All about Pen & Paper rpgs and their relation to video games.

[Frostyfirefly]

@Laura Yeah Right: That's what I love about 13th Age, you can create unique stories with it just because of the way your character concept interacts with the icons.

It sounds like you guys had a blast! 

 

[Shibaginji]

Hey just recently joined this forum because I've been dabbling in RPG Maker VX Ace finally and I couldn't help but drop by this thread because I'm incredibly attached to P&P gaming. TouchFuzzy I saw that you have mentioned some really great games, and I couldn't help but notice you mentioned Leverage. That game holds a special place in my heart for a fairly dumb reason. My name is in that book as a play tester because my major gaming group at the time was with someone who was a friend of the designers of that game. I know, it's lame, but it still makes me kind of happy to hear people talking about it. =P

Anyway, I just wanted to ask if you've seen the game Apocalypse World or any of the games that have been based on it's system yet. There is Apocalypse World, for a post - Apocalypse setting, Dungeon World for Fantasy, Monster of the Week for running a Hunter style game in the vain of TV shows like Supernatural or Buffy, and some others that I haven't really gotten to check out yet. The system seems really cool. It's all built around the idea of making failures mean more then just failing. If you try to do a move and fail it can have lasting effects on the story. For instance, one move from Monster of the Week for one of the character types is a roll he can make to see if he happens to have a rare ingredient the party needs floating around in his stash. Passing it with a high roll would mean that he does, passing it with a low roll would mean that he does but it will take some time to find it, and failing the roll means that he doesn't but he knows where to get some... but it's not going to be easy. It's a very interesting system. I don't know that it would have any great applications in the realm of video game design but the books are certainly thought provoking, especially from a character role perspective.

Edit: Well I can't say it's built all around that, but that was the major grabbing point for me. It's kind of cool that it has the basic concept that the entire group gets to roll with the punches and improv the results of rolls, even the GM running the game.

 

[monkeynohito]

One of the concepts that sounds really cool about 13th Age and could easily fit into any game is the One Unique Thing. For anybody that doesn't know, you make up a detail about your character and that becomes unique to your character. It could be you're the only dragonslayer in existence or even something seemingly mundane like you brew the best beer in the known world. It seems helpful for players that have trouble thinking of backgrounds to just focus on one thing, but you also get players with really rich, detailed backgrounds and this helps focus all that information on the one main thing that's most important.

This actually got me thinking a lot about how far we've gotten away from that one unique thing in a lot of mainstream VRPG characters. I think back to classic SNES era characters from games like FF4, FF6 or Chrono Trigger and all those characters are really unique in both background and powers and it's not just the one true chosen hero, it's everybody. Moving down just the Final Fantasy chain, we now have a lot of games where there's only one or two characters with really unique backgrounds and customization options also gives us far fewer, if any, unique abilities for each character. In WRPGs and MMOs the story revolves around either a few wildly different extremes or a nameless nobody. In a lot of these stories, like really bad tabletop games with a GM disregarding player input, I feel like the story is going on around my character without their actual involvement. FF10 and FF12 left me cold because the characters I started with felt like nobodies standing around watching the real main character drive the story around without me.

NOTE: I do think most RPG Maker games get it right with unique characters, I think the mainstream games are just sort of losing touch.

 

[Omega Weapon]

@Laura Yeah Right: That's what I love about 13th Age, you can create unique stories with it just because of the way your character concept interacts with the icons.

It sounds like you guys had a blast! 

My unique thing: Destined to slay the Red Dragon. I thought the pyrophobia was a nice thing to keep it interesting.

 

[monkeynohito]

Sounds like a reason to want to get rid of the dragon. :3

 

[Frostyfirefly]

Hey guys, what's your take on psionic powers in games? Do you love them? Do you hate them? Are you "meh" about them?

By the way, here's my review of Ultimate Psionics for Pathfinder:

 

[monkeynohito]

I've never been a fan of D&D psionics. Never fit anything until Dark Sun came along and that just goes to show how weird it is in any other setting. It felt like it was a step in the direction of something better than crappy Vancian magic, but then they overburdened it with really awkward, cumbersome mechanics. Attempts to resurrect the system have tended to come from people that wanted to crank the crunch up to 1,011 when people just want something that makes some amount of sense.

