Most people are familiar with the "Golden Age" of adventure gaming, stretching from text-based games like Zork or The Hichhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to the Lucasarts and Sierra era of point and click adventures. There are many that bemoan the loss of that, "more civilized and enlightened" era when games required intelligence and dilligence, as opposed to our modern age of iron, where people are too busy shootin' doodz in Halo: The Duty of Modern Warfare . I played a number of these classics, as well as being at the receiving end of so-called "puzzle dungeons" like The Tomb of Horrors, and I, for one, am happy that we're done with that shit. Unfortunately, like some sort of hideous necromancer, the zeitgeist has decided to resurrect the rotten corpse of the Adventure Game. How well have these undead minions performed? Why do I dislike puzzle-based gameplay? See below the fold:
About Me
- The Lizard of Guilt
- The horrible manifestation of a diseased mind, symptomatic of years of overexposure to strategy games, comics (YOU MEAN GRAPHIC NOVELS), and internet joviality. Symptoms occur irregularly and are treatable with sunshine and fresh air.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Penny Arcade: Blah Blah Blah 3- The Suckening
Here's another quicky-review, this time about the new Penny Arcade RPG
Supershort Take-
How much do you like Penny Arcade? How much do you like Turn-Based Retro-style RPGs? If the answer to both questions is "I bark like a trained seal every time anything even resembling X is mentioned," congratulations- you should buy Penny Arcade 3: Electric Boogaloo. Otherwise, it's a "comedy" game with very limited humor potential, a million annoying little features (or missing features, to be precise) , and music that I'm sure was developed to torture detainees at Gitmo (BAM, political commentary). It is almost saved by a pretty neat combat system, but it pulls shitty from the jaws of "ok for ten bucks" by having too many same-y fights which you can (and should) play through on autopilot.
Supershort Take-
How much do you like Penny Arcade? How much do you like Turn-Based Retro-style RPGs? If the answer to both questions is "I bark like a trained seal every time anything even resembling X is mentioned," congratulations- you should buy Penny Arcade 3: Electric Boogaloo. Otherwise, it's a "comedy" game with very limited humor potential, a million annoying little features (or missing features, to be precise) , and music that I'm sure was developed to torture detainees at Gitmo (BAM, political commentary). It is almost saved by a pretty neat combat system, but it pulls shitty from the jaws of "ok for ten bucks" by having too many same-y fights which you can (and should) play through on autopilot.
Monday, July 2, 2012
Gods and Kings- a “brief” review
Ok, so, say you want to hear some about
Gods and Kings but don't want to read a million billion words about
stuff with me talking very little about the actual game. I'm going to
try a review format where I give an ultraquick take above the fold,
and then talk a little bit about things below.
Supershort take-
I liked Gods and Kings. It makes
navel combat worthwhile, improves the tactical and diplomatic AI
somewhat (note, tactical AI still makes some silly moves (though no
more than it did in Civ4), and certain AI powers are really kinda
dopey-aggressive (see- Bismark, Atilla, Monty)) and adds two nice
features in the form of religion and espionage. Religion is a lot of
fun, and I really like the way they model beliefs. Espionage does a
good job of helping weaker powers to catch up, and is a worthwhile
addition (unlike building spies in civ2-3 or the miserable espionage
slider in Civ4 BTS). The new civilizations are fun without being
overpowering (except for the Ethiopians, maybe), and the changes to
city states (combined with espionage) make it more than a game of
“who has more money” to win the diplomatic war (though money
helps!)
Gods and Kings and Grognards
The Civilization (Civ) series has a long and storied history, pioneering a genre (4X games) and serving as an introduction to turn-based strategy games for a large number of folks. The most iteration of the franchise (Civ 5) was not particularly well-received by the community, with many singing its praises, but a large number turned off by the changes to venerable mechanics, as well as the DLC model, and general AI jankiness.
