On Killing PCs

Discuss.





Okay, I'll give you a bit more than that.  Fine.  Be that way.

Let me first qualify 'death.'  When I say a character is 'dead,' I mean 'unplayable.'  I do not mean 'mildly inconvenienced' (hi, Epic Level!)  I do not even mean 'significantly inconvenienced' (level loss, etc).  I mean 'open up the character builder and start choosing stats.'

As a DM, I have a mixed relationship with inflicting death upon Player Characters.  On the one hand, I want people to be responsible for their actions, and for consequences to be realistic.  I want there to be a sense of danger in combat, and a thrill when a monster's attack narrowly misses or a key save is made.

On the other, people do not like having their characters die.  Players get understandably attached to their characters.  They should.  If they don't get invested in their characters, the campaign (or at least any 'role playing' therein) is likely to suck.  But, of course, this attachment also means that it's difficult for me to kill their beloved characters, even if that's simply how the dice fall.  I'm not there to emotionally scar my players, I'm there to have fun with them, after all (though some DMs might take a different stance on the issue of whether or not emotional scarring constitutes fun).

So, historically, I have made compromises.  There have been three fatalities during my two campaigns, and none have stuck.  I'm not entirely happy about this fact, and while I'd like to rationalize each of my decisions, the fact is that, historically, I've been unwilling to actually take the hard line I espouse in theory on character death.

Monster Power Cards, which clearly define the abilities that monsters have to the players, are one step in the right direction.  If monster abilities are more static, I think death seems less arbitrary, and "fairer," even if from all functional standpoints, I still control what abilities the monsters have.  Players seem to be more bothered by the DM coming up with something on the spot than with regular unbalanced design, and I'm happy to accomodate this preference.  I think the Joker had some good stuff to say about this idea in The Dark Knight.

The 'Table of Messy Results,' which substitutes gross bodily injury for actual death (most of the time), is another helpful tool.  Having a character greviously injured provides a challenge to overcome (for the player and the character) as a penalty for failure.  It might require a change in direction for a character's development, but I'd say that's a good (or at least interesting) thing.

I also hope that having more experienced players will lead them to accept the results of their actions, and more importantly, lead me to be willing to follow through on those consequences.  I hate the thought of being the douchebag DM who turns the newbie's first three characters into bloody stains because he or she happened to be (understandably) genre blind.  Yes, many people learned to play this way.  Yes, 'back in your day, you didn't have no fancy healing surges.  You had 1d4 hit points and a rock.  And you had to share the rock.'  Yes, I'll get off of your lawn.  If it's nobody's first rodeo, though, I think I'd have less pangs of guilt about smacking PCs for making foolhardy, misinformed, or just plain unfortunate decisions.

In the end, though, it really is on me deciding to stand by the ideals I've put forth numerous times on the subject.  Anyone have any insight on this?  I'm always open to hearing new ideas regarding this tricky subject.


-Stormshrug

On Recirculating Content

So, first of all, there's now an honest-to-God interview with Mike and Bryan.  Wall St Journal, you have been all over this one, haven't you?  What's more, the questions are actually poignant and demonstrate a surprising knowledge of the series.  I give props where props are due to Mr. Farley, who is either a fellow fan or an extremely dedicated researcher.

Anyway, I always feel a bit cheap when my blog post consists entirely of responding to content generated somewhere else.  That said, I'm probably going to keep making these posts because, let's be honest, they're easy, and I usually have stuff to say about what other people are saying.  I'll continue to try to have my own 'value added,' however.  Tell me if that's working for you or not.

So, what new information do we get from this Interview?

-Katara is Tenzin's mother.  Nobody is surprised.

-Being stuck in an iceberg DID "[burn] up some of [Aang's] extra Avatar time."  Lucky guess on my part, I suppose.

-New Republic City is based on Shanghai in the 1930s.  Gee, there was another series like that recently... whatever happened to that show, anyway.  (Fansubbers?  Care to tell us?)

-Legend of Korra is Mike and Bryan's response to the usual "Hey, this is making money, do another season" request that gets handed down by the network when something does well.  I would like to speak for the fandom when I say: THANK YOU for not tacking an unplanned season onto the end of A:TLA.  The temptation is obvious, and the results are rarely good.  More writers, producers, directors, etc. should be willing to take the risk of letting one story end to start another (even if the two are connected, as these two stories are).

Here's to hoping for the best for Legend of Korra!

-Stormshrug

On Unbridled Optimism (Starcraft II)

Okay, so, I lied a little bit last post.  Sorry, Mike and Bryan, but in my defense, Blizzard was here first.

I'm willing to say right now that this is going to be awesome.  Given that it's been in Beta for ages (and apparently the Beta's pretty awesome, if a bit unbalanced), I'm not too worried about this statement biting me in the ass later.

