Rule Zero

Standing out in a crowd

on January 16, 2013 at 9:04 am

I am in love with Marvel Heroic Role Playing, and I feel like it’s the next step in tabletop roleplaying games.

I love me some Pathfinder/D&D, don’t get me wrong; however, I feel that progression based systems are starting to become a little bit stale for me. Sometimes I like the toolbox that is 3.x, and building my characters from piles of feats and skills and spells (when applicable), but after playing more MHR, I was reminded of my love for character generation systems like it (such as World of Darkness). These systems offer a lot of freedom during character creation, with the only real limits placed upon you by your Story Teller / Watcher.

There are numerous characters you can make in these systems that can also be made in Pathfinder/4e, but the difference comes in when you factor in that you’re not too terribly gimped if you make some weird choices for your character. If your vampire is a computer science major, he’s still able to do vampire stuff, where as if you make a fighter who is an expert on magic theory, but can’t cast a spell…you can do it, but you risk being weaker in other important areas in skills, such as perception, other knowledges, or stealth. Sure, you’re still doing fighter stuff, but you’re making sacrifices for character concept, which is fine, but that’s where WoD and MHR shine: You’re not exactly losing anything for having points in other areas; skills in WoD, for example, only go up to a max rating of 5 dots, so only having 3 dots in brawl so that you can have 4 dots in computers isn’t so much an issue, where as a fighter doesn’t exactly have the luxury of lots of skill points to spend on flavor (2 + INT mod is just brutal).

Maybe MHR isn’t the “Next Step” for tabletop roleplaying, I could just be sensationalizing the system because of how hyped I am for it, but I would certainly not be sad if game systems started moving that way, towards looser rules over strict, rigid rules, like enforcing movement restrictions; I can’t tell you how much more fun a game is when you are simply allowed to say “I move up to the thing and swing my fist into it’s face” without worrying if your armor, equipment/load size, or your race has reduced your movement capability. Magic rules are also much funner in these systems, allowing you to get creative in your spells (though admittedly, this is something that can get a bit crazy).

In the end, I’ll still be playing Pathfinder (and enjoy it, as well), as there are still plenty of classes I haven’t really played yet (I’m reading The Hobbit right now, and I’m getting that itch to play a Halfling Rogue). Also, my entire campaign is pathfinder based, so PF still has a good amount of life left in it for me. I’m just not going to make the mistake of not playing other systems like I did when I was first starting out as a roleplayer.

How useful are house rules, really?

on January 9, 2013 at 11:04 am

Posted In: Uncategorized

I’ve noticed that in almost every game I’ve ran, house rules tend to be either unused or exploited. About the only house rule that gets used with any regularity is one where casters are allowed to add their spell casting stat’s modifier to damage and healing, and I still have to remind my players of the rule from time to time. I’ve added some pretty generous house rules during my time as a GM (including 4th edition’s “Inherit Bonus” system) that ultimately are ignored, and now I question the need for these things in the first place.

I don’t begrudge my players for not using my house rule; I get that Tabletop RPGs are already complex enough without the DM adding things into the mix. When it comes to making a campaign guide, however, the space used for house rules is probably better spent on fleshing out your world to your players. I’ve always thought that the worst part of Pathfinder / D&D books are the boring, mechanical stuff that fills the pages after the race chapters, so the notion of writing that stuff chaffs me, and ultimately gives my players very little for the amount of work I put into writing those rules.

So, why bother with house rules? What players seem to want (as far as I know) is fluff, something that will help them conceive a character in their mind; that’s what’s more useful, not extra rules for players to learn. Of course, house rule stuff as it comes up, but don’t prioritize them over world building when starting a campaign. Your players will thank you.

A Year In Gaming

on December 21, 2012 at 8:33 am

Posted In: Casual Talk, Game Talk

We’re just about at the end of the year here, how was your year for gaming?

This year, I finally got around to wrapping up my first long running game, which was pretty awesome. A few other attempts have been made at another game, but so far nothing’s clicked like that first group. I’ve got a new game (that has been put on hold until next year) now that looks like it’ll last. Time will tell soon, I hope.

Other things gaming related this year: I wasted decent amounts of money on games that didn’t work out. Diablo 3 being the biggest sinner of the bunch, with Mists of Pandaria hot on it’s heels. Diablo 3 was a cluster fuck of terrible design and shit storytelling, while Mists of Pandaria is the bleach you mistakenly used to get the bad taste out of your mouth that Diablo 3 left. In both cases, money was wasted, and time better spent on going to sleep was instead used on midnight releases for games that we couldn’t even play when they got released (Diablo 3’s wonderful requirement of an always on internet connection, even for single player, means that until 4 AM PST, you couldn’t even PLAY the fucking game after installing it if it was too early; The MoP starting quests didn’t trigger until 4 AM PST as well IIRC), so that was pointless. In fact, Diablo 3 was so bad that I think it killed the Action RPG genre for me.

