Category Archives: roleplaying

Jul 14 0 comments
roleplaying

Remember Tomorrow

Remember Tomorrow

Remember Tomorrow

Remember Tomorrow is a new game by BoxNinja, aka Gregor Hutton, the author of Threesixteen (3:16). It’s available both in print and as a PDF.

While cyberpunk roleplaying games exist, they are nothing like the works that inspired them. Cyberpunk games tend to be about accumulating stuff, blowing up people and to a lesser degree, looking good doing it. There is nothing wrong with that – and I’ve enjoyed untold hours of that seminal game, R. Talsorian’s Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0 – but it’s nothing like the cyberpunk literature it imitates. Cyberpunk games went out of style circa 1995, but science fiction literature very much like the original cyberpunk works (a very small, select group) is very much alive and kicking. My most recent favourite is Richard Morgan.

Reading Gibson, a world of intertwining, tragic destinies, planehopping around the globe, chemical-addled violence and poetic justice is unveiled like a slowly loading JPEG image in 1995. Playing Cyberpunk or Shadowrun or Cyberspace, I mostly wonder about damage rolls and initiative and surviving through the combat-heavy mission, whatever it is. It’s like you’re playing the uninteresting stuff behind the scenes, or only the climaxes of the story. My memories are of shopping lists of guns and implants and software, not characters.

Remember Tomorrow sets out to recreate those literary experiences. It manages to do this without the need for preparation before a game… or a GM (game master). The game is improvised and it provides very good tools to help with that.

The game starts with the creation of characters and factions. Each player introduces one character and one faction (an AI, a gang, a corporation, a nation, …). All of these entities have some pull on the world and a goal. The game is about meeting those goals. All of the character attributes relate to the goals: how Ready, Able and Willing they are to reach their goal? Most scenes are about a character becoming (or failing to become) more Ready, Willing or Able to reach their goal.

One player at a time is the Controller, who frames the next scene – and everyone is welcome to propose and request scenes, depending on what they’re doing – and plays the part of the antagonist: they decide which of the player characters is in for trouble and who’s bringing it. In most cases, the Controller brings in a faction in a conflict with one PC, but that could also be PC versus PC or groups of PCs versus others. After the scene, the Controller role shifts to the next player. The Controller wants to bring in the factions and hostile PCs because he’s rewarded for doing so, helping him achieve his own PC’s goal.

Scenes are structured with very definite outcomes. In most cases the Controller is trying to either take away levels of Ready/Willing/Able from a PC or affect him with negative conditions: Injured, Destitute, Confused and so on – they’re not arbitrary, instead there’s a short list on the character sheet of the possible positive and negative conditions. As a result of a conflict scene, someone’s power is increased and another’s decreased. If through roleplaying the situation develops so that a conflict doesn’t make sense anymore, the scene is left as a color scene, again with defined results. There are no separate combat rules or anything of the sort.

Due to the focus on character goals, I think that the game is going to places very briskly. An episode is considered done when three characters have exited – having been written out due to meeting their goal or dying of injuries or any other reason. The mechanics do not force the goals to become intertwined in the end, but I get the feeling that in most cases they will be, thanks to how the introduction and scene mechanics work.

It feels like a game which should work really well, provided that the players are into improvising a cool cyberpunk tale together. I’m itching to try it out and hopefully will get a chance before my holiday is through.

Jul 07 0 comments
PC, PS2, roleplaying, tabletop games

What I’ve been playing this summer (part I)

Frozen Synapse screenshot

Frozen Synapse

Sins Of A Solar Empire screenshot

Sins Of A Solar Empire

Dark Heresy (tabletop)

Who knows, maybe I should see some people during the summer, too. The campaign has started off strong and I’m beginning to get a good ol’ RPG buzz. Who knew playing space fascists could be so much fun?

Space Hulk (tabletop)

It’s still a great game.

