Ok, so now that we have the baseline, let's see about jazzing things up a little. There are three big areas we want to address: we want to make sure there is some reason to use one attack instead of another, we want to capture some way to simulate aggro management, and we want to generally be able to jazz up the fight with special events, terrain and so on.
The first is the easiest, and we solve a bit of the third at the same time. The trick is that you can offload most of the fiddly bits onto the bad guy. The simple gimmick for this is to assign vulnerabilities to the bad guys that reflect tactical situations, and those can be paired with resistances. To give a concrete example, suppose the Boss can turn into a swarm of bugs - for the duration of this it might not take damage from any attacks except those that can hit more than one square. Or perhaps he can still be hit, but he'll take an extra point of damage from those attacks.
Provided that these vulnerabilities and resistance switch over the course of a fight, you successfully capture the idea that if you know what to do during each phase, you can fight more effectively. Now, admittedly the fact that in a WoW raid this knowledge is gained by dying repeatedly until you get it right, but that knowledge can probably be gotten some other way depending on the venue - for a convention game, for example, it might be part of the prelude.
There's a temptation to address the second point (aggro) with complex systems, causing certain actions to increase aggro, marking to move it around and so on, but that is unnecessary complication. If you step back, aggro is really just a mechanized way for the boss to "fight smart", seeking to go after the most cost effective targets - the squishy ones in particular. As a GM, you can already make that decision, targeting healers and more lightly armored PCs, so the only thing we really need is a way to allow the PCs to inhibit this.
So we'll compromise on a simple mechanic: any time an attack would mark the boss, the attacker gets a taunt token. Taunt token's can be spent to cancel a menace point which it used to fuel an attack that does not include the PC as a target. This does not cancel the attack, just the menace point - the boss can spend another or, if he cannot, the attack changes targets to the taunting PC. However, we want to model the idea of a "Main Tank" so let's add one more twist: at the end of a turn (after the last PC, before the Boss), all the taunt tokens need to be given to one character. This also saves the trouble of havign to track everyone's threat tokens.
For the third and final bit, , we need to add in a little bit of extra variety - enemies that support the boss, terrain features and so on. We don't want these to be too fiddly, so we're not too worried about details - what these should take the form of are choices - opportunity cost decisions that give a reason to choose one action or another (rather than provide only one obvious choice).
There will generally take two forms: The first will be special actions that can only be taken at specific times and places. If the fight takes place in a fallen cathedral, perhaps there are candles to be lit (which takes an action from someone in the middle range), and lighting a candle reduces the number of threat tokens the boss has, or grants attackers +1 damage or otherwise provides some benefit. These are easy to design, and simply depend upon the description of the environment. The only limiter is that these are usually only useful in a single phase of the fight.
Representing secondary creatures is a little more difficult. Mechanically, they should be represented as one more power of the boss - he spends menace to make them appear, but since it's not an attack, it's not influenced by aggro. Support enemies will appear in a given area and be represented by some number of threat tokens. They work like the boss, in that players can attack them instead, and if they clear a threshold of damage (usually the boss's level -2) then they remove one of the tokens. If there are any tokens left when the boss acts again, then they get used. What they're used for depends on the monster: sometimes they'll be turned in for straight damage to a target or targets in the area their in, but if the creature is more built for harassment, then the boss may get those threat tokens back in addition to any it generates this turn.
Now, with the reminder that this is still just an interesting stunt, tomorrow I'll try to take this theory and create a sample or two, and maybe discuss how to use some of these ideas in a less over-the-top fashion.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Running a Raid in 4e, Part 1
Gamefiend threw out the question of whether or not you could run a WoW style raid in 4e, and I've been finding myself chewing on it. I'm pretty confident the answer is "Yes", though I admit I think you'd be kind of crazy to try it, since anything that involves juggling that many players is crazy enough to really qualify as a stunt. It's something you could do at a convention, but it's probably better suited to online play (heck, maybe it's a good use of google wave). This is the a window into my thinking on this, and while it's super, super raw, I figured I'd share it as I work through the details on how I'd make it happen.
Now, you could do it as a straight-up fight, just by making a staged villain[1], probably a triple solo to make sure he has enough hit points to last, but that could quickly end in madness as everyone takes their turn to move and arrange and track their hit points and so on. Also, you'd need to add more area attacks or the things just going to get torn apart by sheer numbers.
So instead, I would probably set it up like an open ended skill challenge with an abstract map. The trick is to capture the two elements of a good raid: distinct roles, and a necessity to change up tactics.
The simplest way to do the "map" is to set up areas of engagement: Near, middle and far. Near means adjacent to the boss (where the main tank and melee damage dealers are going to be), far means at a distance (where most of the healers, buffers and ranged damage-dealers hang out) and middle is the space between, most occupied by skirmishers, off tanks, and specialized roles.
The boss, whatever he is, has a level. That level pretty much determines exactly what sort of threat he is, and also is the basis of most of his capabilities. His hit points are abstracted into the number of "Damage successes" it will take to take him down. I'm calling the ballpark on that his level (which I'll just call [L]) times 5, but this is totally unplaytested, so that might be off base, especially since it would probably be smart to scale him with the number of players. I'd endorse representing these with tokens, like poker chips, but it could just be that I'm nuts for tokens.
In a straight up fight, things go like this: On your turn you can move one "space" (or two spaces if you use any kind of movement power) or use a power (whether to attack or not). You might also do something else, but that's much more situational. Moving is hopefully self explanatory, but the actual fighting is something else.
When a player attempts to attack the boss, he can use any of his attacks, with the following limitation. Melee/close attacks require the character be near the boss, and ranged attacks (anything that would invite an attack of opportunity) need to be from the middle or far distance. If a character uses an ability to heal or buff an ally, that works normally.
An attack is always assumed to hit successfully, but most of the time the only thing that matters is the damage dealt - Raid Bosses are immune to all manner of special effects and statuses (except when they are not, see below), but benefits that help allies can still be triggered. If the damage dealt meets or exceeds a certain threshold (probably based off [L]), then it counts as a success, and the boss takes one point of "damage" - accruing damage successes is what ultimately takes the boss down.[2] However, any failure gives the Boss one "Menace Point".
