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RPG Setpieces

Jun 29, 2009
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It's no secret that I love TVTropes.org. I will out myself as a hopeless academic, and I love to scrutinize things like media. Playing through Half-life made me think about Videogame Setpieces and their applicability to tabletop games.

A setpiece is an impressive scripted event that happens only once and has a gameplay impact. For example, you are driving a boat down a river and a factory smokestack is blasted with a missile and falls directly into your path. You then have to try to navigate past this falling chimney, and onwards to safety. Chimneys don't fall down regularly, and this isn't something happening off in the distance. They make the game world seem more real by making it seem like anything can happen. A lot of good setpieces will make something the players think is safe seems more dangerous. A great example of this is in the original half-life when you are shimmying down a vent, like you always do, and suddenly the vent comes under fire from surrounding military troops and falls to the ground.

In video games, setpieces are a hell of a lot of work. You have to design it, program it, playtest it, bugfix it, and then after all that work, the player will only see it once. The models and animations for a single setpiece may take as long as the design of a recurring enemy that the player will interract with much more often. However, in roleplaying games, you don't have to program a setpiece. Moreover, it's hard to overuse them, because each one is unique. If you use something repeatedly, it stops being a setpiece and becomes a recurring device.

First off, you may already be using setpieces in your game. Most traps are set pieces, and a lot of skill challenges are based around setpieces. Think about what makes those elements work in your campaign when designing setpieces.

Second, a good setpiece will entice or force your players to interact with it. In combat situations, have enemies and players both be able to use most setpieces to their advantage. If there is a boulder propped at the top of a ramp, let the players manuever the enemies in front of it using thei character's abilities, and unleash hell. In fourth edition, a setpiece's effect should be similar to the players' encounter or daily abilities. This ensures that the player doesn't feel like they "Wasted" their turn using it. Setpieces are cool, and players enjoy using them. Be honest with yourself, would you rather throw a fireball at a group of enemies (like you always do) or crush them with a boulder? For out of combat situations, setpieces should contain story or affect navigation, as approrpriate. If the players are trying to navigate a maze like cave, having the tunnel collapse below them forces them into a situation where they are lost again. If the characters are in the city, having an angry mob chasing after someone shouting something about the specific plot coupon they are looking for makes the players want to get involved.

One last thing to keep in mind. You should try not to punish your players for interacting with your setpieces. You want them to occur, and a lot of times you will make them unavoidable. It can seem rather cheap if you force players to use their precious resources to deal with the aftermath of something they couldn't help. Particularly in examples like the cave collapse where you toying with the character's navigational progress, give them something of value, like a tool for completing a future puzzle or a some free loot. "The hardwood floor you are standing on creaks under your weight. *roll to hit the character's reflex* Before you have a chance, to move however, the floor collapses and you take, *roll* 7 damage." This would be annoying, but then it would be totally made better by, "As the dust settles, and your light begins to cover the room you realize that you've fallen into a hidden chamber. Valuable artifacts cover the walls, and a pedestal stands at the end of the room, holding a pair of silvered gauntlets." For harmful setpieces, always allow the player to either mitigate the damage of it through intelligent play, or turn even it into an advantage. Combat setpieces should be budgetted into the overall Exp.

Soul Calibur IV Impressions

Aug 5, 2008
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I still haven't had much time with Soul Calibur IV, but I have now had enough to give some of my impressions. First off, the new game is a huge improvement over SC3. They kept a few of the good things from three, specifically the revised stun system is back with some changes. Namco also added in something called the "Soul Gauge." This little dot is depleted of energy as you get hit, and eventually turns red, at which point your armor can be broken and an instant kill may be performed on you. Honestly, this feature gets relatively little use, as the game already had LOTS of ways to prevent turtling players. So, if grabs, low/mid mixups, unblockable attacks, and guard breaking attacks weren't giving you enough options against turtling players already, you can now just hack away at their shields. Consider me less than impressed, I haven't seen it come into play without specifically playing to beat down the enemy's soul gauge.

