Blissward

Wow, so long since I made a post.

One would think that a week ago I would have written something since it was the 5C True Dungeon weekend.  5C being the last virtual dungeon for the VTD season.

Not going to dwell too long on TD as my thoughts are far more relevant on forums.  I ran 5C six times, 5ABC total of 16 times.  5ABC was the most consistent dungeon of the five.  Three weekends of same dungeon, though, is too much.  I did the 16th run only to see some content I wasn’t able to interact with on other 5C runs.

Didn’t really care about change to 5C-D1.  For some groups, lot of puzzle damage.  My second run was a solo run and I got the answer right.  Speaking of solo run, AC36 Monk did not go well.  Change to room 3 was harsh.  AC36 just not good enough to grind out combats.  Died in room 5.  Why post title?  Charm of Blissward was my most fun meta play of the weekend.  On Epic run, we crushed the dungeon – no combat went longer than 2 rounds.  Brings up that Epic is too easy for a full party that knows what it’s doing and is running Epic builds.

Moving on, as this is already a rehash for me.  RPG time.  Finger wagging time.

Players who want narrative stuff to happen need to assist the GMs with what they are interested in.

While I’m sure I provide way more stuff than others on what I’m interested in, it’s often diffused.  I have a variety of thoughts, sometimes lots.  GMs don’t have the energy to cater to a bunch of stuff that may not even involve the rest of the party.

So, while work has been … trying, I finally carved out time Friday night to start thinking about what I wanted for my PCs in my Saturday and Sunday campaigns.  I was much more direct with what I was interested in for the Saturday game.  It didn’t matter for Saturday’s session, as we were in the middle of doing party stuff.  On a side note, that was probably the most coherent session of the 11 I’ve played.  There was a good balance to the session and our decisions were impactful.  Long argument afterwards about XP, but, since I don’t get worked up by the XP system as much as others, I don’t feel compelled to bring up things I’ve brought up in the past.  Still, would have been good to focus on the positive.

For Sunday’s game, I realized something Saturday – the Olympics are happening.  Now, I realized this on Friday, when I had the opening ceremony on for a really long time even though I was barely paying attention to it or its replay.  But, there’s a NPC in the Sunday game who was training for the Olympics, so I made a connection that could have been made earlier of wondering if we had the Olympics going on in our campaign at this time.

We do.  So, while the campaign is Covid free, as no one wants that much reality, for whatever supers world reason that an Olympics might be delayed a year – alien invasion perhaps, my PC (and his family) attended.  Family whole time and watch a bunch of baseball.  My PC just a few days, primarily to watch women’s pentathlon for, um, reasons.

I only wrote up details of what I cared about for subplot stuff after today’s session because … we were in the middle of doing things in game.  And, because talking with the GM made it clear that I needed to focus my thoughts/cares.  Buying the Denver Broncos can come later.  Hiking Native American Territories or Southwestern World Playboying can come later.  Hunting for a teleporting martial artist in Shanghai can come later.  Visiting family in Mexico can come later.

Focus.

So, speaking of Olympics, it’s very background noise for me this time around.  I don’t have much sense of the competitors.  Not trying to hunt down things I want to watch.  It’s so hard to follow fencing, but there was some interesting stuff shown only because Americanos were getting medals.  Canoe/kayak stuff is another thing that sounds like it would be interesting but isn’t well suited to TV.  Skateboarding not been that interesting to me as it’s like one trick at a time.

Why am I talking about Olympics other than how I like the Olympics?  Focus.  What sport is giving payoff?  The one you like watching the most or have the most rooting interest or whatever.  I was coming up with events Julio would be interested in besides pentathlon.  They aren’t the same as what I’d see in person if I can ever figure out how you actually get tickets.  We both like water, but he would be interested in sailing and swimming even though I think swimming is likely far better on TV.  We both would find diving interesting.  I think badminton is likely terrible to watch in person, too, but I’d still try and see.  Nothing is as good as curling as a spectator sport, but we can try.  Julio would be interested in surfing both because water and because new.  He would try to watch some baseball with his parents and uncle and might find it worth some time, where I’d rather watch archery even given how numbing that is likely to be.  But, I would imagine seeing a lot of different sports is a hassle unless you are well organized or very knowledgeable about how Olympics are conducted.

I don’t want GMs to struggle.  I can empathize with not having the energy to do gaming things – see my not blogging in like a month.  Maybe they won’t use what I send them.  But, they can’t use what I don’t send them.

HoR is fine for playing something mechanical that occasionally becomes thematic.  Home games should really see thematic play where mechanics support.

So, no CCGing, still.  TD is TD (totally awful treasure, again).  Conventions are getting sneaky close to worry about.  Really been RPGs that have been notable in how they could be better and how I can try to make them better by presenting what I care about.

Reledom Encounter Table

So, in theory, late to the party on this topic.  But, since I tune out lots of what other people have to say, pretty different topic for me.

Random encounters.

In theory, not my thing.  Other than RuneQuest, which could have been run very differently to not be this way, I don’t play virtually any videogame roll-playing.  So, the need for things like resource suckers or time control elements or the like that are gamist concerns haven’t mattered to me and just become annoyances at trying to complete narratives.

But, Saturday, there came up the idea that if we don’t have any player driven activity in mind then random events could occur.

So, I got to thinking how that would be useful.  It occurred to me that randomized events occurring that were relevant to advancing plot or subplot could make sense.  Rather than scripting events, even though that’s how I think and could totally be done, having a “harlot table” that touches on preexisting story might be interesting.

Which got me thinking about whether sandbox play can just have randomized events that don’t caress preexisting story, that the randomized events can add narrative value through opening up new narrative paths.

After all, one of the arguments in favor of random encounters is that it prevents staleness.  Something the GM didn’t predefine just happens and the entire table runs with it.

Then, because Sunday was another Denver CRUSH session, I superficially considered random events in a supers game.  Supers worlds are very oriented to “then, something weird happened”.  Champions is all about random die rolls to determine whether Hunteds appear or not.