Descent (tabletop)

It satisfies my dungeon delving urges. Oh and since first covering the game, I’ve come to realize that it’s not so difficult when you play by the rules. Our adventurers have been getting way too few magical treasures. You’re supposed to award everyone in the party with the magical loot when you open treasure chests, not just the guy opening the chest, illogical as that may be.

Frozen Synapse (PC)

I’ve been playing this independent PC strategy game for quite a bit. It’s the only multiplayer strategy game I like. It’s still in alpha and if they manage a proper release sometime, I’m sure to spend lots of time with it. Even if they don’t, I’ve already been entertained enough.

You are commanding a small team of guys with guns, about to assault a small area held by another, like-minded team. The goals vary from elimination to sector control and hostage rescue.

It’s built as simultaneous, turn-based tactics. You make a plan and hit execute. When your opponent has submitted his turn, the results are played back in real-time. It is compulsive stuff – usually you have half a dozen games going at the same time, and the results keep chiming into your in-game inbox as you’re planning the previous game. You can easily play several complete games in one sitting, if your opponent is online. The matches are usually just a handful of turns.

It could use more work on the user interface and benefit from some wrapper. I’m all for abstract vector graphics guys shooting at each other, but it feels so much like the planning stage of the early Rainbow Six titles (which I loved) that I can’t help but think how much better it would be with a real-world backdrop.

Sins Of A Solar Empire (PC)

What a great name for a game! This is a space strategy title from some years back. It’s by the Homeworld guys and that shows – it’s just gorgeous to look at. I generally loathe these kinds of big strategy games, especially in real-time, because I like to be able to concentrate on what I’m doing, but Sins gets it just right. Even though it’s real-time, the pace is glacial, especially in the beginning. Space fleets just don’t get around all that fast.

If you’re interested in user interface design at any level, you need to play this game. Most of why it’s so accessible is because of the UI keeping you up to date with everything that’s going on in the galaxy, giving you just the amount of information you need and enabling you to give critical commands to the other side of the known space without moving your view from wherever you are. It’s stellar stuff, really.

Sins is the only real-time strategy I know of where I don’t feel like I could do with another pair of eyes and hands.

Final Fantasy XII (PS2)

I’ve continued my conquering of Final Fantasy XII. People who think that games of past generation look too crap on your new fancy HDTVs should plug this in – it’s still divine! What a great game. Too bad about the lackluster characters (especially the lead guy), but the game system is absolutely the best package seen to date from the JRPG field.

Mar 29 0 comments
PC, roleplaying

The Witcher

I got the download version from Direct 2 Drive. I do wonder what's going to happen to cover art in a few years.

I got the download version from Direct 2 Drive. I do wonder what's going to happen to cover art in a few years.

I’m not talking about the sequel and no, it’s not 2007 (or 2008, when the Enhanced Edition was released) all over again. I have a bit of a backlog I’m trying to clear here. Clearing old PC titles is good for the wallet and if you pick your moment right in the technological curve, delightful, as the titles some 3-4 years back run very well and in this case look rather nice, as well.

The Witcher is a special case in that what they’re now selling is an enhanced, “director’s cut” version. It comes with partially rewritten and re-recorded dialogue, among other things. This strikes me as an odd thing to do for an enhanced edition, but if the level of quality present here noticeably exceeds that of the original, I am horrified of what the players of the original version have had to suffer. Not that there aren’t other things which could have used a tune-up: the character models border on the hideous (save for the protagonist, who’s very cool, actually) and the combat feels unresponsive. I’ve done plenty of it and I still can’t figure out how the fist fighting (as opposed to mortal, armed combat) is supposed to work. And not that the combat is the sole culprit here – the whole experience is somewhat unresponsive.

But none of that matters all that much, really. The game world is refreshingly rough around the edges – sexism is evident everywhere, peasant lives aren’t worth much anything, angry mobs rule the countryside. Elves and dwarves are present, but oppressed by the racist humans to the point that they’re fighting back guerrilla-style. The protagonist is a genetic freak, often referred to as a mutant, looking like a vampire. His manner is not that of a hero – he’s a monster hunter by trade and will certainly part with as much of the customer’s money as he can. Also, he really goes out of his way to bed every woman he comes across.

