Karrius's RPG Blog

Deconstruction: Dragon Age RPG

2010-07-14T15:47:00.000-07:00

Put out by Green Ronin, the Dragon Age Roleplaying Game adapts Bioware’s great Dragon Age Origins computer game into an RPG. Unfortunately, the roleplaying game falls short of the greatness of the computer game.

It’s worth noting ahead of time that calling this a complete RPG is being especially favorable to it. The game goes from levels 1-5, which kind of roughly map those in DA:O. The part of the game the RPG covers is the first two hours – your intro story. There are no rules or details on the Grey Wardens, none of the info on some of Dragon Age’s memorable monsters, and despite each school of magic in the computer game having a dozen spells in, in the RPG they each have 3 – for a total of 12 spells in the entire book. The art doesn’t even reflect the limited game - in the 102 pages of rules between the player’s guide and gamemaster’s guide, there are seven pictures of monsters that the game doesn’t include, including the ogre right on the cover of the gamemaster’s guide. Yes, that’s right – the ogre, the very first boss of the game, who was featured in all of the promotional material, is not included. Unfortunately, this limitedness doesn’t seem likely to change soon. The game has been out for seven months as of the writing of this article, and the second book, supposed to cover levels 5-10, has yet to be released. An adventure pack, called “Blood in Ferelden” was supposed to be released five months ago, and still isn’t out.

Onto the system itself. The character creation process begins by having you roll 3d6 for each of the eight stats in order, assigning a bonus depending on what you roll (you don’t keep the roll – if you rolled a 9-11 you get an ability bonus of a +1, and the actual roll is ignored). These starting stats range from -2 (if you roll a 3) to a +4 (if you roll an 18). After assigning these eight stats in order, you’re given an opportunity to switch two of them. The designers have come out saying that this method “helps the old school feel” and that it’s friendlier for new players. Unfortunately, it completely ignored any sense of balance (a +/-6 difference is huge on a 3d6 range), and ignores the needs of new players who have a specific character type they want to play, and don’t feel comfortable playing anything else. This wouldn’t have been a problem had the designers just offered some sort of point buy or array method. Unfortunately, “old school” apparently means giving no options, not letting people play the characters they want, and purposefully injecting imbalance. And this isn’t hyperbole – if a player has three stats he feels he needs in order for his character to fit his ideal (say, constitution, communication, and strength for a warrior-leader), he has a 25% of not having an above average stat in one of those abilities. The characters in Dragon Age Origins show good proficiency in most stats – Loghain, for example, certainly has Constitution, Cunning, Strength, and Willpower, and if you want four stats to be above average, you only have a 42% chance of playing that character. That is a serious problem. It’s worth noting there are also ability focuses, which treat your stat as +2 higher for a certain purpose, like Magic (Spirit), Constitution (Running), or Strength (Axes).

Background selection comes after stats, and it just compounds the problems. You pick a background, and gain a stat bonus and an ability focus or two from it. You then roll twice on 2d6 table to determine two bonus benefits you get – most of them include a +1 to a stat or a focus, but some are real stinkers. Picking a surface dwarf might give you +1 Strength and Focus: Strength (axes) randomly, turning you into a real powerhouse. Or you might get Focus Cunning (engineering) and +1 Communication which might not even fit your character. If you choose to play an elven mage, you might end up with Speak Elven and a focus in bows, which mages aren’t even proficient in, compared to someone who was lucky and rolled two different +1s to major stats as a human mage! This just increases the randomness in how good you are, or what character you want to play even more. Not to mention that the backgrounds also feel incomplete – the only dwarven background is for surface dwarves – and the stats don’t even match the game – again, dwarves don’t have their magic resistance as they do in the game.

Finally it gets to classes, of which there are three – Warrior, Mage, and Rogue, just like in Dragon Age Origins. Unfortunately, due to only having five levels, none of the really neat subclasses like the Ranger, Bard, Blood Mage, Champion, or Templar appear. It’s worth noting here that a lot more stuff is random – starting health, health at level up, mana at level up and starting mana for a mage are all rolled for. There’s really no need for this. You gain a few things at level 1, and then each additional level you gain some minor perk – a single new spell or talent (covered next), an extra ability focus, or so on.