The Bloodspeaker game is in a phase where there’s zero pressure on my character to do anything.  Now, my character doesn’t have a personal agenda, goals, whatever you want to call them.  I would say my character has motivations, the party motivation to eradicate Bloodspeakers, and a personal motivation to live up to his sister’s example of heroic (minor clanner) samurai.  My character has interests.  They just don’t seem to lead anywhere.

So, while exploring a non-fleshed out city, Kitayakei is in a ___, when in walks ___.  ___ starts talking about supernatural weirdness and, boom, possible lead on supernatural evil.  Or, not.  But, it’s better than gossip roll telling me things so vague I have no course of action.  It’s better than being dumped in a court setting where I have no responsibilities and no agenda to pursue so quickly give up … just occurred to me this is why I rarely enjoy HoR Political Interactives – I have nothing that I care about doing, so I talk to some folks for half an hour, then stop doing anything.

Kitayakei’s introduction to the campaign was being kidnapped by peasants to be used for icky rites.  That could be his thing.  Everywhere he is on his own, someone is trying to sell him to a tsukai.  Does push the plot.  Could be way more subtle.  Stop an assault on some wealthy NPC who then takes Kitayakei partying at respectable geisha joints and … later … tries to sell him to a tsukai for ickiness.

Now, of course, there’s no actual need for these sorts of events to be random.  However, by having the Reledom Encounter Table to fall back on, random die rolls determine how plot proceeds.  Or, subplot … if there were subplots that involved this character.

Reason I got to thinking about this with the supers game also has to do with how many side activities Julio/Arc Flash could be doing.  Right this moment, there’s a backlog of possibilities where no specific one is primary enough to be the obvious thing for me, the player, to harass the GM about.

Rolls 11 – NPC seeks out PC for non-ickiness.

“Okay, Julio gets a call from ___ to meet up for drinks to talk about ___, right before supernatural evil breaks out.  Roll initiative.”

This cuts through the clutter of possibilities.

So, is it ironic that one campaign could use reledom events because there’s too few things to pursue and the other because too many that are of roughly equal value?

Is it just as ironic or, perhaps, far more ironic or, perhaps, there are other words in the English language besides ironic that could be used instead that the campaign where my PC has too little to do on stage is the one where I have numerous advancement options I want to pursue and the campaign where the PC has too much to do on/off stage is the one where I’m not sure how I want to advance the character?

Let’s explore this observation.

Bloodspeaker campaign has a strong mechanical focus from this player’s perspective.  Even pursuing interests is largely a die roll and … whatever.  In the absence of exploring the character thematically, left with mechanics.

CRUSH campaign has a strong thematic focus (for my PC) from this player’s perspective.  Far more is accomplished (funwise, at least) through dialogue and description than through the die rolls.  The mechanics, at least when it comes to using superpowers, aren’t nearly as compelling to me.  So, getting better at things isn’t particularly important to me.

That seems so … reasonable.

Speaking of mechanics in the supers game because I’m all about explaining to people how to powergame different systems, we were going over the two energy projectors’ primary ranged attacks and it came out that the PC not being played by this guy has about double the dice pool that the PC being played by one who is full of geniusness has.  Sure, one can infer that that matters mechanically.  I figure I lightning bolt Ghost Wolf and do 1-2 levels of damage (remember this is Aberrant), so I need like five or so attacks to land to take him out of combat.  He averages like 6 levels of damage and kills me in two shots pretty much every time.

For a far less technical explanation as I don’t want to overwhelm with a massive amount of numbers, it’s like the difference between Thor hitting a god/Silver Surfer with lightning and The Wasp’s Sting or Black Widow’s Sting.

Arc Flash is basically the Jubilee (early) of the team.  In 12 sessions, Arc Flash has inflicted, to my recollection, exactly one wound level to all supervillains or yet-to-be-determined-whether-villains combined.  On the one hand, he doesn’t fire lightning bolts hardly ever against living things because of a totally different blog topic about how superpowers that do lethal/killing/whatever damage suck.  On the other, that one wound level wasn’t done with a lightning bolt.  It was done using Windsurfing (flight) and the goal wasn’t even to hurt the supervillain but to get him to stop holding on to me.  A goal that failed, by the way, and he punched me a second time and I went unconscious.

Will this continue to work?  To be the rainbringer?  To be the Cypher (before Douglock) of the team (after buying Mega-INT with Linguistic Genius enhancement in another session)?  The flashlight of the team (even though I haven’t actually used that power, yet)?  Yes, I spelled flashlight correctly.

Since powering up is not terribly feasible unless doing a rebuild on powers, guess we are going to see how useful utility powers are compared to the raw beatings of more standard powers.  I can go from 2 dots in Weather Manipulation to 3 dots soon to add a mighty +2d10 to my Lightning Bolt ability, still being only 8d10 behind Ghost Wolf’s lethal energy attack and further behind his bashing energy attack.  Note, by the way, that GW is tougher, faster, stronger, more accurate, and infinitely more regenerativer than AF – it’s almost like I don’t build combat effective characters in any system, almost as if.

Precipitating

Sunday, had a Denver CRUSH session.  After deciding to stop trespassing in a dimensionally displaced lair of a team of superpowered individuals who might not be villains to respond to an attack on a penitentiary for superpowered individuals, we responded.

The puk-ish dragon followed my character out of the lair.

Speaking of dragons, a dragon was the cause of the attack and had broken out a couple supervillains we had defeated.  In the process, killed some people and ate some others.  Set some buildings on fire.  Also, a patch of forest.

This set up an interesting scenario.  Not only were there different options for what to do besides who to beat up, it caused player decisions I was surprised by.

Having options of what to do allows for character development, I hear this is called “ridesharing” by someone who just made up this term for anti-railroading, though, really, lack of decisions and railroading aren’t the same thing – as someone not that into train games, I don’t really feel railroaded nearly as much as other people do.

There was basically fighting some supers at the gate, helping normals, chasing the dragon flying North, or dealing with forest fire.

