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gorgonarcher · 3 months

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Game 3 - Hero System

Champions is the first game I actually played a session of and that character was basically a blend of Wolverine and the protagonist to the 1980s TV show werewolf.

To this date Hero System remains probably the most well-thought and designed pure-point-based character creation system. However, this comes with a caveat that it expects you to do that work for every NPC using the same system as PCs use. And, well, it's a lot of burden on the GM.

I've also heard recently that the developers (Steven Long et al) have gone the way of Kevin Siembada in terms of "my way or the highway" to the point of banning people from the Hero forums that even mildly question recent decisions.

So, to start, in the old days a superhero character would get 250 points to build a character, 150 for free, and 100 with a set of disadvantages (now called complications).

As the game started adding things like perks, more skills, talents, and other such things, they realized they needed to expand the point pool to account for all the different ways they gave to fill out characters. Also, it was proving difficult to make all the disadvantages relevant to a game. There were a lot of characters that were bloated with "just for the points" complications that just bogged down games. Eventually the devs made the decision for the proportion matched with disadvantages to also be reduced.

In the most recent edition, 6th, the standard superhero is built with 400 pts, 75 of which were paid for by complications. With a maximum value to each complication of 40. But I think, instead, I'm going to go with a Powerful Heroic character at 225 points. This will put the character on level with pulp and fantasy characters.

I'm also going to use the "Normal Characteristic Maxima" limits for characters, meaning that she will be limited to "human" limits. (You can tell be the quotes that the upper limits of these are still a bit beyond what you can expect from a human being).

I'm going to follow some of the considerations here:

And some of the budgeting suggestions here, though I make break these, especially since these are for Standard Heroic and I'm doing Powerful Heroic and I'm not entirely sure I'll be sticking specifically to one of the three recommendations or not.

So, when doing Hero System, I prioritize the elements I want first and spend on those, then I spiral out to get the other elements to fill in the story of the character. Sometimes I start with Disadvantages, and I think I'll do that here.

Complications

Note, I find it more interesting to have a number of smaller complications usually, because having one or two big ones means that you have fewer story beats to work with. Yes these are treated as disadvantages and they will create legitimate obstacles or problems for in game, but also these are storyline elements. You are allowed to have more complications than the point limit for your power level, but anything over the limit will be for 0 points, so you take those purely for the story.

So, 50 points of Disadvantages

I'm going to go with the assumption that gorgons are rare, potentially unique in most people's experiences. This justifies taking a Distinctive Feature.

An important thing to consider with Hero System and similar games is to buy your disadvantages according to how you want them to impact the game.

If I want just to be a unique individual, for example. Someone easily pointed out and identified. Then I'd take the +0 option for reaction. In this case most NPCs will treat her as just any other person though the snakes for hair are a thing.

Likewise there's the extent of how distinct I want them to be and this is also relative and sort of asking "how much trouble do you want this to be".

For example, let's consider these pictures of Cael:

Some of these are more human looking than others, but any one of them could be considered "easily concealed" dependent on the other entities present in the world.

If there are snake-beings like lamia or naga in the setting then all four might fall under "noticed and recognized" and "easily concealable". If the setting is almost entirely human, then all four might be "Major Reaction/Prejudice" with the first two pictures being "Easily Concealable", the third being "Concealable" and the last being "Not Concealable". At least under normal circumstances.

In this case, I want a human-shaped gorgon, maybe slight scaling and I'm going to say "Concealable" since she'll have to cover most of her skin and conceal her hissy hair with some effort.

I'm also going to say "Major Reaction or Prejudice" but not extreme. Let's say that while gorgons specifically are rare or even unique, that there are other people touched by spirits who have odd physical features like this. So while they might not know exactly what she can do, they recognize her as spirit touched.

The major reaction is not necessarily good or bad and will vary from place to place. The feature is detectable by common senses like sight and hearing so no points are taken off for that. An example of this would be like how mutants in X-Men can be detected with special gear but most can pass for human. I am going to lean into the variation by culture though and say that some cultures just accept spirit-touched people with a shrug.

So the final complication looks like this:

10 - Gorgon, snake-hair and slight-scales: Dist Fea, Concealable, Always Noticed and Major Reaction, Feature is not distinctive in some cultures.

For the next part, I'm going to lean in on the idea that there are spirit-touched people who have expectations of them and I'm going with a Psychological Limitation.

In this case, we're going to say that she has an urge to always prove her worth or match up to the expectation of her. Perfectionism isn't quite the right idea so let's phrase it "Living up to Expectations".

Once again, model this by how often you want to deal with it. The book has some suggestions for what the different frequencies mean.

The intensity of the urge is also something to choose to your taste. I don't want it to be obnoxious and for some psych lims, "Total" is going to be obnoxious if it is all the time. There are psych lims that can be Total and still fun however: A "Code vs Killing" in superhero games is considered "Very Common Total" because it is something some heroes won't do for any reason and if they kill someone accidentally, then they have a breakdown. It's a thing that's always a factor.

Meanwhile, an uncommon phobia might totally shut you down and force you to avoid something but due to being uncommon, it's not common enough to be obnoxious. Plus, you don't shut down completely, as with the Code vs Killing, you just go out of your way to avoid it. For example, a person with a total phobia for wolves would refuse to go into the Wolf Woods.

Also, a reminder, the frequency is not about how common the situation is in the world but rather how common the situation will be in the game. Wolves might be a very common animal in the world but they won't often appear in the game, or rather won't often share a screen with the person who has the phobia due to them requesting the phobia be uncommon. At least if the GM is reading properly.

In this case, I think the urge to perform is going near constant, so I'm taking Very Common for frequency, but I'm going to make it a Moderate urge, so that it is something she can shake off with a pretty easy EGO check. This causes the disadvantage to look like this.

15 - Living up to Expectations: Psych Lim, Very Common Moderate.

That's 25 of our 50 points.

I want to do a vulnerability or other physical limitation just for the differing structure, but I also want to build up to the psych lim with a social limitation. Which works in very much the same way as a Psych Lim.

Secret Identities and Public Identities are a subset of Social Limitations and they used to be their own unique complications before they were folded in under the general umbrella of social limitations.

In this case, she comes from a culture where being spirit-touched is distinctive and the reputation is that they are either heroes or monsters, nothing in between. This is the source of her psych lim, so I could leave at just a psych lim, but there might be cases where she has a higher expectation of herself, or where society might have a higher expectation of her. Also, she can travel away from this society but not travel away from herself. The two are similar and overlap, but are still different.

The people of her society are going to either expect her to do dangerous tasks on demand or else label her as a thing to be actively hunted if she goes against their demands. But again, other cultures might be worse and just instantly peg her as a monster, or better and just consider her a person.

So, I'm going to put this as follows:

15 - Spirit-Touched, Hero or Monster: Soc Lim, Very Frequent, Major, Not Limiting in some Cultures.

This gives us 40 out of 50 points. So, for the last thing, we're going to do something physical, and we're still going off the idea of her being Spirit-Touched.

What if she's more affected by exorcisms and similar type effects? Now, there's two ways to do this: Vulnerability and Susceptibility.

Vulnerability is when something affects you far more than it does a normal person, but it will still affect a normal person. Susceptibility is when the effect doesn't affect most people and is mostly a you problem. In this case, I'm going to take a nod from Nioh 2 where Purity effect still has a negative impact on humans, it just doesn't affect them as severely as it does a yokai.

I'd say the spirit-touched thing is probably influenced by my playing Nioh 2 a bit recently, but also I had the same terms and concepts with a gorgon back three or four years before Nioh 2 came out and I had ever heard of the series. Still, probably a mix of both to be honest, the old idea coming to the top due to recently playing a lot of Nioh 2.

Anyway, I could take that as a vulnerability, but I'm also going to note that some purification stuff does nothing perceptible to humans but will affect her. So Susceptibility is probably much more what I'm looking for. If something is severe enough to affect human, that can just be bought to that level.

This case we're going to say these are directed exorcisms and purification tools, like salt or holy water. The person saying them has to be willfully aiming these prayers or items at her. So she could stand next to an exorcist affecting a demon and be fine, but if some panicky peasant starts praying at her she'll find herself touched.

Also note that the dice assume basic damage and other types of damage would use different scaling. 3d6 normal damage (which doesn't kill as easily) is roughly the same value as 1d6 killing damage (which targets a different defense). In this case though, we're going to go with a Drain effect. So that instead of targeting either STUN or BODY like normal and killing attacks do, it'll target "Power Defense" which almost nobody has.

We're going to say that these things drain her Recovery, meaning it makes it harder for her to recover spent Endurance or heal from injuries. 1d6 of Drain = 2d6 of Normal Damage, as far as point value is concerned.

We also have to decide whether this is a harm she takes instantly on first contact or whether it continues over time while exposed. In this case, I think the idea of her trying wash off purified salt or get away from someone praying at her is a good idea. I am going to go ahead and go with per phase. Some explanation on time here:

A Turn is 12 seconds. A segment is one second. A phase is a segment on which you act. Characters have a "Speed" attribute ranging from 2 to 12 which is how many actions a character gets on each Turn. So a person with Spd 2 (average human) has two actions in a turn, Segment 6 and 12. So, per Phase would mean the damage happens every time you are exposed in a segment when you have an action.

For frequency, again, this represents with how often you want to deal with it. Not how common the actual phenomenon is, though that can play a factor. In this case, we're going to assume that while the use of prayers and purified substances is well known, most people don't know how to properly perform the prayers or purify things enough to affect spirit-touched (and only have mild impact on actual spirits) plus it's likely that our character is primarily seen as a decent person. That said, enemy mystics would use this against her.

So, with all that in mind, I'm going to mark this as "Uncommon" giving us the following. This comes to a total value of 20. However, because this goes over the 10 points we have left, we only get 10 points out of it. If I wanted I could change the "per Phase" to "Instant" instead, but I think we'll keep it for the pure drama. You're fine to do this. I do like to notate when I went over using parentheses.

10 (20) - Exorcism Sensitivity: directed prayers and purified substances. Uncommon, 1d6 Recovery Drain per Phase.

Complications Total

The complication wrap comes to the following:

10 - Gorgon, snake-hair and slight-scales: Dist Fea, Concealable, Always Noticed and Major Reaction, Feature is not distinctive in some cultures.

15 - Living up to Expectations: Psych Lim, Very Common Moderate.

15 - Spirit-Touched, Hero or Monster: Soc Lim, Very Frequent, Major, Not Limiting in some Cultures.

10 (20) - Exorcism Sensitivity: directed prayers and purified substances. Uncommon, 1d6 Recovery Drain per Phase.

So now we move on to abilities.

Priorities

First, let's set our priorities:

1 - Basic Characteristics 2 - Snake hair 3 - Archery 4 - Consider petrification stare 5 - fill out details.

Characteristics

I do like to start with characteristics to make sure my character's stats are at acceptable levels for me. In prior edition you would have Primary characteristics and Figured characteristics which would be dependent on the Primary characteristics but which could bought above their basic level. In 6th edition, however, everything is bought directly.

The characteristics are as follows:

And some basic comparisons can be found here:

High priority here would be:

OCV/DCV

SPD

DEX

Next would be:

INT

EGO

PRE

DMCV

STUN

Then:

REC

END

Finally:

STR

CON

BODY

OMCV

So I'll go with the following (Cost in parentheses):

STR 13 (3)

DEX 20 (20)

CON 15 (5)

INT 13 (3)

EGO 13 (3)

PRE 15 (5)

OCV 4 (5)

DCV 6 (15)

OMCV 3

DMCV 5 (6)

SPD 4 (20)

PD 7 (5)

ED 7 (5)

REC 8 (4)

END 30 (2)

BODY 12 (2)

STUN 34 (7)

Total Cost: 110

That leaves us with 115 points for the rest of the characteristic.

Snake Hair

Now, I could leave this at just the Distinctive Feature, but let's actually give it some mechanical benefit as well as a social disadvantage. I'm going to start with a sensory advantage.

I'm going to apply an increased arc of perception to vision to 240 degrees. Not quite 360 degrees, but a bit more than the usual range of senses. I could purchase it for just normal vision, but instead, I'm going to purchase it for the entire vision group on the idea of also getting thermal vision, or as the game calls it "Infrared Perception" which is one of the pre-built senses.

10 - Snake Hair, Many Eyes: Increased Arc of perception 240 degrees to the vision group.

10 - Thermal Vision: Detect Heat Patterns/Traces, Passive

And because snakes scent the air with their tongues:

19 - Snake Tongues: All For Normal Scent, Discriminatory (5), Analyze (5), Microscopic: 2x Magnification (6), Rapid x10 speed (3)

That makes for 29 points.

And now we're going to move on to Archery

Archery

All campaigns will have some weapon familiarity or skills be common to all characters, but I'm not going to spend assuming that.

First, Weapon Familiarity.

I am going to give her familiarity with all Common Ranged Weapons for 2 pts

2 -Common Ranged Weapon Familiarity: Thrown Rocks; Bows; Crossbows; Javelins and Thrown Spears; Thrown Knives, Axes, and Darts.

Now on to other things for increased skills, we're going to start with Combat Skill Levels. Combat Skill Levels can be applied to OCV, DCV, or Damage. And we'll add some Penalty Skill Levels to counteract common penalties.

9 - CSL: All Bows 3 levels

4 - Ranged Skill Levels: 2 levels with Bows to counter ranged penalties.

4 - Targeting Skill Levels: 2 Levels with Bows to counter act penalties to target specific parts of the body

Total so far: 19

One path would be to take the Martial Arts rules and determine specific attack styles, but instead, since this is leaning toward Fantasy, I'm going to build her archery style with powers. And sense this is a Heroic level game, I'm going to go with a Multipower.

A multipower is a pool of points that can be assigned to the powers under it. So you can't use all the powers simultaneously but if you have the points to power two powers, then you can use them together. And yes, this includes using two attacks in one combination.

We're also going to apply a limitation to this in the form of a Focus because she needs a bow to use it. A lot of heroic games wouldn't require characters to pay points for their weapons, but we're going to do so for a signature weapon. Foci modify costs dependent on how obvious they are and how easy they are to take away from the character. A bow is Obvious and Accessible so this is an OAF which is a -1 modifier... which I'll get to in a moment. As a note, being able to permanently lose the focus would reduce the cost further. We're basically buying the option where the focus would be lost temporarily for one story.

We have the further option to apply the limit of "Charges" to this, but I don't think I'll go with this, have a cinematic idea of infinite ammo.

So since all powers in the pool will need the bow, this limit applies to the base pool of points. I'm going with a 30 point pool which is then modified. So what we do is take 1 and add the total value of all limitations and divide the cost by that number. In this case 1+1=2, 30/2=15.

I have called this the game that taught me algebra for a reason. Thankfully most of the math is in character creation, not gameplay (but there is a substantial amount there as well.)

15 - Bow of the Exorcist: Multipower: 30pt pool, OAF: Blessed Bow

Now, each slot in the multipower, and there can be as many slots as you have points for, will have their cost divided by 5, if we're allowed to adjust how many points go into them, or by 10 if it is a fixed cost.

First we'll have a basic attack for up to 2d6 killing attack, each d6 of KA is 15 points so this comes to 30 pts. To look deeper, the Ranged Killing Attack typically has Ranged advantage and the limitation that it doesn't add Strength, but we typically assume that when we say RKA. Since the focus limitation applies to the whole power, we reduce it to 15 as above, and then we're going to make this variable so we're going to divide that by 5.

Killing attacks target resistant defenses and go straight to BODY and get multiplied for STUN damage where as Normal attacks do STUN damage and do a portion of that as BODY based on dice rolled. (a 1 on the die is 0 BODY, a 6 is is 2 BODY, all other results are 1 BODY)

3v - Arrows: up to 2d6 RKA, Focus: Blessed Bow

The versatile allows the damage to be any of the following:

1 point, 5 points allocated

1/2d6 or 1d6-1, 10 points llocated

1d6, 15 points allocated

1d6+1, 20 points allocated

1.5d6 or 2d6-1, 25 points allocated

2d6, 30 points allocated

This allows us to represent different degrees of focus on just dealing damage. Note that the focus only reduces the cost of the power in terms of character creation, not how many points it uses in the reserve. 2d6 RKA with an OAF has a "real cost" of 15 but it has "active points" of 30 and that is what matters to the Multipower reserve.

Then we'll have a Blessed Arrow for striking spirits. This will have the Advantage that it "Affects Desolidified" we're only going to affect a single special effect/version of Desolidification: spirits, not all of them (like say someone able to turn into gas or a living hologram or a swarm of nanobots). So this is a +1/4 Advantage. I'm still going to make this as a killing attack but it won't be as strong as the prior one because the Active Points can't go over 30.

So, applying an Advantage is just like applying a limitation except you multiply instead of divide. So, we can do up to 20 pts of RKA, which when modified by the 1/4 advantage becomes: 20x1.25= 25. We also want this to be variable, so we now apply the OAF mod of -1...and I'm going to look at the chart rather than look at rounding rules and it comes to 12... and because this is a variable slot... we now divide by 5 and I have to check the rounding anyway... it's mathematical rounding so 12 rounds down (13 would round up) meaning a cost of 2.

2v - Blessed Arrows: up to 1d6+1 RKA, Affects Desolidification: Spirits.

1 point, 6 points allocated

1/2d6 or 1d6-1, 12 points llocated

1d6, 19 points allocated

1d6+1, 25 points allocated

Now, at this point the gorgon COULD fire an arrow that does 1d6 RKA and 1d6-1 RKA Affects desolidified. But there's no reason to do that here. You'd just use a 1d6+1 RKA Affects Desolidified or 2d6 RKA normal. So lets add some other options. How about a skill for nailing limbs to surfaces. That sounds like an Entangle.

So that it can pair with both our other abilities, it will have Affects Desolidified: Spirits, and I'm also going to mark it with "Cannot be Escaped with Teleportation" for +1/4.

Every 10 points of Entangle give 1d6 of BODY and 1 PD/1 ED (Physical and Energy Defense).

Affects Desolidified (+1/4) and Cannot be Escaped with Teleportation (+1/4) come to a total Advantage modifier of +1/2. So 20 points becomes 30 points. Then comes the OAF bringing the cost to 15 and divide by 5 for a variable slot and you get this:

3v - Spiritual Pinning: Entangle, up to 2d6 BODY 2 PD/2 ED, Cannot be escaped with teleportation, affects desolidified.

1d6 1 PD/1 ED - 15 points allocated, very fragile but forces the target to waste time breaking it.

2d6 2 PD/2 ED - 30 points allocated, not much stronger but might hold longer.

Now, we can pair 1d6 RKA with 1d6 Entangle OR 1d6-1 affects Desolidified with 1d6 Entangle, or a 2d6 RKA, or a 1d6+1 RKA affects Desolidified, or a 2d6 Entangle

Now I'm going to add four variations of a Purification arrow similar to the susceptibility our character has, but intense enough to affect humans. We're going to do a STUN only attack and an END drain (on the assumption that most spirits will have similar REC drain susceptibilities that she has).

First the STUN only, this will be a normal attack where 5 points = 1d6 of effect. STUN only is a -0 limitation because the game believes the benefits and drawbacks even out. But then I will also add "Affects Desolidified: Spirits)" for a +1/4. Which means it will be up to 4d6 and having a similar cost to the Blessed Arrows

2v - Spirit-Stunning Arrow - STUN only up to 4d6, Affects Desolidified: Spirits.

1d6 - 6 points allocated

2d6 - 12 points allocated

3d6 - 19 points allocated

4d6 - 25 points allocated

Note that the basic arrow we started with will have better max possible stun than these, so the second version will be a version that does not affect spirits. In Nioh 2 terms. Same basic situation but up to 6d6.

3v - Soul-Stunning Arrow: STUN only up to 6d6

1d6 - 5 points allocated

2d6 - 10 points allocated

3d6 - 15 points allocated

4d6 - 20 points allocated

5d6 - 25 points allocated

6d6 - 30 points allocated.