This matters a lot because, after everyone's taken a turn, the boss gets to go. He has a number of menace points equal to his level, plus any he's gained from player failures. He uses them to build his attacks - he should have a list of abilities that have menace point costs, but in the absence of that it works something like this.
For 1 menace point he can make an attack against a single target in the "close" area. It is an attack against AC, where the boss effectively rolls 15+[L] and does damage equal to the low normal damage on the table of the gods (aka page 42 of the DMG)[3]. For each additional menace point spent he can enhance the attack by doing one of the following:
This proceeds, round robin, until either all the PCs are dead or the monster has taken enough damage to go down. Simple as that.
Now, this is very basic, and very mechanistic (which is, arguably, very apt for a raid) with very little in the way of tactics. It would be intensely boring because most player will simply do the same thing every round. However, this lays down the baseline for the next step, adding in important things like aggro, roles, abilities and events. And that comes next.
1 - A staged villain is one who, when reduced to zero hit points, changes rather than dies. In most cases this is a physical transformation (like clay statues that have snakes burst out of their chests when they're beaten) but it's also a useful way to simulate the changes in tactics that are familiar to video game players. Normally, each "stage" has normal hit points for its level, though you can just as easily make one stage elite or solo (but I normally wouldn't - the point of this trick is to offset the long dull endgame of solo fights). Easy to budget for it too, as each stage is just treated as its own critter, which is a little bit kind to the players, but I think it comes out in the wash.
2 - As an optional rule, you might allow additional thresholds to speed things along, and to make strikers feel more valuable. So if a creature's threshold is 11 and a hit deals 23 points of damage, you might decide it removes 2 points of damage and so on. Alternately, that might just be situational, but that's something for tomorrow's post.
3 - I am tempted to have damage be measured in healing surges rather than hit points, but I need to think about the impact this has on healing, and whether it means tanks (sorry, defenders) end up insufficiently tough. If damage is in hit points, it's the one thing that can't just be handled with different colored poker chips, but the onus of bookkeeping is on players, so it is distributed. That said, tokens or cards definitely have certain logistical advantages, especially for the large combats. Similar thinking could be applied to damage (just say that at-wills, Encounters and Dailies do 1, 2 and 3 respectively) and while that simplifies things, it's actually a bad idea because it makes things REALLY boring for the player, and removes the tactical choice-making I hope to introduce next.
4 - This is, by the way, insanely abusable, which is why the DM shoud not actually use this on the fly unless he's willing to show some restraint. It's a decent yardstick for pricing boss powers though, and I'll use it later when I craft up some demo raid bosses.
Now, you could do it as a straight-up fight, just by making a staged villain[1], probably a triple solo to make sure he has enough hit points to last, but that could quickly end in madness as everyone takes their turn to move and arrange and track their hit points and so on. Also, you'd need to add more area attacks or the things just going to get torn apart by sheer numbers.
So instead, I would probably set it up like an open ended skill challenge with an abstract map. The trick is to capture the two elements of a good raid: distinct roles, and a necessity to change up tactics.
The simplest way to do the "map" is to set up areas of engagement: Near, middle and far. Near means adjacent to the boss (where the main tank and melee damage dealers are going to be), far means at a distance (where most of the healers, buffers and ranged damage-dealers hang out) and middle is the space between, most occupied by skirmishers, off tanks, and specialized roles.
The boss, whatever he is, has a level. That level pretty much determines exactly what sort of threat he is, and also is the basis of most of his capabilities. His hit points are abstracted into the number of "Damage successes" it will take to take him down. I'm calling the ballpark on that his level (which I'll just call [L]) times 5, but this is totally unplaytested, so that might be off base, especially since it would probably be smart to scale him with the number of players. I'd endorse representing these with tokens, like poker chips, but it could just be that I'm nuts for tokens.
In a straight up fight, things go like this: On your turn you can move one "space" (or two spaces if you use any kind of movement power) or use a power (whether to attack or not). You might also do something else, but that's much more situational. Moving is hopefully self explanatory, but the actual fighting is something else.
When a player attempts to attack the boss, he can use any of his attacks, with the following limitation. Melee/close attacks require the character be near the boss, and ranged attacks (anything that would invite an attack of opportunity) need to be from the middle or far distance. If a character uses an ability to heal or buff an ally, that works normally.
An attack is always assumed to hit successfully, but most of the time the only thing that matters is the damage dealt - Raid Bosses are immune to all manner of special effects and statuses (except when they are not, see below), but benefits that help allies can still be triggered. If the damage dealt meets or exceeds a certain threshold (probably based off [L]), then it counts as a success, and the boss takes one point of "damage" - accruing damage successes is what ultimately takes the boss down.[2] However, any failure gives the Boss one "Menace Point".
This matters a lot because, after everyone's taken a turn, the boss gets to go. He has a number of menace points equal to his level, plus any he's gained from player failures. He uses them to build his attacks - he should have a list of abilities that have menace point costs, but in the absence of that it works something like this.
For 1 menace point he can make an attack against a single target in the "close" area. It is an attack against AC, where the boss effectively rolls 15+[L] and does damage equal to the low normal damage on the table of the gods (aka page 42 of the DMG)[3]. For each additional menace point spent he can enhance the attack by doing one of the following:
- Affect an additional target
- Affect everyone in the area (costs 3 menace points)
- Target the middle distance instead
- Target the long distance instead (Costs 2 menace points)
- Increase damage one step to the right (low normal becomes Medium normal, high normal becomes low limited and so on, costs 2 points)
- Increase the effective "attack roll" by +2
- Change the attack to a different defense (Reflex, fortitude or Will)[4]
This proceeds, round robin, until either all the PCs are dead or the monster has taken enough damage to go down. Simple as that.
Now, this is very basic, and very mechanistic (which is, arguably, very apt for a raid) with very little in the way of tactics. It would be intensely boring because most player will simply do the same thing every round. However, this lays down the baseline for the next step, adding in important things like aggro, roles, abilities and events. And that comes next.