Venus and I (Arc Flash) went to deal with forest fire.  Trilbee and Ghost Wolf (in absentia) went for supers.  Sentinel … didn’t do what I expected.  As someone who tends to just rush in and smash the antagonists, I didn’t expect him to focus on helping normals.  Sure, his superstrength was good for such, plus toughness.  Probably metagaming on multiple people’s parts, but it made sense for me to try to deal with forest fire, and Ghost Wolf was not going to make his presence felt until later (regular situation due to player having stuff he has to do that overlaps with our start time).

I guess it makes even more sense from a power set standpoint when I stop to think about it.  Trilbee and fire is not a good thing.  Venus could have left forest fire to me, but, in character, nobody knows I can just put it out on my own.  Ghost Wolf doesn’t have any great rescue people powers.

Still, it was weird to witness Sentinel caring about normals over smashing face.

I had suggested a natural disaster, natural disaster with bad guys around, or the like precisely because it’s much more interesting to have different things to do that feel like they relate to each other than everyone doing the same thing or just trying to beat enemies down.

I really thought this worked better than any of our other challenges.

While the theme of Arc Flash is electrical powers, mechanically, it’s bought under Weather Manipulation.  You can search how to cause rain through electricity like I did and read about sketchy efforts to create electrical umbrellas of negative charged particles or … you can watch Arc Flash use max power mechanic, spend a Willpower for a success, burn off some health levels for more successes, then roll four more successes for eight successes on Weather Alteration to cause rain in a 30km radius to not only drown out forest fire but put out fires at the penitentiary a ways off, too.

That was all part of a metagame plan.  But, AF doesn’t know that he has Weather Manipulation.  So, part of the play was trying to make it seem like an unknown that this could happen, that he had to reach deep into his superheroic psyche to come up with this gamechanging tactic.

That part didn’t work so well.  Because what I just wrote is not obvious in meaning, what I mean is that trying to have play capture the narrative one would read in a comic book didn’t work so well.  Nobody really cared about the revelation that the electro-dude can cause rainstorms on a thematic level.  Mechanically, it also made Venus helping on the forest fire redundant, though that did mean the two fighting three supers got to have a more challenging fight.

Some folks might argue this is the weakness of narrative style play.  Trying to force a narrative rather than let it come about through random dice rolls (gamist) or less random dice rolls (simulationist, only slightly kidding).  Forced drama isn’t dramatic or some such.

Changing topics, though the above was longer than I thought so maybe I just introduce this for more examination later, I was driving and started thinking (again) about what sort of fantasy RPG campaign I’d be interested in running.  By which I mean in the European fantasy vein rather than some L5R thing.

I was trying to think of how to capture part of the D&D aesthetic of a gaming-oriented fantasy world while getting rid of the stuff I don’t like about the D&D aesthetic.  Part of this came out of a discussion other people were having on Discord comparing D&D versions.  That conversation pointed out that I don’t actually know a lot about D&D, the play of it anyway.  I’ve played way less D&D than other dicechuckers.

It was a struggle.  I don’t want to just fall back on Conan, as that’s not the aesthetic I’m envisioning.  I’m envisioning something much more community based.  I do think magic needs to be largely removed from the PCs’ hands.  Also, that combat magic shouldn’t really exist.  Magic should be wondrous and it doesn’t work well with either certain systems or certain types of players.  Sure, you could have a highly open-ended system where players one-off magic pretty much through description, but I do think that even for players who are into that sort of thing that a campaign of such poorly defined systems would become a drag.

I thought of mythological play with like Greek demigods, but that’s not the right aesthetic.  I want something townie.  I tried to think of what books I was trying to emulate, and I couldn’t think of any, not even Spellsinger, which has the animal thing going on but also stars a magic-user.  If not books and not just being caught up in the D&D paradigm, then what’s the inspiration?  Camelot, sort of.  I’ve run a Camelot game that didn’t really capture the townie feel, and I have a hard time picturing running one that does.  And, something else that escapes me.

I really liked the Babylon RPG, which has that fantasy city feel where characters aren’t superheroes but largely defined by occupations, skills, etc.  I wonder if anything happened to where we might see it published or whether it basically just lives in one person’s head.

Even Crusades era doesn’t do it.  Three Musketeers fantasy could, of course, but I’m no 7th Sea fan (I concluded), and that’s the better fit.  Rome if done in a non-stereotypical way would probably work, though Roman terms would not be the right aesthetic, either.

Well, something to come back to later.  Denver CRUSH needs to plan on taking on a dragon, Dragonette, Basilisk, Swashbuckler, and Warthog again.  And, Arc Flash needs to get rid of a clingy dragon to preserve his secret ID.

Super Smorgasbord

Fighter, magic-user, cleric, thief, …

Sailor, demon slayer, magic amulet maker, trapper, … um … herald.

At some point long after I was exposed to (A)D&D, I thought about how parties are constructed as, shocker, parties.  Players created PCs to fill in roles in a collective.  That principle certainly goes beyond D&D and its ilk.

That second list is a L5R party.  Or, put another way, bushi, bushi, shugenja, less focused on killing bushi, courtier (in theory).  Even with a variety of clans and different areas of focus, L5R parties still tend toward high levels of commonality.  The half-shapeshifter, Void Mystic, monk, ronin, whatever party still is pretty much a collection of similar components.  Nightmare War, where can get Nezumi, Naga, and whatnot in the same party, is when really start getting away from similar PCs in a world sense.

But, I hadn’t thought about superhero parties.

I think of comic teams, how original X-Men had energy projector, elemental, psionic, brick, dude who flies is kind of like someone doles out roles or Fantastic Four had same origin and allocation of elemental powers (with brick, energy projector, weirdo, defensive energy projector) or Avengers had brick/energy projector, brick/energy projector, brick, shrinker x2 or DC had some sort of teams, too.

Common origins or designated roles come to mind even if don’t fit into neat boxes.

Then, there’s RPG play, where you get things like Denver CRUSH 2021:

Arc Flash – energy projector who can fly, unknown origin, secret ID.

Ghost Wolf – mutant energy projector rogue (think Gambit), Native American mutant, secret ID.

Sentinel – rigid flying brick, military background, no(?) non-super ID.

Trilbee – sentient colony of bees, unknown origin, no non-super ID.

