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.
I love serialized stories. I have come to prefer them over non-serialized stories. Because such stories come in short sections, it is easy for me to fit them into my weekly schedule, and they give me something to look forward to while I'm busy with classes and homework. Ultimately, though, my favorite part about serialized stories is how it makes my enjoyment of the story so much greater.
Take for example the anime Clannad. This is a show that is split into 30 minute episodes, on a weekly basis, that's currently on its 19th episode. After each episode, I will usually check my favorite forum to see other people's reactions to it, rewatch the episode, talk about it with any of my friends that have watched it, and then post my own thoughts on the aforementioned forum. It is a ritual which I have come to perform only because I am so excited to see what happens next. The serialization, in my opinion, makes this great series better. While similar shows that I have seen, like Kanon and Air, have made an impact on me and really been enjoyable, the fact that I watched them all in a row over a handful of sittings made the investment in them considerably smaller. I never thought to read people's thoughts or speculations between episodes, or felt the need to expound my own feelings on it. At the end of the day, it would all be moot because I could just watch the rest of the series to confirm or deny my suspicions, and finalize my feelings.
The other important fact is that Clannad has now been a part of my life for 21 weeks. By the time the last episode runs, the show will have been on for approximately half a year (Including weeks off). That means that for more than 2% of my life up to this point, Clannad will have been a major source of my entertainment. When the last frame rolls, it will be a bit like saying goodbye to an old friend. I will probably rewatch the series as a singular work immediately afterwards, and continue to enjoy it as a bit of nostalgia through music, playing the visual novel game, and other such activities.
Also, serialized stories make you feel like you are a part of something For an example of this, consider Lucky Star. Although storywise the show doesn't have too much continuity, the characters are charming and lovable. Also, the humor and mood of the show are both uniquely satisfying. So, when the show aired it's final episode, I had a feeling that was reminiscent of some other "lasts" in my life. It reminded me a bit of the closing nights for shows I acted in, the last performance for band in highschool, and other similar lasts where there was something bittersweet about the whole event. Lucky Star even had some of this in the episode, with the characters themselves getting ready to graduate, and enjoying their last hurrah with the school festival.
For a comparison, I will use Pani Poni Dash, which I watched all at once. The show is similar to Lucky Star in terms of format, humor, and strength of characters. But when I watched the last episode of Pani Poni, my entire mood was different. It just felt like another episode of the show. Moreover, when I was done I felt relieved, as opposed to sentimental.
If you want to get more out of serialized stories as an audience, here are my tips to you. Find friends to enjoy it with you/at the same time as you. The more people you have watching a show or reading a book series, that are at the same point as you, the more you'll be able to talk about it. Even go on forums or websites that talk about that specific work. You'd be surprised at how much intelligent and fun conversation goes on about any given series. Finally, find other ways to enjoy the series outside of the series itself. Listening to soundtracks, reading supplements to the work, looking at fanart and fanfiction, or rewatching the latest episode are all ways to extend the experience.
I hope you all can now see why I love serialized stories so much.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Although I'm not really a dungeon master, I do have thoughts on what I feel are appropriate ways to handle games. One thing I have thought about is what I like to call, from the players point of view, Schrodinger's Campaign. Essentially, you have no way of knowing, as a player, whether your campaign has been adjusted to your party.
Let's say, for example, that you are in a party with a tank with a high damage reduction, and a healer that can really pour on the HP. You may into an enemy that hits hard enough that he nearly kills your tank, and the healer is at the edge of his seat trying to make things not go to hell. After you pull through this fight, you would be quick to congratulate that pair saying, "We really wouldn't have been able to pull through that without you two. He hit way too hard for any other party to survive." But that begs the question, "Would the fight have been this hard with a different party?"
Alternatively, you may have a party that is poorly equipped to handle undead. You have a favored soul instead of a cleric, you have little to no AoE, and your melee is crit-dependant. But you run into a large group of them, and find them surprisingly easy to mow down. You think to yourself, "How easy would this be if we had a sorcerer spamming fireball?" This also begs the question, "Would the enemies be this weak if we did have said sorceror?"
From a DMs point of view, it's hard to strike a good balance. You want the campaign to be varied, with many types of challenges. However, the party will not really be able to handle some, and others will simply become trivial. A good rule of thumb is to avoid things you know will be a TPK, adjust them to be dangerous, but have some solution for the given party. Don't throw a no-chance-to-survive-if-you-don't-disable-it trap at a party with no one that actually can disable it. However, do adjust it down to be a this-will-really-suck-if-you-don't-disable-it trap. However, if the situation is not super likely to be a TPK, leave it be. Don't up difficulties on challenges that play to their strengths, or dumb down things that play to their weaknesses. Part of the fun IS hanging on by the skin of your teeth, but it's also sometimes fun to really kickass at the things you mean to kickass at. Example, if you have a rogue that is insanely good at disabling traps, you should never adjust the traps so that he has a chance to fail that he otherwise wouldn't. That ruins his fun, he probably built his character just so he would never have to worry about failing on a trap. As my DM once said, "You shouldn't punish the players for being prepared."
Here's a quick question for the reader. What do you look for in a friend?
If you said "That they share my beliefs and values," or something in that vein, I must call you out on it. Although people often state that as one of the biggest determinants of a good friend, it actually doesn't hold in practice. In fact, it doesn't even matter if the person is reliable, fun to be around, or attractive. At the end of the day, the biggest determinant of what makes people friends is if they are around each other a lot. Families tend to maintain a relationship because they share a house, and we tend to be closer to family we live near than family we are separated from. I, personally, have very strong political and moral beliefs, but I don't necessarily share these with my close friends. If I were to be drilled on it, I may even call their beliefs evil.
You may ask what this has to do with Roleplay. However, it is very applicable. I mean, why else would a evil-smiting paladin knowingly consort with a shady rogue? The fact of the matter is, they are friends. And being friends transcends morality. Yet, how they became friends in the first place becomes the question. We don't knowingly put ourselves in situations where we will be forced to act out of character, in real life. Tough-guy sorts don't join ballet, because it doesn't fit their image. Similarly, a lawful-good paladin is not just gonna start traveling with a chaotic-evil warlock, just because he could use some magic slinging.
Therefore, we need to find a compelling and logical reason for why such pairings come up (as they often do in DnD). The answer, to me, comes from real life. Such people must have been friends beforehand for such pairings to make sense. Even if they were old friends, a preexisting relationship colors our perceptions of people so strongly that they can pretty much do no wrong, so long as they don't slight you personally. That is to say, the paladin will go with warlock, until the warlock shoots him in the back.
As a result, I think that when you bring in characters that wouldn't normally mesh with a party, it is very important to include a tie of friendship so that it makes sense.
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Recent Comments
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Draxle said:
I feel like a bad friend, because I'm never going to be there to watch your animes with you.Sorry about... read more
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Draxle said:
Mass Effect has almost as much in-game text as Morrowind. There's an entire menu section devoted to talking about technology,... read more
on Visual Novels and Mass Effect -
Brian said:
[this is good]Heh. I use Britishisms on a regular basis, and sometimes Aussieisms as well. It's just so much more fun than... read more
on What do you do that's non-standard? -
π (Pi) said:
I have the same problem with most of my characters too. This subject originally came up when me and Draxle... read more
on The Ambitious Adventuring Party
Don't worry, I'm never going to read the books you read. Though, when you get published you bet your ass... read more
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