Now the Drains. Drains, as stated earlier are 10 points per 1d6 and we're going to do that will work against insubstantial enemies and one that won't. The first one is going to be up to 2d6 and on up to 3d6. Note that this attack does not target normal defenses. And the final products will look like this.

Also note that this is END drain, so each point of drain rolled will drain 5 points of END. Because it drains character points and END is 5 points per 1 character point.

2v - Spirit Drought Arrow: up to 2d6 END Drain, Affects Desolidified.

1/2d6 or 1d6-1, 6 points allocated

1d6, 12 points allocated

1d6+1, 19 points allocated

1.5d6 or 2d6-1, 25 points allocated

3v - Soul Drought Arrow: up to 3d6 END Drain.

1/2d6 or 1d6-1, 5 points allocated

1d6, 10 points points allocated

1.5d6 or 2d6-1, 15 points allocated

2d6, 20 points allocated

2.5d6 or 3d6-1, 25 points allocated

3d6, 30 points allocated.

This brings the final set of archery abilities to look like this:

Archery

2 -Common Ranged Weapon Familiarity: Thrown Rocks; Bows; Crossbows; Javelins and Thrown Spears; Thrown Knives, Axes, and Darts.

9 - CSL: All Bows 3 levels

4 - Ranged Skill Levels: 2 levels with Bows to counter ranged penalties.

4 - Targeting Skill Levels: 2 Levels with Bows to counter act penalties to target specific parts of the body

15 - Bow of the Exorcist: 30 pt reserve, OAF: Blessed Bow (-1)

3v - Arrow: up to 3d6 RKA, OAF: Blessed Bow

2v - Blessed Arrow: up to 1d6+1, Affects Desolidified: Spirits (+1/4), OAF: Blessed Bow (-1)

3v - Spiritual Pinning: Entangle, up to 2d6 BODY 2 PD/2 ED, Cannot be escaped with teleportation (+1/4), affects desolidified (+1/4). OAF: Blessed Bow (-1)

2v - Spirit-Stunning Arrow - STUN only up to 4d6, Affects Desolidified: Spirits (+1/4). OAF: Blessed Bow (-1)

3v - Soul-Stunning Arrow: STUN only up to 6d6 OAF: Blessed Bow: (-1)

2v - Spirit Drought Arrow: up to 2d6 END Drain, Affects Desolidified (-1/4). OAF: Blessed Bow (-1)

3v - Soul Drought Arrow: up to 3d6 END Drain. OAF: Blessed Bow

Total: 52 points

Consider Petrifying Gaze

With 27 points left, considered and put aside for now.

Fill Out Details

So now we're going to fill out details.

First, let's increase her movement.

4 - Running +4 meters, total 16m

2 - Leaping +4 meters, total 8m

And we're going to give her familiarity with some common melee weapons. Weirdly, this doesn't include Staves, but oh well.

2 - Common Melee Weapon Familiarity: Unarmed Combat; Axes, Maces, Hammers, and Picks; Blades; Clubs; Fist-Loads; Polearms and Spears; Two-Handed Weapons

I'm also going to give her some resistant defenses related to her scales.

9 - Resistant Protection: 3 rPD/3 rED

Then I'm going to give her some skills:

3 - Knowledge: Exorcism, INT-based

3 - Stealth, DEX-based

3 - Deduction, INT-based

This leaves one point remaining, which I am going to do as a Perk for being a trained spiritual warrior.

1 - Fringe Benefit: Official Exorcist

The Final Character looks like this:

Altogether Now

Characteristics

STR 13 (3)

DEX 20 (20)

CON 15 (5)

INT 13 (3)

EGO 13 (3)

PRE 15 (5)

OCV 4 (5)

DCV 6 (15)

OMCV 3

DMCV 5 (6)

SPD 4 (20)

PD 10/3 (5 - plus Scales)

ED 10/3 (5 - plus Scales)

REC 8 (4)

END 30 (2)

BODY 12 (2)

STUN 34 (7)

Characteristics Total: 110

Skills

3 - Knowledge: Exorcism, INT-based

3 - Stealth, DEX-based

3 - Deduction, INT-based

9 - Combat Skill Levels: All Bows 3 levels

4 - Ranged Skill Levels: 2 levels with Bows to counter ranged penalties.

4 - Targeting Skill Levels: 2 Levels with Bows to counter act penalties to target specific parts of the body

2 -Common Ranged Weapon Familiarity: Thrown Rocks; Bows; Crossbows; Javelins and Thrown Spears; Thrown Knives, Axes, and Darts.

2 - Common Melee Weapon Familiarity: Unarmed Combat; Axes, Maces, Hammers, and Picks; Blades; Clubs; Fist-Loads; Polearms and Spears; Two-Handed Weapons

Skills Total: 27

Perks

1 - Fringe Benefit: Official Exorcist

Perks Total: 1

Powers

9 - Scales: Resistant Defense, 3 rPD/3 rED

4 - Running +4 meters, total 16m

2 - Leaping +4 meters, total 8m

Total: 15

Senses

10 - Snake Hair, Many Eyes: Increased Arc of perception 240 degrees to the vision group.

10 - Thermal Vision: Detect Heat Patterns/Traces, Passive

19 - Snake Tongues: All For Normal Scent, Discriminatory (5), Analyze (5), Microscopic: 2x Magnification (6), Rapid x10 speed (3)

Total: 39

Bow of the Exorcist Martial Art

15 - Bow of the Exorcist: 30 pt reserve, OAF: Blessed Bow (-1)

3v - Arrow: up to 3d6 RKA, OAF: Blessed Bow

2v - Blessed Arrow: up to 1d6+1, Affects Desolidified: Spirits (+1/4), OAF: Blessed Bow (-1)

3v - Spiritual Pinning: Entangle, up to 2d6 BODY 2 PD/2 ED, Cannot be escaped with teleportation (+1/4), affects desolidified (+1/4). OAF: Blessed Bow (-1)

2v - Spirit-Stunning Arrow - STUN only up to 4d6, Affects Desolidified: Spirits (+1/4). OAF: Blessed Bow (-1)

3v - Soul-Stunning Arrow: STUN only up to 6d6 OAF: Blessed Bow: (-1)

2v - Spirit Drought Arrow: up to 2d6 END Drain, Affects Desolidified (-1/4). OAF: Blessed Bow (-1)

3v - Soul Drought Arrow: up to 3d6 END Drain. OAF: Blessed Bow

Total: 33

Powers Total: 87

Grand Total: 225

Complications

10 - Gorgon, snake-hair and slight-scales: Dist Fea, Concealable, Always Noticed and Major Reaction, Feature is not distinctive in some cultures.

15 - Living up to Expectations: Psych Lim, Very Common Moderate.

15 - Spirit-Touched, Hero or Monster: Soc Lim, Very Frequent, Major, Not Limiting in some Cultures.

10 (20) - Exorcism Sensitivity: directed prayers and purified substances. Uncommon, 1d6 Recovery Drain per Phase.

I'd probably use the first few points of XP to fill out skills with RP stuff and to give her more character. One advantage of doing a multipower like this is it is really cheap to add new powers. There is something to be said for adding some of the martial maneuvers in as well, but the Combat Skill Levels and Penalty Skill Levels cover a lot of what those would do.

This presents a fairly more fluid way to approach martial arts than using the martial arts mechanics. It works well with weapon-based and power-based martial arts, but still the martial maneuvers provide a lot of efficient and low cost prebuilt combinations.

Also note that if she has a normal bow instead of a blessed bow, hers or someone else's, she can't use her multipower at all and she would only use the bow's basic capabilities plus her combat skill levels. If I wanted to further heighten her skill with spirit arrows, I could also give her Combat Skill Levels specifically with that multipower, which would stack with those on bows in general.

#character creation #ttrpg #archer #gorgon #roleplaying games #tabletop roleplaying game #tabletop rpgs #Hero System #Champions #Point Buy #The game that taught me algebra.

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house-of-no-regrets · 3 years

Text

No Regrets [in the wee hours]

Took a bit longer than expected, but I’ve finished the next little story! Hopefully I’ll be able to keep a decent pace on these. No overarching plot, just little stories in the same universe with the same characters. Warning for ~*murder*~ in this one!

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I've been all-too-easy to wake up since I was a child; I'd often needed to go from dead asleep to functional, if groggy, as soon as I heard my father demanding action or attention. While I no longer need that reaction time, the old man long since locked up to rot, my brain is set in its ways and very convinced that I need to be able to bolt out of bed and fight God if a dust bunny moves too quickly in my vicinity.

Which is how I found myself waking up in the middle of the night, the sudden shift in the atmosphere bringing on consciousness with all the subtlety of a foghorn.

My room was silent, still, but I knew without opening my eyes that there was a spirit somewhere, and I didn't even give them a chance to speak before I pointed at the sign posted on my wall, barely shifting from my comfortable snuggle in my blanket and not even opening my eyes. Yes, this happens more often than I care to admit. No, I do not enjoy it. At all.

"Resurrection hours are noon to eight. I'm still alive and still need sleep to function."

There was silence, but the presence didn't leave, so I groaned and raised my head, finally opening my eyes to see the translucent, vaguely glowing, and unfortunately blurry spirit at the foot of my bed.

It did finally speak in a bewildered voice.

"Um, I'm being murdered."

Ah, fuck.

I grabbed my glasses from the bedside table and put them on. The spirit at the foot of my bed was tallish -- I've always been bad at estimating height, maybe half a foot shorter than Yvette? Five-nine... ish? -- and seemed to be in his twenties. There was a considerable dark stain on his chest and belly; likely blood, and the cause of his death. The newly-dead tend to show things like that, as they haven't had the time to get used to modifying their form.

I really hate it when brand new ones find me. I'm not sure how it started, but it seems like more and more often, now, the dead are drawn to No Regrets before they even realize they're dead, at least if they're the type to need my help. Wish I wasn't the one who had to break it to him. I'm not great with people.

"Sorry, bro, but I'm afraid they succeeded. Where was it? I'll get the police over there."

"Uhh... my house. I think. It's a little..."

I sighed. Right.

"You're probably a little out of it still... fresh dead usually are. C'mon, I'll take you around until things look familiar."

Climbing out of bed, I headed over to grab my hoodie from the back of the chair. I learned the hard way that sleeping is not a tits out sort of occasion when you're liable to get the dead dropping in at all hours of the night, so I sleep in pajama pants and a tank top. Little too chilly for tank tops outside, though. I shoved my phone in my hoodie and my feet into loafers, then started heading out of my room and down the hall.

"You remember your name?" I asked, trying to make conversation and learn what I could.

"Uh, Davis. Craig? Craig Davis."

"Well, Craig Davis, I'm sorry to hear about your passing. You're gonna need to possess me for this little adventure, by the way, but I'll walk you through it once we're outside."

"I- what?"

Considering how often I find myself lost in normal conversations, dealing with confused new spirits is especially difficult. Still shaking off my body's angry demands for More Sleep was not helping matters in the slightest, either.

"Possession. I'll explain it in just a minute." I rubbed an eye and yawned as I stopped in the foyer to pull a set of keys off one of the hooks on the wall.

Usually, I've got a driver. Not for vanity reasons, but after three or four near-misses caused by Sudden Spirits appearing in the car with me, I elected to hire someone to drive me into and around town as needed. But it was Fuck-This-Shit O'Clock in the morning, and Graves deserved their rest. The dead don't need to sleep, but they can if they so choose -- and it does, after all, conserve energy. The same goes for Yvette and Ashby; it was too early in the morning for most people to be out and searching for a necromancer to kill, so I wasn't gonna disturb them. I could handle a simple spirit chauffeur and 911 call on my own.

The keys were to the motor scooter; it was the better choice in this situation, allowing for more mobility and no passenger seat for any extra ghosts to drop into. That did, though, mean that Craig would need to ride shotgun in my body.

When I got out to the green scooter in the driveway, I paused and looked over at Craig.

"Hey, I know you're probably still a little out of it, so Possession 101." Script time. At least having this stuff memorized made it easier to do while dozy. "Our bodies need to take up the same space, so c'mere." I beckoned Craig over.

"So like… step into you?" He asked. Good, seemed like his head was clearing up some.

"Yeah, that's part 1."

He nodded and complied, crossing the space between us and settling in the same location, the two of us clipped into each other like bugged NPCs. It always felt so weird, those moments before a spirit actually possesses you. A sort of wobbly, in-and-out feeling like physics is trying to crush you and the spirit together, or, failing that, just kick your ass to the ground so you're not both in the same place at the same time.

"A'ight, now turn around and face the direction I’m facing, and overlay your hands onto mine as best you can." It was just a moment for him to obey, and I continued. "I'm not resisting, so you're gonna start feeling like you're being pulled in and pushed out at the same time. Space is trying to equalize. Let yourself be pulled in. It's gonna feel a bit like-"

The whirlpool effect kicked in before I could finish, the sudden snap and release of tension as Craig's spirit sank into my body. I wobbled a bit and grabbed the handlebar in front of me, then shivered at the sudden chill and dizziness. I'm pretty good at taking on passengers like this, but that didn't make it any more pleasant.

"You in there, buddy?" I asked out loud. Especially with new spirits, trying to think at each other was more trouble than it was worth. My lips moved to answer, though it wasn't my voice coming out.

"Uh- yeah. Yeah I'm here."

I grabbed the helmet hanging on the other handlebar and snapped it on, kicking the stand up and plopping heavily onto the seat.

"Great. Let's go."

"Wait, why am I not in control?" came Craig's confused voice. He felt almost frustrated, an undercurrent of emotion that wasn't mine despite being in my mind and body.

"Because this is my body, and I let you in willingly. Easier to keep control when you're letting someone in. Plus," I gave a little snort. "You just died, dude. I've been letting spirits possess me since middle school."

I felt his frustration turn to grumpiness, and then the pressure in my head, like a storm rolling in, that I knew from experience was him trying to take control. I froze and let out an irritated huff.

"You stop that. I'm not dealing with you doing some dumb shit with my body. Either chill out or get out."

"Oh- uh. Just wanted to see if I could…"

"Uh-huh. Anyhow, now that you're together enough to try joyriding, do you remember much about where you were before you were killed?"

I started up the scooter as emotions rolled through my mind, detached and distant, almost like the muffled dissociation I was used to mid-shutdown. Possessing spirits' emotions always felt weird like that, both mine and not mine, held at arm's length. Craig's was especially turbulent for a new death, but given that he had been murdered… I didn't fault him for being a little confused and angry. Even if it did put me a little on edge.

"Uh- South Pine Street, Dogwood Acres housing development."

"Baller. That's not far from here. Once we get close to your body, you should be able to feel where it is, so I'll have a house number for the police. Don't want to have them scream in all blue lights and loud sirens and have your killer go to ground before they know which house, y'know?"

The muffled flare of anger that I felt was definitely not my own. I took a deep breath, hoped that the killer had panicked and tried to clean up instead of get rid of the body first, and puttered off towards Dogwood.

The housing development was quiet, lines upon lines of identical suburban boxes lit by flickering street lights that cast the sidewalks and yards in harsh white light. The occasional house had the glow of yellow within, but most of them were dormant. Weaving my way through the maze of streets, each one absolutely indistinguishable from the one before and the one to come, I felt terribly exposed -- and alone despite the spirit currently hitching along in my body.

I turned onto South Pine and brought my scooter to a puttering stop, stabilizing it with both feet on the ground. I couldn't help but bounce my legs to replace the vibration of driving; the sudden lack of sensation would ratchet my anxiety up even if I wasn't currently letting a frustrated dead man hang out in my head to catch his murderer.

...I should be more than a little anxious, really, but half-asleep Tabby once again wrote a check that more-awake Tabby is having to cash, and more-awake Tabby is very used to having to deal with the consequences of her idiot decisions. It occurred to me that normal peoples' consequences didn't usually involve murder, but when you live with the dead, you're bound to meet a few killers.

Two houses down, I could feel- not a tug so much as a presence, an echo of Craig's spirit reacting to his body. It was the only one on the street with its lights on and its garage, while not lit, was open. There was a car in the garage, another in the driveway, and a pickup at the curb in front.

"258?" I asked Craig, though I knew the answer already. His anger flared and I felt the oncoming storm again. I snapped at him. "That's two strikes, Craig. I'm sorry for your death, but if you end up driving my body into a crime scene or, god forbid, getting me killed next, I will kick your ass to whatever afterlife you're headed for and stay there to keep kicking it for eternity."

Big words for a short fat lady, but this is, in fact, my body on the line right now. I probably wouldn't be able to follow through on any ass-kicking, but dammit, I would try.

Craig was silent, and I could feel him steaming, petulant like a child denied a toy but with the power of a grown man behind it. With my stomach tying itself in knots and my hands starting to tremble, I dialed 911, hoping it would help quell the rising panic.

"258 South Pine Street. I think there's been a murder. I don't know the state of the crime scene or if the perp is still there, but you might be able to catch them if you hurry. The victim is Craig Davis, white adult male, either shot or stabbed in the chest, likely multiple times-"

"Wait, is this Tabby? The necro girl?"

Oh god I hope that isn't what the operators call me regularly-- I know I'm a bit of a 911 cryptid, since the usual intruder calls are to the non-emergency line, but if I get known as the necro girl I might have to move to a different state.

"Yeah, uh, necromancer, yeah-" I couldn't help but stumble over my words, now, with my train of thought derailed by the interruption. "-uh, murder?"

"Right! I'll send someone."

I murmured a thanks and hung up before she could ask me to stay on the line. I already had to stay around for the cops so Craig could give a statement, and making small talk with the 911 operator was not in the spoons tonight.

I don't like cops much, but in my line of work, they're kind of a necessity. I need to stay on the police force's good side because I need them to remove attempted murderers from my property on the regular. ...and also because graverobbing is still technically illegal, even if I do have the body owner's permission to dig them up.

At least most of the locals who know of me and my employees are chill about it. It took a bit of effort to get to that point, but now at least people don't run screaming from the less-presentable of my employees…

The blue lights of the police showed up fairly quickly, followed almost immediately by the red flashing of EMS. I puttered up slowly and parked my scooter just out of range as the officers set to work surrounding the house, then hung my helmet on a handlebar and walked up the rest of the way to watch the impending train wreck. I could feel Craig's anger boiling higher and tried my best to ignore it; Craig himself seemed to have fallen silent and sullen after I called him out.

"Tabby!"

I was standing just off to the side of the ambulance when someone stepped up behind me and called my name, making me jump and cringe.

"Oh- oh dear, I'm sorry, Tabs. I thought I heard you were the one who called this in!"

I straightened up immediately, face burning. I recognized that voice, bright and smooth and kind and--

"J-Jenna!" My voice was barely a squeak as I turned to face her, looking up at the round, dark face of one of the EMTs. She was a good six feet tall, maybe more, towering above me even in her uniform flats, with a brilliant smile and full lips and gorgeous natural hair pulled through the back of her uniform cap, the streetlight illuminating her from behind like a halogen angel.

Jenna had shown up to one of my early calls for assistance at No Regrets, and then she kept turning up, not every time I was in a situation where I'd be around EMTs, but often.

Concern showed on her face as she leaned to look me over.

"Are you okay? Did you see it happen, or-"

I shook my head, buying time to sort out words by tapping my temple with a finger.

"N-no, I uh- the victim woke me up, he's in here, uh, in case the cops need somethin' from him."

"Oh… are you getting enough sleep, dear? You sound exhausted. Do you want to sit in the back of the truck?"

It took me a second or two to recover from the way she called me dear, my face burning bright red. I couldn't make eye contact even for the second or two I can usually manage so that people don't immediately think I'm being dishonest.

"I- uh- um- w-well, it's, uh, it is like 4am--" I stammered, trying desperately to find words. "I-I guess 'm sleepin' okay, uh, how're… you doing??"

I have never been a great orator and the list of why that is gets a bit longer with every um and stutter.

Jenna's face bloomed into a gorgeous, open grin.

"I'm on 12-hour overnights right now, so I'm basically at least 60 percent Red Bull at any given time. Everyone okay up there at the House? Last I heard y'all were digging up half the lawn.”

