landicine

One of my favorite items from a past tabletop game was the Ring of the Darkhidden. The ring made my character invisible in total darkness. It sounds silly, especially given that lighting a match cancels out the ability, but since the character specialized in fighting skulking-see-in-the-dark monsters, it was actually really useful. I remember loaning it to laraclara's dwarf character, and she almost destroyed a character ten levels above her. I want items in games to be like that: mechanically-relevant but also quirky and flavorful.

In Ultima Online, I enjoy using the crafting system to make odd sets of armor for my utility characters, and I spend way too much time coming up with names to engrave on my main fighter’s swords. Artifacts are my favorite card type in Magic the Gathering, and Quick Gadgeteer is my favorite advantage in GURPS. I have spent a lot of time thinking about gizmos, gadgets, magical relics, cyberware, and so on. It is probably no surprise that I wrote a lot of item cards for TBC.

( I talk about larp items in TBC more... )

I was woken up early this morning by the town of Waltham calling to tell us to stay in our homes until the bombing suspect is apprehended. The Fitchburg line is shut down until further notice. Apparently a lot happened during the night.

(Update: Apparently all service on the MBTA is suspended.)

I heard a campus cop from MIT died. That sucks. I have a great deal of loyalty to campus cops after Baltimore. They protect their campus and students.

I have taken some strange lessons away from RPG campaigns:

In the West: Shooting an ally in the leg to prevent her from doing something stupid is not a sound plan.

Welcome to Infinity: When providing the means to procure illegal hooch for an ally, make sure he signs a waiver.

Artifacts and Kalids: Changing your species to hook up is highly immoral and yet highly effective.

Forsaken Territory: Werewolves are not cuddly.

Castle Ravenloft: A poorly made D20 build can easily die three times in the same campaign.

Chrysolite: Do not waste time developing a biogenetic plague. Someone in the party will get cold feet about releasing it.

The Vacuum: It doesn't matter how much you get paid if your home city falls from the sky.

War of the Lance: It is best not to ask a warlock for clarification on where his powers come from.

Auspicious Beginnings: All the luck in the world won't save you from a nanite-infused super villain with no sense of humor.

Rangers of the Dusty Trail: If a member of your party sees things that aren't there, perhaps he doesn't get an equal vote in group decisions.

City of the Damned: Don’t get involved in family squabbles, especially when one of those involved is packing a dragon-fire shotgun.

The Sound of Drums: If it looks too good to be true, someone wants you dead.

The Golden Gatekeepers: When making wishes, perhaps it is best to take a moment and remember your cousin trapped in hell.

Contact: When purchasing bulk corpses, always inspect the merchandise.  

Tales of the Infinity Patrol: If the girl can be two-sides of a love triangle on her own, perhaps you shouldn't hand her a grenade.

Being Human: Creepy dolls make the most loyal friends.

Our Dear Departed: If the price of failure is to become a Lurker, don’t do it!

From an old talk on game design, Raph Koster mentioned that Robert Cialdini identified six strong persuasive characteristics in humans:

1. We like people who give us gifts.
2. We hate changing our minds
3. We imitate those like us.
4. We are suckers for those we like
5. We trust apparent authority.
6. We overvalue rare things.

In The Gift of Fear, Gavin De Becker mentioned some broad generalities about human nature:

1. We seek connection with others.
2. We are saddened by loss and try to avoid it.
3. We dislike rejection.
4. We like recognition and attention.
5. We will do more to avoid pain than we will do seek pleasure.
6. We dislike ridicule and embarrassment.
7. We care what others think of us.
8. We seek a degree of control over our lives.

It is amazing how often in online games these generalizations apply to people's good or bad behavior. A random holiday gift of "pixel crack" is an easy way to buy player good-will. Players won't change their minds on a system easily; this will keep a certain part of the population away from Felucca indefinitely. The "rare" EM rewards sell for crazy prices despite having no mechanical purpose and just being dyed common items.

Last night's Deadland's campaign ended in pretty much a TPK. The only member of the party who managed to run away had already been killed and was brought back as a Harrowed zombie earlier. Since TPKs happen so rarely in beholdsa's games (this being the second in ten campaigns), they can actually be interesting to think about. Wikipedia of course has a decent article on them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Party_Kill

Looking at last night's, our "plan" was solid enough, though we were fighting one of the big four evils of the setting. I've seen worst plans, though mechanically speaking any plan that requires suprise also requires the stealth skill on more than none of the characters. There was certainly some underestimating of the big villain, but I think the fight was pretty fair since he didn't have his cultist army with him.