Kudos to Blizzard for releasing another trailer to build hype - the first one did a great job, but I suspect that it's a bit far from people's minds, since it was, what, two years ago?  Three?

Anyway, I have to say, the thing I'm most interested in with Starcraft II is the development of the plot, especially Raynor's personal arc, and it looks like he's going to be front and center for Wings of Liberty.  I'm not very good at RTSes (though, like Warcraft 3, I may well find this one compelling enough to elevate myself from 'unforgivably horrible' to 'not a total embarrassment'). 

Starcraft's universe is interesting in that it's pretty much an extremely downscaled version of the 40k universe.  It takes on many of the same themes, but does so over much smaller areas of space, with less species (who fill all of the same niches), and has only a few important characters (Raynor, Mensk, Zeratul, Kerrigan, and maybe, I dunno, Artanis?), particularly after the lore purge that took place in Brood War.  I love the epic, expansive feel of the 40k universe, but this is nice, too.  It lets you get invested in the characters, instead of the setting.

The number one feature I'm looking forward to is, as always, the campaign editor.  Not that I actually ever FINISH the projects I begin in the campaign editor, but I very much enjoy working on them nonetheless.

Plus, given all of the giant robots they have now, I have a good reason to play Terrans.  We'll have to see if they upset Protoss (and their noble Photon Cannon Spam) as my main species for Starcraft II.

Hell, it's about time!

-Stormshrug

On Cautious Optimism

Well, we've finally got an official announcement and a premise for Avatar: Legend of Korra (good job being on the ball Chris!  And Jesse!).  Bryke are notorious Comic-Con Trolls (Warning: Sh*ttty handcam incoming), and incidentally, Comic-Con 2010 begins tomorrow (with some opening previews tonight).

Interesting notes about the premise as reported by the Wall St. Journal (passed on via Last Airbender Fans, as the WSJ link they provide is dead, but I found a working one to the same article):

-It takes place 70 years after Avatar: The Last Airbender.
-It follows Korra, a waterbender and the new Avatar.
-One of the settings (there will probably be many - it's Avatar) is 'Republic City,' a steampunk metropolis melting pot of all four nations that has apparently either replaced or surpassed Ba Sing Se as the center of the Avatar world.
-Not everyone in said city likes benders.
-Aang had at least one child, named Tenzin, who is an Airbender.

If this info is correct (and not misreported, intentionally or otherwise), it means a few interesting things for the Avatar-verse.

-Aang died relatively young, by Avatar universe standards.  If Korra is 16 (the usual age for beginning the Avatar journey, and she probably isn't younger than 12), that means that Aang was only around 67 when he passed away.  Given that Bumi and Guru Pathik are both well over a century old at the end of the series and still going strong, and Avatar Kyoshi lived for over two centuries, we know that individuals in this universe *can* live an extremely long time by our standards.  We don't know the degree to which characters like Bumi and Guru Pathik are anomalous (and Kyoshi certainly was, though presumably the "Avatar Stuff" would apply to Aang).  Still, for an Avatar, it seems young.  Maybe being stuck in the iceberg did take a toll on Aang's body.  Maybe he was killed.  In any case, I suspect that there's something going on here.

-Any of the other children and teenagers from the original series could reasonably be alive.  They'd be pretty old at this point, admittedly (early to late 80s), but given what we've seen some Cool Old People do in the Avatar universe, all this means is that they'll be more badass than ever.

-Technology continued to progress after the war.  I doubt this surprises anybody, but while Avatar: The Last Airbender gave us a world on the edge of a technological explosion, here we see the results.  Nature versus unchecked industrialism is going to be even more of a core issue than it was before.  Hopefully, as before, both appreciation of the natural world and the utility of new technologies (when used responsibly) will be treated maturely.

-Bending is cultural/belief based, and so, as the influence of technology waxes, the prevalence of bending may wane.  The Earth Kingdom had the smallest percentage of benders in the original series (though, given its size, this said little about raw numbers), and was also the most industrialized and bureaucratized (if not the most technologically advanced) nation.  Air Nomads, on the other hand, typically eschewed worldly pursuits to focus on the spiritual, and as such, all Air Nomads were Airbenders.  It'll be interesting what, if anything, they do with this.  The mention of anti-bender politics also suggests that benders have become rarer - they were so integral to daily life virtually everywhere in the original series that it seems unlikely they would be oppressed, but if there were less benders and society did not rely on them as heavily, such sentiments could more easily take root.