1 - A staged villain is one who, when reduced to zero hit points, changes rather than dies. In most cases this is a physical transformation (like clay statues that have snakes burst out of their chests when they're beaten) but it's also a useful way to simulate the changes in tactics that are familiar to video game players. Normally, each "stage" has normal hit points for its level, though you can just as easily make one stage elite or solo (but I normally wouldn't - the point of this trick is to offset the long dull endgame of solo fights). Easy to budget for it too, as each stage is just treated as its own critter, which is a little bit kind to the players, but I think it comes out in the wash.
2 - As an optional rule, you might allow additional thresholds to speed things along, and to make strikers feel more valuable. So if a creature's threshold is 11 and a hit deals 23 points of damage, you might decide it removes 2 points of damage and so on. Alternately, that might just be situational, but that's something for tomorrow's post.
3 - I am tempted to have damage be measured in healing surges rather than hit points, but I need to think about the impact this has on healing, and whether it means tanks (sorry, defenders) end up insufficiently tough. If damage is in hit points, it's the one thing that can't just be handled with different colored poker chips, but the onus of bookkeeping is on players, so it is distributed. That said, tokens or cards definitely have certain logistical advantages, especially for the large combats. Similar thinking could be applied to damage (just say that at-wills, Encounters and Dailies do 1, 2 and 3 respectively) and while that simplifies things, it's actually a bad idea because it makes things REALLY boring for the player, and removes the tactical choice-making I hope to introduce next.
4 - This is, by the way, insanely abusable, which is why the DM shoud not actually use this on the fly unless he's willing to show some restraint. It's a decent yardstick for pricing boss powers though, and I'll use it later when I craft up some demo raid bosses.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Monday Randomness: Dragon Age
Like most of the rest of the world, I am totally freaking hooked on Dragon Age: Origins. My one line summary is that it feels like a campaign GM’d by Fred Hicks. Fred is a mean bastard of a GM, so this is high praise indeed. That sense of a GM’d game is one of the hallmarks of a Bioware game, creating a world that responds to the actions of play, and Dragon Age really turns this up to 11 - the technology for the graphics and stuff is nice, but the real benefit of the tech can be seen in just how many choices the game can now support.
So, with about 40-50 hours of play under my belt, split between a few characters, I feel like it’s time for a list of 10 things to know about Dragon Age:Origins.
1. Fighter’s are the simplest class to play, and there’s a lot to be said for starting with a fighter to try out a starting background and to get familiar with the rules and controls (especially if you’re on X-Box because the manual pretty much exists to convince you to buy a strat guide). Once you have that familiarity, you can try a rogue or mage. So far my sense is that Mage is probably the most interesting to play.
2. This is a Bioware game, so get the intimidation/persuasion skill. Lacking it will greatly diminish your options in play. Also, as a Bioware game, do not buy into the idea that there is some “right” decision the game is expecting you to make. There isn’t. There are rails, certainly, but they are very wide, and your leeway within them is much more than you might expect.
3. There is no way I won't be trying all the backgrounds, and I expect this game will probably get 2 or 3 playthroughs out of me at a minimum. I've tried 3 so far (Male-Human-Fighter-Noble, Male-Human-Mage-Circle and Male-Elf-Rogue-City, my primary) and every now and again something from one of the other backgrounds shows up in play, and it really makes the world feel more organic
4. Oh, God, Backpacks. I have bought every backpack I could afford and I am still short on inventory space. This gets really annoying because I tend to be deep in a dungeon when I’m running out of space. The soldier’s peak expansion helps with this, but it’s still pretty maddening.
5. The resolution of one of the big plot knots involved a lot of watching two NPCs talk to each other. As it turns out, this is not much more fun on the console than it is on the tabletop. It's well written and interesting, but it comes off as a bit of a sour note. I don't mind watching cut scenes of events taking place elsewhere in the game - that's part of the genre - but watching my character watch a scene makes me wonder why I'm there.
6. It’s the small choices that kill you. I have yet to have any huge, sweeping choices that were particularly hard (or even terribly moving), but I have had innumerable small choices that left me staring at the screen, paralyzed, totally invested in the result. Bioware's always been good at this, but this takes it to a whole new level.
7. The game combines of a lot of voice acting talent, quality writing, and an engine that allows them quickly generate visually distinctive characters. That’s all well and good for the heroes, but it’s much more important for the support characters. It is far harder to play “Spot the named character” by looking for the one with better graphics or voice acting, and that’s fantastic, because it really drives home the sense that things can change at the drop of a hat.
8. The downloadable content has been worth the price (though I got some of it free for pre-ordering). Soldier's Peak adds an extra dungeon that has a solid story to it, which also serves as a base once you've cleared it out. Sadly, I have not been able to recruit people to come work there, so my dreams of this being Dark Suikoden have not yet come to fruit. The more expensive pack, which adds the golem, Shale, is possibly even more worth it. First and foremost, it's not a Bioware game until you throw in a killing machine with a dry wit. He's fun to have in the party, and he's incredibly useful. I have so far had at least two boss fights that I'm pretty sure I would have lost if he had not been tanking for me.
9. I am pretty sure I'm missing a lot by not reading every codex update, but honestly there's just too much, and the console is not ideal for it, especially since when I get a codex update I need to go track it down deep in the menus. In theory, this is helped by new things being highlighted, but the way navigation works, if I have to scroll down to something new, I un-highlight it without realizing it. This is a pain, and while I recognize that there are limitations to the interface that come from playing on the console, this (and some inventory management) are close to genuine frustrations. This is exacerbated by the gameplay being so fun that I already resent needing to drop out into the land of menus, so having that be a kind of rough experience is unfun.
10. I'm pretty happy with the graphics. I can niggle about things like the palette or compare it to other games that do this or that better, but the simple truth is that the graphics are good enough to convey a strong sense of place without impeding on the gameplay, and they are capable of generating the occasional moment of wow from a surprising vista or a unique animation. Sound is similarly impressive, though I find I greatly miss hearing my hero speak, a la Mass Effect.
I've been sick for days, so I've had plenty of opportunity to marathon this game and I am hooked enough that my wife has started developing a deep loathing for it. Likely I'll have to drop to less frequent play now that I'm starting to recover, but I look forward to working through it. So far I'm really excited - I'm a console RPG nut, and so far this has blown a lot of previous contenders out of the water in terms of play experience. But I am also well aware that I'm not done yet, and it's entirely possible that it could all come crashing down, or end with a whimper rather than a bang, but for the time being I will hold out hope.
