Disbelief 2: The Disbeliefening

 Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, Role Playing Games, System Neutral, Table Top  1 Response »
May 162012
 
The Suspension Bridge of Disbelief

Thanks to flickr user DaveOnFlickr! CC BY-SA 2.0

A few weeks ago, a commenter lamented that I didn’t give specific examples when it comes to the suspension of disbelief, breaking it, and potentially getting it back. I aim to misbehave please, and thus I’ll try to expand upon that idea a bit more. Here are some sure-fire ways to break the suspension of disbelief and rip your players out of the story:

 

Clunky Mechanics

Ultimately, they are called role-playing games, and there have to be some rules otherwise it’s just shared storytelling (nothing wrong with that, either). When there are rules, especially rules which take a lot of time to play out, are difficult to understand, don’t really mesh with game very well, or are more tedious than actually fun, you run the risk of pulling back the curtain on the fantasy world you’ve delicately set up. There are many examples of crappy rules, but one that immediately springs to mind is the grappling system from D&D 3.5

Now, grappling is a big part of 3.5 D&D. Many monsters do it, and they do it very well. It’s difficult for a seasoned player to create a character that doesn’t have some way of escaping from a grapple. However, the rules are quite horrible:

1. Initiate the grapple by moving into your opponent’s square.

2. They make an attack of opportunity. If they hit and deal damage, you fail to grapple.

3. Make a touch attack to see if you can “grab” them.

4. Make opposed grapple checks to see if you can actually “grapple” them.

You could argue that the whole system of attacks of opportunity is clunky and breaks the SoD, and I wouldn’t fight you too much. I think they make sense (let your guard down, get attacked) but sometimes it seems like it would have just been better to give you a AC debuff instead. Whatever. The problem with grapple, for me, always came around step 3 and 4. You have to make two checks, one to see if you can even be in a position to grab your opponent, and then another to see, ostensibly, if you can hold on.

I don’t know why this couldn’t be handled with one check. The reason for the above rules makes sense (grab, then grapple), but ultimately it pulled my players out of the game because everyone always seemed to forget there was a touch attack involved, then a grapple check, and then you didn’t really even do anything that round, instead you had to wait until next round when you had to make another grapple check to maybe do something to your opponent (like stab him with a dagger or bite his face off). Suffice to say, grappling was extremely clunky, and what exactly you could do while you were in a grapple (cast spell? use a weapon? move the grapplers?) was constantly a question.

A good rule of thumb here is that if you have to constantly reference the rule from the rulebook, you’re breaking the suspension of disbelief; if you have to step out of character to look through the rulebook for what you’re able to do, that sucks and it has brought you out of the game. You stop visualizing what your character is doing to that orc and go elsewhere.

Pathfinder made it a bit better (took away the opposed rolls), but not much.

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Popularity: 1%

 Posted by Nick on May 16, 2012 at 11:45 am  Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,

Living Life By Playing The Game

 Board and Card Games, Movies and TV, Role Playing Games, Table Top  No Responses »
May 162012
 

My father views board games as a critical tool for learning concepts such as tactics, probability, and the importance of having flexible plans.  This is why he had to beat me at every game of Risk for two years he claims.  “I couldn’t just let you win.  The game would have been pointless if you just win.”  I didn’t win my first game against him until I was nearly thirteen years old, at which point I asked him if there’s any other games we can play.  He went to the massive double door cabinets that held all his dusty games and brought to the table a box much smaller than that of Risk, which admittedly had me disappointed and suspicious.  It simply read ‘Stratego’.  That’s not even a real word!  At least Sorry and Trouble are real words I thought to myself.  He explained the basic rules of the game and then we began to set up our pieces.  He went first.

Table top gaming is an art form to me.  I know some people just see it as a way to pay homage to their fandom, others see it as a tool for hanging out with friends, and some just enjoy the competition of it all.  But I can never see a game as something quite that simple, rather they provide me with inspiration, laughs, enlightenment, satisfaction, debate, creation, goals, wit, and mass quantity’s of joy.  Gaming isn’t a hobby for me but rather a section of my life that I carry with me every where I go.

Now that my love and adornment of gaming has been established you should probably know that I’m extremely critical of the medium.  If I’m to invest my funds, time, and friends time in a product then I want high quality.  I believe in quality over quantity and don’t want to wake up to see that my board games and role playing books are all the same thing just painted differently.  With prices often matching or exceeding a new video game the board game company’s must remain making the best possible games they can and avoid at all cost the mediocre.  I want to be impressed when I play a new game, not simply accepting of it.