I nodded, unable to keep from grinning. At least this was a subject I could talk to her about without making an absolute ass of myself--

"Yeah! The new girl, Chris, she's gotten Daryl and Roy to help her get the vegetable garden going! It's plenty big enough to take care of all of us, and I worked out a deal with the soup kitchen so that they get any of our excess, once things are running smoothly, and I can use their account to buy from that bulk food program that's usually only open to chari- oop-!" I bit my tongue and cringed. Right. I'm pretty sure that's technically fraud and I just admitted to it in front of-

There was a commotion from the house that snapped me back to attention, and the cops were leading a man out in handcuffs. He looked pale and shaken, spattered in blood, and not quite… present, like he had just checked out of reality for his own good. That… was a familiar look. I furrowed my brow. He certainly didn't look like a maniacal killer-

"He caught me with his wife," I said. Well. Craig said. I jumped. Jenna jumped. I flushed and covered my mouth reflexively.

"N-no that was him! The victim!" I squeaked. Jenna laughed, a hearty belly laugh, and covered her own mouth, though she was doing a terrible job of hiding her grin.

"I figured! If he caught you with his wife, it would be an upgrade!"

At this point, you could probably fry an egg on my face. Hell, my glasses were starting to fog up-- I stammered for a few moments, trying desperately to find something to say, and it was Craig who saved me, if you could call it that. I was too caught up in my embarrassment and awkwardness to realize how much anger and frustration he was radiating.

"Motherfucker told me he'd have my job! Son of a bitch thinks he can get away with doing this to me, he's gonna fucking pay--"

The oncoming storm crashed over me before I could get a grip on it, and all of a sudden I was lumbering forward, snarling words that weren't my own, and dragging a gardening pickaxe out of my truck -- Craig's truck -- on my way to the man and the cops--

I let out a shriek, in my own voice, feeling the sound cutting my throat raw. I wrested control of my body back with a lurch, falling on my ass in the yard with the force of it while the silvery-blue form of Craig was ejected from my body, screaming obscenities.

I threw my hand forward, fighting for whatever thoughts and words I could find to fix this. I saw Craig right himself and move back towards me, and the first incantation -- if you could call it that -- that my brain grasped left my lips in a single desperate breath, with a dizzying rush of power--

"INTHENAMEOFTHEMOONIBANISHYOU--!!"

The force of the hurried exorcism rushed outward like a sonic boom, strong enough for even the mundanes around me to feel, and Craig's spirit let out a yowl of rage for a brief second before twisting around itself and collapsing in with a sickening crunch, crushing smaller and smaller until it was gone.

I winced -- not my best exorcism. At all.

As the flare of adrenaline dropped almost immediately and I came back to myself properly, I realized -- blurrily, as my glasses had gotten thrown off somewhere -- at least two officers had their weapons half-drawn at me, though they were looking over at where Craig's spirit had disappeared.

I collapsed the rest of the way onto the grass, shaking, and covered my face with my hands, trying with everything within me not to start crying. I should have realized he'd try something like that, why hadn't I been paying attention- I could have been attacked, I could have been arrested, I could have had to watch myself beat a man to death and I- fuck--

The sob that came out was squeaky and pained, and I pressed my hands harder against my face, like that would stop anything else from going wrong. I should have brought someone-- I shouldn't have let him possess me-- I should have been paying more attention--

Warm tears ran from the corners of my eyes, down my cheeks, to pool in my ears, making my already-trembling body shiver harder with the unpleasant sensation. I'd let myself get complacent, hadn't lost control of a possession like that in years, and- I'd almost- fuck--

"Honey, honey, sit up for me. Tabby? C'mon, let's get you up--"

Numbly, I let Jenna help me into a sitting position, where she wrapped a blanket around me and pressed an open bottle of water into my hands.

"Take slow sips. Are you okay? Just shaken?"

I nodded, some part of me grateful that I couldn't quite see her face properly without my glasses, because I didn't want to see what she thought about me after that. She sighed, though, and sounded relieved when she murmured "Good."

My whole body felt like jelly, trembling so hard I could feel the water in the bottle sloshing around, and I kept flashing from too hot to too cold to too hot again, and I couldn't even sort out my thoughts--

Jenna sat down beside me and rubbed my back. If I wasn't having a complete breakdown, I might have enjoyed it.

I don't know how long it took for me to calm down and clear my head, but the car with the other man had left, and the other EMTs had loaded Craig's body into the ambulance while Jenna sat next to me and made sure I was doing okay.

After a while, though, I blinked and shifted my torso, then opened the blanket more and cursed at the bloom of red on my hoodie.

I heard Jenna curse as well as she stood up, but I grabbed her pants leg.

"N-no, 'm okay," I mumbled, and instead of trying to speak more, I reached to pull my hoodie and tank up my stomach to show bruised, but completely unbroken skin, covered in blood, rivulets following my stretch marks and making it look even worse despite my being otherwise completely uninjured. "See, 'm okay." This was not the first time I've had a possession lead to the dead's cause of death showing on my own body. It wasn't even the bloodiest.

Jenna sat back down, and I could see her leaning in a bit.

"Well damn. Magic ghost stuff, huh?"

I nodded.

"Magic ghost stuff."

I could see the flash of white against dark skin as she grinned.

"So that exorcism… Artemis or Usagi?"

It took me a moment to parse her.question, but all of a sudden I was completely back to myself, just in time to absolutely die of embarrassment.

"L-listen, I- y-you can exorcise i-in anyone's name, i-it's the power and conviction that counts--!!"

"Usagi, then." I could hear the laughter in her voice, laughter that bubbled out moments later. I wanted to crawl in a hole in embarrassment, but- it didn't feel like condescending laughter. I knew what that felt like. She seemed just genuinely amused. "I grew up with Sailor Moon, too."

I couldn't stop the squeak that eaked out, and I covered my face again.

"G-god I hope word about this doesn't get out, people already think I-I'm weird enough, and to- to fall back on anime for magic i-in a pinch is just--"

"Cute," Jenna finished.

I squeaked.

Jenna moved away for a moment, and then she settled my glasses on my nose. I couldn't make eye contact, but I did glance over at her and sheepishly murmur my thanks.

"The officers still want a statement from you, since you made the call and tried to go after the perp, but I don't think they're looking at any charges, given…" Jenna trailed off and looked over at where Craig had disappeared. "...yeah."

I nodded, slowly, and then found myself yawning, the adrenaline drop setting in especially hard.

"...d'you think it can wait 'til tomorrow… 've kinda had a rough night."

"I think they'll be okay with that."

#house of no regrets #no regrets #tabby #jenna #writing #ethical necromancy #necromancer #paranormal #fantasy #magic #writeblr #story #useless lesbian tabby has A Night

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uesp · 3 years

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This is why I can't play Morrowind rip

I don’t blame you. There’s a lot of games I can’t play, even some I used to, for reasons like Morrowind’s navigation issues. A thought that enters my mind a lot for games with those issues is “this game does not respect my time”. Whenever I think that, I’m just done with it now. I tend to find I’m happier for it.

To be clear I don’t dislike Morrowind, I do in fact like it quite a bit. I also understand that it is a product of its time, popular concepts in game design evolve with time, with a lot of what I would consider bad ideas falling to the wayside with time (along with some game design ideas that should really be given more tries, although that’s super tangential).

At the same time I’m willing to admit to things I dislike about the game. Morrowind is not sacred, it can be criticized. I don’t like running into unjustified difficulty walls (without taking advantage of exploits). If a game encourages you to explore, and exploring the world is arguably what Morrowind MOST encourages you to do, getting cut off by enemies who are arbitrarily too powerful is terrible design. That’s not to say I dislike a game expecting you to get more powerful to expand what areas you can explore, far from it. But it should be a fairly natural process of discovery. It should be clear that I’m heading into danger.

One good example of this is Red Mountain. Red Mountain in its entirety is gated off by a giant glowing and ominous wall with only one easy entrance. As you approach it the weather becomes increasingly grim, before the entire world turns a sinister shade of red. That sets the tone. It tells me, without necessarily saying anything (although NPCs also warn you), that what’s in there is going to be much more dangerous, and that I shouldn’t go that way unless I’m sure I’m ready.

A random human living in a cave being considerably more powerful than a different random human living in a similar cave is comparatively bad. Sadly, I feel that this is much more common than the warnings with Red Mountain.

To change topics, the Dark Brotherhood NPCs constantly attacking you whenever you rest if you have the Tribunal expansion (which most people will have at this point, as most copies of the game you can easily acquire come with it by default now) is absolutely awful design of the highest level. If you aren’t familiar, when you start a new game or load a save after enabling the Tribunal expansion, there will be persistent, respawning enemies that attack you when you rest until you go to a higher level area to put a stop to their attacks. They start spawning immediately, and they become increasingly dangerous if you just try to put up with the attacks.

What were they thinking? In my opinion, the implementation of these Dark Brotherhood assassins to get you to start Tribunal is a solid contender for the single worst developer decision in any Elder Scrolls game. I’m sure there have been worst design choices in games overall, but I think it might be an honorable mention on a list of all-time worst game design decisions. I have actually tested this with a group of people who have never played Morrowind before, and the DB attacks were consistently a wall they couldn’t get past. I don’t think a person can pick up Morrowind today without either having a game guide (like the UESP), using mods to fix this, or just dropping the difficulty down (a feature hidden in the menu). That’s really, really bad.

I know we’ve been talking about this in other posts, but while talking about things from Morrowind that make it harder for me to get into now, I would be remiss to not go more in-depth with my problems with it (especially since that was the anonymous message’s primary gripe). As Morrowind does not have quest markers, you are reliant on directions NPCs give you. Directions like this...

"The burial caverns lie to the south-southeast of the camp, a north-facing door in a little hill halfway between us and the slopes of Red Mountain. Go north from the camp to the water, then turn east. At a rock cairn on the beach, turn and head straight south until you find the door. The spirits of our ancestors guard the caverns. They will attack, and will kill you if they can. Force your way past them, or evade them, get the bow, and return to prove your worthiness."

Those are actual directions you get during part of the main quest.

Honestly, I can often remember where to go or just instinctively pull up our interactive map if I need it, but if I didn’t have foreknowledge of Morrowind locations, this would bother me immensely. I don’t have unlimited free time, I would like to do the parts of the game that are fun and rewarding, not search mindlessly through Morrowind’s ash and fog-covered countryside for a gray door on the side of a gray rock. When a game doesn’t respect that, I have a hard time playing it. TES has a special place in my life, but I can absolutely understand how things like this are deal breakers for people.

But to change tracks, and to end this post, I would like to leave you with something I absolutely love about Morrowind. A lot of games play with the trope of you having to prove you are “worthy”. Morrowind absolutely does, you interact with a ton of characters who outright despise you, and barely tolerate you enough to send you to complete some task to prove your worth, before sending you off on a dozen more missions to continue to prove yourself, before sending you to other groups who you then have to prove yourself to. However, Morrowind lets you throw up your hands at their demands and snide comments and go “You are all garbage people, and I dislike you all immensely. I don’t need you or your perfunctory approval or your stupid artifacts. Now I’m going to go kill the monsters none of you could because I am AMAZING and HARDCORE and YOU ARE NOT. And I’m going to do it all while FLYING because I am too good to walk on the same dirt you all are confined to.”

And honestly, every game should let you do that.

#UESP #Lore #The Elder Scrolls #Morrowind

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utilitycaster · 3 years

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Actual Play: How it works

This is a collection of how I think of actual play as a medium, because TTRPG actual play is a unique one - a combination of improvisation, a rule set, and randomizing elements. This isn’t fully comprehensive, and I may add to it in the future as I come up with more ideas. I’m also thinking of providing some examples/more in-depth stuff for the items in separate posts, so please let me know if that’s something you would want.

Most of the observations here heavily skew towards D&D and Pathfinder actual play, as they are what I know best. Other systems I’ve listened to (PbtA, Cortex, Savage Worlds) fit in here as well, but this may not apply to all actual play, particularly GM-less games or games that are primarily played as one-shots.

Finally, and I say this only because it is a recurring problem on the social media that I happen to find incredibly irritating: you are also welcome and encouraged to have other opinions, disagree with me, dislike all of this, etc. If you have things to say, my inbox is the best place; this is too long for multiple reblogs and this is a sideblog so replies are tricky. However, if you are the kind of person who is inclined to say things like “Actually, there was an exception to this rule! It’s in the backmasked audio at 06:59:32 in the outtakes of episode 192c of Dungeons and Discotheques! :)” I would like to provide you with this actual play line quote from Adaine Abernant in Fantasy High: I think that you feel like you have a lot to offer, and please take this the right way... you don't.

Onto the thoughts, below the jump!

On narrative devices and rules and the random element:

Foreshadowing is possible, but limited to specific circumstances. A GM can (and should) foreshadow! The point of foreshadowing is to set expectations, and GMs should have hints that indicate things about the world that the party may encounter later, provide potential plot hooks, or otherwise provide the party with information. Similarly, players can do things that nod towards as of yet unrevealed elements of their backstories. However, it is impossible to deliberately foreshadow plot resolutions, because it is unknown what they will be. That doesn’t mean that in retrospect things may happen that echo back to earlier events, but the intent to foreshadow was not there - it’s a happy accident.

I don’t want to say normal narrative rules don’t apply because what are the normal narrative rules, really? However, I think an important thing to emphasize is that narrative satisfaction is not guaranteed. This is especially true if the cast has agreed character death is an option, but even beyond that, an unlucky or lucky roll can seemingly cut an arc short or take things in a weird and unforeseen direction. Because there is an element of randomness, randomness will occur. This, along with the character agency I discuss later, is one of my favorite things about actual play. It strips out the need for a moral or message or specific beats - not that those can’t arise, but they can’t be forced - and as such it can make for unusual, creative, and very true-to-life stories even in a fantasy setting.

On character role, viewpoint and agency:

Actual play stories have an ensemble of viewpoint characters (the PCs). This is perhaps the clearest restriction that exists, at least in all of the game systems I’ve mentioned. There is no good way to depict NPCs acting on their own unless the PCs have a way to observe them, unseen (magical or mundane). It is extremely difficult to have one player play multiple PCs, and if a player leaves there is not a good way to recast their PC. This doesn’t mean NPCs can’t do things with each other offscreen that have implications for the story, nor that PCs can’t come and go or become NPCs, but it does mean a good GM is very careful about NPC interactions because it gets very boring and non-collaborative very quickly to watch someone talk with themselves.

The PCs hold a level of agency that characters in other media do not. Statements about how the characters have a mind of their own in original fiction aside (sidebar: I am team ‘they don’t, you just didn’t realize that the way you wrote their personality and the way you wrote your plot conflicted until you actually started writing it out, which is very understandable’) PCs do in fact have a mind of their own separate from the GM and from each other.

Something I like about this is that unless you are coming up with conspiracy theories regarding the interpersonal dynamics of the players themselves (in which case I think you’re both a creep and a weirdo (derogatory)) or if the GM is not respecting player agency (which I feel is usually very easy to see; see below for more on that) you do not get cases of “these characters are together simply because the author felt like pairing them off” as can happen in scripted media. Any romantic relationship is, inherently, a mutually agreed choice between the originators of these characters, and more generally any plot or relationship necessarily needs to have something that appeals to all characters involved. It may be as simple as “these are my friends and I want to keep hanging out”, but, despite this being improv, it’s a medium where saying “no” is always an option.

With that said there is still room for players to be uncooperative or selfish. It’s rare, but it does exist, and I’m personally of the opinion that it’s in part the GM’s responsibility to have a conversation with that player and to not play into their attention grabbing. That said, with one notable exception, all the accusations I’ve seen about this have seemed to me to be more “I don’t like this player/character/ship/arc and I am going to claim they are stealing focus, despite it being justified,” and not genuinely about a player being obnoxious.

Agency separate from the person who creates the world is perhaps the most unique element of actual play and at this point I’m going to talk a little about how a good GM fosters that.

I’ve said before that when a GM has things happen that are not at least mostly a direct response to character actions, they are typically either world-building or a hook, and can be both. I think of this sort of as a variant on Chekhov’s gun, actually; the gun doesn’t have to go off, ultimately, in actual play, but it is saying the following:

This is a world where there are guns hung on the wall sometimes.

Someone else might do something with this gun.

You can attempt to do something with this gun before they do.

And then the players decide how they want to interpret it and what they want to do, and the dice indicate the level of success in doing so.

A good GM should encourage the players to explore and be creative, and more than anything, reward agency. This doesn’t mean rewarding it with success; rather, it means if someone explicitly indicates they want to interact with an element of the world, you should give them the tools such that eventually, they can try to do so. You can also give them reasons in-game why they should change their mind, or make it so that it’s almost certain to fail if that is reasonable, but if you are trying to flat-out shut it down without providing an in-world reason why, the cracks will almost certainly show.

One important thing to remember about GM-ing: GMs will probably come into the game with some ideas of what’s going on in the world, and some level of understanding of what the world looks like. That will be influenced by the players, both in terms of the consequences of their actions and choices, and also by what the players are interested in. Which is to say: even if there is a session zero, and the GM states a specific premise, that can change! Characters develop, player interests change, dice rolls do weird things, and so a good GM absolutely must if not kill their darlings at least remove, recycle, and adapt them based on the direction of the game and motivations of the characters. Even in a plot-driven campaign, the players and GM and what makes them happy needs to drive the story, because fundamentally, this is a game that should be fun. Which brings us to...

On the Watsonian and the Doylist in actual play:

Stepping back for a second: the context in which people are creating fiction influences them. End of sentence. It’s ridiculous to think it doesn’t. This means everything from political events and worldwide trends, to the media the creator is consuming or has consumed, to personal life events. There are always going to be in- and out-of-universe explanations for choices in fiction.

In actual play, the players and GM know the underlying rules of the world, and it’s difficult to truly split the party and have everyone not involved leave in a way that feels fun, so everyone always has information that they can’t really use in-game. Also it’s a fully improvised medium that is primarily theater of the mind, so unconscious choices, misunderstandings, and accidents are frequently not edited out, and people are human. Which is to say I think it’s important to take this into consideration in one’s analysis; it’s not that you can’t incorporate a Watsonian reason for something that happened, but Doylist reasons are given a weight that they may not have in an edited work.

Three of the Doylist reasons beyond the misunderstandings and accidents I wanted to cover are metagaming, awareness that this is for an audience, and character knowledge.

Metagaming exists in many TTRPGs, and it’s not actually inherently bad. When a DM in D&D says “that just hits” you get an idea of the AC of the creature, and you know your own attack rolls, and you can make decisions based on that, when, in a ‘real’ fantasy battle scenario, you probably wouldn’t gain all that insight from a single hit. The rules of the TTRPG are considered part of normal acceptable metagaming. There’s also the more general one; if you start the first session in a tavern, there is an unspoken expectation that the PCs will interact and form an impromptu group and not just quietly drink their ale and leave - basically, the rules of improv still apply. This is a good thing. And finally, there’s the acknowledgement that you are people with feelings and this is a game and so if someone is upset you stop, or you have discussions about consent between sessions that inform actions in-game. Metagaming just gets obnoxious when someone rolls a nat 1 and then argues that this is obvious information and they should know, or looks up every monster in the manual when you encounter it instead of playing true to the character’s knowledge.

In actual play, the ‘hey fellow tavern-goers, would you like to be a group’ form of metagaming, the “oh right this is a story and we should move the story forward,” is even more important than in home D&D games. This is where I recommend listening or reading some Q&As or watching some after shows, because you’ll hear players talk about this. A 5-hour shopping episode or extensive foraging can get boring to watch or listen to (and unlike accidentally boring or frustrating things, are pretty easy to predict and avoid). On the flip side, a risky choice might seem more appealing when you know there’s an audience who would love the payoff.

I am personally, perhaps unsurprisingly given what I said about player dynamic conspiracy theories and randomness (or, outside of this post, my strong dislike of certain popular fan theories), not a big fan of creators catering to audiences’ every whim...but it’s unavoidable that they will take the audience experience in mind.

Finally, character knowledge, which is the opposite of metagaming - when a character knows something the player doesn’t. This is sometimes covered with, for example, GM statements like “you would know, as a person with history proficiency, that this country is actually in a regency period.” If the character had, in improv, before the GM had a chance to say that, mentioned the king, that’s just because the player did not know that and had made an assumption.