BTW, here's a log of a Q&A session with half the RPG industry held last week on #rpgnet: http://gmshoe.blogspot.com/2014/01/q-all-star-q.html

It's a bit messy to read, but they have some interesting and diverse things to say about the state of the industry, mechanics, RaW vs. Houserules and a lot of other things. Really great to see such a wide array of opinions from so many professionals.

 

[Omega Weapon]

Just a question from a very noobish but interested roleplayer:

Do you guys, as a GM/DM, dislike "evil" PC's?

I know a DM who flat-out kicks you from the group when you try to create an evil character.

 

[Frostyfirefly]

@monkeynohito: Thanks for the link, I'll take a look at it.

@Laura Yeah Right: I allow evil PCs, they actually work pretty well to add a little tension and rivalry, and it's the only way my players can choose specific clases such as the assassin or antipaladin. I only allow Lawful or Neutral Evil only, Chaotic Evil is just too messy (the character constantly wants to dominate or subjugate others, etc.).

I think evil PCs aren't the problem, the problem is evil players, let me tell you a positive and a negative example:

Positive: The evil PC acted aggressively, or at the very least deceptive and sneaky, towards all the other PCs when his selfish interests seemed compromised. Everybody knew that was the character he was playing, and we actually enjoyed his performance. He aided the party because their goals were the same, he was kinda like Dr. Smith from that old sci-fi tv show, I t hink it was "Lost in Space"?

Negative: The evil player controlling the evil PC always tried to murder the other players, he wanted to murder, and abuse in different ways, NPCs as well. He also insulted the other PCs in a very out of character way. It was obvious the player had issues. 

Both things happened during my early days as GM, and I could easily tell from then on that the problem doesn't lie in the portrayal of Evil PCs, rather, it lies when an evil player plays an evil PC. 

 

[Cozzer]

I dislike evil PCs to the point of not letting my player use them (I make exceptions, but that's the rule).

It's mostly because, as a GM, I find the conflict between "doing the right thing" and "not doing the right thing" extremely boring.

I'd rather have all the PCs trying to do the right thing in a situation where it's not easy to define what the right thing is, and having intra-party conflict start from that.

(So, I may allow evil PCs of the "misguided idealist" variety but not of the "I just care about myself" variety. In my experience, this second kind of evil has often been wish-fulfillment for people non-assertive in real life. Whichi I don't think is a problem in itself, I just find it boring.)

 

[monkeynohito]

I agree with Frosty. I've seen plenty of good RPers pull off evil characters without being disruptive of the game or getting in the way of anyone else's enjoyment. If someone just wants to run around, eat babies and set towns on fire, they're a ****ty player. On the other hand, you have those classic lawful stupid paladin characters that are played as disruptively as possible: gloryhounding, bossing other players around, attacking NPCs at the drop of a hat and just generally being an incredible ass. Ironically, I ban paladins for the reasons people ban evil characters, but someone may be able to sell me on it with a good concept.

Either way, I like to get a good enough feel for your character at creation that we can figure out what alignment works best for that concept. Alignment is always explained as a guideline for RP, but that's complete BS, it's not a real motivation that an actor could use. Instead, I look at it as a challenge for good RPers that already have viable motivations for their characters.

Anyhow, here's some advice on playing or running evil characters:

Make sure you define lines you don't cross, both players and NPCs - I don't allow any rape or harming of children. I don't care if it's some demonspawn child taking swipes at your throat, you're not killing it or you're out of my game. If you're uncomfortable with anything evil PCs might do, you might just be uncomfortable with it being in the game at all, so call it out and make sure your NPCs aren't doing it either.

Your character may not actually be evil - I mentioned before that I like to sit down during chargen, hear a PCs motivations and then figure out an alignment from that. Maybe you just want to play a guy who's all about carrying out some evil act like murdering some particular person for petty reasons, but otherwise they're pretty decent. There's no reason to saddle him with an evil alignment and all the baggage that comes with it.

Not all evil characters eat babies - Everyone has lines they don't cross, even evil guys. Evil guys can have close friends too, like y'know, maybe the group of adventurers they clown around with all the time. There's always a chance an evil character can redeem themselves too. I've seen plenty of evil PCs sacrifice themselves for the good of the group, pull a Darth Vader, but in 20+ years of gaming I've -never- seen a Paladin sacrifice himself. Seriously, people should be banning Pallys instead of evil.

