Gaming Thoughts
Feb. 12th, 2003 02:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_gneechI don't know if I'll be able to pull it off or not, but I'm going to try to work up my d20 Modern ideas for playing this weekend or next. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jamesbarrett is talking about taking a break from GMing while work picks up for him, and I want to do some non-D&D gaming.
Cool thing: d20 Modern is open gaming content, so theoretically, if I came up with cool enough stuff for my game idea, I could write it up and publish it.
Right now, I'm still toying with different ideas about what I want the game to be. I have a recurring tendency to run games that I want to play in, and what I want to play in, more than anything right now, is basically something like Tomb Raider, the RPG. Laurie has offered to run a game like that for me, and if she does I'll be all over it like a cheap suit. But in the meantime, I'm impatient, so I've been working in the back of my mind on coming up with such a game myself.
I have been so flibbertigibbetty about gaming for the past few years ... I get enthused about an idea, then drop it, then another idea, then drop that ... it's very frustrating, and not just for me. Frisk and Camstone both have D&D characters hanging in limbo because I keep avoiding going back to Shadows Under Thessalaine, and we never finished that Deadlands d20 we started, either.
Some of it is just that running a game is very labor-intensive; you have to come up with stats, maps, and cool bits, not to mention an engaging plot and interesting non-player characters for the heroes to interact with. And some of it is mechanics and genre problems. I hate D&D magic ... as much better as 3e is than previous versions, it still becomes a mess storywise after 5th or 6th level, because the magic-wielding characters rule the world.
Also, as levels go up, building an NPC becomes a half-hour's labor by itself in 3e ... you have to figure out what skills are cross-class, which feats they do and don't have access to, etc. e-Tools makes that much faster and easier -- but only for D&D, not d20 generally, and only if you stick to the PHB/DMG classes.
I have cool ideas for a way to make D&D magic work the way I want it to ... but implementing those ideas would force me to go back to paper for all magic-using NPCs ... and if I'm going to be doing that much work anyway, what's the point of using a system I don't really like? The draw of D&D is its "off-the-shelfability."
And, given that there's no e-Tools for d20 Modern, what do I have to gain by using it? Neither Frisk nor Camstone are familiar with it, so what would probably end up happening is that I would create a few pregenerated characters for them to choose from ... and since character creation is always Frisk's big beef with HERO, I could do the same thing with HERO just as easily and use it.
Except (sigh) I'm not as excited by HERO as I used to be, either. I love the combat system, even if it does take forever to have even a quick barroom brawl ... but the characteristics and skills don't have a lot of variation. Your chances of success for anything you do are:
8 or less (26%)
11 or less (63%)
12 or less (74%)
13 or less (84%)
14 or less (90%)
This is probably what leads to Frisk's feelings that all his HERO characters were the same ... is there really that much difference between somebody with Stealth 12- and Stealth 13-?
GURPS at least widens that range a little by including 9- (38%) and 10- (50%), but I don't know the rules to GURPS and am certainly in no position to teach it to Frisk and Cam.
I have played around with a homebrew system that takes what I like about a bunch of different systems and synthesizes them -- but if anything, running a homebrew game is three or four times the work of writing up high-level D&D NPC's! There's a ton of math, there's a ton of idiot-proofing the rules, there's a ton of coming up with cool things to put in ... it's tough!
Finally, there are genre issues to be considered. Frisk will play anything, but if it's not fantasy, he's basically there for the ride. Camstone, similarly, has said that he leans towards fantasy for gaming because he has a very high-tech engineering job and wants to escape from science and reality when he gets home. He wants to play with magic, precisely because his day job is contingent on having a very intimate relationship with what's really possible. So that means, for instance, no space opera -- because the moment the blasters come out and the particle shields go up, he'll be going, "Nope, nope, it doesn't work that way, nope!" and will start trying to come up with realistic alternatives -- which would be too much like work.
I hope that the "jump on the roller coaster and fuhgeddaboudit!" nature of an action-adventure storyline will enable him to get over that -- but it's worrisome. He's said that he wasn't interested in a 007-style spy-vs.-spy game for basically the same reasons ... so how will he react to being dropped into Jurrassic Park with a shotgun and 24 hours to find the Jade Skull of Toganda?
Hmm. Maybe I should follow Frisk's mantra of "Let go and jump!" It could just be that I'm overthinking the whole darn thing. Gaming is supposed to be a fun hobby, after all, not something I sit around fretting over.
-The Gneech
jamesbarrett is talking about taking a break from GMing while work picks up for him, and I want to do some non-D&D gaming.Cool thing: d20 Modern is open gaming content, so theoretically, if I came up with cool enough stuff for my game idea, I could write it up and publish it.
Right now, I'm still toying with different ideas about what I want the game to be. I have a recurring tendency to run games that I want to play in, and what I want to play in, more than anything right now, is basically something like Tomb Raider, the RPG. Laurie has offered to run a game like that for me, and if she does I'll be all over it like a cheap suit. But in the meantime, I'm impatient, so I've been working in the back of my mind on coming up with such a game myself.
I have been so flibbertigibbetty about gaming for the past few years ... I get enthused about an idea, then drop it, then another idea, then drop that ... it's very frustrating, and not just for me. Frisk and Camstone both have D&D characters hanging in limbo because I keep avoiding going back to Shadows Under Thessalaine, and we never finished that Deadlands d20 we started, either.