Like anybody though I have preferences.

Horror is delightfully deliciously delectable in every sense.  I am practically a cultist when it comes to H.P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos because for me it’s not enough to just read the story’s.  I like the board games, video games, comics, movies, clothing, toys, all of it.  Does this make me a mindless consumer I ponder at times?  No.  Why not?  Because I still have quality control over this encroaching Lovecraftian madness.  In honesty I would be far angrier should I play a bad game that’s steeped in the Cthulhu Mythos than if I played a poorly built Civil War game.  Don’t just start trying to prod me with tentacles, I demand some crazy chanting first and a minimum of at least four hooded cultists.  Oh and my favorite story by him is The Rats in the Walls, yes it’s somewhat outside of the Cthulhu Mythos, but it just grips you.  Plus it was the first story by Lovecraft I ever read.

I also enjoy movies a great deal and am planning on presenting you with a variety of sci-fi films that are must see’s while potentially stumbling across the occasional dud that must be avoided at all cost.  I often have the tendency to blur the lines of sci-fi and horror though so I’ll try my best to limit it to sci-fi and sci-fi horror films.

I’m pretty sure it’s self evident that I enjoy writing other wise I wouldn’t be doing this.  Other interest include comics, cartoons, investigating geek culture (stumbling about online looking for cool things so I can go ‘Oh that’s cool.’), video games, and the out doors.

While this is the first time I’ll have my writings read by others I’m hoping to continue this trend and have my short story’s published and eventually work up to writing a series of books and comics because when it comes to writing I honestly love nearly every medium as is the same with gaming.

Popularity: 1%

 Posted by adrianveidt on May 16, 2012 at 10:00 am  Tagged with: , , , , , ,

A whole bunch of games from DriveThruRPG are 20% off – here’s how to get them

 Pathfinder, Role Playing Games, Savage Worlds  No Responses »
May 162012
 

So you’re looking for something new to play? Maybe a nice addition to a system you’re already familiar with or something that’s totally new to you? I’ve got two things to say about that.

First, go grab the Wayne Foundation Charity RPG Pack while you still can (only available until the 18th of this month!) It’s $25 and you get $235 worth of stuff. You can’t beat that with a stick.

Second, here’s a bunch of awesome games that are 20% off. Hit up the links to see them at DriveThruRPG and then when you check out, use the code DriveThruApril (Yes, we know it’s a month out of date in verbiage, but it’s the correct code, I assure you).

These offers are good until June 14th, so take advantage of them!

Popularity: 2%

 Posted by Ben on May 16, 2012 at 9:05 am  Tagged with: , , , , ,

Five Handy Resources For Almost Any GM.

 Role Playing Games  4 Responses »
May 142012
 

Plotting out a decent campaign can be difficult, especially for us older hands who are used to keeping everything about our created worlds safely tucked away in a few spiral-bound notebooks. Luckily, things have progressed quite a bit since those golden days, and the vast wonders of the interwebs can make life a lot easier for us Storytellers. Let’s look at a few online resources that could come in handy for planning and running a campaign.

 

 

 

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Popularity: 13%

 Posted by Vanhavoc on May 14, 2012 at 8:10 pm  Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

Huge gaming goodness, little tiny price – an update on the Wayne Foundation charity RPG Pack

 Role Playing Games  1 Response »
May 142012
 

It’s been a bit over a week that the 2nd Annual Wayne Foundation Charity RPG Pack has been on sale. To date 124 awesome people have purchased it, raising almost $2000 for The Wayne Foundation!

The charity pack is only available at DriveThruRPG and affiliates, and will vanish into the ether(net) at Midnight on Friday, May 18th. For $25 you get $235 worth of really, really fantastic things. Entire RPG systems, books to expand universes you already know and love, original novel length fiction and original character artwork. Hit the link above for a full list of what’s available.

Thanks!

Popularity: 1%

 Posted by Ben on May 14, 2012 at 10:00 am  Tagged with: , , ,

Thunderstone Advance – The next generation of deck building dungeon delving

 Board and Card Games, Reviews, Role Playing Games  No Responses »
May 142012
 

The Game

A few weeks ago a giant package arrived at the Troll in the Corner offices, and it contained a giant box of deck building happiness – Thunderstone Advance: Towers of Ruin! I’ve now sat down and played this through several times and I’m ready to give you my honest assessment of the newest version of Thunderstone. To start things off on the right foot let me just say that I like this game a lot, but others in my gaming circles were a bit more on the fence. Here’s why!

