Players? Oh, you mean my guinea pigs!

Howdy folks! Yet again I have procrastinated my post up to the wire, but it's all good as long as it's posted in time. This week we're going to talk more about some of the new experimental methods I am using in my Pathfinder game with the Snowman, and will be briefly introducing a new ongoing subject in the SpacerGal postings. So without further ado, here we go!

Director's Cut: It's... breathing!

Let's get this out of the way first. I really enjoy online gaming. More specifically, the free to play massively multiplayer online roleplaying game side of things. F2PMMORPG... Even the acronym is a handful. But anyways, my love of the genre has led me to want to try and sort of simulate an open world style game for my players, basically leaving them in charge. Is it hilarious to let the kids babysit themselves? You bet it is. Can it be remarkably more mess than you anticipated? Sure can, but in this mess is where some of the best players will truly shine. But before we get to the PC, let's take a look at the GM side of this endeavor.

Part of my ability to do this successfully comes from the fact that I am wildly scatterbrained and have about thirteen different possible story ideas flying around in my head at any given time. To get started, I sit down and lay all those snakes out straight and figure out how to fit them into my setting without breaking the feel of the campaign, usually by plopping a PNPC, or Prime NPC into the story. Then I have to concoct how not to kill my players on what could be a very high level challenge by either scaling the threat back to a more appropriate danger or taking the quest and placing it in the "High level stuff I hope players play long enough to reach" part of my GM binder. The last step is hands-down the trickiest, especially as other stories in the world progress. How do I make my players choose to take these paths?

In order to give players control while still holding the carrot-on-a-stick, I place what I call Adventure Hooks into the world, just waiting for an interested nibble to trigger some kind of event or NPC interaction that will lead into a full-blown story. Often these involve some kind of crowd gathered around something, or a flyer being handed out advertising something of exceptional interest. If it's an adventure hook within an adventure, there are usually a few ways to find it, whether that be finding an item that someone will take interest in or simply poking and prodding an NPC until he or she gives in and decides to take you on the next big journey. But what if a journey takes longer than anticipated? What happens to those other hooks? Well, some of them may still be around, but because Leviathos is a living, persistent world, some hooks can literally be completely missed, never to be seen again. Unless the game resets of course...

Space-Age Roleplay: Welcome to Cyber-space

Many podcasts and die-hard P&P roleplayers naysay the potential of roleplaying in MMORPG environments, saying it can't be done, there's not enough control, there's not enough customization to do what they want, et cetera. To all of you out there who have said or thought this, I say are you out of your mind? Did you even try to roleplay in an online game? If so, which one, and how long did you spend in your attempt? Did you make sure you chose an RP server? Did you log on during prime hours? Did you make sure you were open, approachable, or available for RP interaction? Are you familiar with the lore and flavor of the game in which you attempted to RP?... And the list goes on for quite some time more. But anyways, I'm here to say it can be done. And not just in a "Well that was an alright experience" kind of way, but rather in a "Some of my best RP experiences have been in MMORPG" way. That's right. When approached with the proper mindset and with the proper tools in hand, it can be both a fun and rewarding pass time for all players involved, without the need of a GM. This isn't to say it doesn't have it's fault, no no no. Far from it actually. There are glaring weaknesses to RP in a GM-less computer world, but these weaknesses can be mitigated by players willing to try. That list of questions should be asked of one's self before diving in, and we will be touching on the subject more in weeks to come.

Final Transmission

Space-Age Roleplay will be an ongoing topic of mine, covering the right and wrong ways to approach MMORPG as sources for RPG outlets, some of the general do's and don'ts of roleplaying in these settings, and some of the best ways to get roleplaying going with a community or even random people out there on the interwebs. I do hope our readers will enjoy a new perspective on the subject, as well as gleaning advice and tips to enjoy their own MMO roleplaying. Of course, more kid games are on the way, one in particular I know most of you have had some interaction with in some form or another, but it requires pictures and my camera is on the fritz. So until next time, this is SpacerGal, signing off. Ya'll come back now, y'hear?

Missing Dice and Twirling Tops

Hello world, I'm your wild girl! And this is your first real post from me, SpacerGal, the latest contributor to Sin City Dispatch.