There are moral choices to be made and contrary to what you’ve come to expect from many other titles, the choices often are not black and white. You might lean towards one way or the other, but the game makes sure that you understand that it’s by no means a clear cut decision. Also, they make you accountable for stuff that you’ve done quite a ways in the past. It’s not always clear what your choice is going to result in.

It’s very much new and precious to play someone so far from what we’ve come to expect from a fantasy roleplaying game’s hero. Here’s to hoping that the sequel doesn’t tone things down one bit.

Oct 14 0 comments
Freeware, PC, roleplaying

Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited

Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited

Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited

I have built three characters up to level three in Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited (DDO for short). It’s taken me a week and considering how slow levelling is in DDO, I believe I’ve already spent more time with it than with any other MMO.

I first visited the game some time ago but decided to re-visit it now that it had become free to play. It’s been fun so far. The opening area is well built and written and there’s a good sense of adventure in the proceedings. You get to explore the island and do something fairly epic despite being a first or second level adventurer, including saving a community and facing a grown dragon.

I never really understood the appeal of MMORPGs before playing with my wife. Exploring the game world and our characters and working on our teamwork just brings that much more depth. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, considering that these are supposed to be multiplayer affairs. I’ve been saying for years that MMOs just aren’t for me, and I’ve been doing it wrong all this time. Seems like such an obvious thing. I really (really!) didn’t understand how much of a difference it would be to play with company. I’m not sure if I’d be happy with just online buddies, but playing side by side with someone in the same room is just great.

That said, I have enjoyed my time soloing my paladin and ranger characters much more than soloing in other games. A part of the charm is the very familiar D&D framework, albeit adjusted for real-time gaming. I have all the races and classes I know and love, and I get to fight all these iconic D&D monsters.

Is DDO a substitute to playing pen and paper D&D, which is also something I long for? To a degree. The same themes and mechanical lures are there. I honestly don’t miss the ability to do whatever I can imagine within the context all that much, but I do miss my own imagination. I don’t like being shown what Eberron looks like, when it’s considerably more high fantasy than I what always imagined my D&D to be. I like my characters, but I don’t like all these cartoon characters with funny names around me – although there are many awesome characters, as well.

But I get to roll twenties.

May 06 0 comments
culture, roleplaying, tabletop games

Why we game?

A Life Well Wasted, episode three is up and asking the question “why we game?” It’s all good, of course, have a listen.

I’ve thought about my motivation for playing not just videogames, but games in general, for a great many times. Often it’s because I’ve spent a whole day gaming and feel maybe a bit shameful afterwards. Was that a good use of time? Did I accomplish anything? What did I actually get out of that? (Achievements.)

Because for me, “fun” doesn’t quite cut it, not anymore, not when all I do is games. Especially now that I’m working at a videogame developer, reviewing games as a gig on the side and playing games both alone and with friends, even most of my social gatherings being built around gaming – it’s pretty much all games, all the time.

There’s two things going on here. First is that I still like games for the same reasons I initially got into them: to discover and learn new things, to explore new worlds and to use my imagination. But using all of my time on this, in a sense, short-sighted recreation is not the core for me anymore. These days – and this has been going on for quite a while, probably since college – I’m more interested in games in general, as opposed to a given game. So instead of mulling over how an ability works in Fable II (which is what I’m currently playing, tonight losing a good three hours without realizing it), I’m thinking about what Fable II means in the bigger picture, what are its achievements in the genre and how I could learn from it. Why exactly am I so immersed in it? Does this affect on how I view other games?

So in a sense, I feel my love for games has matured. There’s a context, some method to the madness, something my now more demanding brain tells me is more worthy. Or, well, excusable.