Online play, frankly, sucks. The lag is small, but very noticeable in a game that comes down to split second inputs. If you have a very good connection with the other player, then you can at least guard against their obvious attacks, but your hopes of guard impacting and hitting just frames are essentially gone. If you have a bad connection, then you can be beaten, with ease, by spammers and button mashers. The game's tools for punishing that sort of play are among the first things to go when the time between input and action increases. As a result, certain kinds of characters are becoming very popular online. Any avoidable/blockable moves with a lot of startup lag are a lot better online than off.

Character creation is back with a vengeance in the new game. They added features to armor that alter your character's abilities and stats. You can up their attack/defense/hp or give them new stats that can be used for unique skills that alter their play. These skills range from giving all of your attacks a life drain feature, to increasing your sidestepping speed. The concept is good, but if you want to make a character that is as good as they can be, it leads to some really funky armor combos. As someone who subscribes to the "Less is More" school of design, I hate that to make the numerically "best" armor set that I can, that I must fill every slot with unconnected pieces of gear. The most powerful characters look retarded, and the best looking characters tend to have lackluster skills. Regardless, you have more options than ever, and if you choose to ignore the stats (which you can do if you are confident in your skills, or playing a standard match where the stats are ignored) you canmake some really great looking characters.

The single player game has been revamped. The strategy game in 3, and the adventure mode of 1 and 2 have been replaced with a set of challenges called the "Tower of Souls." Personally, I prefered the other games' unique modes. The strategy game was suprisingly fun, and the adventure mode allowed you to follow a story. Story mode and Arcade mode are also back, for what it's worth. Story mode is less robust than it was in three, no longer allowing for path decisions, or anything of that sort. It is much shorter now, and has very little replay value.

Overall, the game manage to be an upgrade over SC3 only in the sense that it returned the feel of gameplay to that of SC2 and upgraded the graphics. In terms of features, I think that the game took a step backwards. Also, I think that Namco really missed the boat with their online component. The perfect online component for Soul Calibur has existed since Soul Calibur 2 hit the arcades. I am, of course, talking about conquest mode. In conquest mode, you choose a character, and play 8 matches against computer controlled oponents. These AI opponents are based on the players they represent, and your own character is thrown into the mix. Your strategy and skill determine the stats and strategy that your character has when playing other players. For example, if you guard impact a lot, then so will your avatar. This component was incredibly addictive, and would be awesome online, if Namco would have just put some effort into it. They could even had made the "kingdoms" into regional entities, with areas of the world representing different nations which would then compete to gain land. It would have been cool, but instead they went the obvious and flawed route of just using straight PvP online play.

Impressions of 4th Edition

Jun 1, 2008
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Well, the 4th edition preview campaign, Keep on the Shadowfell, came out. My DM picked it up and brought it as a surprise for us last week. So, I've had my first taste of 4th edition, and let me just say that it was a sweet flavor that left me so very hungry for more.

First off, a little bit of background on Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition. It was announced for the first time at GenCon, the gaming conference, last year. It had already been in development for about 2 years. It's the revamped rule set. Wizards of the Coast tossed everything out the door that they didn't like, and rewrote most of what they did. For many groups, mine included, it will eventually replace 3.5 DnD as the primary gaming system.

So here's the story of our gaming experience. Our dungeon master told us to leave all our character stuff and notebooks at home, but to bring our dice and pencils. Like good little players, we did as master told us too. When we got there, we were each handed a character sheet, complete with stats, abilities, etc. We wrote character names at the top of our sheets and hopped right into the adventure.

The first thing we all noticed about the game was that it was playing almost identically to the Tome of Battle. Our characters had what looked like, for all intents and purposes, maneuvers. You would have been hard pressed to tell me whether I was playing a paladin or a crusader, in that session. The next thing that I noticed was that we all were playing the same game now. What I mean by that is that the way that the fighter and the wizard looked the same, from a gameplay perspective. Both were using abilities every round, both had some abilities that could be used often, rarely, or very rarely, and those abilities looked and functioned in a similar manner. The difference was that the wizard was doing damage and control at range, while the fighter was doing damage and taking hits up front.