Venus – plant person (Man-Thing), unknown origin, no non-super ID.

I keep trying to envision how this group functions together when not in the middle of a fight.

What do they talk about?

How do they work together when in two-creature patrols?

How do they portray the team to the public?

Where did their powers come from?

Who is the leader?

Mechanically, we do cover different areas.  Ghost Wolf is personal social character, Arc Flash is public social character (if not that great at it).  Various brains though no inventor type.  Black ops – Ghost Wolf.  Direct force – Sentinel.  Investigators – Venus, Ghost Wolf, Trilbee in some order.

Thematically, we … are just a hodgepodge, a potpourri, a salmagundi, a menagerie, a [looks up more words].

Because the group put so little effort into defining origins of powers, one of us might be an alien where another a magical entity.  We don’t know.

This is a party I can’t see having an analogue in other RPGs I’ve played.  There’s nothing that connects these characters to each other besides being on same team by fiat.  At some point, we assumedly create those connections.

Arc Flash and Ghost Wolf are teaching each other new skills.  The others … … … *shrug*

The players have played stuff together before to varying degrees, but there’s zero effort to create relationships between each other.  When I played with same GM and three of the other four players in L5R home game, we weren’t necessarily close, but we were all samurai who related as samurai are wont to do when have same job (Emerald Magistrate stuff).

Not a group that does much outside of sessions and we spend a lot of time on combat when we have combat so narrative progress has been slow.

Sounds like a disaster?

For those who have played superhero campaigns, maybe doesn’t.  The whole point of this post is that the genre enables for something that just wouldn’t work in other genres.  Trying to have the most unique concept of them all in other games can lead to narrative constraint or mechanical incoherency that would make actually playing the game hard.

But, we are doing okay.  I do wish that it was easier to have group non-hero ID subplots, but I’m having subplot stuff happen between sessions, so I’m getting what I want out of playing a supers campaign.  At some point, AF and GW will likely do a lot more secret ID buddy stuff as things appear at the moment, since we two players are the ones who are interested in the secret ID supers trope.

Possibly far more interesting to me, who has played a number of RPG campaigns where this just doesn’t seem like it would work.  The Feng Shui game had the martial artist, gunner, creature, martial artist/gunner, sorcerer and FS can easily have wildly different concepts relative to a lot of games and we mostly focused on team activities, so I guess that wasn’t crazy different.  Just that this genre feels like it inclines to elements of play very different from other genres, and I’m discovering those elements only now in my feeble old age.

Superlosers

Should superheroes be losers?

[But, blogger, that’s so direct.]

When I think of superhero activities in comics, I think more of the covers than the fights inside.  On the covers, supers are constantly lying unconscious on the ground, in some deathtrap after being captured, being held limp by some villain, or whatever.

How do you get into deathtraps if you don’t get knocked unconscious?

And, the ways that superheroes lose can be ridiculous.  Someone just zaps with something and done.  All to set up the rematch later.

So, what of RPG play, where games aren’t fiction?

Far more than other genres, I see the value in losing.  You lose in L5R and you should be dead.  You lose in dungeoncrawling and you should be dead or use a Fate Point to be left for dead.  But, supers who always win are really boring.

Recurring villains are necessary to simulate comics.  Sure, if you want to just be superpowered but not superheroes, then you get fangs or whatever and win, win, win.  Or, maybe run away.  But, superheroes aren’t just superpowered characters; they are a mess of weird psychological problems in a soap opera.

My Aberrant character is doing a great job at being a loser, but his team is letting him down and racking up win after win.  All of my taking two punches from a brick and being out of combat for 1.5 more sessions is going to waste.

We haven’t gotten captured.  No deathtraps.

Of course, this is Aberrant.  Combat is harsh.  Several levels of lethal damage after a couple of punches harsh.  Whereas being quickly taken out should be a normal result, recovery in Aberrant is far too slow to simulate comic fighting.

Meanwhile, my skill rolls have largely been great.  Botching a stealth roll ended up causing an enemy plane to crash.  I did roll far below usual in a roll in last session, a linguistics roll …

That actually seems about right.  If you are a super, whatever your areas of expertise should be crushed.  But, supervillains are only to be taken seriously when they beat the crap out of you.  If you just beat the crap out of them all of the time, well, that ultimately doesn’t make you seem very impressive, it just means the villains are losers and the “audience” (NPCs) should just expect you to win all of the time and also fix all of their other problems.

Interesting idea that supers are performers in a way that PCs in other genres aren’t.  Even darker games should see supers from a normal’s point of view not from other supers’ points of view.  Ah, the advantage of actually playing in a supers game – keep learning how things differ from other games.  Yeah, Mechwarriors or whatever could be seen in similar lights, but that doesn’t tend to happen.

Superagents were a threat to the others.  (I was too unconscious to fight superagents.)  Small sample size on how I feel about this, plus I wasn’t the one affected, so I have no experience to work with.

Subplots are kind of awkward because the group doesn’t do much outside of sessions and is very groupy during sessions.  I’m working on an angle to get some progress on a mystery on the side, but I haven’t yet built up enough feel for my character and the game to start writing fictions about stuff I do offstage.  Did one that introduced my executive assistant.

After talking to a couple of us, the GM decided to give out more XP.  So, my character got way better mechanically.  How this plays out, I have no idea since we haven’t played another session since this happened.  But, I addressed a primary weakness – fragility.  So, it should be interesting to see what happens.

Combat still takes a long time, so narrative progress is not quick.  We also have a lot of things happening without clarity on what to do about them.  Better than having only one thing to do, but I think we could divvy up activities more if the characters were better defined.

That’s it.  Another session Sunday even though I have family in town.  See how that works.

True Dungeon 2022 token development is almost done, so that has been on my mind a lot, but I have to think about whether what I’ve been thinking makes for fascinating blog fodder or not.  Started throwing out Shadowfist deck ideas to live vicariously through someone who is actually playing.

Casual

Let’s see if mentioning random tidbits can coalesce into some forced theme.