-The Shipping Wars will finally be put to an EVEN MORE definitive end.  Probably.  Unless the series is so unimaginably trollish as not to tell us who ended up with whom via their shared offspring (and probably their offspring's offspring).  That said, I guarantee you that people will try to ressurect Zutara in some form with Korra and [most prominent Firebender within 10 years of her age's name goes here].  It's gonna happen.

Now that I've overanalyzed some tiny, insignificant scraps of data, I'll say that I am reserving full-on excitement until we've at least got a little more data.  You know, like the front half of Korra's character design.

This is what we're working with so far...

Source: Last Airbender Fans/WSJ

I have about as much faith in Mike and Bryan as it is possible for me to have in a (pair of) creator(s).  But not every work lives up to its predecessors, and I've been burned before.  I also wish that we could be more certain of Avatar: Legend of Korra reaching completion, but if it's airing on TV, we get no such guarantees.  While Avatar: The Last Airbender recieved very good ratings and reviews, it occasionally seemed to be on the verge of disappearance and possible cancellation, and five month periods with no word from Nickelodeon about the air date of finished episodes did not help in the least.  Of course, this is part of the gamble any show must make, but animation in the U.S. is a tough bracket to compete in.

This is a lot to worry about now, though.  For the moment, I'll be keeping my eyes on Comic-Con to see what spills out.

-Stormshrug

On Forgetting

I was biking to work today, in something of a daze as I usually am before I caffienate, and I had a great idea.  Well, it may not have been great.  But I remember that it seemed great at the time.  It was one of those 'why hasn't anybody ever done this before' ideas (I'm sure the answer is 'somebody has,' but I can't verify that unless I remember it.)  I think it was the concept for a story, or a joke.  Perhaps it was more cute or droll than truly clever.  I can't remember.  For some reason, I'm drawing a mental connection to Rome, so it probably had to do with speculative fiction.  Time travel, perhaps?  It's hard to tell reconstruction from new ideas inspired by the attempt at reconstruction.

Infuriating.  I need to invest in that pocket notebook, and more importantly, remember to use it.

-Stormshrug

On Regularity

So, in case it isn't abundantly clear, I'm not trying to post every day.

First, I must salute Mr. Flask for doing so (whenver he isn't away).  Writing every day is no small feat.  I was tempted to try to match him, because, let's be honest, I'm competitive, and I like the idea of a challenge.  Plus, as he points out in one of his first posts, writing every day is probably the best thing for your skills as a writer.  So far as I know, that's true. 

I considered all of this.  Ultimately, I decided that unless I have something I want to say, I'm willing to let silence preside for a while.  And sometimes even when I do have something to say, I don't want to publish it immediately.  I like to let my posts sit a bit before publishing them - probably because I'm indecisive and a procrastinator, and by delaying, I can put off committing to my words a  bit longer.

-Stormshrug

On Online Tabletop RPGs

There are things I really like about playing in tabletop RPGs online.  I'm not the kind of person who *needs* to roll physical dice, and so I like that added convenience of not having to waste time with digging around to find the third d10.  I also like that it's easier to separate roleplaying and table talk - in text, it's very easy to demarcate character speech and player speech (although, this reminds me that, the next time I have a reason to play a face-to-face campaign, I need to make up and use a different voice for my character other than my normal speaking voice, to accomplish the same thing).  I think people are also willing to take more risks, with typed text, and, as such, get more into character.  Acting a part is hard, but if you reduce the required input to text only, I think people are more willing to push the envelope.  And, of course, you have a clear record of what was said, what was done, and what happened, which is useful for a plethora of reasons.

That said, there are, of course, a number of problems inherent in online tabletop gaming that like to accompany all of its wonderful advantages and stab you in the back when you look away.  Imagine trying to play a sit-down tabletop RPG with every player in possession of a laptop, iPod, phone, or other electronic accessory.  All the time.  There is a reason that I greatly dislike it when players bring such items to face-to-face games, and try to discourage them from doing so.  The distractability factor for players is simply too high.  During whatever element of gameplay a player does not find interesting, he or she is likely to tune out - but this is very problematic later, when details from that period of time become important.

"NO! We were allied with those (hob)goblins!"*

(A completely out-of-context Order of the Stick panel!  Used for an unrelated joke!)

Access to electronics is an unavoidable part of gaming online, and though it isn't insurmountable, it certainly causes problems.  It also has a kind of sickening synergy with the reduced rate of conversation in online games - few people can type as quickly as they can speak - and so there may be (perfectly reasonable) pauses in an online game.  Added lulls combined with easy access distractions can mean trouble, even in a situation where the DM hasn't made any mistakes.

We're about to have a campaign run with both text and voice-chat, though.  I'm very curious to see how that will go.  The distraction factor is still present, but this might be mitigated by the slighlty faster clip of gameplay (ideally).

-Stormshrug


*He knows.  He just doesn't care.