Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, folks!
Lately, I put my Ptolus d20 game on hiatus after about 35 sessions and 13 levels. It's not reached the end, as I was hoping to take my players from level 1 to 20, but I found that I was foundering.
Running a campaign, or a collection of connected adventures, is a tough challenge over the long haul. I think the most important thing to remember is to keep focus. I put the game on hiatus because I found that I was wandering all over the map, throwing things at my players with little rhyme or reason. I was hoping that it would all gel, and that was not the proper way to do things. My players picked up on the lack of focus and weren't sure what they should be doing. I felt like I was desperately trying to keep my head above water. The game was not fun.
I think part of the reason I lost focus was that I had used some large published modules to fill out the campaign. When those were done, I had gotten so used to using the modules to give me direction, I wasn't sure what to do anymore.
Another problem is the length of the campaign. Dungeons and Dragons assumes that you will play the game from level 1 to 20. If you play one session a week, and it takes two or three sessions to go up one level, it can take more than a year to complete the campaign (probably closer to 2 years, as you likely won't play EVERY week.) Telling a connected story over that length of time is exhausting. Also, your players won't be able to remember everything over that length of time.
The best solution for this that I've come up with is to have story-arcs in a campaign. For a few levels, the players will deal with one story, usually involving one or two villains. They complete a few adventures revolving around this story-arc, and they get to feel a sense of completion, of closure.
I can only guess where this is going to go next, but I hope to take a few weeks off and think about where I want the campaign to go, and how I want to play it.
One last thing. While I was in Fayetteville, NC, I visited an old gaming store and picked up and old book called "Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering" by Robin D. Laws. It's a good read and has some really good advice.
Now Reading: Blood Engines by T.A. Pratt
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Friday, December 19, 2008
Reward Mechanics
Lately, I've been considering how games provide feedback to their players.
Look at any game, and you'll see that it is set up with certain expectations. Dungeons and Dragons, for instance, expects that you will explore maps, kill the monsters, and take their treasure. That's the type of game that D&D players want, and that's the type of game the designers provide. You get experience points for killing the monsters, and the game design expects that you will have a level X magic item improving your character by the time you are level Y.
What I've been wondering is which came first, the design or the expectations? Did the D&D designers see that people wanted to explore dungeons and design the experience system to reward that play, or did the rewards come first and play changed to generate the most reward?
We are, by and large, creatures of self-interest. We will usually favor actions that improve our circumstances. So, in Dungeons and Dragons, killing monsters and taking their loot is the fastest way to advance your character, so you do it.
For another example, look at Burning Wheel. It doesn't use experience points. Instead, there are two major forms of advancement: improving skills and earning artha. You improve skills by using them, and you need to use them at varying levels of difficulty to advance. Artha is used to improve your die rolls, and you earn that by roleplaying. Your character has beliefs, instincts, and traits, and you earn artha by incorporating those beliefs, instincts, and traits into the game. You set up your own reward system, by saying "This is what I want my character to do, and I want to be rewarded for it." If you had a belief that it is better to make peace with the orcs than to fight them, you'd earn the exact same rewards as a character that has the belief that all orcs must die bloody deaths.
I've been running a Burning Wheel game for my players for the last month or so. Before that, they were only D&D players. It's been a rough learning curve, but I'm beginning to see changes in how they play. They're no longer interested only in defeating their enemies. Instead there are moral dilemmas ("Do I heal this injured man, even though he is a heathen unbeliever?"), it also helps that Burning Wheel has a rather gritty combat system, where a wound can last for a long time, which makes combat something to avoid.
Reward mechanics can also influence the genre of the game. In TORG, for example, they use a mechanic called perseverence to create the feel of a horror story in the game. Until you generate enough perseverence points, the monsters have several advantages over you. You gain the points by researching the monster's weakenesses and witnessing the atrocities it commits. This strengthens your resolve to defeat it, until you gain enough information and resolve to enable you to overpower it. The system even encourages splitting the party up, as they can gain more information that way. Just like you see in horror movies.