Its not all bad, though. I finally got to play Fallout 3 years after it came out. While I felt that the game was pretty awesome overall, I didn’t like a few story choices (like not being able to step in during one particular key scene) and the ending overall (for the base game anyway, I never got to play the DLC stuff). It’s the first Fallout game I’ve played all the way through (Fallout 1 always ended after getting the water chip for me). I’ve been wanting to get Fallout: New Vegas for awhile now, but I keep missing every sale on the game somehow.

I finally found a fighter to replace my old Super Smash Brothers Melee obsession this year as well; Persona 4 Arena scratched that itch that had be there ever since Smash Brawl ended up being shit and helped split the smash community. Persona 4 Arena does what Smash Brawl failed to do: Create a game that is accessible to both hardcore fighting game enthusiasts and casual/entry level players. The game has an Auto Combo button that you can mash, and it’ll do a predetermined combo that will end in a super move. The combo is a little flashy, but certainly not worth your time once you get used to the game. The game also offers a Visual Novel like Story Mode and a pretty decent training mode that teaches you the basics and some of the more advanced techniques as well. P4A is worth every bit of money you’ll pay for it.

Outside of Diablo 3 and Mists of Pandaria, I’d say this year was pretty good for me and games. Next year’s looking pretty good as well, with Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn, Bioshock Infinite, and Grand Theft Auto 5 all coming out, and hopefully Dark Souls Two along with it, which would be awesome. I’m hoping we see some more from Nintendo for the Wii U, at least some details on the next Zelda game (though I am really getting tired of the formula, so I’m hoping they go back to the way things were in Link to the Past or Minish Cap this time around).

On character creation

on December 14, 2012 at 9:00 am

Posted In: Table Talk

Sometimes I hate making characters for tabletop games. I find that staring at tables of Feats and pages of spells and magical items doesn’t always work for spurring character ideas. I love playing in a game, but the work needed to be done before hand is can sometimes be frustrating. I have difficulty connecting dots together most of the time, and the longer I’m on it, the more frustrating it gets and the more likely it is that I want to scrap the character(s).

Part of me wants to say that what Pathfinder needs to do is to add new classes that can help facilitate various ideas, but Paizo already takes care of that with Archetypes, which work out way better than 3.5’s trove of classes and prestige classes. I tend to forget about archetypes because I wasn’t initially taken in by them, and afterwards I stopped checking them out. There are some really cool ones out there, like Dragoon for Fighters, Hexcrafter for Magus, and Spellslinger for Wizards (I have always wanted to play someone like Balk from Final Fantasy Tactics), but despite knowing about them, I always end up skipping them and going straight to the feats section, which I find much more dull overall, and is probably why I get frustrated.

If I had to be completely honest, I’d say that a lot of my frustration comes from character making fatigue. In the past two months, I’ve made roughly four pathfinder characters and one Cortex Plus character (with one more on the way), and I wonder if that’s where the bulk of my issues come from. I’ll also admit that the forums have made me too aware of “problems” with various classes and feats, and unfortunately I’m still stuck carrying those opinions with me when I go to make a character (not that there aren’t valid issues with classes, but always reading the negatives about a class doesn’t help).

“Patching” and Tabletop Gaming

on December 10, 2012 at 11:54 am

Posted In: Table Talk

Recently on the Paizo blog, there were a few monk changes. These changes fixed a few issues with monks and their DR problems (along with a price reduction on the Amulet of Mighty Fists, and reverses a previous errata that made no sense in the first place), and I think that with as much love that the monks have gotten recently in Ultimate Combat, Monks should be in a pretty nice spot now. There is, however, something of a problem here.

I have this weird thought that I don’t like that a company can just go in and “patch” a class. In theory it sounds nice, but the thing that bothers me about it is that the books we all buy are suddenly outdated, and you have to hunt for the information online (and who knows when those changes get put up on the SRD). Perhaps I’ve been burned by MMOs for so long with their sweeping changes to classes, but a company being able to errata rules chaffs me. I don’t have a problem with something getting “fixed” when it’s a typo or where the rules are somewhat fuzzy on something, but class changes? I don’t know if that sits right with me.

I do think there are advantages to this, though. I was genuinely happy when monks got some love on the blog, and if they did something similar to fighter (maybe every four levels they change it so that a fighter can take a feat without meeting the prerequisites or something. I’m just spit-balling here), I would more than likely be pretty excited. Adjusting something like Summoner would be something good to see as well, or perhaps knocking wizards down a peg or something.

Them being able to fix problems is probably a good thing and maybe I’m just being too conservative with this thing. Either way, I’m not sure where I fall on this issue, I see the benefits of both ways. I just worry that the product I buy is not the product I will end up using after all the errata is out there, and that kind of bothers me; it makes me feel like I wasted my money on a product that doesn’t work like it’s supposed to.

Or maybe I’m over thinking things. I’ll admit that errata doesn’t happen all that often, and that I’m probably more put off by the idea of the situation rather than the reality of it (in the same way that Wizards, in theory, are super crazy power monsters that can’t be stopped, but in reality almost no one plays them that way).

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