Gods and Kings is the recently released expansion to Civ 5, bringing the return of two subsystems from Civ 4- religion and espionage, along with an assortment of new civilizations. Will it bring the Civ 4 holdouts back into the fold, probably some, but I feel like a lot of the old guard are going to keep going their own way. In my mind, there are a lot of similarities between the Civ 4/5 struggles and the D&D edition wars which raged hot during the switch from D&D 3.5 to D&D 4.0. In both cases, you had a group of designers come in and make mostly beneficial changes to a system which was creaky and in need of an update, changes which a significant percentage of the community rejected due to some poor implementation (in D&D, the Monster Manual ) and nebulous "flavor considerations," as well as a general resistance to change. In this piece, I'm going to wrap a review of Gods and Kings in with a larger exploration of the parallelism between the two edition changes. Join me, won't you?
Gods and Kings is the recently released expansion to Civ 5, bringing the return of two subsystems from Civ 4- religion and espionage, along with an assortment of new civilizations. Will it bring the Civ 4 holdouts back into the fold, probably some, but I feel like a lot of the old guard are going to keep going their own way. In my mind, there are a lot of similarities between the Civ 4/5 struggles and the D&D edition wars which raged hot during the switch from D&D 3.5 to D&D 4.0. In both cases, you had a group of designers come in and make mostly beneficial changes to a system which was creaky and in need of an update, changes which a significant percentage of the community rejected due to some poor implementation (in D&D, the Monster Manual ) and nebulous "flavor considerations," as well as a general resistance to change. In this piece, I'm going to wrap a review of Gods and Kings in with a larger exploration of the parallelism between the two edition changes. Join me, won't you?
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Dungeons and Dragons, Redux
Alright, so, news about development for the 5th edition of Dungeons and Dragons has been wide-spread enough to hit things like Forbes, for Chrissakes, so I'm not going to dwell overmuch on it, other than to note that they're asking for feedback from fans about what THEY would like to see in 5th edition. I want to start off here by noting that this is basically a PR ploy to try and pull back in some of the Grognards that left the fold, as well as to get some free media attention. Anything anyone submits to the design team will probably be completely ignored. They're not stupid, and, moreover, they have Monte fucking Cook, a man who couldn't listen to an outside opinion if his life depended on it, as the lead designer. So this whole post is an exercise in futility.
That said, I feel it's important to talk about the game, and say what I would like for the 5th edition. The fundamental problem with D&D is, paradoxically, it's success. When people think of table-top RPGs (with a brief exception during the mid 90's), they think of D&D. In order to "succeed," it has to reach an enormous audience, each of whom runs their own "game," by their own interpretation of the rules (See http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2012/01/11 ). The very fact that one person's D&D matches with another is nothing short of a brain miracle. Moreover, since it's been going since forever, it's got an enormous amount of legacy baggage, which is beloved by various fans. No matter how shitty an implementation of an idea was (Psionics, Vancian Casting, Epic Levels, etc.) , it has to be included, because otherwise people will (and have) pitch(ed) a shit fit. Finally, it's been around since the goddamn dark ages of RPG design, when Gary Gygax and a bunch of chucklenut friends sat around and came up with some sort of a half-wargame thing (modeled on a shitty wargame, to boot) to try and pretend to be elves. This means that the "bones" of the game are not well suited to what it is today.
In a terrifying way, Dungeons and Dragons is the United States Government. It was made a long time ago, and in ways that don't really fit with how things work now. It's got an enormous crowd of hangers-on, each of whom has some tiny little portion of the rules that they belove, and will throw a fucking tantrum about any attempt to touch it. It has an enormous impact on the world around it, and is enormous is reach and symbolism, so it can't really just "do its own thing" without an enormous perception of failure, and huge problems for all sorts of different people, all of whom are to be governed under one law. Finally, the odds of any individual voice working to shape changes to the rules are basically nil, so I'm free to burble on about all the goofy things that I would do if I ran things, without any risk of actually having my designs carried out.
So, therefore, let there be two sets of proposals, the vanity project and the realistic project. Each detailed below.
Vanity Project:
Preface: I want to begin by acknowledging the broad success that Dungeons and Dragons has enjoyed. It's made relatively large chunks of cash, and it's wasted the free time of countless introverted nerds throughout the ~40 years of it's life. That said, I feel releasing another edition of the game is moronic. Kill it. The reason for my position is actually pretty simple: any rules set that claims to be Dungeons and Dragons has, built in, an enormous weight to carry. If we imagine an alternate universe in which GURPS was the default game system, and I released a game called "Ned's Asskicking Game," and I used the rules that were published in the basic set, I would sell 10 copies. 9 of those copies would be to my relatives.