Personally I find going deep down the rabbit hole with things like this - “why doesn’t this character, who CLAIMS to be from this country, not know this?”, or clearly OOC statements - tends not to actually spark any interesting theories, but that is, ultimately, an opinion.

A few final thoughts on different formats of actual play

True livestream/live-to-tape (Critical Role, Into the Motherlands, and the second season of Fantasy High): the main thing to keep in mind is Doylist explanations are even more important because there is quite literally no editing. Also, there will possibly be some of those more boring stretches or even a little OOC metagaming discussions within the structure of the game, because there’s no way around it.

Editing, but primarily just to remove long explanations/math and doing soundscaping (NADDPod, Rusty Quill Gaming): Pretty similar; a lot of them even make the choice to leave in OOC metagaming discussions, so it’s mostly that there are fewer cases of people slowly adding numbers.

More extensive editing and possibly some predefined other elements (TAZ, most Dimension 20 shows): this may fall into a more traditional story structure. It’s not to say that there won’t be surprises, because the players do still have agency, but the ‘rails’ might be a little more apparent; there might be some DM monologuing done after the fact (beyond just cleaning up the audio) or choices that were not scripted per se, but not exactly improvised either (think how D20 tends to have pre-set battle maps and earlier seasons had a pretty strict RP/Battle structure.

Somewhat relatedly there are broad story structures, which is more of a spectrum, ranging from sandbox (Critical Role) to very clearly GM-driven missions (TAZ Balance and, to an extent, Amnesty); nearly all of the other shows here fall into a structure of “here is your overall goal, how precisely you get there is up to you although, like any GM, I will provide in-story information on where it may make sense to go that will often funnel you towards specific places.”

I do have a theory that since TAZ Balance in particular was an entry point for so many people, it takes them time to adjust to the more sprawling, unpredictable, and difficult-to-organize stories other actual play can have, but ultimately it is a matter of personal preference and all of these still fall into the category of actual play.

#long post #today in: unsure if anyone wants to read this but that has also never stopped me not even once #and writing this was fun

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white-tulips · 3 years

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I spent most of this morning continuing playing through the hikikomori route, more of my thoughts below!! (major spoilers ahead!!!!!)

if you haven’t but want to read my first post on my hikikomori playthrough, you can see it [here]!! it’s been a month since I last played any, aha...

I played for quite a few hours earlier but I don’t think I really progressed all that much aha. most of my time went towards grinding and wandering around and seeing little things. oh, and also playing through Orange Oasis. I never actually did that in my first run of the game. it was okay.

I really love how many little details and things to go back to that there are, but I’m still a little bitter at just. how long everything is. I talked about this a lot in my previous post, but it irritates me that the first 15-20 hours (give or take depending on how fast you’re able to blast through this game) is just. exactly the same as what you experience in the main route. especially since now my hikikomori save file is even longer than my main story file, and I think I still have a decent ways to go until I finish. I don’t actually know! I haven’t been spoiled for this route, thankfully, so I don’t really know how much is left. I have a vague idea of a couple areas I need to go to, but that’s about it.

ok, on to my thoughts!! this post is probably just going to be me rambling about tiny details I found interesting since I didn’t progress through much plot stuff, I think.

when I opened up my save file, I. completely forgot what I had been doing a month ago and what I wanted to do next, so I decided to go back to the Last Resort. I don’t know what compelled me to go, but there was a lot of fun stuff there so I’m glad that I did!

I had never tried to use Aubrey to go into the girls’ bathroom before? it was very cute, I liked it. I don’t know why, but as soon as I walked in it really reminded me of Basil. I think it’s all the flowers, photos hanging from the wall, and general soft cutesy vibe. I’m not really sure what to make of that, but it was just my general impression. hmmmm.

I have no words for this other than it just made me amused. go get your vacation, king.

also:

I didn’t know Hero had a confirmed age!! all this time I had been assuming he and Mari were 16 years old, so it’s nice to have something set in stone!

I have no words for these, either. seeing all of the Hero pictures just made me laugh out loud a little I loved it.

when I was standing in Jawsum’s office, I noticed that the elevator behind his desk was shaking. I went to examine it, and was surprised when this was where I ended up.

the black space elevator.

something I completely forgot to mention in my last hikikomori post was black space!! it had completely took me by surprise so I can’t believe I forgot to talk about it.

last time I played and went back to Last Resort, there was a completely black car on the highway and it had really freaked me out. as soon as I clicked on it, instead of giving me some kind of prompt Omori just got in and it drove off. I was so shocked because I wasn’t expecting it fhgjdfhgj. it ended up taking Omori back to one of the black space rooms, and I had no clue what to make of it. I wandered around for a little while, and ended up finding this... friend?

I’m... not sure! who are you......

anyways, so I got in the elevator and we’re back here, now with more spiders.

the spider wasn’t interactable. not sure whether to be upset or relieved.

aaaand then there was this guy in the treehouse. I want to know what these black space NPCs are!!! as soon as I tried to interact with it, the screen glitched out (intentionally) and then it was gone. one day I’ll know what it means.

oh, another thing I spent quite a bit of time doing at the Last Resort-

getting statues made of everyone!! RIP to all of my clams, but these are so cute.

cuuute.

I really liked the comment on Mari’s! it made me happy that it highlighted her playful side.

after I was done reexploring Last Resort, I wanted to go back to Sweetheart’s castle. I was walking through Pyrefly Forest, and I noticed one of the picnic blankets had a cooler open (signaling that you can see a new picnic cutscene) so I went to go sit down and have a picnic.

so, when I was going around earlier and doing some stuff, there were a few picnics that I think I had skipped for some reason so I was doing them and mindlessly skipping through the text for no reason other than it would bother be if I just left them. nothing about the conversations was different even though Basil is here now, so I didn’t think anything would be different for the one in Pyrefly Forest, but I was wrong!! I almost completely skipped through everything aha.

it started off the same, with Hero being scared of the spiders, and then Kel prompted Basil to say something positive to try and make him less scared.

it’s pretty insignificant, but I thought it was interesting that he said pretty much the exact same thing he says in the spider room in black space.

when I got to the castle, I went straight to the library. something about the pattern of going to black space, plus being able to go into the barn in Otherworld, just made me feel like there would be something there. and oh boy was I right. the entire place was crawling with Something.

very good.....

I wasn’t able to get screenshots of them, but there were a couple text popups that really stood out to me. my memory is so bad I can’t remember all of them even though it was only this morning,,, but I’m pretty sure one of them had a popup that was just “Liar.” and I was like HM....

it just really had me thinking....

in my previous post, I mentioned that I had a gut feeling that the Something in the barn was supposed to represent Basil, not Mari. this kind of added fuel to that thought!

the barn in Otherworld was only used in the main route in reference to Basil, with it literally showing Omori a vision of him, and also having Stranger walking into it. now, the library also has a lot of connection to Basil! after picking up one of the keys, it shows us another vision of him, and it’s also littered with egret orchids. I don’t think choosing to have all of these Somethings in both of these places is just a coincidence.

now, about the “Liar.” line. in any fight with Something, if there’s a text popup meant to be Something speaking, it’s always done like this-

with the “???:” to indicate character speech. but the “Liar.” popup was just a standalone line. and it instantly reminded me of this room in black space-

and this just kept making my brain whirl.

in this room, there were all of these popups with “Liar.” and then of course there was-

see here how there also weren’t indications of who was saying ‘liar”, but there was for Something? my idea for this room was always that it was Omori repeating it to himself. because we all know by now that Something is Mari, and her saying “I love you”, especially in this form, is nothing but pure torment. and I think here, we have Omori unwilling to believe it. there’s no way Mari could love him/Sunny. she has to be lying.

soooo then, this brings me back to the library. having the “Liar.” popup there, keeping in consideration that the Somethings there might represent Basil, what could that mean?? it could be in reference to Basil’s words “Everything is going to be okay” because clearly everything is not okay. if all of these Somethings are meant to be Basil, it could fit!!!

... so there’s my long winded theory. idk! I think it makes sense, but I could be wrong!! that’s just my first impressions right now, maybe my thoughts will change when I play more!

moving onto the piano room-

this was when I thought “ohhhh so that’s why the wall always felt hallow. it all makes sense now”

and then I spent the next 30 or so minutes fighting all of the Somethings

I LOVED this. this was the first time a fight was put on a time limit, and since Something was so much more powerful, it felt actually stressful. I was stressed! but I managed to make it with 2-3 turns left, and I didn’t die. I did die about 1 or 2 times to arachnophobia and thalassophobia though F. but it’s okay because I got an achievement and also Omori’s suffocate skill is really good.

anyways I did some more mindless walking around (I had to kill time waiting for all my statues to be built, you know!)

this made me really happy. Big Molio I love you you’re the mvp and you deserve the world.

... looking through my screenshots I wish I could forget this one-

,, do I need to even explain it.

I remember a while ago, I saw someone on twitter post this and iirc the caption was something like “isn’t it a bit morbid to have the jumprope there” and, at the time, I had never gone through Orange Oasis, so seeing that tweet I had the wind knocked out of me. I was just sitting there like “fuuuuuuuuck”. and then I went through Orange Oasis today, saw it again, went “fuuuuuuuuck” and then forgot I screenshot it. it’s just a lot.

okay who knows how I filled the rest of the 6 hours I played because I didn’t take many screenshots of the downtime and running around completing sidequests I never did. the last point of interest today was I had went back to Humphrey.

I didn’t do too much, but I did fight Mutantheart.

I adore her!!!! so cute!!! Mutantheart my beloved.

I lost to her once, because I was a bit confused, but once I caught on to the gimmick of her fight, it was actually pretty easy. rest in peace, queen, I love you...

and then, uh. Her-

I tried 3 times. I didn’t win... all of the characters are maxed leveled at 50, but this is so difficult... well, the first half of the fight I found to be pretty easy, actually. but once she switches into full power mode it’s over. I don’t know how I’m supposed to win. farewell my dream of completing the foe facts book, it was a nice goal while it was realistic.

and then I stopped for the day! I think I needed that month of not playing, because coming back into the game after a lot of my rage and burnout settled was probably best, and I had a lot of fun playing! hopefully it doesn’t take me another month to continue.

if you made it all the way through this post, thank you for reading! I hope you like my thoughts~

I’ll leave on this note-

king shit

#text #omori #omori spoilers

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c-is-for-circinate · 4 years

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Y’all this episode had everything I could possibly have wanted and things I never even knew to wish for.

How did one episode start with Henry Crabgrass, the most glorious and beloved NPC of my heart, and end with mother fucking Avantika, with so much awesome shit in between!!! How!!!

Okay I am making a list of shit I absolutely loved tonight, in approximate chronological order:

Y’all I just love Henry Crabgrass so much. I don’t even have smart things to say about that fact, just a warm glow in my heart. May all the light of Melora’s grace smile down upon them and leave Henry as the toughest, most unkillable patch of crabgrass in all Exandria.

Vess and the Tombtakers, so many questions and so few certain answers, so many things to wonder, so many dots to connect! I really do feel like the crew are connecting them at this point, and while I’m sure in some places they’re far from the map, the general outline really is starting to emerge. What, exactly, was in the book the Tombtakers tried to claim without showing it to Vess deRogna first? What did it do to Lucien? And, if Vess has the book--what are they trying to find now?

So okay, let’s talk about Yasha and Beau. As someone who has had a lot of feelings about the intense relatability of Beau’s crush on Jester, I have now fully committed to also having a whole lot of mostly new feelings about these terrible awkward disaster lesbians with no fucking idea what they’re doing. I saw a post the other day mention how this whole relationship is about the feeling of discovering you can have this, that you can actually be happy, that you get to have this kind of relationship with someone. I’ve written about that. And I feel it so, so hard, every time I see them interact, when every bit of bravado leaves both of them. It’s so easy to be off-putting! It’s so easy to have crushes on wonderful people you kind of wish would look at you but you’re absolutely sure never will. It’s so hard to actually know what the fuck to do in the face of wait shit this might actually be a thing I could get for real? how? wait, how???

Also let’s talk about Jester in that scene, who ships Beauyasha harder than anything in the world??? Because yes, right, some of it is just that Jester loves romance, and some of it’s that Jester gets very invested in the happiness of her friends, but that is a lot of investment there. And I can’t help wondering if there’s a little dimension of...she wants to see True Love and Happily-Ever-After work. And she’s delighted to see it work for her friends who she loves, and when it comes true they’ll be happy and she loves that, but also I don’t know that Jester’s ever actually seen two people fall in love with each other and enter into a healthy, happy relationship before. But hey, all of her books say this wonderful magical thing exists, and now it seems to actually be showing up for her friends? Of course she wants to see it. Of course she wants it to be just as magical and wonderful as in all her stories, even if it’s not for her. (And maybe especially if it’s not for her, but I think that’s a whole separate post about Jester and her very high passive insight and all the people who are in love with her and the very specific ways she treats each of them.)

I love Yeza. Don’t we all love Yeza? He’s trying so hard. It’s always great to see Yeza for that kind of wide-eyed outsider POV on the M9 shenanigans, and I love it. He made a comment this episode about meeting goblins while living in Rosohna, and everything that’s happened to him really hit me in a while new way. Usually I think about how he’s had his life turned upside down by all of this, but man, just think how much he’s seen that he never in a million years would have begun to expect to experience! This smalltown alchemist from a pastoral little farming city in the middle of the Dwendalian midwest has lived for a significant amount of time as a housekeeper in the capitol city of the Krynn Dynasty. He must have gone to the markets and met the neighbors and learned the streets and the food, and who had he ever known in his whole life who could say such a thing? He lived with the Ruby of the Sea in Nicodranas by the ocean. He’s been to Zadash, now, and it’s only a matter of time before he sees Rexxentrum. How much farther will he go? (Man, I would love some good Yeza fic once this campaign is over. I think it’s going to take that long for me to really know how his story arc ends.)

Someone was posting earlier this episode about witnessing Vess scare Yeza so badly, and insight into how the Nein are starting to run in circles that really outstrip the people they used to know. Watching Pumat in the wake of being Informed By Lady de Rogna That He Would Put A Rush On That has really hammered it home. They remarked, in their very M9 somewhat idle vaguely ridiculous way that they wanted the icebreaker, and one tiny snowman later Vess had pulled rank and money and rerouted the ship’s entire passage for them. She’s scary--and with her, the M9 have the kind of power that’s scary, too. And that’s always such an interesting moment. The M9 are used to thinking of themselves as people with very little, who have to fight and scrap and get lucky for their own survival all the time. And yes, they’re utterly careless with money--why not be, when it comes and goes and almost none of them have ever really seen it help or last? And yes, they’re prone to violence and sometimes pretty rude. But before now, it’s always been a situation where the M9 acting loud, rude, and demanding could be chaotic underdogs scrapping to get what they needed or wanted from people who had the option of saying no. Suddenly they’re in a position where the balance of social situations is biased in their favor instead of against them. There’s such a difference between ‘please accede to my unreasonable request because I have a high charisma and will pay you lots of gold’, and, ‘you’re going to accede to my unreasonable request because otherwise my Cerberus Assembly boss may or may not have you assassinated’. The M9 have never been on this side of that before. I’m very curious to see how much they notice that they are now.

PALADIN OATH PALADIN OATH PALADIN OATH! I was not paying nearly enough attention when that scene started, so I am going to need to watch it again and also make extra sure to read any available source material on this specific homebrew oath, because it’s probably not exactly the same as the Oath of the Sea homebrew you can find on google. There’s some overlap between the abilities there and the ones Fjord already have, and the vows don’t quite match up, though some of them are close. Ugh, mostly I’m just so glad it has happened and Fjord has promised and he means it, he means it so much. He rest-of-his-life means it, and my heart belongs to Fjord who couldn’t even imagine the rest of his life as a thing separate from the monotony of his first thirty years, so very recently.

I actually always really love when CR has episodes at sea? Obviously the M9 have done it the most, but Vox Machina went sailing a time or two as well, and it’s just always so great. It’s often days of down time in a way that overland travel isn’t, and the party fills it with so many good little moments. Matt always gives them such cool encounters. On boats, spending a week at a time getting from one place to another, so much of the chaos of rewriting a plan seventeen times in an hour gets stripped away: they’re headed towards a destination, sometimes something comes up to deter them, and they have to find a way to deal with it. There are always crew members and the structure of a boat itself to take into consideration in any combat that pops up. It’s just such a nice tone, and I also love that the ocean itself kind of hates them now because it adds really delightful additional risks, and anyway heck yeah ocean voyage.

WHICH ENDS IN UNDEAD AVANTIKA ATTACKING THE SHIP WITH A TRIO OF CRAB-MEN AND WHO KNOWS WHAT ELSE HOLY FUCK. Look, I think M9 becoming pirates by accident and then trying to figure out wtf might actually be my favorite arc of this campaign so far, and every time it comes back I get so so happy. I’ve got some feelings about this showing up in the same episode as Fjord finally taking his full oath to the Wildmother. They are going to have to kill U’kotoa before this campaign is through. They are going to have to, because Fjord will never be safe on the ocean again if they don’t, and Fjord has bound himself by vow and will in service as the Wildmother’s paladin of the open sea. She hasn’t asked it of him, not specifically, but it’s his job. It’s going to be his job. In part it’ll be because it’s poetic justice, Fjord taking down the cruel demigod who (in some ways) made him. Mostly it’s just that killing U’kotoa is a job that needs to be done. To protect the oceans, the life they hold, the people who sail upon them, it’s going to need to be done. It’s Melora’s domain to do this, which means it’s her paladin’s job, and Fjord is her paladin of the sea. It’ll be him sooner or later.

I am so fucking delighted at the massive pile of fireworks on the deck of this ship, and I hope to god these Chekhovian bottle rockets go off before the end of this combat encounter, because this is, in fact, all I ever wanted the minute Beau put them in there.

#CR spoilers #episode 112

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better-wcrps · 2 years

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Players Should Be Participating, Not Just Watching

One part of a much bigger problem in the WCRP community is the passive treatment of players by staff and ranked members of a roleplay. This can be a subtle effect, perhaps in part due to the fact that players have grown so used to it that it doesn’t appear out of the ordinary. In some communities players are treated only like observers, readers of a book they have no part in writing. They are an audience and filler characters for the ‘main cast’ of characters, often times staff members, NPCs, and ranked characters. Their impact in the world is limited by design, built only to react to plots rather than being allowed to make fundamental changes on the world. This is a fundamentally poor and inaccessible way to run a roleplay that serves only those closest to staff or ranked positions.

This is something I’ve personally run into multiple times in the past. The symptoms of this condition are fairly consistent over several roleplays, though some may be more insidious than others. This can come in the form of ‘point-buy’ systems for characters to receive plots, dreams, visions, or other special events– leaving regular players to put in the mileage to get a character ‘noticed’ or give them a fulfilling storyline while often times ranked or staff-played characters get those things for free. The most obvious symptom is that all the important roles are played by staff or ranked characters in a clan or cat group. Big plots typically focus on deputies, leaders, and healers– *especially* if these roles are filled by staff members. This can also happen outside of ranks, but oftentimes these cases still include staff members or friends of staff. The most popular players get the best plots, or are the only ones to get plots at all. An event is focused around a leader’s own personal struggles, them losing a life, their past, and so on.

Of course, these events would be fine if they were in moderation or isolated– interspersed with other, more inclusive events… but often times this is not the case when this problem exists in a community. This means that usually your character, if you are not part of those roles, is mostly forced to be in a position to react only. You are only witnessing these things, having thoughts about them, and otherwise making no impact on the story as a whole. I was once made a rank in a roleplay community wherein the admins would encourage you to focus plots away from the group or clan and specifically on rank and rank relationships. You were discouraged from including them because the ranks were the most ‘important.’

Again, this isn’t to say that events for ranks are inherently bad. It’s about more the distribution of them, how much members are able to take part and interact in a meaningful way, and a consideration of if these same plots and events are given to regular members excluding ranks. Using ranks or NPCs as a staff mouthpiece can unknowingly end up in this position as well. If your NPCs are only talking to each other, their storylines unaffected completely by player character decisions or changes… then something may be wrong there.