So, with about 40-50 hours of play under my belt, split between a few characters, I feel like it’s time for a list of 10 things to know about Dragon Age:Origins.
1. Fighter’s are the simplest class to play, and there’s a lot to be said for starting with a fighter to try out a starting background and to get familiar with the rules and controls (especially if you’re on X-Box because the manual pretty much exists to convince you to buy a strat guide). Once you have that familiarity, you can try a rogue or mage. So far my sense is that Mage is probably the most interesting to play.
2. This is a Bioware game, so get the intimidation/persuasion skill. Lacking it will greatly diminish your options in play. Also, as a Bioware game, do not buy into the idea that there is some “right” decision the game is expecting you to make. There isn’t. There are rails, certainly, but they are very wide, and your leeway within them is much more than you might expect.
3. There is no way I won't be trying all the backgrounds, and I expect this game will probably get 2 or 3 playthroughs out of me at a minimum. I've tried 3 so far (Male-Human-Fighter-Noble, Male-Human-Mage-Circle and Male-Elf-Rogue-City, my primary) and every now and again something from one of the other backgrounds shows up in play, and it really makes the world feel more organic
4. Oh, God, Backpacks. I have bought every backpack I could afford and I am still short on inventory space. This gets really annoying because I tend to be deep in a dungeon when I’m running out of space. The soldier’s peak expansion helps with this, but it’s still pretty maddening.
5. The resolution of one of the big plot knots involved a lot of watching two NPCs talk to each other. As it turns out, this is not much more fun on the console than it is on the tabletop. It's well written and interesting, but it comes off as a bit of a sour note. I don't mind watching cut scenes of events taking place elsewhere in the game - that's part of the genre - but watching my character watch a scene makes me wonder why I'm there.
6. It’s the small choices that kill you. I have yet to have any huge, sweeping choices that were particularly hard (or even terribly moving), but I have had innumerable small choices that left me staring at the screen, paralyzed, totally invested in the result. Bioware's always been good at this, but this takes it to a whole new level.
7. The game combines of a lot of voice acting talent, quality writing, and an engine that allows them quickly generate visually distinctive characters. That’s all well and good for the heroes, but it’s much more important for the support characters. It is far harder to play “Spot the named character” by looking for the one with better graphics or voice acting, and that’s fantastic, because it really drives home the sense that things can change at the drop of a hat.
8. The downloadable content has been worth the price (though I got some of it free for pre-ordering). Soldier's Peak adds an extra dungeon that has a solid story to it, which also serves as a base once you've cleared it out. Sadly, I have not been able to recruit people to come work there, so my dreams of this being Dark Suikoden have not yet come to fruit. The more expensive pack, which adds the golem, Shale, is possibly even more worth it. First and foremost, it's not a Bioware game until you throw in a killing machine with a dry wit. He's fun to have in the party, and he's incredibly useful. I have so far had at least two boss fights that I'm pretty sure I would have lost if he had not been tanking for me.
9. I am pretty sure I'm missing a lot by not reading every codex update, but honestly there's just too much, and the console is not ideal for it, especially since when I get a codex update I need to go track it down deep in the menus. In theory, this is helped by new things being highlighted, but the way navigation works, if I have to scroll down to something new, I un-highlight it without realizing it. This is a pain, and while I recognize that there are limitations to the interface that come from playing on the console, this (and some inventory management) are close to genuine frustrations. This is exacerbated by the gameplay being so fun that I already resent needing to drop out into the land of menus, so having that be a kind of rough experience is unfun.
10. I'm pretty happy with the graphics. I can niggle about things like the palette or compare it to other games that do this or that better, but the simple truth is that the graphics are good enough to convey a strong sense of place without impeding on the gameplay, and they are capable of generating the occasional moment of wow from a surprising vista or a unique animation. Sound is similarly impressive, though I find I greatly miss hearing my hero speak, a la Mass Effect.
I've been sick for days, so I've had plenty of opportunity to marathon this game and I am hooked enough that my wife has started developing a deep loathing for it. Likely I'll have to drop to less frequent play now that I'm starting to recover, but I look forward to working through it. So far I'm really excited - I'm a console RPG nut, and so far this has blown a lot of previous contenders out of the water in terms of play experience. But I am also well aware that I'm not done yet, and it's entirely possible that it could all come crashing down, or end with a whimper rather than a bang, but for the time being I will hold out hope.
Friday, November 6, 2009
The Project so Far
I realized this week that this little experiment of mine has gone on for a month, so I figured I’d stop and look at how it’s gone.
At the beginning of October I began this self-imposed project of writing one entry per weekday, every day. As much as I hope you’ve all enjoyed the content, the real purpose was for my sake. I tend to write in fits and starts, so I was looking to get more consistent practice, both with writing and with maintaining some level of discipline.
So far it’s worked out pretty well, and I’ve learned a few lessons that would hopefully be of use to anyone.
I moved off of Livejournal for this one big reason - I needed to be able to write drafts ahead of time and schedule their posting, something Livejournal’s not so good at. As a secondary issue, Livejournal’s blocked at work - this is not a big deal for posting (I try to do it all the night before) but I have enough vanity that I like checking comments over the course of the day.
Blogger’s been good - it offers the features I need with a minimal amount of fiddliness. I have a self-hosted wordpress blog, and as much as I like it, it is easy to get distracted by messing around with plugins and keeping up with the latest version. That said, I do miss the flexibility and power that wordpress offers, so if I were to do it again I would probably go with a wordpress hosted blog, but the benefits are not so much greater that I would deal with the hassle of swapping over. If blogger’s spam filter proves useless, or if some other problems reveal themselves, I might reconsider, but I’m good for now.
On the writing end, its amazing how satisfying it is to get ahead of things. This week’s material on villainy was done as one block (pulled in from a One Bad Egg Project that never saw the light of day) so I got to relax over the course of the week, and that was a good feeling, but it also made me a little lax. It’s satisfying to get ahead of the game, but if I get too far ahead, it’s easy to get lax.