An observation I’ve had with my superhero character is that he is really competent … as a rich dude.  He’s pretty bad at actually being super.  Most of his powers are combat powers, and he has sucked in combat.  Meanwhile, even things he doesn’t have like eight dice for, keeps rolling lots of successes.  Just kept doing like five successes on each roll in a social scene last session, though, actually, very little got accomplished.  Case of rolling dice too much for something minor, or, alternatively, the situation should have had more impact to justify even rolling dice at all.

I could reference a post on theangrygm.com, which I like to read, though talk about long, rambling intros that lack substantive content and sarcastic/sardonic language …  Um, post about when to roll dice.  But, you could just read that.

I did almost double his soak with some XP because the more combat I saw the more I would expect to get hit once and be out of combat.

Because we still lack clear benchmarks on play, it’s hard for me to analyze my build.  It’s not terribly constructed using the awful Aberrant character creation rules (aka awful any White Wolf RPG character creation rules).  It’s just unclear how combat should work.  I may have already said this, but I find combat odd in that it should go very quick to take characters down which I like in RPG combat but feels too harsh even if you don’t end up dead.  The lack of a clear STUN Pips side to combat means supers get ripped up in combat in a way that just doesn’t fit 4c comics play.  While there hasn’t been a narrative fail, yet, I don’t think it’s possible to do multiple combats in the same day, which is totally not normal for comicbook supers.

Nothing going on for me with my new HoR4 character.  I know how much that depresses you, but tis be what tis be.

I had a one on one session of Witch Doctors, wherein I played my Washington DC character.  Got to resolve something involving a subplot.  Guns and lust – the greatest subplots of them all.  No plot.  No specific conflict.  All player driven narrative of a day in the life, where conflict is the psychological state of the character in the aftermath of Ghosts and a desire to get laid, um, I mean have meaningful companionship on this lonely rock hurtling through spacetime.  Can’t cue up Afterglow just yet.

Did actually use magick.  In a geniusy way, of course.  A way totally in preparation for his further adventures around people who fire arms.  No idea when that would be, but stories can last quite a long time in one’s mind.  Maybe I’ll be a certain type of WD player – the casual player.

Didn’t send any True Dungeon transmutes in, so I will still need to take up a slot to be psychic or be two STR below where I could be.  Now, I could even be two DEX higher than before, yet I don’t know when I’ll get around to sending anything in.  Fascinating.

I keep thinking about Shadowfist deck ideas (and not remotely about V:TES or Traveller deck ideas).  I find it interesting just how different the perspective is on Discord from my own on cards.  Fascinating differences of opinions.  Utterly fascinating.

Okay, so … content?

Arrowverse is back.  Fascinating!

Flash is okay.  Not particularly cringeworthy.  Less annoying than a lot of Arrow episodes and, uh, a lot of Flash episodes.  I’ve yet to pay attention to Superman & Lois or see Kung Fu (for bonus CWness).

Blah, blah, solitaire, blah, Terraforming Mars solitaire, blah.

Going back to the fascinating world of True Dungeon, 2022 development has started.

So, I try.  I try to view things from an experience standpoint different from mine.  But, so many people make me want to not bother.  I have immense tolerance for things that will bother other people.  Obtuseness is not something I have much tolerance for.

You can’t want Black Lotus and Time Walk to be your average power level every set and not create a model that is of no benefit to the people currently invested.  When new is always better than old, than a rational person, which admittedly people who get into collectible stuff may not qualify as, will conclude that nothing has any value anymore; the new will just keep obsoleting the old until … there’s nothing new anymore.

Now, this doommongering is not going to “pay off” tomorrow or next year.  There are other factors at work and not every token is outclassed immediately, so there’s a reasonable illusion that not everything will get outclassed even years down the line.  Also, structurally, some tokens, slotless tokens, are rather difficult to make less valuable up until slotless get forced into slots or there becomes a restriction on number of slotless or whatever other rule that doesn’t currently exist and likely never will as it will piss off established players.

But, what’s the point of new tokens?  Sure, those of us who have already achieved a power level greater than that of the Jurai Royal Family don’t need to catch up to some level of play beyond us.  There are those who are trying to get to the lofty heights of token tycoondom.  And, yes, they can catch up with new tokens.  Can also catch up with existing tokens by just shelling out lots of money, which is what getting new tokens eventually results in.  But, it’s a treadmill.

Get to my point, then what?  Chill?

Let’s say anyone with as good of a collection as mine stops running.  Then, bubble burst.

Someone has to keep wanting.  Sure, there’s the next gen.  My gen (at the point of serious investment, not at the point of initial play) just stops running, and the PAXites or friends and family or whoever throws money at the new stuff.  Yes, that will happen.  Is it sustainable?

Maybe tulips have more value than I think.

Not like Magic cards haven’t gotten considerably more valuable over a significantly longer period of time.

So human nature to want to be one of the in crowd, to lord over others, to speculate that markets just go up.

And, also, so human to want rather than be satisfied.

I still get tokens.  I’m part of the engine that keeps the economy chugging along.  Other than an eventual inability to keep pouring money into by far the most expensive hobby I’ve ever had, when do I stop?  When do I move on from the desire to be a .1%er and am just satisfied being a …

… casual player?

007

Or, is that 070?

No.  Wait, that’s right.  This is post 700.

So, one might think that James Bond hasn’t been all that relevant to my life recently.  Certainly, haven’t seen a movie recently, haven’t read a book recently, nor played a spy game in like forever.

March 23rd, we finished up New Amsterdam.  I didn’t just use one Token, I used both of Garrett’s Tokens.  Btw, nobody will get this, but my character was named Garrett Vaplon.  If you do understand why, well, I guess that would be … interesting.  The resolution was interesting, where a low key investigation turned into a war zone.  So, what does this have to do with Bond?  As a magistrate, GV has a license to homicide.  No sex (for good reasons).  No gadgets, vehicles, or even weapons use.  No drinking.  A lot more looking after others than Jimmy B.