It's important when choosing a game to consider what sort of behavior the game expects. If this doesn't fit YOUR expectations, you should choose a different game.
Now Reading: Code of the Lifemaker, by James P. Hogan.
Look at any game, and you'll see that it is set up with certain expectations. Dungeons and Dragons, for instance, expects that you will explore maps, kill the monsters, and take their treasure. That's the type of game that D&D players want, and that's the type of game the designers provide. You get experience points for killing the monsters, and the game design expects that you will have a level X magic item improving your character by the time you are level Y.
What I've been wondering is which came first, the design or the expectations? Did the D&D designers see that people wanted to explore dungeons and design the experience system to reward that play, or did the rewards come first and play changed to generate the most reward?
We are, by and large, creatures of self-interest. We will usually favor actions that improve our circumstances. So, in Dungeons and Dragons, killing monsters and taking their loot is the fastest way to advance your character, so you do it.
For another example, look at Burning Wheel. It doesn't use experience points. Instead, there are two major forms of advancement: improving skills and earning artha. You improve skills by using them, and you need to use them at varying levels of difficulty to advance. Artha is used to improve your die rolls, and you earn that by roleplaying. Your character has beliefs, instincts, and traits, and you earn artha by incorporating those beliefs, instincts, and traits into the game. You set up your own reward system, by saying "This is what I want my character to do, and I want to be rewarded for it." If you had a belief that it is better to make peace with the orcs than to fight them, you'd earn the exact same rewards as a character that has the belief that all orcs must die bloody deaths.
I've been running a Burning Wheel game for my players for the last month or so. Before that, they were only D&D players. It's been a rough learning curve, but I'm beginning to see changes in how they play. They're no longer interested only in defeating their enemies. Instead there are moral dilemmas ("Do I heal this injured man, even though he is a heathen unbeliever?"), it also helps that Burning Wheel has a rather gritty combat system, where a wound can last for a long time, which makes combat something to avoid.
Reward mechanics can also influence the genre of the game. In TORG, for example, they use a mechanic called perseverence to create the feel of a horror story in the game. Until you generate enough perseverence points, the monsters have several advantages over you. You gain the points by researching the monster's weakenesses and witnessing the atrocities it commits. This strengthens your resolve to defeat it, until you gain enough information and resolve to enable you to overpower it. The system even encourages splitting the party up, as they can gain more information that way. Just like you see in horror movies.
It's important when choosing a game to consider what sort of behavior the game expects. If this doesn't fit YOUR expectations, you should choose a different game.
Now Reading: Code of the Lifemaker, by James P. Hogan.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Ending a Character's Story
First off, I'd like to apologize for my long absence. I don't really have an excuse. Things got busy and I kept finding reasons to put this off. Well, here's an early New Year's resolution: I will write here more often.
OK, on to my topic of today. I recently had a character I was playing in a D&D campaign die, and it was by my choice. His story had reached its end, and I thought this was the proper way to send him off.
A little background (skip this if you hate gaming stories): My character, Borodim, was a mad druid of the sea in a pirate-themed campaign. He was once a fisherman who was caught by mind flayers and aboleths and experimented on. He later escaped and joined a party of adventurers, driven to cover the entire world in 3 inches of water. (Like I said, mad.) Recently, the party returned to the undersea city of the mind flayers and aboleths, where Borodim had to confront his past. He and the party killed the mad wizard who experimented on him, and led a mass escape for many of the abominations slaves. In the course of the battle, Borodim was wounded and, a moment of lucidity, told the party to flee while he held off their enemies. ("Fly, you fools!") He was captured and fed to the Mind Flayer's Elder Brain, where his madness drove the brain into a seizure, crippling the Mind Flayers and Aboleths plans... for a time.
I had several reasons for killing off Borodim. First, he had returned to the beginning of his story, and had a chance to confront and defeat the demons that drove him. After that, I felt that there wasn't much reason to play him any longer. Second, his mad antics, while amusing, were starting to get a little stale to me (and, I think, to the other players.) Third, and this is the game mechanics reason, he was starting to prove less effective in combat and I was getting tired of playing a spellcaster (especially one who couldn't use his spells while shapeshifted.)