And on the other hand, I find myself going back, towards the golden days of childlike, unshameful gaming of far too much, really. I made a return to pen and paper roleplaying games after an almost complete hiatus of a couple of years. It’s been fantastic and I’m really looking forward to our next game. I can feel parts of my mind waking up from a hibernation, imagination and improvisation skills kicking up again, taking four games to get back into gear and now I’m ready to really jazz it up. Roleplaying games rule, you know.

Mar 09 4 comments
roleplaying

Actual play: Dark Heresy – Illumination

Dark Heresy rulebook

Dark Heresy rulebook

Yesterday I got my act together and finally ran a game of Dark Heresy, the Inquisition themed roleplaying game set in the universe of Warhammer 40’000. It’s been out for over a year and I’ve been itching to play it.

I have done so little roleplaying in recent years that I was a bit nervous and quite probably overdid my preparation work, piling some eleven-plus hours for the one night of gaming. I don’t regret it, as I really knew what I was doing and now I’m ready for the next two games, as well – I got plenty of surplus material. I think that works out to around three hours per game session, which is frankly a bit much to my taste. We’ll see what I can do about that.

We’re running the rulebook’s introductory adventure, Illumination. Our group has three characters: an Assassin and two Imperial Psykers. A hilarious time was had with the character creation. I can’t think of another game with such outlandish, yet moody options, resulting in absolutely broken caricatures of characters, so far from the accepted heroic tropes as can be. It was a little bit time-consuming and it would have helped if everyone had their own career advancement options at hand. Choosing the psychic powers was slow, although they are delightfully brief to describe.

The adventure played well, managing to blend together everything I wanted. We even ended the laugh out loud funny session on a suitably moody note, dreading what’s to come The group handled their first combat encounter by appearing so intimidating that the enemy backed off – this is what I want from an Inquisition game! Granted, it was psychic fear and thus also subject to random warp implosions and such, which only adds to the tension. I love the mechanic where every manifestation of psychic power is a potential bomb going off. Keep rolling those 9s, folks!

I kept checking the book to read up on skills, talents and powers, but it was smooth enough. The one thing I worry about are the generally very low characteristic scores of the characters. Most of the time it seems quite unlikely that you could succeed on any given roll. This makes me not hang the proceedings on the die rolls, which leads to the die rolls being a kind of windowdressing. It all worked out fine in the end, but it’s something I need to think about a bit for the future.

Jan 19 2 comments
roleplaying

3:16 Carnage Amongst The Stars

3:16 Carnage Amonst The Stars cover

3:16 Carnage Amonst The Stars cover

Over the weekend I picked up and read Box Ninja’s 3:16 Carnage Amongst The Stars roleplaying game. It’s a steal at $10/8€ for the 96-page, very well laid out PDF.

It is a traditional roleplaying game with a gamemaster and 1-5 (or more) players, probably works best with gamemaster and 3-4 others. You need some dice (d6, d10) and some experience with gung-ho military science fiction. It’s obviously Starship Troopers and Aliens territory, but with a rather large dose of the absurdly phobic world of Nemesis The Warlock and other 2000AD fare.

The game is played in a campaign format, with many shorter missions forming a whole. Players portray troopers who are sent out to kill every last living thing in the cosmos in the name of the paradise that is Terra. This is not comedic in the least. Satirical, well, if you want it to be, but funny? No. It is really splendidly written, somehow managing to both grin with glee in the kill-happy machismo of its source material and at the same time “out-Verhoeven Verhoeven”, as Robin Laws put it.

The game itself is a very straight, very well-designed bug hunt. The troopers kill aliens, the troopers die, the troopers move to a new planet. All well and good. The smart stuff is between the details – in the orders that are revealed to the troopers as they move up in the ranks (to make sure the expeditionary force never returns to Terra), in the gear they can requsition later on (Planet Killers, Star Killers and so forth), in the planet creation rules (with enemies like other troopers who have grown tired of killing) and in the flashback mechanics, which eventually flesh out your troopers beyond being just a name and a one-line “reputation” description. (“Trooper Dog? He smells.”) Flashbacks are used as a means of getting out of a sticky situation by revealing something about your past, either finding new strengths or failing on your own terms – typically, instead of dying.