Today, episode 2 of Denver CRUSH.  Dominated by super team versus super team combat.  So, Julio Torres isn’t a martial arts expert, is only somewhat socially inclined without having relations with any of a number of villainous possibilities, doesn’t even have a gun or commando knife (unlike Garrett), hasn’t destroyed a vehicle he has piloted yet, and has wealth more akin to Bond’s antagonists than Commander Bond, himself.  We set up some forums and talked about doing more between sessions to get the character development that we often don’t have time for during sessions.  At some point, we should get better at combat, as combat is actually kind of harsh, to leave more time on Sundays for other stuff.

What defines 007?  Sure, there are all of the quirks.  There’s a formula for his stories.  But, in the words of a geniusy type, can solo word “competence”.  And, that’s where my two PCs struggled.  Garrett didn’t solve the Mystery.  Julio or, rather, Arc Flash got face numbingly blasted once and was Crippled from then on.  Neither one is terribly knowledgeable to where they can avoid pitfalls that JB regularly avoids (or sleeps his way out of or gadgets his way out of).

But, let’s switch gears in our Aston Martin (7 speed!) and talk about quirks.  Shaken not stirred.  Walther PPK.  Aston Martin.  Ability to meet woman with extremely suggestive names.  I suggested a new Shadowfist format Saturday, though it’s a format that could apply to a variety of CCGs.  Not all, at least not as defined for Shadowfist as Shadowfist has no minimum deck size and five-card limit.

Showcase – Choose up to one card from each set and construct your deck using only copies of those cards.

Modern Showcase – As above but only choose cards from Modern sets.

Feedback so far?

That sounds terrible

I’ve built two decks so far.  Start with the Ascended since it would be a bad format if you couldn’t do something interesting with the worst faction.  Also, … come back to this next point later.

Semi-Crocodile
x5 Violet Meditation
x5 Dockyard
x3 Shadowy Mentor
x3 Recruits
x5 Valley of Ashes
x3 Rosomak
x2 Elle Mactans
x5 Corporate Informer
x5 Snap of the Crocodile

So, I started with 4x Tears of the Crocodile because … I didn’t really think about this format a whole lot when I started.  Save the best (selection of options) for last.  Because Back for Seconds only has two of the six Modern factions, Dockyard is going to show up a lot … except when it doesn’t.  Because something I discovered when working on decks was just how prevalent foundations were.  Sure, you give up something else, maybe something really good, but it’s not hard to run 10x or more foundations in what are going to be around 40 card decks.

This deck won’t look anything like typical Ascended decks.  But, then 007 isn’t 005 or 006 or anything like what a spy is actually supposed to be like.  Also, I don’t really get Ascended, anyway.  Sure, it’s totally missing events that do things, so … come up with your own Ascended Modern Showcase.

Then, we go to a good faction.  A too good faction in Modern.

5 Demon Bagless
x5 Bribery
x5 Pocket Demon
x5 Feng Kan
x5 Abysmal Wyrm
x5 Exorcist
x5 Feather Mountain
x5 Secluded Redoubt
x5 Punk Geomancers
x5 Jian

Why the name?  Well, I had Six Demon Bag until … I realized I hadn’t put any FSSs in.  SDB would be good for Feathering attackers into the dudes who don’t just heal every turn.  No Dockyard here.  Still event soft, plus lack of evasion outside Bribery, plus lack of inevitability.  Well, plenty of changes possible.  If not for need for another FSS, would have run non-Lotus, faction card.

So, quirky.  AKA, interesting.  Sure, actually playing this format may not turn out well, after all, who has any clue?  But, I was way more into the Ascended decisions than I normally am because the decisions felt interesting rather than just playing good cards or, um, just playing bad cards.  I’m far more inclined to try to build good decks when I have limited options.  This is why I’m way better as a limited player than I am as a constructed player in CCGs.  Well, at least some geniusy type thinks that, where the only evidence is winning limited Magic tournament and placing second in a couple of others while sucking in constructed Magic and being ranked number two in the world in limited VTES rankings for like a year after winning multiple limited tournaments in a row as opposed to … being a Hall of Famer off of constructed wins and dropping all the way down to a tie for 25th most tournament wins ever.

So, these decks are probably terrible Modern Showcases, but I want to play this format, these formats.  Enthusiasm!  Not my thing … most of the time.  Why be a terrible spy?  To be a legendary character.

Next Gen

One would think I’d have good inspiration as my gaming has picked up and I had multiple things last weekend.

This weekend, my nephew turned one.

Much of last week I spent playing the solo challenge of Terraforming Mars using the app.

Learning – that’s my theme I just settled on.

Jesse (not to be confused with a certain erstwhile coworker) has all of the usual things to learn as well as all of the things that won’t be the same for us.  I’m already a different gen from my siblings.

Meanwhile, this old Dog had to learn how to generate plenty of oxygen and temperature while not forgetting to get nine ocean tiles in play by the end of Gen 14, while playing various corps of different utility.  Still haven’t won playing Ecoline.  Thought I had and overlooked that I hadn’t oceaned enough.  I may have been in a position to win with Ecoline once, maybe it was someone else, but I stupidly bought a card I couldn’t play as I didn’t pay attention to the cost and fell like one temperature level short.

But, why does anyone care about my new solitaire thing?

I mean, sure, we played a three-player game Friday where my knowing cards and interactions much better helped a lot, though that was still only my second game with opponents because I’m just not that interested in interacting with AI opponents or random people online.  The considerations are just so different, where you need to do very specific things in the solo challenge.

I tried doing a plants strategy in solo challenge multiple times, and it was painfully slow.  What works for me is 4+ energy to fuel one of the blue cards that gives an oxygen level, plus heat high enough to keep moving temperature up each turn.  I think only once did I ever win with an animals card in play because I was in command on Gen 13 to where there was inevitability and I could fiddle around for VPs.

So, Terraforming Mars was hardly the only thing I did since last post.

Last weekend, had a L5R home campaign session and our second Denver CRUSH session.

The first DC (TM, R, C) session was mostly one round of combat.  Yeah, learning new game with 5 on 4 supers combat was super … slow.

Second session was five more rounds of combat, listening to various academic presentations relating to pyramids around the world, getting called in on a mysterious crime that occurred while my character was ineffectually spamming electricity.