Some of it is just that running a game is very labor-intensive; you have to come up with stats, maps, and cool bits, not to mention an engaging plot and interesting non-player characters for the heroes to interact with. And some of it is mechanics and genre problems. I hate D&D magic ... as much better as 3e is than previous versions, it still becomes a mess storywise after 5th or 6th level, because the magic-wielding characters rule the world.
Also, as levels go up, building an NPC becomes a half-hour's labor by itself in 3e ... you have to figure out what skills are cross-class, which feats they do and don't have access to, etc. e-Tools makes that much faster and easier -- but only for D&D, not d20 generally, and only if you stick to the PHB/DMG classes.
I have cool ideas for a way to make D&D magic work the way I want it to ... but implementing those ideas would force me to go back to paper for all magic-using NPCs ... and if I'm going to be doing that much work anyway, what's the point of using a system I don't really like? The draw of D&D is its "off-the-shelfability."
And, given that there's no e-Tools for d20 Modern, what do I have to gain by using it? Neither Frisk nor Camstone are familiar with it, so what would probably end up happening is that I would create a few pregenerated characters for them to choose from ... and since character creation is always Frisk's big beef with HERO, I could do the same thing with HERO just as easily and use it.
Except (sigh) I'm not as excited by HERO as I used to be, either. I love the combat system, even if it does take forever to have even a quick barroom brawl ... but the characteristics and skills don't have a lot of variation. Your chances of success for anything you do are:
8 or less (26%)
11 or less (63%)
12 or less (74%)
13 or less (84%)
14 or less (90%)
This is probably what leads to Frisk's feelings that all his HERO characters were the same ... is there really that much difference between somebody with Stealth 12- and Stealth 13-?
GURPS at least widens that range a little by including 9- (38%) and 10- (50%), but I don't know the rules to GURPS and am certainly in no position to teach it to Frisk and Cam.
I have played around with a homebrew system that takes what I like about a bunch of different systems and synthesizes them -- but if anything, running a homebrew game is three or four times the work of writing up high-level D&D NPC's! There's a ton of math, there's a ton of idiot-proofing the rules, there's a ton of coming up with cool things to put in ... it's tough!
Finally, there are genre issues to be considered. Frisk will play anything, but if it's not fantasy, he's basically there for the ride. Camstone, similarly, has said that he leans towards fantasy for gaming because he has a very high-tech engineering job and wants to escape from science and reality when he gets home. He wants to play with magic, precisely because his day job is contingent on having a very intimate relationship with what's really possible. So that means, for instance, no space opera -- because the moment the blasters come out and the particle shields go up, he'll be going, "Nope, nope, it doesn't work that way, nope!" and will start trying to come up with realistic alternatives -- which would be too much like work.
I hope that the "jump on the roller coaster and fuhgeddaboudit!" nature of an action-adventure storyline will enable him to get over that -- but it's worrisome. He's said that he wasn't interested in a 007-style spy-vs.-spy game for basically the same reasons ... so how will he react to being dropped into Jurrassic Park with a shotgun and 24 hours to find the Jade Skull of Toganda?
Hmm. Maybe I should follow Frisk's mantra of "Let go and jump!" It could just be that I'm overthinking the whole darn thing. Gaming is supposed to be a fun hobby, after all, not something I sit around fretting over.
-The Gneech
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*nods*
Date: 2003-02-12 11:36 am (UTC)For me, though, I don't know that it's the /work/ -it's just that I put in all of that work, and then my players often seem utterly uninterested in even hanging onto their character sheets, much less wrapping their mind around continuing storylines or literary subtext. If all of my games were one-shots, my players wouldn't care in the least... but since I hate running simple one-shot games, their lack of anything even resembling commitment to an ongoing storyline discourages me.
I mean - I /remember/ being in a committed campaign, taking notes, making maps, fixing my character sheet between game sessions (eraser marks annoyed me when I sat down for a fresh game), keeping notebooks for characters talking about where and when items were acquired, reputations, names of major NPCs - and we were /all/ like that when we played. Now, though, it seems like my players think it's a major chore to keep track of character sheets and crib sheets from game session to game session.
*grumps* So I grow far less enthusiastic about putting the work into making a living world, when my PC's can't be troubled to even hang onto the bit of paper representing their persona within it. So maybe I am an old, crotchety DM - but I dunno, isn't the fun character development? Hanging out with friends telling this grand story? I mean - as a DM, /my/ fun is creating the story in which I can embroil the players, the intrigues and combats, the reversals and the triumphs. I guess it just loses its lustre when you've got players who lack an overriding interest in that story.
Eh. I'm grumping.
Ishmael
Re: *nods*
Date: 2003-02-12 09:12 pm (UTC)Giants in 3e
I have recently encountered something with D&D that is bugging me and that's part of the reason I want to take some time to do some further preparation. Giants are far stronger than I feel they have the right to be. Yeah, they're big and strong, but they should not be that skilled.
Giants, especially Hill Giants, should be really big versions of orcs. If they hit you, it's going to really hurt, but the current rules have them set to be really good at hitting you too and that's plain wrong. They should have an orc's ability to hit set to their power level. Instead of the massive +15/+10 they currently have, I feel they should have a more reasonable +8/+3.
At their current power, they were easily hitting Tyro's boosted AC of 25 when that should have been hard to do. Given that 3e boosted their hit points almost triple, giving them massive AC's is unfair as well. That, though, can be gotten around with some magic spells and weapondry. If I change nothing else about Giants, it is going to be their attack rolls. They are just too damn high. The Giants in my world are not that great at combat. Their advantage is all in their size, not their skill.
-Frisk
Re: Giants in 3e
Re: Giants in 3e
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