Thunderstone Advance is a deck building game somewhat similar to Dominion, or Ascension, or many of the other deck building games out there. Thunderstone Advance differs though in theme and mechanics. You’re playing the part of an entire adventuring group, bent on building up your characters and equipment to enter the dungeons and fight your way to the fabled Thunderstone. You start off with a deck of 12 cards, drawing six per turn. You purchase new cards to add to your deck which allow you to defeat monsters or buy even more cool stuff. In defeating the monsters resident in the dungeon, you gain XP with which to do cool things, and accrue points that will allow you to (hopefully) win the game.  The deck building aspect of the mechanics are similar to other games, with the difference being your choice between acquiring new cards, or using your current deck to go defeat some nasty creatures.

Are you ready to go shopping and then kick some monster butt?

In Thunderstone, at the beginning of each turn, you must make a choice. Are you going to venture into the dungeon area to take on some nasty things? Or will you head into town to do a bit of shopping, perhaps pick up a bite to eat or a new spell?  You can also choose to do neither of these and either place cards from your hand into your discard pile, or remove one card from the game permanently.

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Popularity: 1%

 Posted by Ben on May 14, 2012 at 8:49 am  Tagged with: , , , , , ,

Reality Makes the Best Fantasy: Body Types and Physical Training

 Role Playing Games  3 Responses »
May 112012
 

Hermes, God of Athletics and Sports.

There are approximately 640 skeletal muscles in the human body. These are the muscles that work in conjunction with your glorious skeleton to move you from the computer to the fridge and back to the computer again. I’m assuming you live like me, wrapped in a blanket, drinking coffee and wishing your kid was old enough to make sammiches.

These muscles sit between your disgusting but useful organs and your skin. They help to propel you forward, pick things up, put things down, punch that caterpillar that was sassing you, summon and then wrassle Kord, open jars, put a case of water in the shopping cart. The list is extensive. Without your muscles you would be as useless as one of those hanging skeletons you always see depicted in high schools, made from the donated bodies of dead people (at least that’s where my science teacher told us our skeleton came from).

Depending on your level of physical activity, different muscle groups on your body will be more developed than others. When my spouse was taking Eskrima (a Filipino martial art influenced by local tradition and Spanish fencing), he had huge forearms from drills with ratan sticks. He also had insanely hard shins and huge calves from kicking things. A friend from high school is a female bodybuilder. That means that periodically she has to change her diet significantly and bust her ass in the gym to achieve the definition required to place. When I was growing up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan I often heard the crazy pops and sneaker scuffs of those playing handball, hard hands and harder muscles sending a tiny rubber ball zipping across the court. Badminton players, fencers, basketball, soccer, all these sports demand a certain body type in order to best play the game.

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Popularity: 2%

 Posted by TristanJTarwater on May 11, 2012 at 9:30 am

The Gods of Aruneus – available today!

 Aruneus, Pathfinder, Role Playing Games  No Responses »
May 112012
 

The latest Aruneus PDF has hit the streets! The Gods of Aruneus is available as of today, for $1.00 at Drive Thru RPG.

Aruneus is a source book for the Pathfinder Role Playing Game detailing the world, politics, and lives of those living in a high fantasy world one hundred years after a cataclysmic zombie apocalypse.

Aruneus is a new world for use with the Pathfinder Role Playing Game system. 100 years past, Aruneus experienced an apocalyptic event. Starting in a small village, a family infected by a strange sickness died, only to rise again several days later. Within weeks hordes of undead were roaming the Human empires, ravaging any warm blooded creature that fell in to their grasp. Aruneus was devastated – losing in a few years over 10 million sentient beings.

After 100 years of fending off a complete collapse, the sentient races are rebuilding their societies and for the first time there is hope that the undead menace can be destroyed and life given a chance to flourish again.

The Gods of Aruneus gives the divine backdrop in which the zombie apocalypse was formed. Have the gods abandoned this world?

  • Six gods
  • Six new Domains
  • A new threat for the world of Aruneus

You’ll find 10 pages of new material for use in your Aruneus campaign, or in any Pathfinder or d20/OGL game. You’ll also find a new, tougher class of zombie which not only turns humans, but other races as well!