But the big lesson has been that I need to write less. Not less often, but rather, shorter material. I have a tendency to just keep writing until I hit a stop point, and the net result can be a little bit sprawling. That’s problematic for two big reasons. First, it makes it much harder to maintain any kind of schedule - without a clear sense of end points, it’s hard to get to “done”. The second is that shorter is better for blog posting - the occasional long post has its place, but people have a lot of material to absorb in the day, so something that’s quick to read and gets to the point has a lot to offer.
This is actually a kind of fun lesson.. The path to getting better at this will also make it easier to do, so I’m pretty good with how that shakes out.
I’m happy with how it’s gone so far, and I hope to keep it up. And I hope you all will continue to enjoy reading it, and I thank you for your attention to this little project so far.
At the beginning of October I began this self-imposed project of writing one entry per weekday, every day. As much as I hope you’ve all enjoyed the content, the real purpose was for my sake. I tend to write in fits and starts, so I was looking to get more consistent practice, both with writing and with maintaining some level of discipline.
So far it’s worked out pretty well, and I’ve learned a few lessons that would hopefully be of use to anyone.
I moved off of Livejournal for this one big reason - I needed to be able to write drafts ahead of time and schedule their posting, something Livejournal’s not so good at. As a secondary issue, Livejournal’s blocked at work - this is not a big deal for posting (I try to do it all the night before) but I have enough vanity that I like checking comments over the course of the day.
Blogger’s been good - it offers the features I need with a minimal amount of fiddliness. I have a self-hosted wordpress blog, and as much as I like it, it is easy to get distracted by messing around with plugins and keeping up with the latest version. That said, I do miss the flexibility and power that wordpress offers, so if I were to do it again I would probably go with a wordpress hosted blog, but the benefits are not so much greater that I would deal with the hassle of swapping over. If blogger’s spam filter proves useless, or if some other problems reveal themselves, I might reconsider, but I’m good for now.
On the writing end, its amazing how satisfying it is to get ahead of things. This week’s material on villainy was done as one block (pulled in from a One Bad Egg Project that never saw the light of day) so I got to relax over the course of the week, and that was a good feeling, but it also made me a little lax. It’s satisfying to get ahead of the game, but if I get too far ahead, it’s easy to get lax.
But the big lesson has been that I need to write less. Not less often, but rather, shorter material. I have a tendency to just keep writing until I hit a stop point, and the net result can be a little bit sprawling. That’s problematic for two big reasons. First, it makes it much harder to maintain any kind of schedule - without a clear sense of end points, it’s hard to get to “done”. The second is that shorter is better for blog posting - the occasional long post has its place, but people have a lot of material to absorb in the day, so something that’s quick to read and gets to the point has a lot to offer.
This is actually a kind of fun lesson.. The path to getting better at this will also make it easier to do, so I’m pretty good with how that shakes out.
I’m happy with how it’s gone so far, and I hope to keep it up. And I hope you all will continue to enjoy reading it, and I thank you for your attention to this little project so far.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
The Villain's Monologue
Before I kill you, let me first lay out my plan in exquisite detail...
One of the classic tropes of villainy is the villain's monologue, the point where he launches into a little speech detailing what he's done and why, often with an explanation of the inevitability of his success which will soon be rendered ironic by heroic effort. This is a much-maligned idea, and the running joke is often some variant of "If I were the villain I wouldn't just waste my time talking to my prisoners, I'd just shoot them in the head." We laugh and nod because that seems logical, but it's a lie.
The simple truth is that people tend to want to be acknowledged. Just being right is rarely enough—we need the other person to acknowledge that we are right and that they are wrong and to generally concede our awesomeness. For the damning evidence of this, I direct you to every internet discussion ever. Given a person with a plan, a high opinion of himself, a position of power and an opportunity to show off, it seems that a villain who does not monologue would probably be the rare case. Even our jokesters would certainly take time to explain how clever they are to just shoot the heroes and make sure they understand just how smart the person killing them is.
All of which is to say the villain's monologue is a very natural thing, and it should sound like that. It should not sound like a planned speech, but rather like an indignant internet posting. Thankfully, there's no shortage of examples for you to draw on.
For well established villains, there's also a nice emotional twist to the monologue—sometimes the characters are the only audience the villain has. Imagine for a moment that you're a super genius, about to conquer the kingdom after years of work, planning and profound cleverness. Your underlings do their job well, but none of them really understand the big picture. Who are you going to talk to, to connect with on a human level, about this thing which is the single most important thing in your life? The hero you've taken prisoner is not the ideal companion, but you two have a strong emotional bond (even if it's negative) and he gets what you're trying to do. Logic might dictate that you need to kill this guy, but the simple human need for companionship can make it really easy to defer that decision.
If this doesn't seem to make sense, take some time thinking about your own friends, co-workers and people you deal with and the conversations you have—you may find that logic is only a small part of the equation.
As a bonus, the monologue is also a useful tool for the DM who wants to demonstrate he hasn't been cheating. When the villain explains how he did things it can help the players connect the dots of events. Use this sparingly however—if the villain needs to explain more than two or three things this has crossed the line from "tying off loose ends" into "DM gloating over how much smarter he is than his players".
Other Quick Tips for Villainy
* In 4e, Just assume that all villains have access to ritual magic. You'd be amazed how much it simplifies things.
* If you game has action points, fate points, bennies or some other currency that is tied to the character (rather than a GM pool) then be transparent about it. You should absolutely be using those points to help villains survive to recur, but you need to do it out of their legitimate budget. Spending "Just one more" point on the villain for his defense or escape feels like a the kind of sleight of hand players won't notice, but I promise, they will. Just keep things where the players can see them. If the system has a general "GM Pool" then you have a little more leeway, but remember not to cheat it. Even if you fudge, find some other way to do it - cheating on budget is too blatant to stand.
* Respect where things are not. If the players are the first people in a tomb in 1000 years, that's a bad place for ambushers from the rival party to be waiting. If the enemy is going to drop from the trees and they only drop from the trees that are near the characters, things feel false and overly convenient.
* Pay close attention to where your players are directing their ire. Sometimes (perhaps often) the players are better than you at sniffing out who the long-term villain of the game should be. Be willing to change your plans in response to this.