After the fight was done we also noticed something else. The game was moving much faster. In one gaming session, we were able to get our characters, set up our play spaces, do three full combat encounters, and two roleplaying encounters. Normally, in a single session, we'll get in about two to three encounters, either roleplaying or combat. To me, this was a huge improvement.

If you aren't already, get excited for fourth edition. It fixes a lot of the problems of earlier editions. Wizards have less book keeping. Fighters are not so vanilla anymore. Everyone can do cool stuff, and they can keep doing cool stuff all day long.

The Advantage of a Serialized Story

Feb 27, 2008
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In every almost every storytelling medium we run into the concept of a serialized story. Be it the weekly episode of our favorite shows, the yearly volumes of our favorite book series, or the weekly webcomic, the serialized story is ubiquitous. There are many advantages, a few disadvantages, and several pitfalls associated with such stories. I want to talk about a few in this post.

First and foremost, a serialized story builds suspense in a natural way. With a self-contained story, you can build suspense no longer than the length of the story. In a serialized story, on the other hand, suspense can last from the end of the last issue up to the beginning of the next, or even span multiple issues. Suspense gets the audience emotionally involved. If done correctly, they will feel excited to see the resolution of the story, but not feel like they are being suckered by a blatant cliffhanger (though cliffhangers can work well if used sparingly and unpredictably).

Second, serialized stories give the audience time to consider, discuss, and review the work. That time in between let's the mind do its magic on the story. Since we do much the brain work subconsciously over time, putting space between issues means that our minds have time to pick apart the story as we have seen so far and digest finer details that may be missed without that requisite time. Things like imagery, character motivation, and other subtleties often go unnoticed for a good amount of time, only solidifying after a week or so. Discussion of the current issue helps this, and also builds a fanbase for the story. For the audience's sake, it's fun to discuss the story with others, speculating on the contents of future issues and expounding observations. Reviewing falls right in this same vein. Repeat viewings/readings cause new details to emerge, and is often more pleasurable than the original viewing.

A big disadvantage of serialized stories is size constraints. Often, serialized stories are such because of space. A TV program is serialized because they only have 30 minutes to squeeze the show into, Serialized novels suffer more from time constraints. Comicbooks become prohibitively expensive if they are made too large, and webcomics are often stuck on a fairly tight schedule. For all these reasons, we have to find ways to squeeze a cohesive portion of a story into a small chunk. Naturally, we want there to be a beginning middle and end to each episode, so we have to breakup the overarcing story into its own component stories. This is the hardest part about these constraints, because sometimes we have component story that really can't be shrunk down to a one episode size chunk.

Another disadvantage of serialized stories is that you have to find a way to remind your audience of what has happened in the past. In a singular story, you don't have to remind your audience about what has occurred up to that point. For the most part, the audience remembers what the protagonist on page 5, even if you are on page 125. In a serialized story, though, who knows how long it's been since they saw it. Thus, you have to put in frequent reminders of the setting and events that are a backdrop for your individual story. This may take the form of a quick recap at the top of each episode, or possible just frequent flashbacks, even to things that "Just Happened" from a story point of view.

A big pitfall is to think of serialized stories as totally different from singular stories. The fact is that almost all stories are both, for some subset of the audience. You will have people who only buy full season DVD boxsets, and people who will take breaks between chapters in a book. You, thus, need to find ways to keep your story appealing no matter how it's taken. For a serialized story, this may mean cutting down on the artificial suspense, and limiting recaps to a minimum. For singular stories, this means reminding the audience of events when they come to be important, and leaving good breakpoints by denoting where substories end with chapter markers, or the like.

Next post I will talk about why I like serialized stories better, as a general rule, and a few of my own observations on how I enjoy such stories compared to singular stories.