If a PC betrays the party, they're done - Everyone dreads when that evil guy will betray the group, but it can only happen once and that PC is effectively dead after that. That's pretty serious business and you can be sure that -if- that moment ever comes you'll be able to get some really good drama out of it. So, why not?

Adventure should be priority #1 - This really fixes a whole slew of problematic characters. Imagine playing Bilbo and deciding to stay at home instead of leaving with the party. Or imagine Reed Richards decides to sit at home and do science all day instead of fighting bad guys because he's a scientist. That's really a lot worse than the character who wants to loot dungeons because he's greedy. If an evil character's main priority is adventure, how likely is he to mess with the other PCs or betray the party if that ends his adventure? Like Bilbo, you can even play a character who hates adventure as long as he goes along with it anyway.

 

[Touchfuzzy]

People just screw up evil. Evil people don't do evil things just to do evil things, especially evil things that will get them nailed to a wall.

And just like was said in the last post, evil people can have friends. I had an evil warlock in one game, he wasn't a butcher though, and cared what happened to the rest of the party members. They sometimes didn't question the things he did when he went off on his own for a night in town, and he tended to do good things, but mostly for his own reasons. He might save a town from an undead horde... but he just really hated undead. He would save a kid if he saw one in trouble and he didn't feel it would put himself in danger. It would put people in his debt, and letting the kid die wouldn't help him in any way.

He wasn't senseless evil.

 

[Frostyfirefly]

@monkeynohito: Your last paragraph reminded me of this!

http://www.thefump.com/lyrics.php?id=1664

I allow Paladins, but to solve moral dilemas, I allow them to be quite ruthless; kinda like Conan.

EDIT: So, you could say that as long as they justify they are lawful in their god's doctrine, they can do what they want. Hm, I think I need to revalue muy definition of lawful

 

[monkeynohito]

A couple of really great examples of how an evil character can work in a party are Jayne Cobb from Firefly and Tyr Anasazi from Andromeda.

Jayne was definitely your typical greedy adventurer, all about money and always on the lookout for ways he could scheme up some more. He was pretty dumb though and that kept him from doing any major harm to the party or his place in it. Captain Reynolds also knew exactly how far he could be trusted and kept his eye on him, being able to catch trouble early and cut it off at the head. If nothing else, any plans that would cause a major split had a tendency to collapse and he'd always have that 'day job' within the group to fall back on.

Tyr was more that evil character that everyone's so afraid of. He was literally wired for Nihilism and Objectivism in the middle of a party headed up by a paladin on a quixotic quest to restore the Systems Commonwealth. There were times he outright attacked the party, tried to join the other side or took off to follow his ambitions, but Dylan Hunt would let him come back. They sort of had a weird friendship where Hunt just had to accept that Tyr was untrustworthy by nature. I think the key difference between him and Jayne, though, was that he had very solid goals and ambitions, so he was much more principled.

In both cases, the rest of the party knew this character was untrustworthy and they just plain knew to not leave them in charge of guarding the vault full of gold. The GM also made it more beneficial to stay with the party and in cases where they might betray the party, they would have those plans fall through or give a hint to the rest of the party so they could stop them. It also helped that both characters were they heaviest hitters in the group and pulled enough of their own weight that the rest of the party tolerated them.

 

[Cozzer]

You know, Jayne in Firefly always broke my suspension of disbelief a bit.
Every time he started one of his antics I was reminded that the other characters kept him around because... well, his name is in the main cast.

Expecially after the end of Ariel.. Ok, throwing him in space was a bit much, but any sane commander would still have left Jayne on the nearest planet.

And in an RPG you can't just decide that "every time the evil characters turns against the party, his plans fail". It would feel WAY more forced thant in a TV series, and it already feels forced there.

That's another problem I have with evil characters (but it applies to coward characters, unreasonably lawful characters and other kinds of characters too): nobody in the party likes them, so it's up to the GM to give them a reason to keep them around instead of just going to a guild or something and finding another adventurer.

(And the GM can't just let things solve themselves: if he said the player he could create an evil/coward/etc. character, he can't say "well, turns out you should have created a different character, sorry but you can't play")

In a game where I was a player, we did actually kick a character from the party because we decided that his psychopathy was more harmful than his combat abilities were useful.