* Be willing for your ultra-cool bad guy to look stupid. When that happens, and your players are the cause of it, it is wildly entertaining. For a demonstrations of this, see nearly any episode ofBuffy the Vampire Slayer .
* A villain that thwarts, cancels, or removes PC motivations and goals is a poorly-done villain. A villain that complicates, changes, or creates PC motivations and goals is doing his job.
One of the classic tropes of villainy is the villain's monologue, the point where he launches into a little speech detailing what he's done and why, often with an explanation of the inevitability of his success which will soon be rendered ironic by heroic effort. This is a much-maligned idea, and the running joke is often some variant of "If I were the villain I wouldn't just waste my time talking to my prisoners, I'd just shoot them in the head." We laugh and nod because that seems logical, but it's a lie.
The simple truth is that people tend to want to be acknowledged. Just being right is rarely enough—we need the other person to acknowledge that we are right and that they are wrong and to generally concede our awesomeness. For the damning evidence of this, I direct you to every internet discussion ever. Given a person with a plan, a high opinion of himself, a position of power and an opportunity to show off, it seems that a villain who does not monologue would probably be the rare case. Even our jokesters would certainly take time to explain how clever they are to just shoot the heroes and make sure they understand just how smart the person killing them is.
All of which is to say the villain's monologue is a very natural thing, and it should sound like that. It should not sound like a planned speech, but rather like an indignant internet posting. Thankfully, there's no shortage of examples for you to draw on.
For well established villains, there's also a nice emotional twist to the monologue—sometimes the characters are the only audience the villain has. Imagine for a moment that you're a super genius, about to conquer the kingdom after years of work, planning and profound cleverness. Your underlings do their job well, but none of them really understand the big picture. Who are you going to talk to, to connect with on a human level, about this thing which is the single most important thing in your life? The hero you've taken prisoner is not the ideal companion, but you two have a strong emotional bond (even if it's negative) and he gets what you're trying to do. Logic might dictate that you need to kill this guy, but the simple human need for companionship can make it really easy to defer that decision.
If this doesn't seem to make sense, take some time thinking about your own friends, co-workers and people you deal with and the conversations you have—you may find that logic is only a small part of the equation.
As a bonus, the monologue is also a useful tool for the DM who wants to demonstrate he hasn't been cheating. When the villain explains how he did things it can help the players connect the dots of events. Use this sparingly however—if the villain needs to explain more than two or three things this has crossed the line from "tying off loose ends" into "DM gloating over how much smarter he is than his players".
Other Quick Tips for Villainy
* In 4e, Just assume that all villains have access to ritual magic. You'd be amazed how much it simplifies things.
* If you game has action points, fate points, bennies or some other currency that is tied to the character (rather than a GM pool) then be transparent about it. You should absolutely be using those points to help villains survive to recur, but you need to do it out of their legitimate budget. Spending "Just one more" point on the villain for his defense or escape feels like a the kind of sleight of hand players won't notice, but I promise, they will. Just keep things where the players can see them. If the system has a general "GM Pool" then you have a little more leeway, but remember not to cheat it. Even if you fudge, find some other way to do it - cheating on budget is too blatant to stand.
* Respect where things are not. If the players are the first people in a tomb in 1000 years, that's a bad place for ambushers from the rival party to be waiting. If the enemy is going to drop from the trees and they only drop from the trees that are near the characters, things feel false and overly convenient.
* Pay close attention to where your players are directing their ire. Sometimes (perhaps often) the players are better than you at sniffing out who the long-term villain of the game should be. Be willing to change your plans in response to this.
* Be willing for your ultra-cool bad guy to look stupid. When that happens, and your players are the cause of it, it is wildly entertaining. For a demonstrations of this, see nearly any episode of
* A villain that thwarts, cancels, or removes PC motivations and goals is a poorly-done villain. A villain that complicates, changes, or creates PC motivations and goals is doing his job.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Hate the Villain, not the GM
Five Things You Would Think Would Make Players Hate a Villain But Actually Make Them Hate You
1. Steal Their Stuff
This is a classic, and it will absolutely result in some rage, but it has all sorts of problems. First, it's very hard to do without cheating or otherwise making it look like an obvious GM force, and that puts the blame on you. Second, if you steal the character's gear (esp. in a gear-heavy game like D&D) the players will feel like they're being penalized, and they may have to do extra bookkeeping to address the changes in their sheets. This is not to say that nothing can get stolen—plot items, macguffins and loose treasures are all in play—but think long and hard before you take anything that is written on the character's sheet.
Making It Work: To make a theft work, you must spend some time thinking about how to make it recoverable. That means that the villain should not steal things he intends to keep unless you expect things to end with the players looting his corpse. Instead, the villain should be the means by which the item stolen gets transmitted to a new owner or location. This way the villain opens the door to further play rather than just being a black hole that valuable things disappear down.
The balance here is that you definitely want to hit things that are important to the characters and players (and their gear definitely qualifies) but you want the pain to be measured in emotional intensity, not in added bookkeeping.
2. Make Them Feel Stupid
One common situation to encounter when GMing occurs when you present your players with a problem which you can clearly see the solution to, but for one reason or another it completely baffles your players. This is normal enough, but it becomes a problem if the villain then solves the same problem in the way that GM envisioned it. For all intents and purposes this is telling your players they were too dumb to figure out what they "should have done" and then rubbing their nose in it. Not only is this a jerk thing to do, there's a good chance the original disconnect was more your fault than theirs, and that just makes it all the more insulting.
Making It Work: Let your players see the villain have similar frustrations to their own. If the PCs really had to work to get past a challenge, that work really feels rewarded when they see that yes, it really was hard. Hard enough that it’s stopping other people. Plus, every time you show the villain being stymied, you earn a little more credibility in the eyes of your players—if they feel your villain can't just breeze past things with the power of GM fiat then they are less likely to assume you're cheating the next time you do something clever with him
3. Second Verse, Same as the First
The idea of a chain of villains is an old classic—kill off one villain and now you have to face the new, more powerful villain that was behind the first one. This is a good, usable trick, but you need to make sure that each successive villain is distinct. If the new villain is basically just the old villain with more powers, bigger weapons and a more ominous cape then it's not much different than just re-using the old villain, except now you've undercut any sense of victory the players got out of defeating the old villain. Even bringing back the original villain is preferable to introducing a knock-off.