Popularity: 1%

 Posted by Ben on May 11, 2012 at 9:12 am  Tagged with: , , , , ,

Cheating is the natural state of play for those cheeky little gits called kids. Here’s why that’s okay, and why you should embrace it.

 Board and Card Games, Role Playing Games  No Responses »
May 102012
 

Cheeky Little Gits

This kid is a cheat and a liar!

I’ve spent a fair amount of time lately creating games for kids, and playing games with kids – primarily my own two girls who are 6 and 9.  I’ve come to the conclusion that the natural state of gaming for children is to get away with absolutely as much as possible and do what needs to be done to try and win the game or shape it to their satisfaction. I kinda love this about kids too, for  several reasons. I admit that my sample pool is pretty small – my two kids who are always willing to play games in the name of science, and a few other sessions with other kids. So, take this report with a grain of salt.

For some systems, this is okay. There are a ton of kid oriented RPGs out there, my own Argyle & Crew being one of them. These tend to go a little lighter on the rules than RPGs aimed towards adults. The fact that kids seem to like to cheat is one of the reasons I built A&C like I did. Yet, rather than call it cheating, I simply call it imagination. We’ll get back to this in a few paragraphs.

Of all the kids I’ve played with over the past few years, it doesn’t matter what we’re playing – board games, RPGs, My Little Freaking Pony, many of them tend to let their imaginations really run wild.  It’s an awesome experience. I can interject something strange, such as a Martian spacecraft into my daughter’s My Little Pony play session and not only does she take it in stride, it gets incorporated into her play in a matter of fact way. That’s not cheating.

When you’re playing Quarriors though, and she opts for eight dice rather than six, well that is cheating. Really in her mind it’s a much lesser form of cheating than say introducing my Godzilla action figure and my wife’s hairy Wonder Woman doll into the Pony mix. When she watches ponies on the tube, both Godzilla and Wonder Woman consistently fail to make an appearance.  Yet here she is playing with dice already and she just wants to add two more. Sheesh, what’s the big deal?

Why when young kids cheat, it ain’t cheating

Back to my game and imagination – that’s why when I made a game for young kids, I built into it the ability for the person running the game to say “yes” as much as possible. Mixing atomic age giant monsters with golden aged comic people and talking ponies who have no hands yet somehow still build trains and stuff is perfectly okay! In a young kids mind there’s no barriers formed yet between what is, what should be and whatever. They’re still learning all this stuff about the world around them and what’s possible – to a 6 year old, just about anything is possible.

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Popularity: 2%

 Posted by Ben on May 10, 2012 at 10:04 am  Tagged with: , , , , , ,

The Kickstarter Problem

 Board and Card Games, Comics, Role Playing Games, Technology  12 Responses »
May 092012
 

The lovely Kickstarter logo

Short post today. I want to talk about Kickstarter, the self-described “funding platform for creative projects.” Here’s a link to their guidelines, which constrain but don’t seem that strict.

The concept behind the site is very simple. Let’s say I want to create something. I can start a Kickstarter page, and fill it out with all the details about whatever it is I’m gonna make. Donors can come, see how much my fundraising goal is, and choose to contribute. I set up fundraising “tiers”, much like larger fundraising organizations do, except these tiers provide tangible benefits. The $10 tier might get you a personalized thank you card, the $50 tier might get you a signed copy of whatever I’m creating, and a $500 donation might get your name listed as a Gold Donor or whatever.

The main selling point of Kickstarter is that if the fundraising goal is not met, you don’t end up donating any money. So if my goal is $400, and I only raise $250, the money raised all goes back to the donors, no questions asked. So it’s kind of like risk-free financial supporting: toss some money if you like the idea, but if not enough people do, then there’s no risk.

There are definitely some cool projects that have popped up on Kickstarter in the past year or so. But I am a bit worried that it might get out of hand.

I’m not saying the Kickstarter model is a bad one. In fact, I’m absolutely positive that more projects will see the light of day because of the platform, when in the past they would have been merely the dreams of idle gamers, artists, and programmers. Kickstarter is a fabulous tool for the indie creator, to be able to subsidize the creation of whatever his or her dream project is – and if enough people can get behind it, then it’s worth creating.

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Popularity: 2%

 Posted by Nick on May 9, 2012 at 12:00 pm  Tagged with: , , , ,
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