have any sort of event where only winning matters?

The point of rolling dice is to have stakes.  I can “internalize” failure.  I feel the failure as a player.  I can portray my character as a loser – it’s not like we are really heroes, at least not in this chapter.  But, that doesn’t fit my character’s situation.  He’s not supposed to win any of these things.  He’s an inexperienced generalist.  His schtick is to roll 4k3 on pritnear everything as base roll to support a wide range of activities.  So, why should he care if he doesn’t win?

So, why should he care about any of these events?

One thing interesting about play in this campaign is that it’s very different from the bulk of my L5R play, admittedly a lot of which was living campaign.  I view the system as a system of success with failure being more like a botch.  You blow your Tea Ceremony roll, and you lose like a rank of Glory or gain Infamy or whatever.  But, that’s not how this play is.  This play is more like other systems where failure is routine and success at things you want to succeed at is … maybe not an exception but … an achievement.

I keep harping on the same things for a reason – I keep experiencing the same things.  It’s hard to get excited about talking about things that aren’t relevant to my play.

Achievement.  PCs don’t have to always achieve.  They should fail at least some of the time.  But, they should routinely achieve something.

Sure, I’ve gone in two different directions.  On the one hand, I’m promoting the idea that failure should matter narratively.  On the other, that achievement should be common, though there are obviously different levels of achievement.

If I don’t achieve my ultimate goal at WC, that’s fine.  My goal is … extravagant.  But, I should feel like I can achieve something.  I don’t have any sense of what I can achieve.

Yet another reason combat is such a good activity for parties.  Not dying is an achievement.  Killing your enemies is an achievement.  Conserving spells is an achievement.  One-shotting some dude is an achievement.  There are so many opportunities to feel like you are accomplishing something.

I’ve been thinking about social challenges in recent months for various reasons.  A huge problem I find with social challenges in my RPG play is that I have no sense of what I’m achieving or not, of what I can even achieve or not.  I got an idea to write out what PCs can accomplish in various activities should I pick up the mantle of GM again, as I’ve grown weary with the nebulous nature of trying to make some impact on the world that isn’t mowing down things trying to kill me.

The way to do any sort of significant activity is to have a PC’s engagement with the world change in some way whether successful or not.  There are lots of ways to accomplish this, like having some NPC offer to help a PC do better in an event or have some NPC claim something of import that a PC failed to claim through their loserinesses.  NPC could have bet on the PC and be pissed at a poor showing.  NPC could be happy a PC sucked “My baby was sure they were going to lose to you, but now is so supremely happy to be less of a loser than you are that I’ll now offer you a job to go to the Stinky Swamp to eliminate the Demon of Disgustingness and claim these four pretty trinkets I keep in my pauper’s hut.”  Butterfly effect of some insignificant match leading to … murder.

It’s hard getting good mechanics for contests, at least with L5R R&K systems.  I thought our last event had good mechanics.  But, I went out of my way to prep for the event, and it didn’t really matter either in terms of making the player decision to prioritize the event or in terms of the results of failing to achieve anything of note.

We have had seven sessions at WC, and I don’t think a single thing of import has changed over that span for our characters.  It’s okay to have some sessions where a particular PC doesn’t have any narrative advancement.  Should be significantly less than half.

So, I’m being ranty again.  It’s my nature.  Being thankful and grateful are much less so.  I’m grateful that I consider these sorts of things as more major problems in my life.  I’m grateful when someone cares about this blog.

Pair Problem

Tried again to play VTES last night.  Failed.

So, two of us played Star Fluxx, then Traveller.  I didn’t realize there was a Star Fluxx, where I hadn’t played Fluxx in a decade or something.  I was reminded why I don’t play these games.

Traveller game was brutal.  I lent him my Safari deck, and I played some Beowulf deck that theoretically did things with connections.

Round 1

We both end up on same contract.  I can do subplot, he can’t.  He gets 2 VPs, I get 4.  I used Modular Hold out of paranoia.

Round 2

I forget to use Modular Hold out of paranoia on same contract (first one was out of my opponent’s deck, this was out of mine).  I get stopped by my own complication.

Meanwhile, my opponent has two Luxury Suites in play and doesn’t get stopped by clearing five complications, putting him at six Safari counters.  He gains 7 VPs.

Ian 4 VPs, not-Ian 9 VPs.

Round 3

I get through contract I was already on and gain 5 VPs.

Opponent gets 4 VPs from contract, 2 VPs from subplots, 2 VPs from Luxury Suites, and 3 VPs from hitting seven Safari counters.

Winner 20 VPs, not-winner 9 VPs.

This is how we imagine tournament play would be like, if there was any.  Three rounds if decks just race and don’t really affect each other.  Points out that 4S Scout deck is likely too slow when Safari ship can do what we expect Subsidized Merchant ships to do.  Now, the Safari deck will explode into a fine red mist against serious piracy, but that’s true of most decks.

So, let’s say the two of us are the only two committed enough to show up, given that we are typically the two who show up.  What can we do besides keep playing a CCG I created?

Ultimate Combat!, of course!!  I’m supposed to show off the better Magic next time.

Wheel of Time …  So, I traded away my collection.  I, then, discovered I have my friend’s collection I was using to elevate one of my laptops.

Gloomhaven/Frosthaven came to mind as last reasonable thought.

BattleTech (maybe Alpha Strike) came to mind as last unreasonable thought.

Why is it difficult at all to think of a two-player game in case other people don’t show up?  Not like history is short on two-player games.  I played rummy at Lyon’s when I was growing up waiting for food.  I should have a shogi set around somewhere.  Etc.

Because I’m not into filler.  I’m more inclined to play filler games with 3+ players because I’m hanging out with a group of people and don’t really feel that strongly about what to play, plus it’s harder to decide on any game more people you have.

I like games.  I play solitaire constantly throughout days, then do things like make a CCG or write up RPG rules in a couple hours.  But, I don’t like them equally.

And, much of my gaming isn’t really about the games being played.  Lot of it has been casual play.

So, when I play a two-player game, I focus more on the game I’m playing.  I want to care what the mechanics are, what the experience will be like.

And, so, that’s why I immediately thought of Ultimate Combat!.  Besides, it’s fast and easy and I can just grab one box.  You know, what some CCGs sold themselves on early on before people started arguing stack timing and trying to figure out layers.  BattleTech of any type isn’t just grab a box, and it’s kind of ridiculous to be playing a minis game instead of a CCG when there are lots of minis things going on at the store throughout the week that I could, in theory, join.  I wouldn’t.  I don’t paint minis, for one thing, so I don’t fit in.

Gloomhaven isn’t the most portable “in case we can’t play what we intended to” option.

Could always play more Traveller, but I’m not sensing a desire to get deeper into the game.  I have my L5R LCG collection still; maybe the game would be more fun if I built all of the decks rather than being played competitively.  I have my Buffy collection.  My Tempest of the Gods collection.

Ooh, having to look up Tempest of the Gods as I blanked on the name, realized we could be playing Dragon Dice!!

Yup, this is what it’s like for gamers:  try to figure out what to play, then make terrible decisions.

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.