Visual Novels and Mass Effect

Feb 22, 2008
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I can't say I've played much mass effect, I've only seen bits and pieces of gameplay and heard quite a lot about it. It's on my to do list, right after getting an XBox 360, which is itself pretty far after doing schoolwork. In truth, I put it in the title because I know my audience (Matt) and thought this would ensure that said audience would read in a bit. There's a Japanese genre which has little impact outside of Japan, and bits and pieces of it tend to show up in games like Mass Effect. That genre is the Visual Novel.

First off, I want to dispel some myths about what a Visual Novel is. A visual novel is not quite a dating sim. Many visual novels are loves stories, but they are scripted romances, as opposed to the statistics based rigor of a dating sim. In a visual novel, you follow a story and choose paths. In a dating sim, you grind levels for romance, which I find a bit odd. A visual novel also isn't (always) porn. Even erotic games aren't necessarily porn. Many visual novels do not contain sex, and many of those that do have it use it as a "reward" which only constitutes 1 scene, much like a hollywood sex scene.

With that covered, Mass Effect and KOTOR each contain what would amount to a mini visual novel in them. I speak of course, of the romance arcs. For these sidequests, you advance through dialog with the person of your choice, which culminates in a relationship. Similar to Eroge, in Mass Effect the "reward" for the romance is a short sex scene, which has gotten more bad press than it could conceivably warrant. More importantly, though, the primary task in these games is just to go through dialog, learn about a character, and experience a story primarily through text with a small amount of visual input to spice things up.

A visual novel takes that sort of a sidestory, and makes it the focus of the game. Naturally, that means that the story gets more room to grow, and the freedom of the story to branch becomes a key attraction. The main purpose is to convey the writing, and multiple playthroughs let you see each of the stories in the game.

But why hasn't this caught on in the US? The short answer is that it doesn't fit American tastes. A longer answer is that Visual Novels do not contain action, are primarily romances, have a ton of text, and are generally more tuned to a Japanese palette. Video games still rely a lot on the 16-25 year old male demographic, many of whom think a romance game sounds like a girl thing. The lack of shooting people, and the walls of text that accompany the game makes it seem more like work and less like fun to a group that rarely picks up books for pleasure. Even if that weren't a problem, existing visual novels play more to Japanese tastes by using things like anime style character designs.

In all honesty, I don't think that this will ever change. If visual novels do come up in America, I think that they will arise independently of Japanese visual novels. i.e. a company like Bioware will release a game like Mass Effect - Action, and give it a spiffy new name. And perhaps being integrated with action games is a better place for these sorts of stories for the American audience. I do know, though, that I just preordered Clannad Full Voice version, and even if I am a minority market as an American who likes visual novels, I do love Key ever so much.

What do you do that's non-standard?

Feb 21, 2008
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I was looking over a list of Britishisms and Americanisms and I realized that I regularly use quite a few Britishisms, which to me seems odd. It got me thinking about what other non-standard things I do, and why I started doing them. So, today I pose the question, "What do you do that's non-standard?"

Non-standard is something you do that isn't expected from people with your background. Like using Wisconsin slang, while being originally from Alabama. It's doesn't necessarily have to be wrong, and it can be the norm for people with a different background than you. Here are a couple of mine:

24+ hour time

Let me just get this out there, I find 12 hour time a bit imprecise. Times from 6-10 are generally ambiguous, because people are equally likely to be active during that time on either side of noon. Then you get into time zone changes that are greater than 12 hours, and it gets real weird. 24+, though, is something I picked up from Japanese network scheduling. Essentially, you can keep counting past 2400 hour (2400h) to get times like 1:00 AM. So, you don't 2:00 AM on Sunday, you say 2600h on Saturday. Personally, this makes more sense to me, because you normally track a day as being from when you wake up to when you fell asleep. "I stayed up till 5:00 the next morning," just seems clumsy compared to "I stayed up till 2900h."