The motive:
The point of a table-top game (broadly speaking) is to allow people to inhabit a different decision-making space, in some combination of taking on a role that is unavailable to us normally and examining decisions which we don't deal with on a regular basis. In short, to have fun. Rules can either serve to facilitate or destroy fun. This isn't to say that you CAN'T have fun with any rules set. You can play "magical tea party storytime," a game with no rules, and have fun. You can have fun playing monopoly with friends, even though the INHERENT DESIGN OF THE GAME IS TO SHOW YOU HOW LITTLE FUN IT IS.
In it's current state, any game which is "Dungeons and Dragons" is burdened with a large number of rules which are profoundly fun-destroying, on the whole. The biggest offender isn't even a rule so much as an attitude, an attitude which was mostly unstated, and frequently denied, but is as much a part of the game as the To Hit roll: There are players, and there is a GM. The GM tries to make a world for the players to inhabit. The players try to manipulate that world using the tools they are granted by the rules. Fun is made by the players acting on the world. In reality (a funny word to use when talking about, in effect, a collective hallucination), the longest-lasting enjoyment that people draw from the hobby is that of stories. An RPG is a way to tell stories together.
The Problem:
Telling stories is very hard. I've tried. I've run games, and I've played in games. When you're running a game, you want to come up with a plot. You want to force your will on the players, to make them actors in your drama. When you're a player, you identify with your character. You want him to succeed (or at least fail interestingly). You want him to prosper and grow. He's YOUR GUY. D&D makes these two roles very clear, and, unsurprisingly, it then requires an vast array of rules to try to ensure that the GM can pose appropriate challenges for the players, and the players have tools (but not TOO many tools) to influence the world.
What I would want:
I want the game to change in the following way- I want to make the players consider a wider world than their own character, and, simultaneously, I want to reduce player control over their own character. As it stands right now, players have such complete control over their own characters that they behave like automatons who exist only for the sake of gaining power, which is the only thing that allows them to influence the evolution of the narrative. In exchange for allowing the players to have some explicit control over the thread of the story, the story needs to have some ability to influence the characters. There have been a series of WONDERFUL rulessets that try to accoplish this very thing.
If we want a game that lets us tell stories about heroic fantasy characters crawling in dungeons that is, in some way, a new thing, we must change the way that the roles are assigned within the system. To do this is impossible, I feel, with the current baggage associated with the Dungeons and Dragons license.
My realistic proposal:
Problems-
I feel that 4th ed made the game a lot less like horrible rocket-jousting and reduced the level of caster supremacy. However, the rules for out-of-combat stuff (which, admittedly, was less important), were reduced far, far too much in scope. In addition, the codification of attacks into powers, which had the beneficial step of making the rules much more self-contained, had the negative effect of reducing the amount of creative energy that the players put into encounters, encouraging more of a tactical feel (something I really like, in general BTW). This was exacerbated by the endless slew of conditions that required tracking.
Solutions-
Transform the "powers" format into something slightly less technical, and slightly more descriptive.
Add additional neat non-combat options, not only for the casters, but also for non-casters! 99% of the characters who do cool shit in fantasy novels (at least before the widespread acceptance of D&D as the dominant paradigm) were not wizards or clerics or druids.
Reduce the number of status effects, and make them dependent on some sort of a "ladder of Woe." The worse you're hurt, the worse the effect is, in general. See the homebrew thread in SA/Tradgames for someone's proposal.
No more psionics, except within the context of a very specific campaign setting
No more 100million fucking fantasy races. I'm a fantasy racist. I don't want to have to deal with fitting minotaurs AND living crystal people AND dragons with tits in the same world
No more 100 million classes! Actually, on that subject, can you not release an endless torrent of spatbooks? I know these last two are not going to happen, because it's the "business model," but it's shitty.
Monsters that die faster (I know this was fixed in MM3, but I didn't get that one).
and a Pony
I'm done.