So, the battle in the undersea city seemed like the perfect moment for him to go. His death would show that the abominations were a grave danger that the party would have to return to fight. His sacrifice to the Elder Brain would incapacitate them for a time and allow the other players to escape.
So, with my GM's permission, I narrated a little story of Borodim's end, telling of how he was captured, taken to the Brain, and how it reacted. There were no die rolls, and everyone agreed that it was a good end.
The decision to kill off a character is often a troublesome one for a party of characters. First, the group usually depends on each character to fulfill a certain role (damage dealer, healer, battlefield controller, etc.). Removing one character can throw that balance out. Second, some of the players might object to the death of ANY player character, or resent the fact that you remove a character and then get a new one of the same power level. Lastly, the changing of a character can mean that your GM has to change around their plans, which might be a chore if he or she had a large role planned for you.
The only real solution to this problem is to talk it out amongst the group. Explain your reasons for ending the character's story and try to make a replacement character that fits smoothly into the group. Hopefully you can reach an accomodation where you are not stuck playing a character that has "jumped the shark" and the other players still get to enjoy the game.
Until next time...
Now Reading: The Code of the Lifemaker by James P. Hogan
Now Watching: Emma, a Victorian Romance
OK, on to my topic of today. I recently had a character I was playing in a D&D campaign die, and it was by my choice. His story had reached its end, and I thought this was the proper way to send him off.
A little background (skip this if you hate gaming stories): My character, Borodim, was a mad druid of the sea in a pirate-themed campaign. He was once a fisherman who was caught by mind flayers and aboleths and experimented on. He later escaped and joined a party of adventurers, driven to cover the entire world in 3 inches of water. (Like I said, mad.) Recently, the party returned to the undersea city of the mind flayers and aboleths, where Borodim had to confront his past. He and the party killed the mad wizard who experimented on him, and led a mass escape for many of the abominations slaves. In the course of the battle, Borodim was wounded and, a moment of lucidity, told the party to flee while he held off their enemies. ("Fly, you fools!") He was captured and fed to the Mind Flayer's Elder Brain, where his madness drove the brain into a seizure, crippling the Mind Flayers and Aboleths plans... for a time.
I had several reasons for killing off Borodim. First, he had returned to the beginning of his story, and had a chance to confront and defeat the demons that drove him. After that, I felt that there wasn't much reason to play him any longer. Second, his mad antics, while amusing, were starting to get a little stale to me (and, I think, to the other players.) Third, and this is the game mechanics reason, he was starting to prove less effective in combat and I was getting tired of playing a spellcaster (especially one who couldn't use his spells while shapeshifted.)
So, the battle in the undersea city seemed like the perfect moment for him to go. His death would show that the abominations were a grave danger that the party would have to return to fight. His sacrifice to the Elder Brain would incapacitate them for a time and allow the other players to escape.
So, with my GM's permission, I narrated a little story of Borodim's end, telling of how he was captured, taken to the Brain, and how it reacted. There were no die rolls, and everyone agreed that it was a good end.
The decision to kill off a character is often a troublesome one for a party of characters. First, the group usually depends on each character to fulfill a certain role (damage dealer, healer, battlefield controller, etc.). Removing one character can throw that balance out. Second, some of the players might object to the death of ANY player character, or resent the fact that you remove a character and then get a new one of the same power level. Lastly, the changing of a character can mean that your GM has to change around their plans, which might be a chore if he or she had a large role planned for you.
The only real solution to this problem is to talk it out amongst the group. Explain your reasons for ending the character's story and try to make a replacement character that fits smoothly into the group. Hopefully you can reach an accomodation where you are not stuck playing a character that has "jumped the shark" and the other players still get to enjoy the game.
Until next time...
Now Reading: The Code of the Lifemaker by James P. Hogan
Now Watching: Emma, a Victorian Romance
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