Throwing SI prefixes on Non-SI Units

Just recently started doing this. But if I'm talking about very large or very small things I find it easier to just tack on SI units. Example, I would write 1 M$ as shorthand for $1,000,000, or 1 G¥ for 1,000,000,000 Yen. I even do this in WoW, where I refer to 1000 gold as "1 kgold" or "1 kg (virtual worlds have no mass, so no ambiguity here)."

I'm interested to see what other people do. I'm sure there are a lot of very valid ways to do or say things, that just aren't common usage or aren't strictly correct.

Learning to Love the Camp in Roleplay

Feb 17, 2008
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Anyone with enough experience with roleplayers knows people who are over the top. Perhaps their character is a mary sue, or they directly ask the question "HOW OLD DO YOU THINK I AM?" Either way, the character is serious to the point of being silly. This is called being campy, a great read regarding which can be found here, and it can either ruin or make your day depending on how you take it. Now, call me Mary Sunshine if you like, but I prefer being happy and having fun to being emo and getting pissed off. So, I think it is important to learn to like the campiness of roleplay and have a good laugh at someone else's seriousness.

Rather than go into how to enjoy it (Because you cannot teach someone else to like something) I am just going to spout out my own observations of common ways that characters are too serious to be taken seriously. Note that in pretty much all of these cases, what makes it campy is the extremism involved. Read the above paper to get a better feel for what I mean.

Mary Sue: Ah, the classic Mary Sue. Mary can do anything. Mary is good at Math, everyone wants to be Mary's friend, Mary is rich, Mary is not a snob about it, Mary can cure cancer, Mary has cured cancer, Mary is the most powerful mortal on earth, Mary is the most humble person on earth, absolute power absolutely can't corrupt Mary, and so on and so forth. The fact of the matter is that even if Mary is not a god, you cannot find something that is too much for Mary to handle. The player of Mary Sue takes it all very seriously, and that's where the humor lies.

Backstory Bomb: This guy has his autobiography prepared as a piece of personal oral tradition. I think that he may recite it in the bathroom as he takes his morning shower. Unluckily for you, the second you start talking to him, he decides to share his special talent and tell you his entire life story. This isn't the cursory "Oh, I was in the war. Those were some tough times." No, this is a history lesson on that characters life, probably starting at birth and going up until five minutes ago. Take notes. Otherwise you'll just fall asleep. While it's good for a character to have a backstory, and sometimes once you get to know the character you want to find out a bit about what makes them tick, saying hi shouldn't invite a spirited autobiography.

Corner Seat Benchwarmer: This is that guy who walks into the tavern, goes to a corner, orders a drink, and then proceeds to "Sit ominously" in the corner never speaking a word. I'm pretty sure his goal is to get someone to ask him what his deal is, chances seem pretty good that it's just an anti-social Backstory Bomb sitting there waiting to go off the moment he is prodded. My guess is that this guy will "Reuctantly" tell you all about his sordid past and that he is a renegade loner. I gotta say, though, I've never spoken to one on purpose. Fact of the matter is, if you go into the corner to sulk, have fun emo kid.

Ye Olde Speech Guy: This guy truly equates roleplay with speaking in middle english. Expect superfluous vowels, strange spellings, frequent (and often inappropriate) use of the Thou form, and bad attempts at old puns. I think this guy read too much shakespeare, and probably didn't understand a word of it, but did learn how to affect the style. It's really out of place, because most fantasy worlds are simply based on medieval times, and do not have a strong connection to the real culture or language involved with it. That's not to say the Ye Olde Speech Guy does either, but he is trying, too hard. It is worth noting that using inappropriate slang does break the mood of roleplay, but regular speech should be fine. Thou needeth not to strain thyself.

The Clique: This is that group that is hanging around the city and wants nothing to do with anyone else. It doesn't matter that FlagRSP has them marked as looking for contact, the fact of the matter is that they are so involved with their own conversation that anyone new is necessarily an intruder. The humor is if you hang around just to listen to them. Many of the stories these tightly knit groups make are very campy, and are great sources of humor. Maybe a few of them are really interesting, but you'll never get invited in to find out.