That said, I feel it's important to talk about the game, and say what I would like for the 5th edition. The fundamental problem with D&D is, paradoxically, it's success. When people think of table-top RPGs (with a brief exception during the mid 90's), they think of D&D. In order to "succeed," it has to reach an enormous audience, each of whom runs their own "game," by their own interpretation of the rules (See http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2012/01/11 ). The very fact that one person's D&D matches with another is nothing short of a brain miracle. Moreover, since it's been going since forever, it's got an enormous amount of legacy baggage, which is beloved by various fans. No matter how shitty an implementation of an idea was (Psionics, Vancian Casting, Epic Levels, etc.) , it has to be included, because otherwise people will (and have) pitch(ed) a shit fit. Finally, it's been around since the goddamn dark ages of RPG design, when Gary Gygax and a bunch of chucklenut friends sat around and came up with some sort of a half-wargame thing (modeled on a shitty wargame, to boot) to try and pretend to be elves. This means that the "bones" of the game are not well suited to what it is today.
In a terrifying way, Dungeons and Dragons is the United States Government. It was made a long time ago, and in ways that don't really fit with how things work now. It's got an enormous crowd of hangers-on, each of whom has some tiny little portion of the rules that they belove, and will throw a fucking tantrum about any attempt to touch it. It has an enormous impact on the world around it, and is enormous is reach and symbolism, so it can't really just "do its own thing" without an enormous perception of failure, and huge problems for all sorts of different people, all of whom are to be governed under one law. Finally, the odds of any individual voice working to shape changes to the rules are basically nil, so I'm free to burble on about all the goofy things that I would do if I ran things, without any risk of actually having my designs carried out.
So, therefore, let there be two sets of proposals, the vanity project and the realistic project. Each detailed below.
Vanity Project:
Preface: I want to begin by acknowledging the broad success that Dungeons and Dragons has enjoyed. It's made relatively large chunks of cash, and it's wasted the free time of countless introverted nerds throughout the ~40 years of it's life. That said, I feel releasing another edition of the game is moronic. Kill it. The reason for my position is actually pretty simple: any rules set that claims to be Dungeons and Dragons has, built in, an enormous weight to carry. If we imagine an alternate universe in which GURPS was the default game system, and I released a game called "Ned's Asskicking Game," and I used the rules that were published in the basic set, I would sell 10 copies. 9 of those copies would be to my relatives.
The motive:
The point of a table-top game (broadly speaking) is to allow people to inhabit a different decision-making space, in some combination of taking on a role that is unavailable to us normally and examining decisions which we don't deal with on a regular basis. In short, to have fun. Rules can either serve to facilitate or destroy fun. This isn't to say that you CAN'T have fun with any rules set. You can play "magical tea party storytime," a game with no rules, and have fun. You can have fun playing monopoly with friends, even though the INHERENT DESIGN OF THE GAME IS TO SHOW YOU HOW LITTLE FUN IT IS.
In it's current state, any game which is "Dungeons and Dragons" is burdened with a large number of rules which are profoundly fun-destroying, on the whole. The biggest offender isn't even a rule so much as an attitude, an attitude which was mostly unstated, and frequently denied, but is as much a part of the game as the To Hit roll: There are players, and there is a GM. The GM tries to make a world for the players to inhabit. The players try to manipulate that world using the tools they are granted by the rules. Fun is made by the players acting on the world. In reality (a funny word to use when talking about, in effect, a collective hallucination), the longest-lasting enjoyment that people draw from the hobby is that of stories. An RPG is a way to tell stories together.
The Problem:
Telling stories is very hard. I've tried. I've run games, and I've played in games. When you're running a game, you want to come up with a plot. You want to force your will on the players, to make them actors in your drama. When you're a player, you identify with your character. You want him to succeed (or at least fail interestingly). You want him to prosper and grow. He's YOUR GUY. D&D makes these two roles very clear, and, unsurprisingly, it then requires an vast array of rules to try to ensure that the GM can pose appropriate challenges for the players, and the players have tools (but not TOO many tools) to influence the world.
What I would want:
I want the game to change in the following way- I want to make the players consider a wider world than their own character, and, simultaneously, I want to reduce player control over their own character. As it stands right now, players have such complete control over their own characters that they behave like automatons who exist only for the sake of gaining power, which is the only thing that allows them to influence the evolution of the narrative. In exchange for allowing the players to have some explicit control over the thread of the story, the story needs to have some ability to influence the characters. There have been a series of WONDERFUL rulessets that try to accoplish this very thing.