The troopers have three statistics: their name (just a single name will do for now, thanks), their Fighting Ability and their Non-Fighting Ability. FA and NFA are scaled on 1-10. You need to roll under your score on a D10 to succeed. There are very few modifiers, usually it’s a straight roll. Combat is a matter of trying to get to your weapon’s optimum range and killing the bugs before they kill your buddies or you. Your guns only have one statistic: how many aliens they kill at a given range (ranging 1-d100 for the small guns). Even though the scale and pace seem outrageous, it’s geared towards requiring smart, tactical play and very tight roleplaying. Your players will be wrestling with each other over getting the most kills. Kills is the only stat you’re tracking aside from rank, much like an online fragfest.

The gamemaster does not need to do much preparatory work. There is a checklist for building planets for the troopers to kill. This is not a “choose one or make one up” kind of deal, it’s an actual checklist. You pick a feature (type of planet, alien) and cross it off, only using it again if the troopers keep on trucking after they’ve done twenty (!) planets’ worth of killing. Many of the options present you with tactically and atmospherically interesting setups, others are likely to cause discomfort with your troopers.

It’s smart, it’s entertaining, it’s focused. I especially admire its mechanics – there is nothing you don’t absolutely need to run the game, and all of it support what it’s trying to do. Stellar stuff, I can’t wait to play it.

Jan 14 1 comments
culture, roleplaying, tabletop games

How To Host A Dungeon

A game about drawing, How To Host A Dungeon is a most delightful work, effortlessly combining days of scribbling as a child, the frustrations of becoming lost in roleplaying game systems when all you really want to do is delve into a dungeon, the simple, now forgotten joy of taking a pen to a paper and self-made, analogue fun. It’s brilliant.

The idea is that you take a piece of paper and draw a dungeon. The game tells you how to go about it, building the dungeon in sequential ages, Primordial Age to Age of Monsters and so forth, with numerous groups moving in, expanding their territory, and likely perishing, leaving a neat dungeon behind. Adventurers might explore it, disaster might strike. You use pens, beads of some sort – I have coins – and your own fingers (for measurement, silly) to draw it in all its glory.

How To Host A Dungeon is an inexpensive ebook, currently downloadable at 5 USD. (There is a printed version, if you’re so inclined, but it works neatly with your standard printer.) If you’re very cheap, there’s a limited free version to check out, as well, so if you’re at all intrigued, just get to the site already.

Check out some dungeons created with the game in this Flickr group. It’s too cool. (This is my favorite so far.)

You don’t have to regret growing up if you never stop to play.

Apr 18 1 comments
PC, roleplaying

Dungeon & Dragons Online: Stormreach

Last night I took my initial steps in Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach. The game is two years old and still supported. I heard good things about it from the Gamers With Jobs podcast and decided to have a go, as I haven’t played a modern MMORPG at all, really. Anarchy Online was my last attempt.

It’s pretty enough, albeit a little generic. It runs smoothly on my med-spec PC with everything maxed out. Being a console player, I find the user interface a little difficult, but it’s nothing distracting. My initial impressions are not good: both of the characters (a human Paladin and a warforged Fighter) I’ve created have disappeared after logging out for the first time. I find it hard to motivate myself to create a third character.

I haven’t played it enough to really pass judgement, but there is one thing I want to bring up: the Dungeon Master. When I got into the first dungeon, a narrator’s voice boomed out, giving a bit of atmosphere and setting the scene. This being Dungeons & Dragons, I found this entirely natural, even though I don’t recall a similar approach from any other game. Things quickly moved on: when I encountered a crazy man, the Dungeon Master explained that the man was addressing me, badly acting out the crazy man’s voice in a melodramatic fashion – exactly like a less than stellar, real-life Dungeon Master would. This felt extremely weird to me. I haven’t witnessed anything comparable in a videogame.