Luckily the player didn't seem to take it bad, but it must have been disappointing for her.

I like the idea of an evil character which genuinely wants to help the party, but nobody has proposed it to me yet.

EDIT: Oh, and I like paladins. When I play paladins, other players like them! 

But yes, Miko Miyazaki-style paladins can be as bad as Belkar Bitterleaf-like evil characters.

 

[monkeynohito]

I think Jayne got away with a lot more than other evil characters because he was really entertaining. Like, when I watch a Harry Potter movie and see that teacher guy, Snog or Snookie or whatever, I honestly couldn't give two ****s about him because he's an unlikeable character. Jayne was edging towards that point where the audience would eventually turn on him, but he would have had to pull some major despicable before they wouldn't have wanted to see him on the show anymore.

The same goes for any character in a roleplaying party, a character's worth is in how enjoyable it is to see them do their thing. I'm assuming your player's psycho routine just wasn't any fun to watch, but if it really was the highlight of the night would it really be better to watch that person play a more boring character that didn't get into as much trouble? At chargen, you have to be asking, is this character going to be enjoyable or are they going to waste everyone's time by doing a bunch of **** no one cares about? It's really the same for any character.

As for massaging the world and story to keep an evil character motivated and involved without stretching believability, a GM has to do that with every character, it's really not any tougher with an evil one. A player can't be pushing the boundaries too far either or the rest of the party will boot that character out or the GM will kill them off.

PS: Paladins are, hands-down, the most troublesome class to GM for and tend to appeal to the worst players. I'll run down the grocery list of pally problems oncce everyone's done talking about evil.

 

[Cozzer]

As for massaging the world and story to keep an evil character motivated and involved without stretching believability, a GM has to do that with every character, it's really not any tougher with an evil one

Well, when a character is actively trying to get the party killed, i think it IS a little tougher to believe that other characters keep him around without breaking the fourth wall.

Or when he is so stupid and impulsive that he may as well be actively trying to get the party killed.

Yeah, maybe my problem is more with "I'll just follow my impulses without giving a f*ck about my and anybody's survival" characters. It's just that they tend to be evil too.

Lately, my favorite phrase during pre-chargen is "Sorry, but this character would already have died at least four times before the game even begins".

About the paladins, I guess we've just had very different experiences.

I'm curious about your paladin horror stories.

 

[Omnimental]

In my experience, paladin problems are the exact same kettle of fish as evil PCs.  Players who care more about self gratification then the people they're playing with.  Paladins appeal to those who want to be the "Supreme Authority" and lord the fact that they're "better" then their peers and evil characters attract players who want to play selfish pricks.  There's plenty of people who play these roles that AREN'T those types, but the ones that do fit the type tend to be loud and easily remembered.

It doesn't help in the case of paladins (in D&D) that you can have problems with GMs who see paladin and start planning ways to force the player into a no-win situation that relies entirely on their definition of 'good'.

 

[Cozzer]

I don't know... of the people I know, the ones who play paladin just like the archetype of the good knight, and the idea that his power comes from his determination to be good itself.

It feels strange to me, seeing paladins dumped in the same category as evil PCs, since I've never actually seen a "supreme authority" lawful-stupid paladin.

Different experiences and all that, I guess.

 

[monkeynohito]

Well, when a character is actively trying to get the party killed, i think it IS a little tougher to believe that other characters keep him around without breaking the fourth wall.

Or when he is so stupid and impulsive that he may as well be actively trying to get the party killed.

So, I take it you don't watch a lot of Game of Thrones, huh? :3

Seriously though, if you want a really low-maintenance party or you aren't big on interaction between PCs, make sure all the characters are on the same page; if you want more drama in the party, throw increasingly differing viewpoints in the mix to create more conflict or chemistry. You can run a successful game either way, it really just depends on taste. In all honesty, the GM doesn't get to decide how well the PCs get along anyway, it really shouldn't be a reason for a ban.

All that said, there can be decent reasons to discourage certain characters. If everyone wants a low-maintenance party that fights evil and goes on flower-picking picnics in their spare time, the one guy playing a NE tiefling necromancer is just looking to disrupt things. Some characters just don't fit the campaign either: if we're running a city campaign and a player makes a ranger that refuses to enter the city, that player's getting slapped across the face.