The L5R session was an end to a chapter.  A chapter where almost all of the narrative lives only in my mind.  There’s so much potential to do things that produce more on stage story, where my fiction that I plan on doing has not a lot to do with what we do on stage.  It’s an extrapolation.

This weekend was third session of DC.  It made sense to me to have a quieter session where action was pushed to the side while we did investigating.

Though, we aren’t that good at investigating.  I think 60% of the PCs have pretty straightforward powers that are meant for confrontations.  Not powergamed PCs, just straightforward ones.  Yes, my character has more powers than he needs to for utility and thematic reasons, but they hold together themewise very well.  In Champions terms, looking at an Elemental Control for non-offensive powers and a Multipower for the attacks.

Now, I did roll INT/Biz twice this session.  Nine dice in my dice pool.

We just had various leads that weren’t obviously the one, true lead.

But, besides that sessions one and two were a lot of learning about combat to where session three was learning about noncombat, whether my rolling CHA/Etiquette to talk to a kid in a hospital or Biz roll to remember someone’s face, there’s also learning the pacing and ethos of supers play.

I’ve watched a fair share of soap operas in my day.  I view supers as the most soap opera of common genres (common to folks I’ve played with, anyway).  So, the slow burn of play with various different plots going on simultaneously and some things just getting tabled to be resolved later all make sense to me.

There’s also learning about each other’s characters.  Two of us were following a lead and I realize neither one of us had powers oriented to tracking someone down.  No enhanced senses, no Mega-INT, no mental powers, etc.  Found out one of the other PCs has enhanced senses.

One of the things that I think about with the L5R campaign is how to learn to do things more efficiently so that we use play time better.

This week is kind of insane.  If all goes according to plan, I have RPG sessions Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, have True Dungeon Friday, Saturday, HoR Battle Interactive Saturday, True Dungeon Sunday.  I doubt anyone will run a HoR mod late Sunday for me to get a mod I’ve missed.  Wednesday is Witch Doctors.

In theory, I’ll have plenty of material to mine next week, but I might also be so wiped by 3/22 that it will take me a while to post next post.  Of course, those with a different blogging style would blog multiple times by 3/22.

Dun Da Con 2021

I don’t know what was going on with DunDraCon this year, but this weekend was essentially a con for me.

Combine five True Dungeon runs with two home RPG campaigns, plus even had a canceled game.

Very slight spoilers that, if they affect you the devoted reader, you should totally let me know about.

Friday

Finally.  For the first time, I got in a solo True Dungeon run as 4C reduced demand for 4A and 4B and nobody jumped on the run at the last minute nor did I get merged into another run, though they asked me if I wanted to.

I went with druid for kill power, healing, options, and saves.

I cast seven spells in room 1.  Six of them were healing spells.  I also attacked like eight times and never successfully hit.  Oh, I should mention I was doing Nightmare as the whole point was to try to solo Nightmare.

I figured out room 2.  Room 3 was not going well and could have easily have been the end.  Room 4 was more hand holding.  Room 5 ended with a giant 1 (1) on my screen.

Well, that learned me something.  At least VTD Nightmare at this point is not going to go well solo.

Slight break, then solo run #2!!

Paladin this time and only on Hardcore.

This went far better, though I chose combat in room 6 and that really should have killed me.  Used ridiculous number of heal pots just to drag myself into room 7, where there was no way I could inflict enough damage.

So, as everyone knows, the key to TD is having a really high Armor Class.  Yup, you may not murder stuff, but you will totally survive ridiculously longer when you devote significant effort to increasing your AC as high as possible … on your solo runs.

Boardgame night got canceled between one of the people not being available and my pointing out how much gaming I had the rest of the weekend.

Saturday

TD with more than one player on a run!?!  What bizarre nonsense this be?!?

I played barbarian because I don’t think I had after acquiring Bog’s.  Seven players.  First room, Greater Rage.  Group stunned on round one and murdered round two without things happening.  Oh, this was on Nightmare.  First puzzle was not even close to being done.  Room 6, chose puzzle, so my first time seeing the puzzle but I provided zero input.  Success in room 7.

Monk and rogue are broken, but I missed out on 90 or so damage by missing a Fury.  Oh, rogue isn’t overpowered, it’s broken in the sense that it has ridiculous glass cannon potential.  My barbarian build did amuse me as I ran three rings and all three were plus saves rings, while my armor was Troll Hide Armor not because I cared anything about the AC bonus (my AC with armor on was 15/16).

So, I know this will sound blasphemous but group play was better than solo play.  Sure, I enjoy being able to think of my own solutions to puzzles and making decisions quicker, but combat is really, really boring when it goes like 15 rounds.  Just as how grinding combat in RPG play is really boring or how pretty much any activity that involves doing the same thing over and over again is likely going to be boring.  Besides, it’s pointless to play below Nightmare, and I don’t think I can survive Nightmare to room 7 without like totally slowplaying combats – there’s no real clock on solo play combat like there is in more normal play combat, so that isn’t really possible.

I think I’m not inclined to more solo play. Oh, I won’t avoid it, as it at least means I don’t have to worry about playing with random players, but I don’t think I’ll make a real effort to engineer it, again.

So, I’m 1.5 hours late to my L5R home game.  We accomplish stuff!  Don’t really feel much sense of accomplishment, but it was funny to small talk for a while with a player’s new (temporary) PC.  If we were playing Legend of the Five Romances, “pre-affair time”.  But, we aren’t.

Tired but wound up, still, so I didn’t crash afterwards.

Sunday

8AM No Spellcasters run of VTD.  We are professional killers.  We killed, though we also avoided room 6 combat, and I found out the answer to the puzzle.  I am the only one not to survive until epilogue.

I played a melee build this time.  It didn’t tell me much.  What made playing crappy fighter in first No Spellcaster run fun was using ammunition.  This build didn’t have that option.  So, it was just doing stuff that people always do.  Next time, seems like I wouldn’t do melee fighter again unless 2021 tokens are available and we can see how much less suck fighter becomes when it has a legendary class token.