I took it in stride, because I feel that the narrator is a great device. I can take the generic dungeon settings and lifeless characters much better when they’re being supplemented by the narration. The narration makes the game feel like a tabletop experience; I’m giving the audiovisual execution more leeway because I’m being asked to do so. Without the narration I would probably bemoan the way the game can’t match a tabletop experience, but this device conveniently bridges that gap and makes it feel like Dungeons & Dragons. Then again, it wouldn’t take much for the narration to begin to grate.

I’m looking forward to some more Stormreach, although I don’t expect this to turn me into a MMORPG fan. It had better not, too – I agreed to not get lost in these games (well, World of Warcraft, specifically) when I signed up for my new job as a videogame producer.

Apr 16 4 comments
roleplaying

Gumshoe RPG

I’ve been reading the new Kenneth Hite game, Trail of Cthulhu. My review will be up in the Finnish roleplaying game magazine Roolipelaaja in a few weeks. I’d like to discuss the Gumshoe system as it is in the game, since it looks like it’s generating a fair bit of controversy. Gumshoe is Pelgrane Press’ investigative RPG system, created by Robin D Laws, of Feng Shui fame. (Speaking of Feng Shui, it looks like David Eber’s great fansite The Fortress Of Shadow is back.) Gumshoe is also featured in other roleplaying games published by Pelgrane Press, such as the forthcoming Mutant City Blues. (Great name, guys!)

Gumshoe is built for investigative roleplaying. It shifts the suspension in an investigation from “do I succeed in Library Use and find out something?” to “so the person we’re looking for and his great-grandfather are the one and the same… now what?”. It does more than that, but the very basic idea is that you never roll to gain clues. The investigation is not about stumbling on clues, but interpreting them. The book likens this to shows like House (or CSI, or X-Files): of course the doctors find whatever they’re looking for, but what does it mean? How do they solve it? Thus whenever you’re looking for a clue, you succeed automatically, as long as you have the required skill. There may be additional clues that require more digging to uncover and the players are supposed to think about their abilities to uncover clues – it plays just the same, but without the die rolls. Investigative abilities (library use, spot things) are thus separated from general abilities (fighting, repairing stuff and so on), in which you can fail in to provide drama.

What I especially like about the ability system is the concept of spending points from abilities to gain a bonus to a roll or to gain a special benefit from using the ability. This means that you’re constantly managing your resources and being aware of your character’s limits approaching – once you’ve spent all your ability points, there’s not a whole lot you can do anymore. I feel this is very appropriate for a horror game with impending doom right around the corner.

The second ingredient are character Drives. In a horror scenario, realistic actions result in little drama. The player characters have characteristics like “curiosity” which drive them towards the looming horror. The players are rewarded for following their Drives and punished for disregarding them. It’s nothing an experienced Call of Cthulhu group wouldn’t do automatically, but it’s nice that the game’s mechanics support this.

The third ingredient is the adventure structure. In an investigative scenario, most scenes should be about clues. The objective is to find the clue and once it’s found, you move on. All clues should point you towards the next clue and thus move you from scene to scene. It’s surprisingly easy to design scenarios around a clue tree, even though this is quite different from the usual Call of Cthulhu scenario design.

Many people have accused Gumshoe of railroading the players because the investigative abilities work automatically. I just don’t see the reasoning here. Why would being able to fail make you more free? It’s just going to frustrate everyone and add grief to the gamemaster, who then needs to think of an alternative way to deliver the clue to you. Considering that most Call of Cthulhu characters have very high statistics in the core investigative abilities, the possibility of failure is slim to begin with. The same goes for Drives – it’s a mechanical system that makes it easier to play in the spirit of the Cthulhu stories.