Making It Work: This is pretty easy to fix—just take a little time and flesh out your villains. You absolutely should connect you villains so that the new villain has a motive tied to the old villain, such as avenging him or fulfilling an oath to him, but otherwise make sure he's different. One easy way to underscore that difference is to change the type of villain—if the old villain was a brawler, the new one might be thinky or sneaky. The mechanical changes will emphasize the other changes.
4. Outshine
When one of your characters really drills down to excel at something, like a skill or particular combat style, there is a temptation to make the villain better than him, so as to inspire the character to new levels of performance. That works to a point, but remember this: a villain who outshines the character has one purpose—to be defeated by the character in reasonably short order. When that happens it’s pretty satisfying. The problem comes when a recurring villain does this, and is only made worse if he outshines multiple characters. When this happens the GM is basically communicating to the players “It doesn't matter how hard you work, I'm the GM and I can trump your efforts with a whim.”
Making it Work: There are two good solutions to this. The first is to simply have the villain excel in an arena that none of the characters overlap with. That gives him a gimmick that's recognizable, and can create problems the characters are not as able to tackle directly, but which don't make them feel inept. For example, if you have a group that is not at all sneaky, a high stealth villain creates interesting problems.
The second is possibly even more fun, especially for a rival. Pick an area of expertise and make sure the villain is good enough to make the character sweat a little—even if the villain is not quite as good as the character, he should be good enough that the character can never take success for granted. As a bonus, make sure the villain understands and respects their respective level of talent in a way that other people who are less well versed in it do not. If you have seen or read The Princess Bride, the dialog during the big fencing scene is a great example of this.
5. Bulletproof Sheep's Clothing
It is not hard to fool your players. This is not because they are not smart, or because you are particularly clever, but because they trust you to do your job as DM.
This trust means that they are willing to overlook small inconsistencies and make decisions that lead to fun play rather than spend their time studying every detail for the potential twist. One common way that this trust gets abused is to introduce a villain as an ally and then proceed to cause all sorts of bad things to happen to your players while the villain remains hidden in plain sight. Often, this is accompanied by the GM expressing disbelief that his players can't see it when it's "so obvious."
While the breach of trust alone is very bad for a game, this is more subtly toxic over time. Players expect bad things to happen to their characters as part of adventuring, and if the GM is using the hidden villain in this fashion, players are likely to just assume he's cheating (because he is) and that will taint the whole game something fierce.
Making it Work: The purpose of hidden villains is to be discovered, so it is your job to make sure they're found out. This does not mean there won't be complications or that it won't take time, but it needs to be doable. You can start with clues that there is a traitor, and build investigation from there. For a nice twist, you can have the characters know the villain's nature but lack the evidence to convince those around him. Whatever you do, keeping that goal of discovery in mind changes the hidden villain from a way for the DM to feel clever into an engine to drive play.
This idea also has a lot of overlap with the betrayer, an ally who sells out or changes sides. The difference is that the betrayer should be a genuine ally for a time, and when he switches sides, then he plays out much like a hidden villain.
1. Steal Their Stuff
This is a classic, and it will absolutely result in some rage, but it has all sorts of problems. First, it's very hard to do without cheating or otherwise making it look like an obvious GM force, and that puts the blame on you. Second, if you steal the character's gear (esp. in a gear-heavy game like D&D) the players will feel like they're being penalized, and they may have to do extra bookkeeping to address the changes in their sheets. This is not to say that nothing can get stolen—plot items, macguffins and loose treasures are all in play—but think long and hard before you take anything that is written on the character's sheet.
Making It Work: To make a theft work, you must spend some time thinking about how to make it recoverable. That means that the villain should not steal things he intends to keep unless you expect things to end with the players looting his corpse. Instead, the villain should be the means by which the item stolen gets transmitted to a new owner or location. This way the villain opens the door to further play rather than just being a black hole that valuable things disappear down.
The balance here is that you definitely want to hit things that are important to the characters and players (and their gear definitely qualifies) but you want the pain to be measured in emotional intensity, not in added bookkeeping.
2. Make Them Feel Stupid
One common situation to encounter when GMing occurs when you present your players with a problem which you can clearly see the solution to, but for one reason or another it completely baffles your players. This is normal enough, but it becomes a problem if the villain then solves the same problem in the way that GM envisioned it. For all intents and purposes this is telling your players they were too dumb to figure out what they "should have done" and then rubbing their nose in it. Not only is this a jerk thing to do, there's a good chance the original disconnect was more your fault than theirs, and that just makes it all the more insulting.
Making It Work: Let your players see the villain have similar frustrations to their own. If the PCs really had to work to get past a challenge, that work really feels rewarded when they see that yes, it really was hard. Hard enough that it’s stopping other people. Plus, every time you show the villain being stymied, you earn a little more credibility in the eyes of your players—if they feel your villain can't just breeze past things with the power of GM fiat then they are less likely to assume you're cheating the next time you do something clever with him
3. Second Verse, Same as the First
The idea of a chain of villains is an old classic—kill off one villain and now you have to face the new, more powerful villain that was behind the first one. This is a good, usable trick, but you need to make sure that each successive villain is distinct. If the new villain is basically just the old villain with more powers, bigger weapons and a more ominous cape then it's not much different than just re-using the old villain, except now you've undercut any sense of victory the players got out of defeating the old villain. Even bringing back the original villain is preferable to introducing a knock-off.
Making It Work: This is pretty easy to fix—just take a little time and flesh out your villains. You absolutely should connect you villains so that the new villain has a motive tied to the old villain, such as avenging him or fulfilling an oath to him, but otherwise make sure he's different. One easy way to underscore that difference is to change the type of villain—if the old villain was a brawler, the new one might be thinky or sneaky. The mechanical changes will emphasize the other changes.