If we want a game that lets us tell stories about heroic fantasy characters crawling in dungeons that is, in some way, a new thing, we must change the way that the roles are assigned within the system. To do this is impossible, I feel, with the current baggage associated with the Dungeons and Dragons license.
My realistic proposal:
Problems-
I feel that 4th ed made the game a lot less like horrible rocket-jousting and reduced the level of caster supremacy. However, the rules for out-of-combat stuff (which, admittedly, was less important), were reduced far, far too much in scope. In addition, the codification of attacks into powers, which had the beneficial step of making the rules much more self-contained, had the negative effect of reducing the amount of creative energy that the players put into encounters, encouraging more of a tactical feel (something I really like, in general BTW). This was exacerbated by the endless slew of conditions that required tracking.
Solutions-
Transform the "powers" format into something slightly less technical, and slightly more descriptive.
Add additional neat non-combat options, not only for the casters, but also for non-casters! 99% of the characters who do cool shit in fantasy novels (at least before the widespread acceptance of D&D as the dominant paradigm) were not wizards or clerics or druids.
Reduce the number of status effects, and make them dependent on some sort of a "ladder of Woe." The worse you're hurt, the worse the effect is, in general. See the homebrew thread in SA/Tradgames for someone's proposal.
No more psionics, except within the context of a very specific campaign setting
No more 100million fucking fantasy races. I'm a fantasy racist. I don't want to have to deal with fitting minotaurs AND living crystal people AND dragons with tits in the same world
No more 100 million classes! Actually, on that subject, can you not release an endless torrent of spatbooks? I know these last two are not going to happen, because it's the "business model," but it's shitty.
Monsters that die faster (I know this was fixed in MM3, but I didn't get that one).
and a Pony
I'm done.
Monday, November 14, 2011
Narbonic: Shitty Shit, or Shittiest Shit (naw, I'm just foolin')
Because my blogpost about Homestuck is quickly turning into a giant morass of endless WORDS WORDS WORDS, it's time to talk about something simpler but still webcomic-y, namely, Narbonic (http://www.narbonic.com/) which has the benefit of being over, and, as such, easier to talk about. I'm not going to claim Narbonic is an awesome, life changing event. In fact, for most people, I really wouldn't recommend it, but, since you're one of the elect (those people reading my blog- all one of you), I'm going to make a reasonable guess that you'll like it. Also, it's not a super-high traffic thing, and I feel Shaenon deserves a little non-traffic.
Monday, October 17, 2011
System Mastery and Games
So, I've been recently reading a lot about indie RPGs, and Dogs in the Vinyard, which is a game in which the players are Mormon peacekeepers in a weird west version of Deseret. It has a really interesting way to resolve interactions, in that conflicts are always escalating, either by the required dice increasing, or in that the conflict gets more dangerous (words->fists->guns). However, the specifics of exactly what goes on is up to the players, and has very little mechanical crunchiness. This is a common feature of most indie rpgs- beautiful resolution mechanics, and very little in the way of crunchiness. This makes them much better than traditional RPGs for storytelling. Moreover, because the mechanics are so elegant, they're easy to pick up, making the barrier to entry very low, as far as RPGs go. Furthermore, they're much more imaginative, easily lending themselves towards new players who aren't yet familiar with the constraints of a traditional system. Finally, they are much more varied and adaptable, able to work in any kind of universe, either because there is a system for the setting (see above) or because the rules themselves assume so much less than non-indie (D&D) systems
Nevertheless, Dungeons and Dragons remains the system of choice for the vast majority of RPG gamers, and, moreover, over time, it has developed to be more and more mechanical and rules-heavy. It's a system that moves slowly, inelegant mechanics, and is very closely tied to a swords and sorcery universe with very specific assumptions. Trying to change them causes all manner of silly effects and poor balance. Even for people who move away from D&D, the other systems that are commonly used (White Wolf, Rifts, and GURPS) are either tied extremely heavily to a universe, mechanically ungainly, and/or horribly unbalanced.