The Unwitting Gimmick: Sometimes a character is defined by a great personality. The Unwitting Gimmick is defined by a gimmick. He is a tauren that always croaks like a from, or a halfling that took the tall deformity, and is thus 7 feet tall. Normally this is not meant to be taken very seriously, much like being the tallest midget in the world would be regarded as just a silly joke. For some reason, though, the player takes the matter very seriously and doesn't seem to notice the absurdity of what should be an obviously absurd character. Irony is delicious, like cake.

Should WoW Have Level 60 Max Servers?

Feb 10, 2008
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I rarely talk about this, but I do have a world of warcraft account. I don't exactly play a lot these days, but it is a game that I pay for on a monthly basis and play from time to time. For 1 whole year now, World of Warcraft has been World of Warcraft the Burning Crusade. The old world of warcraft is, effectively, gone. No one runs old world instances as level 60 characters anymore, Naxx is still just a nostalgic memory for a tiny portion of WoW population, and being level 60 just means that you still have 10 levels left to go to 70.

As a paying player, though, shouldn't I have the option to play somewhere that the world of warcraft that existed a year ago still exists? Essentially, imagine a server where no one owns the burning crusade expansion. No one can roll a bloodelf, no one can go to outland, and no one can level past 60. If you really want to, you can transfer off the server later to play up to 70, but it could give you the chance to experience the old content with a group of like minded players. Considering how many servers there are, I think a single server like this could support a full population. You could keep it up to date in terms of patches, so that you don't have to worry about the security issues and bugs of the old patches. However, this would be the place where being 60 meant being maxed, and going to a raid means 40 people in MC/BWL/AQ/Naxx again.

I know that at the end of the day, this is just nostalgia that makes me want that game back. But there is some good content back at 60 that will never be experienced again.

The Ambitious Adventuring Party

Feb 10, 2008
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Here's an idea I'm throwing out there because I'm too busy to do it myself. Someone should run a Dungeons and Dragons group where the players entirely decide the goals of the campaign. Let me quickly explain what I mean by that.

In most campaigns, the players are pulled together and then sent off on a mission. More or less, they are told what their place in the world is. "You are the heroes of a new age, go kill XXXXX" or "Go find XXXXX to save the world." Something like that, even if they aren't as cliche. For most groups, this is a good way to handle it. The setting is, essentially, thrusting itself upon you, and the least it can do is tell you where to start. Sure, your character may have goals or ulterior motives, but for the most part your character is going with the flow of the story.

What I'm getting at is a campaign where the players come up with their own goal. From start to finish, the players see the plan through. Here are a couple examples of how that might work [disclaimer: all of these ideas are evil. So sue me.]

1. The party is a cult of worshippers of an evil god. Their goal is to establish a city of worshippers to that god, and then expand that nation's power. It doesn't matter whether they take over an existing town, or build it from scratch.

2. A wizard steeped in necromantic power wants to become a lich to achieve everlasting life. He is building a group to help him achieve this goal.

3. A small gang of thugs wants to extend their reach and become a force in their region, or maybe even extend out further.

4. A nihilistic cult wishes to end the world.

5. A drow house wants to rise up the ranks of its city.

Such goals are not mutually exclusive, either. Take this as an example of a possible party created goal. A paladin who worships the god of undeath hopes to build a kingdom to his dark god. He enlists the aid of a known arch-necromancer, who realizes that this group would be ideal to help him ascend to lichdom. The necromancer coerces his right hand man, a bloodthirsty barbarian, to join the cause, promising power and an opportunity for untold bloodshed. A visiting member of a foreign thieves guild gets wind of this plan, and considering that his guild couldn't make inroads with the current rule of the region, convinces himself that if there was an overthrow this foreign guild could instate themselves if he had a connection to the overthrow.

That's only one possibility. And if you are a DM skilled at improv, it would be an great chance to show your stuff. The most important thing would be, however, to avoid guiding them too much. The goal is for the party to decide what they are trying to do. The DM's job is just to make that a fun and excited prospect to play out.