This unequal treatment particularly in the case of ranks vs average warrior characters deepens the divide between players and players with ranks. If ranks get all the plots, then those roles are highly desired. If a rank if chosen only based on activity, then players who need breaks or are disabled are not chosen for those roles. A rank in roleplay becomes an inaccessible role only for the super active and staff favorites.

A roleplay community should be built to be an interactive experience for a multitude of people. It should not be a playground for a select few friends or staff members to play with the characters they deem to matter most, are the most self indulgent, or that they have the most fun playing. This especially can become a problem when the WCRP community is small and well-connected. There’s specific friend groups spread all across roleplays that stick together and build one another up– excluding people they’re not familiar with and don’t bother to know, even when they’re in a staff position. New players become just a number to pad out the roleplay, another face to keep OOC chats active. If you started a roleplay for players to watch a storyline play out, or to play with your friends chiefly– you’re better off writing a book and starting a private roleplay respectively. It’s not fun for other people to watch a select few be treated and lifted up while they fight to even get acknowledged.

A good roleplay is interactive. The world bends to players, NPCs have meaningful relationships or connections to them, decisions matter. Come up with events that allow characters to actively make decisions that impact the world and drive plots forward, don’t make those decisions for them. Find creative ways to present problems to characters.

Take a few examples of ways to start an event: You need a character to be injured, you need a character to stumble on a discovery or notice something specific, you need a character to transfer specific information. Does your NPC or rank truly need to fulfill those roles? If your rank character starts events by experiencing them first in a dramatic way, it forces other characters to react to that first before being able to truly take part themselves. This is fine in moderation, but do they *always* fulfill those roles?

What if you raffle it off to players instead– allowing it to enrich their own storylines? Come up with plots for non-ranked characters specifically. Give them special events if you give ranked characters an event. Seek out individuals who haven’t been holding the spotlight much and lift them up. Truly think about the consequences of a character’s actions and (With consent! I will warn players ahead of time if i think something may have ripple effects.) apply those to the world. See if you can tie their backstories in and any themes you notice in their history.

This is essential groundwork for a long running and successful roleplay. I have essays and essays worth of lists over how to help include people in roleplays, this is only a brief overview. Truly I ask you to consider who you’re starting the roleplay for and why. Do you want observers? Do you want a passive audience? Is it an inclusive story– are your events chances for all players to get involved? Ask yourself these things and consider your answers seriously. It’s okay to want a private roleplay setting! But when you plan a roleplay for a group, you need to be looking at these things critically and thoughtfully. A good roleplay takes thought and planning, even if it’s difficult at times. And even if you’ve found yourself guilty of these things, it’s never too late to change. I’ve most certainly fallen into these problems early on in my roleplay career.

Mistakes happen. It’s how you fix them that matters.

#warrior cats #wcrp #wc oc #warriors oc #warriors roleplay #warrior cats rp #staff advice #cliques #favoritism #long post

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shoichee · 4 years

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GoMs + Kagami, Hanamiya, Teppei as Pokémon Trainers

Pokémon x Kuroko no Basket Crossover

Headcanons on KNB characters if they were trainers

For only the “Generation of Miracles” (plus Kagami), I wanted to show that they are prodigies in the pokémon universe by each giving them the appropriate specialty legendary/mythical pokémon respective to their anime counterpart abilities/personalities.

Also, as GoMs in the pokémon universe, I was careful to also choose some of their respective pokémon based on base stats and the consideration of type variety, unless a team had most pokémon sharing a type for a reason, in addition to already choosing pokémon based on their pokédex entries.

I have also given pictures of said pokémon suited to each KNB character below the cut.

Warning: spoilers on KNB characters, it’s a given

Kuroko Tetsuya

his lack of presence would directly translate into the pokémon world pretty nicely and would make him pretty attuned to ghost pokémon floating about, but that won’t necessarily mean he’ll have a full team of ghosts

I feel like he would accidentally just pick up the mythical pokémon, Marshadow as a kid without knowing its reputation and would just let it follow him around like a buddy… and then they would become an official trainer-pokémon relationship later on // they’re both tiny and usually unnoticeable; they’d be best friends

he’d definitely have a Zoroark, since these pokémon require very strong bonds with their trainers, and they’re infamously known for their illusions and trickery; for Kuroko, he probably saw right through a Zorua’s (pre-evolution) tricks back in the day and then it became intrigued by him and joined him along the way before evolving into the Zoroark we see present day // this is a tribute to Nigou as well, since they’re both dog-like/fox?????

surprisingly, he’d have a Hatterene just trailing behind recently; Hatterenes hate extreme emotions emitted from humans and I’d feel like it would just be lured in by his dry personality

Hatterene’s color scheme is literally the same blue and pink like Kuroko and Momoi, so Hatterene is very much a Momoi who chases Kuroko around while he doesn’t mind it at all

his 4th pokémon, Vanilluxe, came to be when he spent hours hiding in the tall grass for a Vanillite (pre-evolution) to show up; he was willing to go out of his way to catch one because he wanted an ode to his love for vanilla milkshakes

all in all, he would be the trainer who is able to instantly connect and make friends with other pokémon around without even trying; ironically, he would have the most variety of typings in his team because of that

he’s the protagonist trainer who would always be the first to openly stand up against the villain teams and foiling their plans, but he would need the support of the other GoMs (cough) to take down the team bosses

he would definitely be friends with N (BEST franchise character)

he’s a “youngster” trainer like a “youngster joey” vibe KDJWORKWKW but like he’s pretty OP by the end of his journey

Kise Ryota

Cinderace with its hidden ability Libero is perfect for our blondie; Libero is an ability that allows the user to become that type of the move it just used until it uses a move of a different type, and then it’ll switch to that next type (I thought about Greninja with its Protean ability at first because it’s the OG ability and it's the exact effect just a diff name; but Cinderace’s design is a soccer motif and it reminded me of Kise in the old Teiko days)

Kise would very much be a renown model in the pokémon universe, and he’d idolize Elesa (from Pokémon B/W and B2/W2); both are blonde models too LOL (except she dyed her hair black in B2/W2)

so he’d have a Luxray (non shiny OR shiny, both suit him), because since he looks up to her so much and she’s an electric-type gym leader, he’d probably have an electric-type of his own

I would think he’d have a dragon-type pokémon like Haxorus to connect him with Aomine (a dragon-type trainer) since in the anime, Aomine was Kise’s mentor and role model in basketball; it would give him a fighting chance with Aomine if they ever faced each other in a pokémon battle

he would have a shiny Sylveon, and he would love to dote the ever living fuck out of it and feed it poképuffs (maybe from Murasakibara’s café LOL) and sing with it, and every time it sweeps someone’s team with its Moonblasts, he’ll cheer it on so much BDHWIRWI it also adds a certain connotation to his idol reputation as this “approachable guy” with his adorable Sylveon too

this guy has an idol status not just in the beauty/fashion industry, but also in the sports world (especially in Unova’s sports stadium in Nimbasa city)

he’d meet tons of other models and fashion icons like gym leader Nessa, champion Diantha, etc. WHEW JUST SAYIN

he would have his face plastered everywhere on trainer PR videos and even getting offers for some minor acting roles in Pokéstar Studios

one day, while he’d be at the studio, there was a whole commotion how the studio and the museum had their deliveries mixed up because the studio had the real meteorite while the museum had the well-made prop of a meteorite; and uh, it turns out this meteorite had the alien virus that pretty much had its DNA mutated into a Deoxys

long story short, being a very experienced trainer, Kise would manage to catch it after hours of chasing it in the wild areas nearby

over time, he and this particular Deoxys would come to have enough mutual respect for each other to be able to battle as a proper trainer-pokémon duo

that being said, he won’t resort to using it unless it’s life-threatening; note: he changes its Formes using a chunk from the meteorite in the studios he broke off (Deoxys [and its many forms] is further reference to his versatility as a basketball player)

Midorima Shintarou

as a man who seeks for good luck and fortunes he’d stack up on a Chimecho for sure and…

Togekiss; he used to have its pre-evolution Togepi to solely to try to make it stand up while sleeping for good luck (according to the pokédex), and the more he kept trying, the more he made it attached to him and before he knew it, he had a fully evolved Togekiss // he’ll NEVER admit that he loves it to bits, though

this might be unexpected at first glance, but he’d have a Mega Absol; hear me out, it’s called the “disaster pokémon” according to its pokédex, however it is only named so because it warns others of disasters when it appears SO IT WOULD WARN MIDORIMA OF INCOMING BAD LUCK

he’d probably receive a Rowlet from Momoi as a gift from her laboratory, and he didn’t have the heart to abandon it; he’d evolve it to a Decidueye… and just… keep it (this pokémon is a reference to his no-miss shots)

ultimate good luck bringer: Ho-Oh ✨

would have the most “balanced” team out of everyone in terms of type-coverage (reference to him having the most coverage in skills for basketball, from shooting to absolute defense to having ball-handling skills)

he’d totally avoid Akashi’s Kadabra (pre-evolution of Alakazam)—who will be mentioned later down in the list—because it’s said to bring bad luck, as well as avoiding all the Ninetales because he doesn’t want to risk accidentally pulling off one of their tails and be cursed

he’ll avoid caverns as much as possible (but it’s impossible to avoid them all) because those are the habitats of Golbats (who will supposedly give bad luck if one bites you) but if there wasn’t a leeway for him, he will literally LATCH onto his Chimeco and keep his Togekiss and Absol out of their pokéballs to guard him LMAOOO

I would feel he would constantly strive to fill up his entire pokédex, so he’d be a pokémon master in training in a sense; he’s someone who wants to prepare himself for any situation and opportunity, so being a pokédex filler would always provide him an encyclopedia on potential pokémon to either stay away from or catch more of because of certain luck factors

make no mistake though, he’s a seasoned pokémon battler, don’t fuck with him

Aomine Daiki

an intimidating Garchomp would be his ace™️ pokémon, ummmm have you SEEN its base SPEED stat??? it’s a monster

we’re gonna go overkill and give this man a Mega Rayquaza just for the sole fact that he’d be the “ace” trainer of ALL ace trainers and veterans alike

however, because of his “lack of practice/training” like in the anime, he’d probably just stick with these two pokémon, since usually Garchomp already sweeps everyone’s teams without a sweat

homie is probably napping on top of one of the laboratory roofs (probably the one Momoi works in) or escaping to a nearby cliff or hill to relax and keep a lookout for any promising trainers that pass by him

is a trainer who pretty much kept one-shotting all the trainers throughout his journey in the region (aka that’s us protagonists when we play against NPCs)

he would also be that trainer who wiped the floor with the current champion so badly that he felt that all his “training” leading up to that moment didn’t even feel rewarding (plus there’s those countless trainer battles before where it didn’t feel thrilling), and so, he just left the league after, waiting for the day a sufficient rival could show up in his life

he’s definitely cleared the challenging battle systems of each region (probably back when he still had some passion for battling and had a good full team): Battle Frontier, Battle Tree, PWT tournament, Battle Manson, Battle Tower… you name it, he’d probably be done with most of them, if not, all

Murasakibara Atsushi

he’d have a Bewear, Appletun, and lots of variants of Alcremie’s just hanging around him

note: you should search up all the variations of Alcremies yourself, hint cough, it’s 60 variations total

maybe he’d have a Snorlax chilling nearby because it’s so huge

Murasakibara would be a Pokécafé owner AND HE’D HAVE HIS BULKY BEWEAR AND HIS SNORLAX GUARD THE SHOP, YOU CAN’T ARGUE WITH ME

or he would UNLEASH his G-MAX forms of Alcremie’s

and he’ll just use his pokémon to make the tastiest poffins, poképuffs, and pokécurry

he’ll never bring out his final pokémon, Melmetal, unless it’s an absolute emergency and his shop is in danger

he would love Kuroko’s Vanilluxe, in a sense where he would always impassively joke about eating the ice-cream pokémon and Kuroko would just constantly hope he’s not being for real

he wouldn’t be motivated by ambitions like other trainers would have, he just wants to chill and loaf around all day; if someone pissed him off about he was a “weak” trainer or how they were becoming overly cocky when talking about their goals, he’d be right there smiling and ready to annihilate them | (• ◡•)|

Akashi Seijuro

Espeon would totally fit him as his first pokémon; its eyes are very reminiscent of his feline irises, and it’s tiny in size but a very powerful sweeper when set up right AND THEY’re ~calm~ while being capable of either sweet or very calculating later on / LIKE PET, LIKE OWNER

Tsareena; this one has a literal attitude of a queen and its pokédex is pretty terrifying in which one kick from its legs “leaves a wound in the opponent's body and soul that will never heal”... sound familiar?

Nidoking, cough I wonder why I picked this guy he’s a king, but jokes aside, it’s here to add more type variety to his team, and it’s mostly there to be a status inflictor (aka poisoning) and hazard setter with traps for his opponents… sound familiar with how he initiates his shogi strategies?

Mega Alakazam. that’s it. this pokémon has 5000 IQ like ?? would totally wipe the floor with Akashi in shogi if it tried

you thought Aomine had an overkill legendary, but Akashi has Hoopa, who’s capable of a Confined form and Unbound form, representative of his two contrasting personalities

he’s an ambitious trainer aiming to become a Pokémon Master, and he’s one of those feared prodigies that all the region champions just lowkey sweat hearing about him coming to wreck their leagues apart

his pokédex would be damn near completed

he looks more into a pokémon’s utility and how it can fit into his strategies; it just turns out that most of the capable/eligible pokémon he ends up picking are psychic-types because they all tend to have extremely high intelligence to pull them off

Momoi Satsuki

Mega Altaria fits Momoi’s aesthetic of being cute, but very dangerous if you underestimate it, and I wanted a cute connection to Aomine who I primarily headcanoned to be a dragon-type trainer, so Altaria is a dragon-type pokemon that I picked out (perfect alternative would be Mega Gardevoir if she never met Aomine)

Blissey is a pokemon that brings happiness to anyone that eats their eggs, and it very much fits Momoi’s personality

Tapu Lele is a totem pokemon that has incredible knowledge, and is known to be able to outsmart any opponent during battle, referencing her pre-cognitive defense research abilities

she would definitely be constantly mistaken as a pokémon “Beauty” (yes that’s a trainer title), but in actuality, she’s training to become a pokémon professor as an assistant

Momoi’s “professor specialty” would definitely be her researching about a pokémon’s current stats (plus their EVs and IVs) and would pinpoint their level of potential and thus, predict their growth (and the steps taken for a certain type of growth) // she’d probably become really famous in the world of competitive battling because a lot of trainers would try to approach her to help “train their teams”

Kagami Taiga

I think he would ironically have a Lopunny because it used to be Alex’s but she just left it in his care and now he has this prankster bunny that’s basically an Alex 2.0 to other pokémon in its vicinity ?? but it has hops like Kagami so

a hotheaded, short-tempered guy like Kagami would have an Incineroar (they… kinda look the same)

Krookodile would be very much up his alley… its offensive stats are also not something to take lightly, especially when paired with moves like Earthquake and Foul Play

Kommo-o would be a pokémon that embodies Kagami’s personality very well: it seeks to battle only strong opponents for the reason to defeat the “darkness,” and its presence is more than enough to scare the weaker opponents away; Kagami has been mentioned as the “light” many times throughout the series, and his piercing gaze on the courts generate suffocating pressure on the opposing teams // it’s also a pseudo-legendary pokémon on the same base-stat caliber as Aomine’s Garchomp (hinting at their game against each other) ( ᐛ )

last one I’d find really amusing to give for Kagami would be Victini, the adorable mythical pokémon said to bring only victories for its trainer… and it’s a reference to his ascendance to the top of the Winter Cup after defeating all the GoM’s teams

oh yeah, I forgot Mega Lopunny existed so I’ll just attached that right below

anywho, so he’s a rising pokémon trainer who wants to become a pokémon master… but only for the battling part LOL like he doesn’t believe in “catching ‘em all” so to speak because he’d be someone who would believe in winning battles with the pokémon you truly bonded with; in other words, he’d probably only catch new pokémon if he feels a certain connection with them

but because of that, he doesn’t have much info on other pokémon besides his own, and it bites him in the ass when he has to try to figure out ways to take down opposing teams

reluctantly would team up with Kuroko after finding out many of the competitions require double battling but he doesn’t have a single strategy for it, and then Kuroko would pop out of nowhere and offered a hand to be his double battle partner until he learned how to double-battle on his own

spoiler alert, they totally start becoming travel companions in exploring the world together

of course Kagami would have battle strategies, but he isn’t like Akashi where he would actively look for the appropriate strong pokémon for his strategies; he makes strategies to accommodate his existing team

Kiyoshi Teppei

HE HAS A LUCARIO, NOT ONLY THAT A MEGA LUCARIO; they both seek for justice and they’re extremely loyal, and they both are able to read their opponents very easily

HE ISN’T CALLED THE “IRON HEART” FOR NOTHING, I CAN SEE HIM WITH A SHINY METAGROSS JUST BEING AN OFFENSIVE TANK YET BEING ABLE TO SWEEP, JUST LIKE AN ACE WOULD

he would live a double life: a shopkeeper of his grandparents’ pokémon item/antique store by day, pokémon ranger and patroller by night

he would keep his local area safe (ง'̀-'́)ง

yes, I only see him as a steel-type trainer

he’d be so precious with his pokémon and meticulous in his care for them: he’d probably shine his Metagross everyday or brush out his Lucario’s fur, just because !!

and his pokémon would be fiercely protective of Teppei in return, mostly because they noticed he has bad knees and they don’t want him to strain them any further(;´༎ຶٹ༎ຶ`)

Hanamiya Makoto

no debate, he’d have a shiny Hydreigon… dude that pokémon is an absolute nightmare to level up and evolve, let alone tame, but back when it debuted in Pokémon B/W, it was the most OP pokémon out there // shiny variant of it because it has a similar color scheme to the Kirisaki Daiichi basketball team, and he’d probably have a shiny version just to flaunt it off and piss people off

Salazzle with a hidden ability Corruption, where it allows it to poison any pokémon regardless of type or ability; again, it’s to piss the trainers off in battle

and finally, a Dracovish; a person like him would totally have this inherently fucked up pokémon just for the sole purpose to disturb the hell out of his opponent trainers, but make no mistake: it’s an underdog sweeper

look, he’s an admin of some sinister villain team and he has his other Kirisaki Daiichi starter players as his personalized grunts (they’re like a specific sect of the villain team; e.g. Shadow Triad or the Seven Sages of Team Plasma)

you might wonder, why don’t I give him a “spider” pokémon, since the webs are the analogy used to compare to his strategies in basketball? too many villains have Ariados in their teams and Galvantula is a friendly, fuzzy tarantula soooo it wouldn’t fit Hanamiya at all

I don’t think he would have any deep motive to be villainous other than to just enjoy people getting fucked over by his own deeds and actions; sometimes, it isn’t so deep

“it’s your boy, Guzma Hanamiya” if you get this reference I love you

End Note: “Mega” forms and “G-MAX” forms are not separate pokémon, but rather, temporary power-ups during battles; they are just shown to show the differences in appearances compared to their original forms when they transform.

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rpgmgames · 4 years

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April’s Featured Game: Nobody's Home

DEVELOPER(S): oates ENGINE: RPG Maker MV GENRE: Survival Horror SUMMARY: After a night of extreme drinking and partying, you wake up in stranger's bed to discover... Nobody's Home.

Buy the game here! Our Interview With The Dev Team Below The Cut!

Introduce yourself! *oates: Hi, this is oates! I'm a pixel artist and game developer, I've started making games with rpgmaker in 2016 with VX Ace and now currently using MV for recent projects. Previous projects I've worked on were the FNaF-inspired Souls-like One Night at the Steeze, my first rpgmaker game and it's prequel, the FNaF-inspired roguelike No Delivery. Other games I've worked on include the fangames Day Dreaming Derpy, made in VX Ace and Spike's Day Off, made in MV and the latest in a series of previous fangames previously developed on Adobe Flash.