4. Outshine
When one of your characters really drills down to excel at something, like a skill or particular combat style, there is a temptation to make the villain better than him, so as to inspire the character to new levels of performance. That works to a point, but remember this: a villain who outshines the character has one purpose—to be defeated by the character in reasonably short order. When that happens it’s pretty satisfying. The problem comes when a recurring villain does this, and is only made worse if he outshines multiple characters. When this happens the GM is basically communicating to the players “It doesn't matter how hard you work, I'm the GM and I can trump your efforts with a whim.”
Making it Work: There are two good solutions to this. The first is to simply have the villain excel in an arena that none of the characters overlap with. That gives him a gimmick that's recognizable, and can create problems the characters are not as able to tackle directly, but which don't make them feel inept. For example, if you have a group that is not at all sneaky, a high stealth villain creates interesting problems.
The second is possibly even more fun, especially for a rival. Pick an area of expertise and make sure the villain is good enough to make the character sweat a little—even if the villain is not quite as good as the character, he should be good enough that the character can never take success for granted. As a bonus, make sure the villain understands and respects their respective level of talent in a way that other people who are less well versed in it do not. If you have seen or read The Princess Bride, the dialog during the big fencing scene is a great example of this.
5. Bulletproof Sheep's Clothing
It is not hard to fool your players. This is not because they are not smart, or because you are particularly clever, but because they trust you to do your job as DM.
This trust means that they are willing to overlook small inconsistencies and make decisions that lead to fun play rather than spend their time studying every detail for the potential twist. One common way that this trust gets abused is to introduce a villain as an ally and then proceed to cause all sorts of bad things to happen to your players while the villain remains hidden in plain sight. Often, this is accompanied by the GM expressing disbelief that his players can't see it when it's "so obvious."
While the breach of trust alone is very bad for a game, this is more subtly toxic over time. Players expect bad things to happen to their characters as part of adventuring, and if the GM is using the hidden villain in this fashion, players are likely to just assume he's cheating (because he is) and that will taint the whole game something fierce.
Making it Work: The purpose of hidden villains is to be discovered, so it is your job to make sure they're found out. This does not mean there won't be complications or that it won't take time, but it needs to be doable. You can start with clues that there is a traitor, and build investigation from there. For a nice twist, you can have the characters know the villain's nature but lack the evidence to convince those around him. Whatever you do, keeping that goal of discovery in mind changes the hidden villain from a way for the DM to feel clever into an engine to drive play.
This idea also has a lot of overlap with the betrayer, an ally who sells out or changes sides. The difference is that the betrayer should be a genuine ally for a time, and when he switches sides, then he plays out much like a hidden villain.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Helping Players Hate the Villain
Ten Ways to Help Your Players Hate a Villain
1. Give him a magic item or gadget that one of the players wants. Have him use it on the characters with great enthusiasm.
2. Have him take credit for cool things the characters have done. If possible, have him collect a reward for their effort.
3. Give him an ally who is a genuinely good and nice guy and who is also friendly and supportive of the characters. Have this ally try to get both sides to get along, and sacrifice himself to keep his friends from fighting. Then make sure the players see the villain's absolute disdain for this ally.
4. The villain should only rarely defeat or thwart the heroes. Instead, he should make things much more costly enough for them, costly enough to taint their victory. Give him an objective that is tangential to the goals of the PCs, rather than in direct opposition, so he can take advantage of their efforts. Make sure he thanks them.
5. Have NPCs who do not respect the characters respect the villain.
6. Have the PCs find the one chink in his villainous armor—the one good thing he does that he keeps secret. It should be something hidden but clearly good, like charitable giving or teaching kids to read or something. Make sure that the characters get at least one crack at him while he's doing this, so they would be forced to act in front of the people who think he's a hero.
7. If the villain is going to kill someone, it should be someone who is about to help the characters. Ideally, he should also frame them for the murder.
8. Have him do exactly what the characters would do in that situation. If that thing has gotten the characters in trouble or made them look foolish, make sure that he is acclaimed for it.
9. At some point the villain should know something the players need to find out. He should be utterly civil and willing to help them out, but the price should involve them doing something for him that is difficult (but not impossible) and plays very much to their strengths, so it is very clear that whatever it is he could not have accomplished it without their help. Make sure the fruits of those labors show up again later.
10. Have the villain think highly of one of the characters, albeit in a very condescending fashion. Have the villain offer words of encouragement and suggestions for how to improve whenever possible, and make it clear he thinks the character has so much potential and it's just a shame he's not living up to it.
1. Give him a magic item or gadget that one of the players wants. Have him use it on the characters with great enthusiasm.
2. Have him take credit for cool things the characters have done. If possible, have him collect a reward for their effort.
3. Give him an ally who is a genuinely good and nice guy and who is also friendly and supportive of the characters. Have this ally try to get both sides to get along, and sacrifice himself to keep his friends from fighting. Then make sure the players see the villain's absolute disdain for this ally.
4. The villain should only rarely defeat or thwart the heroes. Instead, he should make things much more costly enough for them, costly enough to taint their victory. Give him an objective that is tangential to the goals of the PCs, rather than in direct opposition, so he can take advantage of their efforts. Make sure he thanks them.
5. Have NPCs who do not respect the characters respect the villain.
6. Have the PCs find the one chink in his villainous armor—the one good thing he does that he keeps secret. It should be something hidden but clearly good, like charitable giving or teaching kids to read or something. Make sure that the characters get at least one crack at him while he's doing this, so they would be forced to act in front of the people who think he's a hero.
7. If the villain is going to kill someone, it should be someone who is about to help the characters. Ideally, he should also frame them for the murder.
8. Have him do exactly what the characters would do in that situation. If that thing has gotten the characters in trouble or made them look foolish, make sure that he is acclaimed for it.
9. At some point the villain should know something the players need to find out. He should be utterly civil and willing to help them out, but the price should involve them doing something for him that is difficult (but not impossible) and plays very much to their strengths, so it is very clear that whatever it is he could not have accomplished it without their help. Make sure the fruits of those labors show up again later.
10. Have the villain think highly of one of the characters, albeit in a very condescending fashion. Have the villain offer words of encouragement and suggestions for how to improve whenever possible, and make it clear he thinks the character has so much potential and it's just a shame he's not living up to it.
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