I refuse to believe that the main problem with indie RPGs is simple publicity, because you would figure that in such a situation, a system like the Dresden Files RPG, which is 1) an indie RPG, using the FATE engine and 2) has a super-popular book tie-in would be an enormous success. Moreover, it's not a stable equilibrium to assume that mere lack of popularity is holding these systems back, as popularity tends to bring popularity, meaning a system like Mouse Guard, which has gotten some exposure from the geek press, would explode and make a million bucks. However, these are self-evidently not the case, which leads me to believe that the "problem" with indie RPGs, in so far as there is a "problem," is the very things they cherish.
In my mind, people like to master complex systems, and they like to operate within rules. Coming up with a character and story is hard, and takes thinking in ways that most people don't do on any sort of a regular basis. On the other hand, operating within rules systems, and optimizing those systems are things that people (or at least people who play RPGs) do every day. The popularity of WoW may be due in part to skinner-box-esque mechanics and a mile-deep sheen of Blizzard polish, but, in another sense, the systems mastery aspect is facinating, and it's something that's very easy to sink your teeth into.
The systems mastery component goes deeper, as games like Minecraft or EUIII, which are effectively sandboxes of tools to play in, tend to cause a lot of fatigue and pose a large barrier to entry, especially at first (at least, that was what I experienced). D&D is easy to grasp, because it's all about killing monsters and accomplishing quests. The mechanics are built around the optimization of one's personal character and the murder of things that stand in the way. In comparison, DitV or Burning Wheel, which are designed for expression, rather than task accomplishment, don't lend themselves as much to this. I know this isn't an original observation, I don't think there's an easy way to make indie RPGs more popular without making some compromises, but it's quite interesting. After all, how many bugs that are bemoaned by designers, people who work with a product extensively, and even casual users turn out to be the very things that contribute to a formula's success.
See you in the funny papers!
Nevertheless, Dungeons and Dragons remains the system of choice for the vast majority of RPG gamers, and, moreover, over time, it has developed to be more and more mechanical and rules-heavy. It's a system that moves slowly, inelegant mechanics, and is very closely tied to a swords and sorcery universe with very specific assumptions. Trying to change them causes all manner of silly effects and poor balance. Even for people who move away from D&D, the other systems that are commonly used (White Wolf, Rifts, and GURPS) are either tied extremely heavily to a universe, mechanically ungainly, and/or horribly unbalanced.
I refuse to believe that the main problem with indie RPGs is simple publicity, because you would figure that in such a situation, a system like the Dresden Files RPG, which is 1) an indie RPG, using the FATE engine and 2) has a super-popular book tie-in would be an enormous success. Moreover, it's not a stable equilibrium to assume that mere lack of popularity is holding these systems back, as popularity tends to bring popularity, meaning a system like Mouse Guard, which has gotten some exposure from the geek press, would explode and make a million bucks. However, these are self-evidently not the case, which leads me to believe that the "problem" with indie RPGs, in so far as there is a "problem," is the very things they cherish.
In my mind, people like to master complex systems, and they like to operate within rules. Coming up with a character and story is hard, and takes thinking in ways that most people don't do on any sort of a regular basis. On the other hand, operating within rules systems, and optimizing those systems are things that people (or at least people who play RPGs) do every day. The popularity of WoW may be due in part to skinner-box-esque mechanics and a mile-deep sheen of Blizzard polish, but, in another sense, the systems mastery aspect is facinating, and it's something that's very easy to sink your teeth into.
The systems mastery component goes deeper, as games like Minecraft or EUIII, which are effectively sandboxes of tools to play in, tend to cause a lot of fatigue and pose a large barrier to entry, especially at first (at least, that was what I experienced). D&D is easy to grasp, because it's all about killing monsters and accomplishing quests. The mechanics are built around the optimization of one's personal character and the murder of things that stand in the way. In comparison, DitV or Burning Wheel, which are designed for expression, rather than task accomplishment, don't lend themselves as much to this. I know this isn't an original observation, I don't think there's an easy way to make indie RPGs more popular without making some compromises, but it's quite interesting. After all, how many bugs that are bemoaned by designers, people who work with a product extensively, and even casual users turn out to be the very things that contribute to a formula's success.
See you in the funny papers!
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