What is your project about? What inspired you to create this game initially? *oates: Nobody's Home is largely based on my experiments to find and apply horrific elements in modern situations or phenomena. The scenario being explored here in Nobody's Home is the aftermath of some crazy party. Sound design is especially important when crafting a horror scenario, so I often look to music to draw inspiration. Much of the atmosphere and house design was inspired by music and imagery associated with '70s yacht rock (a sub-genre of soft rock). Another important note is a lot of the general mood and 'weirdness' was inspired by a band I listen a lot to, Dance Gavin Dance, specifically their "deathstar" album. However they have a tendency in all their albums to switch genres mid-song, often going from their post-hardcore sound to funk, pop, and even rap; aside from that, some of the subject matter covered can range from disturbing to unpleasant to nonsensical, but combined with the amazing music, it creates an experience that pulls the listener in all different directions. It got to the point that I was naming events in the game after some their tracks so I had to be careful not to inadvertently make a fangame haha But there are some easter eggs in Nobody's Home that were intentionally left in, and I'm fairly certain players have identified it already.

How long did you work on your project? *oates: I used much of the same framework left over from my previous project No Delivery for this development cycle, so the hassle for setting up asset pipelines was very much mitigated. I started in earnest, making assets back in January this year so it took roughly 2+ months to finish development for this project.

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project? *oates: Aside from the previous music inspirations, I was really intrigued with the way Resident Evil 7's Beginning Hour demo was able to pick up where Konami's cancelled PT left off in terms of survival horror games to look forward to back in 2017. Prior to later updates, the initial demo really only included a few set pieces, basic item interaction, and almost no puzzles from the full game. It was largely able to pull off scaring players from almost atmosphere alone (if you exclude the Jack Baker and ghost encounters). It was later in the full game that it was able to show off it's metroidvania-esque design to its fullest. After my previous project, I wanted to step away from roguelike design for a bit and focus a little more on an exploration-based experience, so I took a few notes from the way RE7 and RE2: Remake handled map design and progression.

Did you come across any challenges during development? How did you overcome or work around them? *oates: I was coming off a severe cold last year and it took most of January for me to recover, so it was a little hard to start full-on development immediately like I normally would on top of other career matters. And looking at events today, it's even more imperative that developers practice healthy habits during development.

Did any aspects of your project change over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept? *oates: I've had the idea for Nobody's Home as a concept for a while, but filling in those gaps with actual gameplay between centerpieces was a big variable. I went back and forth between the turn-based item combat from the previous project to cutting out combat entirely. While I didn't implement it, I also brainstormed a few concepts for overworld action and combat ala Zelda, but it seemed too complex given the time frame I set for myself. Eventually I settled on a middle ground between full combat and separate encounters, with "enemies" acting as essentially a toll gate. The rest of the game followed suit with various tolls and "mouse traps" for the player to trigger at their own behest. This wasn't necessarily the design I had in mind at first, but it helped to concisely fill a relatively small location with specifically "deadly" content.

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? If you don’t have a team, do you wish you had one or do you prefer working alone? *oates: I largely work solo for both development and art, but I do regularly work with a few musicians for an original soundtrack. I first started working with other composers for the fangame Day Dreaming Derpy, where after the initial demo was released, I received emails from a few musicians volunteering to contribute some tracks for the game. In all, the original soundtrack contained 9 tracks in total, with 3 tracks from each composer; each of them doing an amazing job and, in my opinion brought the project back then to a higher degree of quality. This was how I met some of the composers I still work with today and they all have some really great work! TheNGVirus @NGVirusNG1 Kaminakat @thekaminakat dRedder @HornyGremlin

What is the best part of developing a game? *oates: It's a toss up between the initial brainstorming/research and the first run-through when you have your desired maps linked together. For the brainstorming, it's pretty fun to learn about subject matter you want to do justice to as well as stretching your creative muscles for the first time in service to a certain concept. However this obviously wears off when you devote too much time to a particular concept, but it's still enjoyable nevertheless. For making that run-through, it doesn't necessarily mean to have all the events implemented, but to experience your game the way players will experience it for the first time does give a sense of completion/cohesion to what you, as a developer, are trying to accomplish. It essentially puts what you're working on into a different perspective for you.

Do you find yourself playing other RPG Maker games to see what you can do with the engine, or do you prefer to do your own thing? *oates: I do keep an eye out for what other rpgmaker projects are doing, and to see what others can do with the engine helps get the creative juices flowing; it's also fun to try to mentally reverse engineer how certain mechanics or effects were made. And it's always great to see fellow devs showcase what's possible with the engine.

Which character in your game do you relate to the most and why? (Alternatively: Who is your favorite character and why?) *oates: Nobody's Home has a relatively small cast of characters, whom you do interact with but never see, this is largely to done to create a sense of "un-relatability", but if I had to pick a character, it'd be "car guy", the guy you find stuck in the car. They have a good line, " ...there'd be a good reason for this, but there isn't..." Story of my life.

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently? *oates: There were a few areas I would have liked to expand on or add, specifically- the attic + roof, the front lawn, behind the walls, and an entire second floor. Unfortunately that meant potentially adding more questlines and NPCs while the first set of questlines were pretty interwoven so it would have been way more complex, also again, given the time frame I set, it would have extended the development cycle way beyond what I had time for. But if I had implemented those extra areas, the game's length would also go way beyond the 30 min - 1 hr it takes to complete the game as it is now.

Do you plan to explore the game’s universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is? *oates: I'd like to do both really, each installment of the VCRPG line of games is definitely a stand-alone story, or an isolated incident, but I would love to explore the aftermath of the game's events and how the passage of time ravages and twists the story into urban legend. I like to treat places and environments like characters as well, capable of making memories, being misunderstood, preserved, destroyed, and ultimately capable of change.

What do you most look forward to upon finishing the game? *oates: Both the fan reaction and free time honestly speaking. Once the development cycle finishes and the game is published, your work isn't really finished as there's always a chance someone's feedback can apply to immediate changes or patches you can implement, even during the release period. Marketing is also another large step to take into consideration after release, this includes tweeting, sending keys for lets plays, etc. Watching playthroughs is also a really good way to collect data on what parts of your design fall through and what fail to land. But after all that is said and done, some free time really helps the brain recuperate.

Was there something you were afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game? *oates: Just whether or not I handled the game's subject matter tastefully. Like horror cinema, everything done is in service the the themes and message of the piece as a whole.

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs? *oates: The game engine is essentially a tool, and like any tool you can find plenty of creative ways to get the same result. And don't be afraid to research whatever it is you need help with, it also helps to be specific with what you want.

Question from last month's featured dev @moca-pz: If you can collaborate with any game developer in the world, who would it be? What would be their role(s) and what would be your role(s)? *oates: Game developer I'd like to work with: Hidetaka Miyazaki His role: Story Lead and Director My role: Drinking buddy Game we're working on: SciFi Souls

We mods would like to thank oates for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved!

Remember to check out Nobody's Home if you haven’t already! See you next month!

- Mods Gold & Platinum

#rpg maker #nobody's home (game)#nobodys home #nobody's home #game #rpgmaker horror #pixel horror #horror game #indie game #gotm #game of the month #oates #gotm 2020 #2020 #april #april 2020

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rainofaugustsith · 3 years

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Rain Plays SWTOR: Solo Macrobinoculars (most of it), Imperial side, Pt. 2

I'm back with Part II of the Solo Macrobinoculars Run. To reiterate, I knew going in that I would not be able to complete the entire chain, but I'm writing a guide on the parts of the quest that can be soloed. This site does not like links, so to find part 1 please click on the #swtor macrobinoculars tag.

Where we left off, I'd just finished scanning targets on Belsavis, and we were ready to hit the Rakatan temple.

A Spy's Secret: Belsavis

How to get there: if you scanned the target in the Tomb last, you are actually positioned really well to get to the next part of the mission. If not, take the Rakatan Transport to the Lower Prison Magma Transport stop and then make your way out into the Tomb area.

In the front room, the order for making the grid go away is: 1. Click the third panel. 2. Click the fourth panel. 3. Kill the droids. 4. Click the two things on the sides of the walls above the power generator. 5. Click the fourth panel again. 6. Turn so that you are facing the Rakatan Transporter and look up. There's a clickable near the ceiling. Click it. The grid will go down. At the second grid: 1. Slow down. In my experience, the second (deadly) laser grid did not load right away with the rest of the room, so Viri ran right into it. 2. You have to click the wall panel five times. Once to open it; the rest to input the code. You will see the panels light up with the colors as you add them. 3. The code is Red, Green, Yellow, Green.

In the Cryoban tank area: 1. Click the tanks and manage the pipes ONE AT A TIME. You need to click the tank, follow the white smoke coming out of the pipes on the ceiling and click on the ceiling junctions ONCE each to route the cryoban to the door to break it down. When the door weakens enough you can click on the pipe right above it, and then the door itself.

The first time I tried this I blithely opened all the tanks and found myself completely unable to figure out which pipes I'd done, which I hadn't, and how the hell to extricate myself from the mess I'd created. I ended up resetting this part of the mission (which meant scanning all three targets on Belsavis again). Learn from me. :(

The final boss here is relatively easy, but it made me sad he was Ortolan. I kind of hated killing him.

Now, it's time to scan more targets. A lot of these are in really obvious places, on top of major landmarks. Alderaan

- QT to Thul Research Camp. - QT to Outpost Talarn. - QT to Thul Supply Camp, and then go south. It's in the heart of the Republic gameplay area but you can avoid pretty much all combat if you are careful about where you walk/speed. - QT to Panteer Hideout. The target is on the Panteer castle, you can scan easily from the bridge while you're still surrounded by friendly NPCs rather than wading into enemy NPC territory.

Balmorra

- The first target is right in the middle of Sobrik, where you come in on the planet. If you didn't do this one first, the closest QT point is the Sunken Sarlacc Cantina. - QT to Bugtown. - QT to Markaran Imperial Outpost. The target is on the Okara Droid Factory building so you can get it from a considerable distance. - QT to Sundari Imperial Outpost. It's on a building of the Balmorran Arms Factory that is against the rocks so it's hard to see the target from a distance, but it's scannable well before you reach the factory.

Voss

- QT to Ghen's Outlook. Your target is actually on the building tower on the base, so you just need to get a little ways away to scan it. - QT to Pilgrim Retreat. The target you're scanning is right on top of the Shrine of Healing, so as soon as you can see the Shrine from the road, you should be able to get your scan. - QT to Outpost Skyline. The target is in the heart of the Gormak Lands, so it's a bit of a schlep. It's on top of the canopy in the area that marks the entrance to the Gormak Lands. - QT to Outpost Overseer, and just hop on the main road. It's on the top of the Gormak arch.

At the end of this scanning mission, IR-77 will pay you another ambush visit, stronger than before.

Nar Shaddaa

- QT to Keeling's Listening Post. If you don't have that one, the Corellian Sector. - QT to the Slippery Slope Cantina, which is the closer of the two QT points on the Promenade. -- QT to the Imperial Data Center, shuttle to Network access or pick up the heroic Hunger of the Vrbithers and use the provided transport. Be aware that even if you are not doing the heroic, you will likely have to contend with enemy vrbither NPCs as you move to the scanning point.

All the Pieces - Nar Shaddaa

This is the last bit you will be able to do solo, and it's quite a grand finale. To get there, QT to Network Security Access.

The first obstacle is a group of four gold droids. You should be able to beat them, but it's a reminder that the next sections are intended for groups.

To beat the two discs on the floor, stand on them one by one. Put your companion to passive so they are standing with you. The discs will eventually explode and the door will open.

On the dock, every enemy NPC droid is gold, so try not to pull them all at once. Force pushing them off the platform does not work; they will return.

Now your character will get to pretend they're in an action movie and recreate that sequence where Anakin Skywalker jumped out of the speeder into Coruscant traffic! This is a jumping puzzle like no other, and it's long. You will be jumping from speeder to speeder in heavy Nar Shaddaa traffic. What's that you said? Why didn't your character just commandeer a speeder instead of doing this? Shhhh. Jumping puzzle time.

You will likely die at least once while attempting it. Probably far more often. The good news is that there are three save points along the way. As long as you've reached these points, you will not need to do the entire puzzle again. You can hop on the speeder and just speed to the save point. If you die on the last boss, you'll be taken back to the beginning, but again, you can hop on those three speeders, one after the other, to get back to the boss.

With the jumps, if you don’t see a car close to you- wait. A lot of the time the vehicle you need to jump on will pull up along side. Sometimes they will be so close that you don't even have to jump, you can just drop.

Rocket boosts can be useful in a few places but be careful, it's very, very easy to overshoot these jumps and fall to your death.

For a few jumps, you're actually going to use grapples. Mouse around on the larger ships that are too far away to jump and they may have a grappling hook you can click.

Take your time. The traffic is rushing beneath you, but you can take all the time you need to figure out the safe jumps. If the vehicle you need has veered away wait, it will come back.

At a few points (the save points near the speeders) you will face gold and silver mobs. If you're soloing this with your companion, it will be difficult. I ended up throwing Heroic Moment at the last one.

IR-77 will greet you after you defeat the final mob, and he'll be ready to destroy you. He has a knockback, which really isn't a pleasant prospect when you're on a moving, narrow platform. Be prepared for it and try to dispatch him as quickly as possible.

Once you reach the large skiff, you will face Maki'Voro. It's a challenging fight and he doesn't go down easily. He has a very wicked knockback, so try to make sure you're angled so that he can't knock you over the edge. You will know he's about to throw it when he suddenly flies into the air.

I ignored the adds, with the exception of the nanodroid shield froid that appears over Maki'Voro's head. This droid has a potent heal, so you need to interrupt it and destroy it ASAP.

After Maki'Voro has been destroyed, you have reached the end of the Macrobinoculars quest line that you can solo. The final H4 requires four players because there are four panels you have to stand on simultaneously.

I really hope that SWTOR's devs will consider adjusting this final H4 so it can be soloed, especially since it seems that only one part of it specifically requires multiple players. They pulled an Oricon here, since everything except the last H4 is soloable. I knew going in that I would not be able to finish the quest line, but I'm guessing a lot of people who begin it do not have that knowledge. It's a very well designed questline with interesting gameplay and story, and it's a shame that solo players can't finish it. If Bioware really wants the content to be played and enjoyed, forcing grouping is perhaps not the best way to achieve that goal.

In the meantime, if you're like me and really hate grouping, you can still get a lot of interesting gameplay out of this mission chain. You just can't finish it. If you've played Shroud of Memory you know what happens to the Shroud, so perhaps, like me, you can try to incorporate that into your own headcanon to fill in the blanks of the mission you can't do.

#swtor #rain plays swtor #swtor solo #swtor macrobinoculars

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adastraperfortuna · 3 years

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I Played Cyberpunk 2077

Ultimately, Cyberpunk 2077 is an excellent video game. It’s hard to talk about it without acknowledging the backlash that it received around its launch, but the backlash was directly proportional to the amount of marketing that it got. This happens to a lot of games – and frankly, a lot of my favorite games. If I were working at CD Projekt RED and I was responsible for the kind of marketing that resulted in the kind of expectations that they built for themselves, I’d have to take that sort of stuff into deep consideration. But, as someone who bought the game, enjoyed the game, and desperately wants to talk about the game, I’m not sure that it matters. So, to reiterate: Cyberpunk 2077 is good.

There’s so much game to Cyberpunk that it might be easier to start by talking about my favorite part of it that isn’t a game: the photo mode. I’ve joked before about my favorite gameplay loop in Star Citizen being “taking screenshots,” and that’s not my intent here, but some of my favorite games in recent memory have made it easy to look over the memories I made during their runtime. Interspersed within this review will be some of my favorite screenshots that I took – the inclusion of precise controls for things like depth of field, character posing/positioning, and stickers/frames helped to make my screenshot folder feel less like a collection of moments in a game and more like a scrapbook made during the wildest possible trip to the wildest possible city.

And what a city it is. Night City is my favorite setting in a video game in recent memory. It’s not incredibly difficult to make a large environment, but to make a meaningful environment where every location feels lived-in and the streets are dense with things to see and do? That’s a challenge that very few studios have managed to step up to. More than that, Night City feels unique in the landscape of video game cities – whereas a city like Grand Theft Auto V’s Los Santos is rooted in a reality we’re familiar with, Cyberpunk’s retro-futuristic architecture (and overall aesthetic) help lend it a sensibility that we’re unfamiliar with. It really feels like stepping into another world - fully fleshed-out, fully envisioned.

The environment is obviously beautiful and unique, but I was surprised by just how ornate it was. The thought and consideration that went into details as minor as the UIs you’ll encounter in and on everything from car dashboards to PCs and menus both diegetic and otherwise helps the entire world feel diverse, detailed, and cohesive. While everything feels of a kind and everything is working towards the same design goals, the sheer amount of variety was shocking.

The biggest thing that stuck out to me about Night City itself within just a few hours of playing was how vertically oriented it was. Not just in the “there are tall buildings” sense, though there certainly are tall buildings – I’m talking about the way that Cyberpunk uses verticality to tell stories. The first time that you end up high enough above the skyline to see rooftops will inevitably be during one of your first encounters with Night City’s elite. The hustle and bustle of street life fading away as an elevator climbs up the side of a building and you emerge into a world you aren’t familiar with was astounding. That claustrophobic feeling of being surrounded by monoliths isn’t only alleviated by attending to the rich, though – for similar reasons, my first journey out of the city limits and into the “badlands” will stick with me. Cyberpunk successfully manages its mood and tone by controlling the kind of environments you’ll find yourself in, and while that may seem like a simple, sensible, universal design decision, its consistent application helped ground the world for me in a way that made it feel more real than most of its contemporaries.

Something else that makes Night City feel real is how Cyberpunk implements its setpieces. In a decision that reverberates throughout the rest of the game, CD Projekt was clearly all-in on the notion of immersion and seamless transitions. While it was consistently surprising and exciting to find bombastic moments embedded in the world’s side content (one standout involves Night City’s equivalent of SWAT descending from the sky to stop a robbery in an otherwise non-descript shop downtown), it never took me out of the world. And, on the other end of the experience, the number of memorable, exciting story moments that were located in parts of the city that you had wandered by before helped make the world feel almost fractal, this idea that every building and every corner could house new adventures or heartbreaks.

One thing that did take me out of the experience, unfortunately, were a few of the celebrity (or “celebrity”) cameos. While I think that the core cast was well-cast, with Keanu Reeves as Johnny Silverhand in particular being an inspired choice, the game, unfortunately, wasn’t immune to the tendency to include recognizable faces just because they were recognizable. Grimes plays a role in a forgettable side quest that felt dangerously like it only existed because she wanted to be in the game. There are also an almost concerning number of streamer cameos (“over 50 influencer and streamers from around the world,” according to CD Projekt), and while most of them completely went by me, the few that did hit for me only served to disrupt the world. The only perceived positive here is that most players won’t have any idea who these people are.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only thing that broke immersion in the game. Due to what I can only assume are particularly harsh memory restrictions imposed by the game’s release on last-generation hardware, the game has some of the most aggressive NPC culling that I’ve ever seen. While NPCs don’t strictly only exist in screen space, it often feels like they do, as simply spinning the camera around can result in an entirely new crowd existing in place of the old one. This is obviously rough when it comes to maintaining immersion in crowded spaces on-foot, but it gets worse when you’re driving. Driving on an empty road, rotating the camera, and finding that three seconds later there was an entire legion of cars waiting for your camera to discover them, far too close to slow down, was always a deadly surprise. It doesn’t help that your cars take a while to slow down.

Cyberpunk’s approach towards cars in general is interesting. While I certainly had trouble with them when I began playing, I eventually began to get into their groove. If you want to learn how to drive effectively in Cyberpunk, you have to learn how to drift. After the game’s latest substantial patch, the team at CD Projekt finally fixed my largest problem with the game’s driving – the minimap was simply too zoomed-in, making it difficult to begin to make the right decisions on when and how to turn when traveling at speed. Now that that's resolved, however, whipping and spinning through the streets is fun, and the cars feel appropriately weighty. I’ll still occasionally boot up the game just to cruise around its streets and listen to the radio.