The randomizing mechanics (dice and cards) hated us last night. I managed to cast as spell that backfired so badly that even after reducing the wound number with a Benny, I was still half dead. Our super regenerating elixer didn't heal our ally despite the GM spending a lucky point to let us reroll out of sympathy!

It actually felt good to have the campaign end like that since it meant things weren't too rigged in our advantage. What is the point of having a randomizer if some magical hand will just make things work out in the end?

I just heard that Shadowbane was being closed. This game had already had the problem of switching from a pay-to-play model to an advertisement model. I'm sort of glad. Sorry, but this game bothered me.

I think it is the tone of the game. I don't mind the idea of a PvP centric game, though a game with only PvP would be very dull for me after a while. However, it had this idea that PvP was the end-all and be-all of gameplay. When it first came out it used this advertisement:

“We don’t play games to bake bread, we play them to crush!”

This was an attack on the game Ultima Online which has a cooking skill that provides almost no mechanical benefit to the game. I play UO and have a chef character. I trained the skill to make named bags of flour for my evil company, a completely roleplay reason which served no tangible benefit. I have a lot of fun with my roleplay groups in UO, telling stories, getting into fights, being put on trial, etc. I enjoy a little bit of PvP from time to time, but it bothers me that the hardcore PvPers basically denigrate any other playstyle.

Then there was Shadowbane's rampant sexism. Certain fantasy races were male only (minotaurs and dwarves) in part because the dev team for the game wanted female avatars to be attractive. Their version of attractive was basically scantily clad succubus characters. While this is true for a lot of MMOs, Shadowbane pretty much took it a step further with this action.

I think the sexism and "grr...crush" tone are related. Shadowbane tried to be a very "masculine" game. I put "masculine" in quotes because it is a bullshit version. If the end all and be all of being male was war, death, violence, and only liking women when they are half naked, I'd fucking kill myself. I enjoy a good war game (Twilight Imperium!) and in-game combat (PvP in UO can be a lot of fun) and women in all states of dress. I'm attracted to women physically, but I don't think that has ever defined my friendships with them.

One of my best friends in Ultima Online is an woman who has a son older than I am and who refers to herself as "old lady." We've talked about real life stuff (job, family, moving,etc.) , game-related stuff, and really random stuff over the years. I'm not sure such a friendship could exist in a game which is entirely "I beat you up and take your stuff."

Shadowbane's gone. Good riddance!

I don't actually know if I'll ever use this one. I had my cryptic days in my youth though, so maybe I'll babble again.

Who are you?
What do you want?


Why are you here?
Where are you going?

I was going through my B5 cards trying to find a picture that scanned well. This one scanned remarkably well and fits a certain role with my journal: It feels wrong. No matter your point of view about B5's storyline, Psi-Cop Sheridan is the combination of two polar opposites into something that no one wants. The picture is either the good guy wearing a black hat or a bad guy wearing a white hat. I figure I'll use it for when I talk about politics.

I originally wanted to scan in the card "Level the Playing Field" for my userpic, but neither the Sheridan nor Bester version scanned well. That card taught me a bit about playing to your strengths rather than just losing with your faults.

I'm slow. I don't fill out profiles that often. I have so many online accounts and such that it seems pointless to write them most of the time. I never got around to putting up some userpics until today. I guess I want to show them off now and explain why I picked them.

This clock was from a painting I did for a Planescape campaign I was part of. My GM allows us to do a weekly journal for our characters to get special benefits (experience, luck points, etc.). For one character, I wrote poems. For another I talked about crazy theories that were always wrong. For this one, I painted.

http://tabcreations.com/wiki/index.php?title=Charbon

The great thing about painting is that even if you aren't very good, it feels right. Drawing or writing never feels that way for me. I'm not that good at drawing, so it is mostly seeing my mistakes. With writing, I know I'm a hack at best. It is hard to enjoy something with a critic demon on your shoulder. I don't get that as much with painting.

I also like gears and the idea of tinkering with things. My job is mostly tinkering with bacteria (plasmids, genes, proteins). I like the Mad Scientist roles in a lot of games.