Rule Zero

It’s wild to me how different things play out in-game compared to how the forums say things will go.

We’ve been playing in Pedro’s new pathfinder game for a few sessions now. Our party consists of a fighter, a rogue with a great axe, a witch (focused on healing), and a monk. The consensus on the forums (or rather how the forums would rank the usefulness of each class), is that the witch will be of the most value in this group (magic > everything),  the rogue’s job should have been replaced day one by a wand of summon monster 1, the fighter is the guy who drives into the iceberg, and the monk is the titanic itself.

It is quite the opposite, my friends. The monk is probably our most valuable member. The monk has saved our asses at least 5 times throughout this game so far, as we’re not even out of the first area we started at. Our rogue gets us out of all the crazy traps that my brother throws at us (that he made up), and the fighter is a monster who doesn’t stop unless killed. The witch? Funny enough, the witch has not been the one who imposes her will on reality and led us to victory. She’s good, no doubt, but she has not trivialized the game in any capacity.

What are we doing different, I wonder?  Specifically with the monk, which is generally considered one of the worst classes out there. Why is our monk such a beast? And it’s not just our monk, either. The player of the witch had a monk in the game he ran that was an absolute monster, and that game went on into the higher levels (at least 12+ levels). I think it’s because we’re doing stuff that isn’t exactly standard.

First off, only the base monk is ever considered. The plethora of archetypes and feats available in the official pathfinder books are never accounted for. 15 point buy standard is also used to generate the monk, which goes right out the window as soon as you roll your stats. People freak out about DR as well, but at the same time never boosting their strength to where DR gets pushed through with ease. Sure, they’ll always lose a little bit of damage, but everyone has to deal with that (keep in mind that it’s not guaranteed that you’ll always have a weapon that will break through DR on other classes either, so the fighter’s right there in the same boat).

Secondly, it always comes down to the kind of game the Gm runs. In a vacuum, the monk probably doesn’t fare too well compared to others also built in the same vacuum. Outside of that vacuum? It’s anyone’s game. Maybe the game that your monk ends up in will have a lot of NPC characters to fight in, with monsters used sparingly, or maybe the GM, I don’t know, tailors his game to the group makeup and decides “maybe I shouldn’t throw them against those three iron golems”.

I just think that it’s not always cut and dry. I used to lurk the paizo pathfinder forums a lot about a year and a half ago, and they were bitching about monks. Recently I started following one poster in particular that I like, and his post history is filled with stuff about monks (talking about how bad they are). I was flabbergasted. People are still bitching about monks, who have gotten more love in the last couple books than a hooker on buy “one get one free” weekend. If fighters got that much love, I’d be ecstatic.

Just remember that you should play what you want, regardless of whether or not it’s considered bad (so long as you’re taking your group into account). It’s better to crash and burn than to give up on a character you’re excited for, especially because some dudes told some other dudes on a message board somewhere that your idea was bad because math.

One thing I struggle with in my creative life is wondering if I just ripped off something and how badly I did it. There are a number of things I’ve put into my campaign that I’ve later looked at and thought: “Oh hell, this is just like X from Y. Dammit it all.”

Part of that is going to happen no matter what. Whenever you create something, you’ll draw inspiration from things you like, and sometimes that means lifting ideas without really thinking about it.

There are a few ways to deal with this eventuality. One way is to ditch the idea entirely and start over again and hope that the next idea isn’t similar to something else. Another way is to twist and distort the idea until the very core of the idea is there, then apply it to something else.

Both of the above are ways I’ve dealt with this problem. There’s also one other way I’ve dealt with this, that sounds sort of crazy at first, and that is to not care too much about it.

I’m under the impression that while I’d love to have only original ideas only, that’s not always going to happen. Instead, I’ll move a few things around with the idea at the most then drop it into the setting where appropriate. This sounds bad at first, but just follow me for a second.

One of the things I’ve got in my game are these archways that are about a 100 feet tall, and they’re found all over the continent. There are legends that these archways were once powerful gates that the Hul-kor (giants) used to quickly move from place to place. Now they sit, unused and with little else known about them.

Sound alright? I realized not too long ago that these are basically the Cypher gates from Paizo’s Pathfinder setting Golarian. I didn’t mean to use the same idea or anything, I just thought the idea of giant arches in random locations was cool. It wasn’t until I read the first part of Second Darkness that I realized that they’re pretty similar (unknown arches in various locations in the world, with an unknown purpose). Those giants mentioned earlier? After coming up with them, polishing them, and making the rest of my world’s mythology based on them, I figured out that they were pretty similar to the Titans from the Warcraft universe but less cosmic and missing the whole Burning Legion aspect of them.

I could have simply ripped all my roots out of the ground and started fresh, but I decided to accept the similarities and move on. I figured that in the long run, figuring out a new backstory would hurt the game more than a few similarities to popular franchises.

Don’t stress too much about making sure your story/setting/characters are wholelly unique and you’ll save yourself some headach. As long as you’re not outright copying something on purpose, you should be good. You’re passion for something will make up for any concieved lack of originalty you feel.

It’s strange to think sometimes how little empathy people can have towards their fellow man.

I was working Monday night, filling up the cigarette racks. I asked my manager if he knew if we had anymore of a particular kind of cigar left. It happened to be one of those really cheap cigar packs (the ones that come in a box like a pack of cigarettes), and he said that he ordered them last week, and they’re already sold out. I shrugged my shoulders and said to him: “Oh, then I guess there’s nothing to put there. I didn’t know these things were big sellers”.  He chuckles to himself and says: “Yeah, well, these fuckin’ bums will smoke anything, they don’t give a shit. They’ll drink or smoke whatever you put in front of’em”. He then continues on for a couple of minutes talking down about our customers.

Now, it’s one thing to complain about the occasional jerk customer, but really? This dude is going to start laying into the general populous of the area? I can’t be the only one with empathy at that store.

I don’t know when working at a shitty liqueur store in a bad neighborhood made you a better person than others. Nothing about my job makes me think that I’m any better then the people I serve. Most people that come in are just trying to make it by one day at a time, and if they can only afford a cheap pint of vodka, then that’s fine. Just because we might be able to afford some higher shelf alcohol doesn’t mean we’re better people or that we have the right to look down on people for their choices regarding cigarettes and alcohol.

The very notion that we have anything up and over on the customers chaffs me. It’s not like we’re war veterans or that we raised a whole bunch of money for various charities or anything, so maybe we should try and check our privilege for a second and remember that we’re in the same boat here: We’re not heroes or notable figures in the city, we’re just clerks who don’t get regular breaks and have to deal with the occasional asshole.

I know this was kind of a left field post for this little rant space, but this has been on my mind off and on since I got off of work. Thanks for taking the time to let me get this off my chest.