Realize I need to immediately jump into regular group run.  Nightmare again as two new players.  Everything accomplished where my defensive, support build had little reason to be so.

So, even though non-solo play was decent (I would have liked to try Epic with this dungeon and do combat in room 6 on non-solo), I didn’t think a lot of this dungeon.  I didn’t like second puzzle room.  I didn’t like third combat, which seemed to have no particular interesting feature and was not thematically well integrated.  Solo play probably made things more boring for me even though the real threat of failure and not even getting to room 7 in a run was interesting.

So, I’m 1.5 hours late to my Aberrant home game.  We … did not accomplish stuff!!  Because the group is new to the system and didn’t make a lot of effort to learn how the mechanics work, we got through one round of combat, then called it.  I don’t think that was a bad session, just pointed out that we need to ramp up on how the game actually works much faster.  I need to call upon my distant recollections of how White Wolf games tend to work or just use my geniusy brain to brainmaster the rules of this game.  Would help if I actually made an effort to learn my own powers.

Still didn’t crash afterwards.

What made this so reminiscent of a con weekend wasn’t amount of gaming, as I could have been doing like eight True Dungeon runs.  It was the variety of games combined with the need to get up by certain times and the limited windows to fix/eat food.

This is what my life should be more like.  Well, taking into account how in person conventions are not happening, still.

Rampant Villainy

In Exploring Villainy, I talk about my problems with caring about villains.

Yet, recently, I have had an exercise to create a supervillain.  It wasn’t hard.  It was a combination of “I am an evil version of you” with “I turn your strength into a weakness”.  Maybe I used up too much design space.  Maybe not, as having supervillains who just interact with a single facet of a superhero seems like it would be insufficient.

Speaking of design space, while working on this supervillain, many, many ideas came to mind for other supervillains.  And, that’s another reason to not just build a rogue’s gallery where each SV is just a single feature.  While single super play might want an extensive rogue’s gallery, team based supers shouldn’t need nearly as many per hero.  So, combine reasons for this SV to resonate.

How many?

I have no idea.

I have never played in a comic book style supers campaign.  I’ve only either done games where PCs effectively were superheroes in powers but lacked the genre features of comic books or played in convention one-shots of actual comic book style supers.

For a single player, I would think there would need to be three defined SVs and two more concepts before ever playing a session.  But, let’s say you have five players.  Do you need 15 statted up SVs and 10 more concepts before the first session?  Perhaps somewhere in the interwebs, someone has answered that question.  Perhaps after I publish this, I will do a search on such a question.

If you have a SH team, would think you would have a SV team.  Boss.  Mastermind(s) with minions.  Monster.  SV team can be roughly the same size, let’s say identical size, so five, then four more, so nine, round off to 10.  Before ever playing, look to have like 10 statted up antagonists (minions not being SV level yet still requiring stats).  Two per PC.  Given how quickly it’s possible to churn through antagonists, seems like having one per PC more concepts in mind and one per PC more concepts vaguely considered.

Of course, once play begins, things may change.  Maybe some roll goes weird and it makes sense to create a SV from what happens during play.  Maybe some ideas work well but others not so much to where adjust those waiting in the wings.

Now, why am I creating a SV?  Because it was an idea that the group liked to have players create SVs.  This takes pressure off of the GM.

Why not do this in any game?  As one of the players pointed out, different genres put different emphasis on antagonists.  Comic book style play should put an extra emphasis on SVs that relate to PCs mechanically, thematically, or both.  In general, I see supers play being more thematic play.

Sure, there are those who will love to grind through beating down stat blocks.  But, that’s a truth in any sort of genre and strikes me as better when playing, um, videogames rather than RPGs.

So, back to types of SVs.

Aliens, Magic, HighTech, organizations with hordes, Badass Mastermind, Monster, loose team, tight team, Cosmic.  These are some categories of antagonists that come to mind to inform SV creation.

My comic book preferences are for magic, cosmic, mutant, “warrior”.  So, magic always comes to mind for SV – demon, sorcerer.  However, it really makes sense to see what the SHs’ sources of powers are.  If a very alien/tech source, magic shouldn’t be that common.  Superman has magical antagonists, though part of the reason he has as many as he does is because it’s one way to challenge a super who is way too OP.

Because I don’t like faceless hordes, I’m not into aliens (by which I mean entire races of aliens not SVs with alien origins) or organizations.  Sure, there are more interesting things that can be done with aliens.  There can be superaliens among the aliens.  I’m not that into reading about Doctor Doom or Lex Luthor (or watching the latter on Arrowverse shows) because it’s hard to take masterminds or overlords or whatever you want to call them seriously when they lose as often as they do.  It’s far easier to take seriously SV teams that lose because the focus in on powers interaction rather than on the actual plots of the masterminds.

Loose team meaning a team like Legion of Doom from Super Friends or anything where there’s no unifying theme more than being the nemeses of the SHs.  Tight team has unifying theme.  Apocalypse & Four Horsemen is a tight team.  What about Brotherhood of Evil Mutants?  Kind of more of a loose team.  Within a mutant context, there’s nothing that comes through about powers or origins even if gathered by a mastermind.

Seems like tight team is a good starting enemy.  Loose team comes about as play progresses to where all of the individual nemeses are established and figure they can only win by banding together.  Cosmic concerns me unless the whole campaign is cosmic.  Oh, you do it eventually, but once you send the First Ones Beyond the Rim, dealing with xenophobic intrigue is anticlimactic.

So, I don’t know what the source of the SHs’ powers is, including not knowing mine.  Makes it hard to focus in any particular area.  However, just having these categories does open up ideas.  My PC could be more effective against HighTech and Magic but worse against Aliens and Monster based on stereotypes.

Well, when you are looking at actually playing something rather than considering a hypothetical game, seems like it becomes easier to focus.  Now, if only I put this much villain thought into other genres, maybe my non-supers campaigns would be more engaging.  For instance, what L5R villains do I think of that have specific intersections with PCs.  The more I think about a next L5R campaign, the more I think I want to focus on villains as villains have obviously been an area I’ve struggled with, yet they are so important for making more compelling stories, no matter the genre.