Speaking of the radio, did I mention that Cyberpunk 2077 has one of the greatest game soundtracks that I’ve ever heard? The radio is filled with great original songs from some pretty great musicians, but that’s not where the soundtrack’s beauty starts and it certainly isn’t where it ends. The original soundtrack (composed by P.T. Adamczyk, Marcin Przybylowicz, and Paul Leonard-Morgan) was consistently beautiful, moving, and intense. The world feels gritty and grimy but ultimately beautiful and worth saving, and a great deal of that emotion comes from the soundtrack. While the heavy use of industrial synths could’ve lent itself towards music that existed to set tone instead of form lasting memories with memorable melodies, the sparkling backing tones and inspired instrumentation helped keep me humming some of its tracks for months after last hearing them in-game. I’m no musical critic, I don’t know how much I can say about this soundtrack, so I’ll just reiterate: it’s genuinely incredible.

It certainly helps that the encounters that so many of those tunes are backing up are exciting as well. I was expecting middling combat from the company that brought us The Witcher 3, and while the experience wasn’t perfect, it was competitive with (and, in many ways, better than) the closest games to it than I can point to, Eidos Montreal’s recent Deus Ex titles. Gunplay feels tight, shotguns feel explosive, and encounter spaces are diverse and full of alternate paths and interesting cover. My first playthrough was spent primarily as a stealth-focused gunslinger, using my silenced pistol to cover up the mistakes that my feet made when trying to avoid getting caught. Trying to sneak into, around, and through environments helped emphasize how complex the environments actually were. While it’d be easy to run into a wealth of the game’s content with your guns loaded and ready to fire, that may contribute to a perceived lack of depth in the game’s world design. I’m trying to write this without considering what other people have said about the game, but this particular point has been something of a sticking point for me – there are individual, completely optional buildings in Cyberpunk that have more interesting, considered level design than some entire video games, and the experience of evaluating and utilizing them was consistently mechanically engaging and exciting.

The sheer number of abilities that the player has can be almost overwhelming. While leveling does encourage the player to specialize into certain traits, especially when said traits can also serve as skill checks for the dialogue system and some traversal opportunities, every trait houses a bundle of skills that each house a sprawling leveling tree. Far from the kind of “three-path EXP dump” that you’ll find in a great number of AAA titles, Cyberpunk’s leveling experience can be legitimately intimidating. It’s difficult to plan the kind of character you want to play as when you’re trying to project eighty or a hundred hours forward for a character that will be constantly encountering new kinds of challenges. I certainly didn’t begin my playthrough by wanting to be a stealth-focused gunslinger – in fact, I was originally aiming for a melee-focused hacker build. While I was drawn to what I was drawn to, hearing stories from other players about the kind of builds that they ultimately considered to be overpowered made one thing exceedingly clear: Cyberpunk is a game that rewards every kind of play, possibly to its own detriment.

Cyberpunk’s main story is notably short. I wouldn’t consider this to be a problem, considering the sheer amount of engaging, exciting, heartfelt side content, but it might be the core of the difficulty scaling plateauing so early on. As you progress deeper into the game you’ll find that almost every build, as long as you are willing to commit to something, is more than viable. Look around long enough and you’ll find people saying that every single build is overpowered. For me, that fed into the central power fantasy in an exciting way. By the time that I rolled credits a hundred hours in I was more or less unstoppable, walking into rooms and popping every enemy almost instantly. For others, this was a problem – it can be frustrating to feel like all of your work to become stronger wasn’t met with an appropriate challenge when the time came to put it into practice. This is a difficult problem to solve, and I don’t have a solution. I’ll fondly remember my revolver-toting, enemy-obliterating V, though, so I can’t complain.

Regardless of the scaling, however, the content you play through to arrive at that pinnacle of power was consistently, surprisingly robust. While the differentiation between “gigs” and “side quests” is confusing (word for the wise: gigs are generally shorter and more gameplay-centric missions that are designed by CD Projekt’s “open world” team while the side quests are made by the same team that made the main quests and are generally longer and more narrative-centric), both kinds of side content are lovingly crafted and meaningful. Of the 86 gigs in the game, every single one of them takes place in a unique location with a hand-crafted backstory and (almost always) a wealth of different approaches. These don’t exist separately from the rest of the game’s design philosophy, even if they are made by a separate team, and you’ll often find that decisions made outside of gigs will reverberate into them (and, sometimes, the other way around). I’ve played a great deal of open world games, and never before has the “icon-clearing content” felt this lovingly-crafted and interesting. While the main quests will take you traveling across the map, the side content is what really makes it feel dense and real. You’ll be constantly meeting different kinds of people who are facing different kinds of problems – and, hey, occasionally you’ll be meeting someone who has no problem at all, someone who just wants to make your world a little bit brighter.

It’s surprising, then, that one of the most obvious ways to integrate that kind of content in Cyberpunk is so sparsely-utilized. “Braindances,” sensory playback devices used to replicate experiences as disparate as sex, meditation, and murder, play a critical role in some of the game’s larger quests, but they almost never show up in the side content. You would imagine that the ability to freely transport the player into any kind of situation in a lore-friendly way would’ve been a goldmine for side content, but its use is limited. This isn’t even a complaint, really, I’m just genuinely surprised – I wouldn’t be surprised if they used them more heavily in 2077’s expansions or sequels, because they feel like an untapped goldmine.

Another thing that the game surprisingly lacks is the inclusion of more granular subtitle options. While the game does let you choose the important stuff – whether or not you want CD Projekt’s trademark over-the-head subtitles for random NPCs, what language you want the subtitles to be in, what language you want the audio to be in – it doesn’t include something that I’ve grown to consider a standard: the ability to turn on subtitles for foreign languages only. As the kind of player who avoids subtitles when possible, I went through most of Cyberpunk with them off. Unfortunately, a tremendous number of important cutscenes in the game take place in languages other than English, and I didn’t know that I was supposed to understand what these characters were saying until I was embarrassingly far into one of the prologue’s most important scenes.

NOTE: I was pleasantly surprised to discover after replaying the ending of the game earlier today that they've fixed this issue in a patch. Nice!

I can only complain about the game’s language support so much, because there’s something important that lies between the player and the story they’re there to experience: a fucking incredible English localization. Ironically, it’s so good that I can’t help but imagine that most players won’t even think about it. It’s easy to notice and talk about an excellent localization when it’s from something like a JRPG, something with a clearly different style from what you’d expect from a work made in English, but never once in my entire playthrough did I even briefly consider the idea that it was natively written in anything other than English. I knew that CD Projekt was a Polish studio, but I just assumed that they wrote in English and localized it backwards. The language is constantly bright and surprising, the jokes land, the characters have memorable quirks, everything feels natural, and the voice acting is legitimately some of the best that I’ve ever heard in a video game. Both versions of the main character’s voice were damn-near instantly iconic for me, landing up there with Commander Shepard in the upper echelon of protagonist VO. I can’t praise it enough.

That said, even if the localization was incredible, it’d be hard to appreciate if the meat of the story wasn’t up-to-snuff. I was ecstatic to discover, then, that Cyberpunk 2077 has an incredible story. Every great story starts with a great cast of characters, and Cyberpunk hit it out of the park with that. The core cast of side characters are some of my favorite characters in years. Judy, Panam, River, and Kerry are all memorable, full, charming people. Kerry Eurodyne in particular is responsible for my favorite scene in a game since the finale of Final Fantasy XV. The quest “Boat Drinks,” the finale of Kerry’s quest line, is quietly emotional and intensely beautiful. He, and the other characters like him, are more than the setting they’re in, and the way that the game slowly chews away at the harsh and bitter exterior that the world has given them as it reaches to their emotional, empathetic core consistently astounds. Night City is a city full of noise, violence, destruction, and decay, but you don’t have to participate in it. You don’t have to make it worse. You can be different, and you can be better. You don’t get there alone, you can’t get there alone, and Cyberpunk is a game that revels in how beautiful the world can be if we are willing to find the light and excitement in the people around us.

Of course, Cyberpunk is a video game, it’s an RPG, and the story is more than a linear progression of memorable moments. Something that struck me while making my way through Cyberpunk’s story was how expertly and tastefully it implemented choice. I’m used to games that give you flashing notifications and blaring alarms whenever you're able to make a decision that matters, so I was initially confused by how Cyberpunk didn’t seem reactive to the things I said and did. The game would give me a few options in conversations, I’d select one of them, and then the story would progress naturally. However, as I continued, I began to notice small things. One character would remember me here, a specific thing I said twenty hours before would be brought up by someone there, an action that I didn’t even know I had the choice to not take was rewarded. The game slowly but surely established a credibility to its choices, a weight to your words, this sense that everything that you were saying, even beyond the tense setpiece moments that you’d expect to matter, would matter. It was only after going online after completing the game that I realized just how different my playthrough could’ve been. While nothing ever reached the level of the kind of divergent choices that The Witcher 2 allowed, there were still large chunks of the game that are entirely missable. Three of the game’s endings can only be unlocked through the completion of (and, in one case, specific actions in) specific quests, and multiple memorable quests were similarly locked behind considerate play. This isn’t really a game that will stop you from doing one thing because you chose to do something else, most of the choice-recognition is simply unlocking new options for the player to take, but it always feels natural and never feels like a game providing you an arbitrary fork in the road just for the sake of making it feel artificially replayable. CD Projekt has already said that they made the choices too subtle in Cyberpunk, but I deeply appreciate the game as it is now – more games should make choices feel more real.

It helps that the dialogue system backing up some of those choices is dynamic and the cutscene direction backing those scenes up is consistently thrilling. The decision to lock you in first-person for the entire game was an inspired one, and it resulted in a bevy of memorable scenes made possible by those interlocking systems. There are the obvious ones – being locked in a smoky car with a skeptical fixer, getting held at gunpoint by a mechanical gangster with his red eyes inches away from your own and a pistol’s barrel just barely visible as it presses against your forehead, having to choose between firing your weapon and talking down someone with a hostage when in a tense, escalating situation. There are also a million smaller ones, situations where the scale of the world becomes part of the magic. The first time that I sat down in a diner and talked with someone I had to meet or the first time that I rode along through the bustling downtown of Night City as a politician sized me up will stick with me because the perspective of the camera and the pacing of the real-time dialogue interface combine to make almost everything more powerful. There’s so much effort put into it – so many custom animations, so many small touches that you’d only see if you were staring intensely at every frame. All of that effort paid off, and the controversial decision to strip third-person out of the game was ultimately proven to be one of the smartest decisions that CD Projekt has ever made.

Another decision that helped power an exciting, engaging story was how the game freely manipulates the time and weather during key story moments. It’s a small touch, it’s one that you won’t notice unless you’re looking for it, but every once in a while you’ll walk into a place during a crystal-clear day and come out five minutes later to discover that it’s a cold, windy, rainy night and you have a city to burn. Along with the first-person limitation, this initially feels like something that could only harm immersion, but when it’s backed up by a story that motivating and scenes that thrilling you’d be hard-pressed to notice it outside of the flashes of telling yourself that this scene or that scene is the best that you’ve played in a long time. This also helps avoid a problem that games like the Grand Theft Auto series consistently face – instead of letting scenes happen at any time, compromising direction, or doing something like a timelapse, sacrificing immersion, Cyberpunk manages to always keep you in the action while also presenting the action in its most beautiful and appropriate form. There are moments where it truly feels like it’s meshing the kind of scene direction that’d be at home in a Naughty Dog game, the gameplay of Deus Ex, and the storytelling of the WRPG greats, and in those moments there is nothing else on the market that feels quite like it.

I sure have talked a lot about this game’s story, considering the fact that I have barely brought up its central hook. The early twist (unfortunately spoiled by the game’s marketing), the placement of a rockstar-turned-terrorist-turned-AI-construct firmly in your brain after a heist goes wrong and your best friend dies, helps establish a tone that the rest of the game commits to. Johnny Silverhand starts as an annoying, self-centered asshole with no real appreciation for how dire your situation is, but by the end of the game he had more than won me over. Reeves’s performance was really stellar, and the relationship between him and V is incredibly well-written. More than that, his introduction helps spur on a shift in the way that you engage with the world. The first act is full of hope, aspiration, the belief that you can get to the top if you hustle hard enough and believe. After you hold your dying friend in your arms and are forced to look your own death in the eyes, though, things begin to turn. Maybe the world is fucked up, maybe it’s fucked up beyond belief. But there Johnny is, telling you to fight. Why? Every time you fight, things get worse.

But the game continues to ruminate on this, it continues to put you in situations where fighting not only fails to fix the problem, but it makes it worse. Despite that, it’s positive. For me, at least, Cyberpunk’s worldview slowly came into alignment, and it’s one that I can’t help but love. Cyberpunk 2077 is a game about how important the fight is, how important believing in something is, even if you’re facing impossible odds, even if there’s no happy ending. It’s a story that posits that giving up is the worst ending of all, that your only responsibility is to what’s right and to the ideals that you and the people you love want to live up to. The game uses every story it can tell, every character it can introduce you to, and every encounter it can spin into a narrative to drive that home. And, when the ending comes, it was phenomenal. All of the endings were powerful, effective, and meaningful to me, but I’m more than happy that I went with what I did.

Cyberpunk 2077 is an excellent video game. It’s not flawless, but no game is, and at its core it's one of the most fun, beautiful, narratively engaging, and heart-filled games that I’ve ever played. I couldn’t recommend it highly enough, and I sincerely hope that everyone who has skipped out on it because of what they’ve heard is able to give it a shot someday. Maybe they’ll love it as much as I do. Wouldn’t that be something?

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theoutcastrogue · 4 years

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Alignment in D&D

[by Jonathan Tweet, via EnWorld, June 2020. Jonathan Tweet is a game designer who has worked in D&D 3rd Edition, Ars Magica, 13th Age and others.]

Alignment is, on some level, the beating heart of Dungeons & Dragons. On the other hand, it’s sort of a stupid rule. It’s like the hit point rules in that it makes for a good game experience, especially if you don’t think about it too hard. Just as Magic: the Gathering has the five colors that transcend any world or story, so alignment is a universal cosmic truth from one D&D world to the next. The deities themselves obey the pattern of alignment.

On the story side, the alignment rules contain the rudiments of roleplaying, as in portraying your character according to their personality. On the game side, it conforms to D&D’s wargaming roots, representing army lists showing who is on whose side against whom.

The 3x3 alignment grid is one part of AD&D’s legacy that we enthusiastically ported into 3E and that lives on proudly in 5E and in countless memes. Despite the centrality of alignment in D&D, other RPGs rarely copy D&D’s alignment rules, certainly not the way they have copied D&D’s rules for abilities, attack rolls, or hit points.

Alignment started as army lists in the Chainmail miniatures rules, before Dungeons & Dragons released. In those days, if you wanted to set up historical Napoleonic battles, you could look up armies in the history books to see what forces might be in play. But what about fantasy armies? Influenced by the popularity of The Lord of the Rings, Gary Gygax’s rules for medieval miniatures wargaming included a fantasy supplement. Here, to help you build opposing armies, was the list of Lawful units (good), the Chaotic units (evil), and the neutral units. Today, alignment is a roleplaying prompt for getting into character, but it started out as us-versus-them—who are the good guys and who are the bad guys?

Original D&D used the Law/Chaos binary from Chainmail, and the Greyhawk supplement had rudimentary notes about playing chaotic characters. The “referee” was urged to develop an ad hoc rule against chaotic characters cooperating indefinitely. This consideration shows how alignment started as a practical system for lining up who was on whose side but then started shifting toward being a concrete way to think about acting “in character.”

Another thing that Greyhawk said was that evil creatures (those of chaotic alignment) were as likely to turn on each other as attack a lawful party. What does a 12-year old do with that information? One DM applies the rule literally in the first encounter of his new campaign. When we fought our first group of orcs in the forest outside of town, The DM rolled randomly for each one to see whether it would attack us or its fellow orcs. That rule got applied for that first battle and none others because it was obviously stupid. In the DM’s defense, alignment was a new idea at the time.

Law versus Chaos maps pretty nicely with the familiar Good versus Evil dichotomy, albeit with perhaps a more fantastic or apocalyptic tone. The Holmes Basic Set I started on, however, had a 2x2 alignment system with a fifth alignment, neutral, in the center. For my 12-year old mind, “lawful good” and “chaotic evil” made sense, and maybe “chaotic good,” but “lawful evil”? What did that even mean? I looked up “lawful,” but that didn’t help.

Our first characters were neutral because we were confused and “neutral” was the null choice. Soon, I convinced my group that we should all be lawful evil. That way we could kill everything we encountered and get the most experience points (evil) but we wouldn’t be compelled to sometimes attack each other (as chaotic evil characters would).

In general, chaotic good has been the most popular alignment since probably as soon as it was invented. The CG hero has a good heart and a free spirit. Following rules is in some sense bowing to an authority, even if it is a moral or internalized authority, and being “chaotic” means being unbowed and unyoked.

Chaotic neutral has also been popular. Players have sometimes used this alignment as an excuse to take actions that messed with the party’s plans and, not coincidentally, brought attention to the player. The character was in the party because the player was at the table, but real adventurers would never go into danger with a known wildcard along with them. This style of CG play was a face-to-face version of griefing, and it was common enough that Ryan Dancey suggested we ban it from 3E.

The target we had for 3E was to make a game that doubled-down on its own roots, so we embraced AD&D’s 3x3 alignment grid. Where the Holmes Basic Set listed a handful of monsters on its diagram, 3E had something more like Chainmail’s army lists, listing races, classes, and monsters on a 3x3 table.

When I was working on 3E, I was consciously working on a game for an audience that was not me. Our job was to appeal to the game’s future audience. With the alignment descriptions, however, I indulged in my personal taste for irony. The text explains why lawful good is “the best alignment you can be.” In fact, each good or neutral alignment is described as “the best,” with clear reasons given for each one. Likewise, each evil alignment is “the most dangerous,” again with a different reason for each one. This treatment was sort of a nod to the interminable debates over alignment, but the practical purpose was to make each good and neutral alignment appealing in some way.

If you ever wanted evidence that 4E wasn’t made with the demands of the fans first and foremost, recall that the game took “chaotic good” out of the rules. CG is the most popular alignment, describing a character who’s virtuous and free. The alignments in 4E were lawful good, good, neutral, evil, and chaotic evil. One on level, it made sense to eliminate odd-ball alignments that don’t make sense to newcomers, such as the “lawful evil” combination that flummoxed me when I was 12. The simpler system in 4E mapped fairly well to the Holmes Basic 2x2 grid, with two good alignments and two evil ones. In theory, it might be the best alignment system in any edition of D&D. On another level, however, the players didn’t want this change, and the Internet memes certainly didn’t want it. If it was perhaps better in theory, it was unpopular in practice.

In 5E, the alignments get a smooth, clear, spare treatment. The designers’ ability to pare down the description to the essentials demonstrates a real command of the material. This treatment of alignment is so good that I wish I’d written it.

My own games never have alignment, per se, even if the game world includes real good and evil. In Ars Magica, membership in a house is what shapes a wizard’s behavior or social position. In Over the Edge and Everway, a character’s “guiding star” is something related to the character and invented by the player, not a universal moral system. In Omega World, the only morality is survival. 13th Age, on the other hand, uses the standard system, albeit lightly. The game is a love letter to D&D, and players have come to love the alignment system, so Rob Heinsoo and I kept it. Still, a 13th Age character’s main “alignment” is in relation to the icons, which are not an abstraction but rather specific, campaign-defining NPCs.

~ Jonathan Tweet [source]. Jonathan Tweet is a game designer who has worked in D&D 3rd Edition, Ars Magica, 13th Age and others.