Social Interaction Dice-ectomy

The Snowman really dug into one of the things that has become a signature of my GM style, and that is the removal of social interaction skills in 3.5 OGL/d20 system games. I've never been a fan of the Intimidate or Diplomacy rolls, as they just don't make sense to me. Granted, I like a more abstract game with less emphasis on rules and more emphasis on both storytelling and character development for my players, but even setting my distaste of rules lawyering aside, they seem so counter-intuitive to roleplaying. In my mind, the purpose of a roleplaying game is to, you know, play a role, and using dice to determine how NPC feel about you detracts from this.

Part of removing these dice actually lies heavily in how detailed an environment is, and it does take going an extra couple of miles on the GM's part. Not going to lie to you, I spend hours upon hours developing even the most minor of NPC, delving deep into imagination to forge histories, personalities, quirks, and flourishes for the people my players will be meeting. Creative writing has helped make Leviathos feel more like a living, breathing world, and I have several very lengthy stories about the adventures of my main NPC that I'll probably end up sharing here.

As far as game elements are concerned, I find my players open up much more when they have to actually talk down a furious guard captain or frighten a native into telling them about an ancient secret. This opening up leads to better player chemistry, deeper, more interesting characters that players want to come back to time and again, and a fuller world for the GM to dig into.

I ultimately decided to start trying this method out a while ago. I had kind of a falling out with D&D after a very poorly run game, and most of the problems came from the heavy-handed book ruling. After wrestling with myself about what could be done to get away from the rules without completely stripping them away, I decided to do two things. The first was to remove those interaction dice, and the second was to remove alignment (but that's a story for a different time!). I sat down and started collecting all the characters I had ever played, reworked them into a new world of my design, and ran with it. After further developing this place, I thought about all the best roleplaying experiences I had ever played out, and realized they all happened when the players were entirely in control of their path. And that, my friends, is also a story for a later day. More on my style coming soon!

Childlike Nature: Let It Rip!

I work at a toy store, so naturally I see all of the kid's games, fads, and the latest anime tie-ins. And of course, I buy these things! Occasionally, there's a real gem in the midst of the loads of crap spewed out by the major distributors. One of those gems is Beyblade, the game of high-performance top battles. On the surface, the toy line and game elements are just a cash grab based on the new show, but when you dig a bit, it's actually a surprisingly deep game with a certain appealing simplicity.

The goal of the game is to make sure your top is the last one standing in the "Bey Stadium," a big plastic bath tub with a bowled bottom and two side pockets in which your tops can get stuck. You and your opponent count down in sync and on the last count, you both launch your tops into the stadium from a launcher powered by a toothed rip-cord. They clash against each other, breaking down each others speed until one falls over. Simple enough, right? Now let's look a little further.

There are three types of tops, and your choice can literally make or break the game before you even launch.
Attack types are super-aggressive, ripping around the beveled stadium at ridiculous speeds, often fast enough to fly out and hit bystanders if they aren't careful. They hit hard enough to knock most tops over or into the pockets, making them lose. But of course, this speed and striking force come at a cost. They have little to no staying power, so if they don't win quick, you're going to be outspun.
Defense types are heavy, wide-bottomed tops designed to withstand the brutality of attackers. It's rare that an attacker will be able to even make a defense top budge further than a few inches before running out of steam, and while these have more staying power than attack types, they still suffer from higher friction due to their bottoms and weight.
Stamina types weigh in at almost nothing, stand very tall compared to other tops, and can spin for upwards of 3-4 minutes when not being hit. The obvious weakness here is the lack of weight and high profile. Attackers will eat them alive, whereas defense tops will be struggling to keep up with the speed of these lighter contenders.
Balance is self-explanatory. They draw from the strengths of each of the other types, but this blending of strategies more often than not ends up in expanding weaknesses or lower performance compared to specialized tops.

So it's kind of a rock-paper-scissors, where Attack beats Stamina, Stamina beats Defense, and Defense beats Attack. Where this can really get interesting is in the customization. Oh, did I not mention all of these tops can be stripped down to five parts and reassembled in whatever configuration you find fits? This is where all of our physics lessons come into play, and savvy players will spend time digging through parts and testing all sorts of combinations to find what works best. There's more to it than this, but I'll get into that next time.

Last Transmissions

There ya have it. I hate dice outside of combat and I enjoy silly kid games. You'll definitely be seeing more of me in the coming days, as we have another Pathfinder session with more wacky elements coming into play every week, including a discussion about my "persistent world" experiment. And of course, there's more to say about high-performance tops, so be on the look out for your favorite space-faring gamer! Ya'll have a good one now, y'hear?