From DDB's stats, 2019

#long post #Jonathan Tweet #d&d history #alignment #chainmail #gary gygax #d&d #ad&d #2nd edition #3.5 #4E #5e

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toonstarterz · 4 years

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Humans Actually Have “Types” Like Pokémon Do

If you look at the game NPCs or the anime, there’s actually a fair share of humans with “special abilities” aren’t there? I mean, it's pretty much confirmed that there are humans in the pokémon world with psychic powers or can understand the hearts of dragons, so I think the idea that humans have evolved to a point where a portion of them have a “type” isn’t totally off-base.

I’d probably put the actual percentage of “typed” humans to be around 20% of the whole population. Naturally, you aren’t going to see kids flying through the air or your neighbors breathing fire or anything like that. Rather, the genes that manifest these expressions of the elements are watered-down versions of what makes a pokémon’s own typing. For example, a “water-type” woman can’t breathe underwater, but they can hold their breath for a considerably longer time than other humans. A lot of these type-users do commonly end up as members of the Pokémon League (gym leaders, elite four, etc.) as a result of this affinity.

So here’s how these typed humans can be identified:

1) NORMAL

By far, the hardest to distinguish from regular humans. They have no notable enhanced physical abilities like strength or endurance. Instead, the key identifier for Normal humans is their astounding health. Most documented Normal humans have great immune systems, hardly ever coming down with illness and can fight them off almost instantly when they do. Their bodies are highly adaptable, generating a new homeostasis to account for sudden changes in the environment. The most common of the typed humans.

Notable examples: Norman, Mina

2) FIRE

No, they're not pyromaniacs. Fire humans are generally hot-blooded, both physically and often times in personality. This manifests in a sort of “sixth sense” that allows them to very broadly perceive heat levels beyond the scope of regular humans. The common example is being able to tell a hot frying pan from a cool one just by looking. In some cases, fire-typed humans can even emit a small level of heat when emotionally “fired up”.

Notable examples: Malva, Kiawe

3) WATER

Somewhere in-between a professional swimmer and a merperson. While by no means aquatic, they have an incredible tolerance for moving in the water. Water humans are naturally adept swimmers, and can breathe underwater for extended time periods. Additionally, Water humans are gifted with a natural hydration system within their bodies, almost like an internal reservoir. A few cases have seen Water humans being able to filter out impurities in the water of which they drink.

Notable examples: Lana, “People of the Water” (M09)

4) GRASS

Basically, the expression "having a green-thumb" made manifest. Grass Humans have an innate ability to “feel” the wellbeing of plants and grass-type pokémon. It’s strong enough that some Grass humans claim they can physically accelerate the growth of plants by touching them. Fittingly enough, grass-typed humans also have a slight affinity for associated types such as ground, water, and even poison. While not especially durable, Grass humans have surprisingly high stamina, with many taking up aromatherapy as a hobby.

Notable examples: Ramos, Milo

5) ELECTRIC

Electric humans are most notable for being almost always reactionary. Their bodies have a natural insulation that helps to protect them should they be hit by electricity from a pokémon or other means. It should be noted that this is not a full immunity; they are resistant to permanent internal damage, but it will still hurt like a bitch. There some very rare cases of humans being able to slightly redirect the flow of electricity.

Notable examples: Ash Ketchum, Wattson

6) ICE

You've probably seen them wearing shorts in Snowpoint City. The main trait of Ice humans is their astoundingly high tolerance for cold weather. In fact, some even revel in it, preferring it to a more “optimal” climate. One can compare this characteristic to that of a beartic, which thrives in snowy environments. The trade-off, however, is an aversion to hot weather, which makes more them uncomfortable than the average human.

Notable examples: Candice, Melony

7) FIGHTING

Somewhat easier to identify than Normal humans, you can tell Fighting-types from their above-average physicality. In addition to great strength, they’re also noted for their great balance and quick reflexes. A large portion of the grow up to be bodybuilders, martial artists, and even dancers. Incidentally, Fighting humans have a strong mental fortitude, which is believed to have derived from being in touch with one’s “chi” energy. They also tend to have very healthy and hearty appetites.

Notable examples: Bruno, Maylene

8) POISON

Neither poisonous nor venomous, Poison humans are some of the most misunderstood. In fact, they are some of the healthiest individuals in the world. This comes from a near-perfect immunity to foreign toxins, and a sixth “sense” for identifying toxicity levels in pokémon and the environment. Poison humans can withstand many gases and even smoke before needing any treatment. While many find their calling in the sanitation industry, some Poison humans enter the medical field as nurses and doctors.

Notable examples: James (Team Rocket), Nurse Joys (some)

9) GROUND

Commonly referred to as “The Children of the Earth”. Ground humans are among the most attuned to sensations underneath the surface. A notable portion of them can sense tremors or even earthquakes before they strike. When asked, many Ground humans state that they are one with the Earth as a single organism, which allows them to see the “feelings” within the land. As such, they are often noted for having grounded personalities, pun intended.

Notable examples: Courtney, Hapu

10) FLYING

Like I said, you ain’t going to see them flying through the air. Instead, you can identify Flying humans for their fantastic spatial awareness. This translates to being able to detect movement in their vicinity with amazing accuracy. They are often regarded for their peripheral vision and a lack of discomfort at high altitudes. Vertigo and acrophobia are almost alien to them. Flying humans are very attuned to the air in general, perceiving the direction of air currents and impurities with ease. Many are professional Sky trainers.

Notable examples: Falkner, Yvonne (Pokéspe)

11) PSYCHIC

By far, the most obvious and “flashy” of typed humans. Effectively espers, Psychic humans have arguably the most dangerous abilities of any human, being able to execute psychic powers at will. These techniques span a wide range from clairvoyance, reading minds, telepathy, and full-on psychokinesis. While not to the degree of psychic-type pokémon, all Psychic-humans must be registered as such on account of being “dangerous individuals”, which has led to some controversy.

Notable examples: Sabrina, Olympia

12) BUG

Never underestimate a Bug human. Despite not having any physical or mental enhancements, they are well-documented for their heightened senses. The five senses (touch, sight, etc.) are incredibly developed, which arguably makes them superhuman. Impeccable hearing, a keen taste palette, and a sense of smell similar to a growlithe’s are just of few of their traits. Bug humans are the hardiest of the typed-humans, being able to live off of the flora and fauna should they feel the need to.

Notable examples: Guzma, Tracey Sketchit

13) ROCK

Easily mistaken for ground-types, what makes Rock humans unique is their longevity. The age expectancy of rock-typed humans is quite high, due to their long history of adapting to the elements. Rock humans have a sixth “sense” that allows them to recognize the history, composition, and durability for all aggregate matter, namely rocks and minerals. As a result, it’s quite common to find them living their lives as archeologists, paleontologists, and even meteorologists.

Notable examples: Steven Stone, Olivia

14) GHOST

Second to psychic-typed humans in terms of obvious powers, Ghost humans are highly attuned to the spirit realm. Their most prominent ability is being able to communicate with those that have passed away, particularly with restless spirits. They are often thought to be necromancers and exorcists, though most Ghost humans don’t appreciate this connotation to black magic. There are some who believe that Ghost humans are the reincarnation of spirits who have not atoned for their sins.

Notable examples: Morty, Allister

15) DRAGON

Amongst the rarest of the typed humans, Dragon-type humans have an amazing assortment of physical enhancements. Great strength, highly intelligent, and incredibly charismatic to name a few. They are also the only humans who can communicate with dragon-type pokémon almost verbatim due to understanding the “hearts of dragons”. There is a great deal of controversy regarding the supposed elitism of Dragon humans.

Notable examples: Lance, Iris

16) DARK

In most cases, Dark humans are more known for their personalities and than any fantastical powers. As a whole, Dark humans are known for their high intelligence, cunning nature and craftiness much like the pokémon type. They tend to struggle with empathy, which manifests in unique ways. At its worst, Dark humans are prone to narcissistic and near-sociopathic behavior. The best, however, have healthy outlets and generally have the best of intentions. There is much debate for the labeling of Dark humans as “evil” in the pokemon world.

Notable examples: Grimsley, Giovanni

17) STEEL

The differences between a Steel human and a Rock human are minimal. What makes a Steel human unique though is their high influx of bodily metals (iron, calcium, etc.) that would otherwise be disruptive in regular humans. They live generally healthy lifestyles as a result of their natural endurance, and similarly to Rock humans, can ascertain metals with relative ease. A few Steel humans claim some metal textures are comforting to sleep on.

Notable examples: Grant, Byron

18) FAIRY

Fairy-typed humans are exceptionally rare, but contrarily, are the easiest to spot from appearances alone (opaque sclera). Their quasi-magical traits manifest in different ways: youthfulness, gifted talents, and the rarest of all, healing properties. They have the most delicate features of the typed humans, which often hide their large sexual appetite. While incredibly social and play well with others, they have trouble with empathy much like Dark humans, occasionally leading to anti-social behavior.

Notable examples: Valerie, Ilima

#pokemon #headcanons #type #this is one of those ideas that just would not go away until i wrote it down #hopefully someone finds it as interesting as i did

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eligos-venator · 4 years

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In regards to Villainy

I’ve been watching the villain post make its rounds and reblogged it earlier quietly with a small rant in the tags about personal concerns of my own. It’s shown up multiple times since then to where I feel some clarification is required on my part personally, as Eligos’s writer.

Communication and mutual agreement is required on all sides in RP, and nobody gets a free pass to do whatever they please because of some label that helps define their typical position in a roleplay. My gear gremlin was made for me as a player to enjoy watching him learn and grow as a person, and to provide minor inconveniences for other players should they wish him to get in their way as a way to help provide character growth for their muses. Not to be some big bad boss who gets their jollies by harming others. And I will not change him to suit anyone’s personal tastes but my own.

Read on if you want to see my whole take on this. Or not.

Let’s start with what the definition of villain actually means, given it’s a vaguer concept than most would like to think:

Definition of villain

1: a character in a story or play who opposes the hero 2: a deliberate scoundrel or criminal 3: one blamed for a particular evil or difficulty

These definitions are a rough guideline, but overall, all it takes to fall into the category of being a villain is a willingness to oppose a hero, regardless of reasoning or intent. Even in a clash of two heroes, you could call one the villain in that particular story for how they oppose the other. It’s a matter of perspective. One could be the villain of a story merely because they aim for the opposite goal of the hero of that tale, even if both end goals are suitably noble in the scheme of things. We often see in literary works that the villains of stories oft have either selfish or noble intentions, and in the case of the latter, what turns them into villains is how they view the world and how they may have let other important aspects fall to the wayside in their single-minded devotion to their goal.

Rarely is it that a good villain is written to be cruel and harsh for its own sake. The villain’s view of the world may be twisted, but there’s always an element of logic and reason, the same as you might see in a heroic character. Even initially good motivations and desires can be twisted into something absolutely horrendous and monstrous with the right pulls of the string in a character’s history. Some can have their world views changed for the better with time, while others struggle in vain to understand to the bitter end. But that’s how the cookie crumbles. Not all endings are happy, and not every character deserves a happy ending in a story book, especially so when considering how many that they have made suffer through their actions. But by that consideration, heroes aren’t above similar karmic justice as well, simply because they wore the mantle of hero. Nor are they automatically entitled to their happy ending. Harming others, regardless of role one sees themselves in a story, inevitably begets wrath and a desire for similar harm upon the one who originally inflicted it. And while that may lead to interesting interactions, it doesn’t always unfold in a way where things work out where each party gets their just desserts as people believe they should. We watch what happens as a story unfolds, and the job of the mun in roleplay is to portray the character as their motivations, desires, and ethics would bid them do, be it for weal or woe.

But there are additional aspects to keep in mind when roleplaying, and it isn’t simply limited to keeping to the character. Communication ahead of time, and discussing what is acceptable, what isn’t, and what one expects to come of roleplay with another, must all be done in order to ensure things go in a manner both parties are ok with what may happen and are on the same page. There never should be any ‘well that’s what my character would do’ bullshit when it comes to discussing boundaries and hard limits on what one finds acceptable versus unacceptable in roleplay. If you feel your character would not be able to be played in a manner in which you prefer due to said boundaries or rules, it is best to find roleplay elsewhere. To push or pressure one into ignoring their own personal comforts and boundaries is unacceptable. Even when walking up to someone, there still is an expectation of some communication on an out of character level should you intend to harm their character. This isn’t reserved only for villains to do. That’s placing undue burden on one player type while relaxing standards for the rest. All players must heed this if communication is to be healthy, in order to avoid crossed wires.

Which brings us to concerns people run across in roleplay. There indeed are players who play a character type due to the power fantasy, and do not properly communicate with their fellow players, nor keep in mind what they may face for their actions. Please note how I did not specify sides. In my time in roleplay, I have seen many players of heroes pull the same exact thing that they are so quick to accuse villain players of: ignoring what consequences they would logically face for misdeeds and attacking others in the street, as well as attempting to kill without communication or agreement on an OOC level, on top of trying to maim and cripple characters in permanent ways over small slights, such as spilling a beer on them, or harsh words exchanged. All of this, with not a single word of communication or planning ahead of time. One person falling into one side or the other between ‘hero’ and ‘villain’ does not give them a free pass for such behavior. It’s reprehensible behavior no matter who does it, and using the OOC information that someone happens to play as a character on the other side of what one considers good or evil as reasoning for a free license to do so is even moreso. Actions have consequences, no matter what side you are on. It is better and more interesting roleplay to roll with the consequences of a muse’s actions than it is to straight up ignore them. Talk shit, get hit. Hit someone, be hit in return. No party should expect a blanket immunity due to what they consider themselves. But neither should players feel they are given an automatic pass or ability to control the fate of another’s character. That’s still up to the writer of the character themselves, regardless of how much you may dislike the character being portrayed.

In particular, I’ve seen a disturbing number of individuals who feel it is within rights to execute player characters with zero communication out of character, and it’s mostly the players who play the ‘good’ characters saying this. If you feel you have an innate right to execute a character played by another, without any sort of communication ahead of time, you may be better off writing by yourself than with others. No player is allowed to force character death on another, regardless of the roles played. You may discuss and plan, and plot ways any encounter may go, but the moment one tries to bully or force another player into killing their character off, regardless of why, they have gone too far and should not be surprised if the player in question chooses to remove themselves from the roleplay or ignore it entirely.

In regards to the claims of that the guards would not allow such characters in, that is ignoring just how vast a city is and the limited number of troops that would be there to patrol, in comparison to the rest of the populace. What we see ingame doesn’t necessarily correlate to the actual size of each location, as areas have been limited in size both due to technical limitations of the game as well as to ensure a relative amount of convenience for the players.

Certainly, should a character with a bounty and known face get noticed for their deeds or a guard is called for, they should be prepared to potentially face consequences for their actions or try to escape. Actions have consequences. But one cannot simply whip up a dozen super-powered city guard NPCS to try to execute another player simply because they dislike that the player is not playing the type they want them to. Especially if the character in question may not even have a wanted poster or have done anything that would warrant the guard’s attention. That is gatekeeping roleplay at its finest, deciding who should be where based on personal preferences with little regard to others beyond personal feelings. By that sort of standard, any player who disliked someone else could do the same and merely claim that the face is close enough to a bounty that they should be killed on sight. Better to alert a player of a guard character and let them handle it, if you do want to have guards interfere, or plot with said character’s player to see how guards can be involved and then step in if they are agreeable to such. If not, drop it and either watch, or ignore. Whipping up random NPCs to do your bidding and to try to force someone out of roleplay without any discussion will not encourage people to do as you expect, and instead is more likely to earn you a spot on the block list.

Often times, a player character that falls on the villain side of the spectrum may not necessarily have a bounty because they have handled their personal situations or misdeeds in a way that keeps them under the radar, or they are skirting the line between legal and illegal. Assuming that all deeds are known and skipping straight to confrontation is poor form at the least and is considered metagaming. No player gets a free pass to do that. Many villain players have rules that one must adhere to when engaging their characters precisely because as players we’ve all seen people assume what our character would and wouldn’t be let known, or what they would say, and then run with it without even a word to us as the player of said villain. The rules we have are used to avoid such mischaracterization and help ensure that communication is healthy on all sides. Players of both sides get particularly upset when key details are left out and things they do not want nor did they agree ahead of time to are sprung on them.

Finally, a character does not represent the writer. A character may adore strawberries and peanuts, but the writer may be highly allergic to where they are sent into shock even on mild contact with either of them and thus loathes them. And what a character may think of said foods may also differ drastically between what the writer thinks of them as a result of those differences. This is the difference between in character and out of character. I explain it as such as I have seen the community grow progressively worse over time in understanding that what one’s character may do may not necessarily reflect the writer’s view in real life at all. Too many see a character that is morally questionable and believe that the writer behind them will behave in the exact same way as the character, and that how the character may see things is no different than how the player does. If you struggle to comprehend that a character does not necessarily represent the player, then you misunderstand what roleplaying is. It is not merely and only inserting yourself into a game setting down to the last detail. You may do that, but others have just as much right to write out something different, and approach a character not from a perspective of how they themselves feel, but from a point of analyzing of how someone who experienced the history forged for the character might behave and in doing so explore the resulting mindset.

Such history may scar a character or traumatize in a way that brings out behaviors that the player themselves would never consider till they sit down and consider just how the character may respond after all factors are taken into account. Just because one character hates something or someone does not mean that the writer does as well. Darker characters and villains often have traumas that skew their views to some degree, but just because the writer has taken the time to consider what that may result in does not mean they require therapy themselves as a person or that they share those same views or ideals. To say so and paint all players with such a broad brush and claim them to be mentally unwell is disgusting and indicates that, as a player, one cannot separate themselves from their character enough to comprehend that others are able to portray views other than their own personal set of beliefs held as a person. It also discourages dialogue, as it shows an innate, hostile bias, and there are not many that are willing to put up with such hostility and narrow-mindedness as it is being aimed at them as a person and attacking them as a person rather than disliking the character forged. You cannot expect someone to willingly listen and try to see your side when attacked on a personal level for little more than having made something you dislike seeing in your personal roleplay. If you dislike it, don’t interact or involve such a character in your plot line. If they ask for your view, you can always provide constructive criticism, but if you offer it unbidden you should not expect it to be listened to or taken. Especially if it is very clear from how you approach it that your problem is personally with the player and not the details or how they portrayed the character.

As a personal example, Eligos would be categorized as a villain. He works for whoever pays him the most as a minion, and while he mostly does perfectly legal work, he absolutely has done less-than-legal work and then carefully covered up his misdeeds after by pulling the strings of the people who owe him favors. He is considered a villain mainly as he will do whatever he is allowed to within his contract in order to succeed, and often times finds himself working for the wrong [losing] side because his messed-up priorities led him to see the extra money offered as indication of good faith in his abilities and also valuing him as an asset, and not being able to see why acting on behalf of someone he thinks valued him more is a bad thing. He will work with anyone if he’s given a good enough reason or money, or against them if someone else makes a better offer. He won’t kick puppies or harm kittens, or hurt anyone unnecessarily, and if it does boil down to combat, it’s something I absolutely discuss ahead of time to find out limitations and also what one desires to see happen, so that personal growth for the character he is facing off against or with has that opportunity to grow and learn as a person. If someone says they dislike something? That’s now off the table and no longer up for discussion, period. But by virtue of his poor life choices and habitually finding himself on the wrong side of conflict due to his values, he is a villain, through and through.

But playing a character like him isn’t a simple power fantasy made to flex virtual muscles. There’s easier and simpler options, and if I wanted to do that, I’d have just made a hero, as those characters tend to not be analyzed so hard for compliance as villains are. If Eligos had been made to be some stupid power fantasy and nothing more, he’d not be yeeted into a wall half as often as he has by both those around him and his own tools malfunctioning. Nor am I mentally unwell and think the same way he does, simply because I let him say and do the shit that he does. I personally dislike many of his life choices, but do find it amusing to watch him go, and then pile on karma later for all of his misdeeds so he regrets his actions later. He’s an arrogant little gear gremlin who exists to help further stories of others while providing entertaining moments. Just because one individual personally may not see the karma carried out or get to execute him simply as they dislike him doesn’t mean he gets away with no consequences for his actions. As the player, I decide how to punish him. Not others. Him being a villain does not strip me of that right and give it to you simply because you dislike seeing him around.

#mun speaks #mun rants #villain

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