The talents are another facepalm-worthy bit of game design that should have been avoided. Talents are like D&D feats – certain classes can take them, they sometimes have requirements, and there are two ranks for each talent. Some of these talents are pretty good – there are talents that let you reroll some tests, like Stealth, Lock Picking, Traps, and so on. Other talents might give you +1 to hit, lower the cost of stunts in combat, increase your defense if you use a shield, or even read someone’s mood with magic or gain new spells. But then some of the talents are just not interesting. The Music talent requires you to have a focus in either performance or musical lore, and it lets you… play an instrument and sing. Yup, even if you took that focus, you couldn’t sing or play music without that talent. And no, there are no rules for singing in any way helping in anything but flavor. If you take ran two of music, you get to… play a few more instruments, equal to your communication, which may just be one or two extra. There are a few other lame duck talents thrown in there that serve no purpose except to punish people who choose to make their characters interesting, rather than focusing on being competent.

Before continuing, I want to talk about the one thing I actually LIKED about the system – the dragon die. When you roll an attack, you roll 3d6+X against the opponent’s defense, and if you hit you then roll damage. Simple enough. But one of those 3d6 is supposed to be a different color, and is called the “dragon die”. If you roll a pair on any of your 3d6 (including with the dragon die) you’re allowed to do a stunt. There’s a list of stunts, each with a Stunt Point cost – you get a number of stunt points to spend equal to whatever the dragon die is. The stunts include all sorts of things, like an extra move, knocking a target prone, disarming someone, dealing extra damage, attacking again, or hurting an extra enemy. This is all great stuff, and I’d like to see other systems use this.

Onto the magic system, and this is where the troubles continue. Each mage gets to start with three spells, and will gain a few more as they level. The magic system is MP based. To cast a spell you pay the mana, roll 3d6+magic against a DC based on the spell, and if you pass, the opponent rolls something against 10+your magic. The problem is, the attack scales as you level up – as a mage, you will be boosting your magic stat, and taking a specialization for an extra +2 asap! – and the defenses do not. So at level 2, you’re looking at a character rolling 3d6+7 or +8 vs a target number 11, and if he succeeds, the opponent has to roll 3d6+will power against 17 or 18 or be stunned for a turn. In short, a very basic entropy mage will stunlock the biggest enemy in the battlefield. That enemy will not get to act, ever. The dragon dice stunts only make this worse, and are not as interesting as the melee ones. For 1-3 stunt points, you can add that number to the target number, virtually guaranteeing a lock down. For 4, you can cast a different spell this round, too. The spell choices are limited, and virtually guarantee success if you’re smart enough to specialize.

Finally, I want to point out how the Gamemaster’s Guide has horrible advice that nobody should follow, and poisons the well for new RPG players to come. To quote:

“The dreaded rules lawyer is one of the most common problem player types. … The Rules lawyer often quotes rules and “official” interpretations of them as justifications for his behavior, and argues rules decisions he disagrees with. … By pointing out your mistakes, these players try to score points and control the flow of a campaign. …

While it talks about the good of knowing the rules, it always does so in a “as long as the person is quite and bows before the almighty GM” manner. Never is the GM who arbitrarily changes rules told that he’s wrong, or that he SHOULD be corrected. It’s always the fault of the rules lawyer. This attitude is utterly childish, and completely unnecessary. And of course, there's no listing of the problem player who bitches and moans that other people, while playing entirely by the rules, are playing by them in a way he doesn't like.

A Look At: Wild Arms pt 2

2010-07-11T04:41:00.000-07:00

Part 1 can be found here

This article is also going to contain major spoilers for Wild Arm’s endgame, and focuses largely on the villains.

Near the end of the game, it’s revealed that a major character is not actually human, but is instead an artificial creature made out of living metal, like the demons in the game. They’re originally designed to be war machines that mimicked humans, and are called Holmcrosses. Which is an odd, but unique name – and also a bastardization of “homunculus”. While it has to be used sparingly, taking another name for something, and twisting it until it’s no longer recognizable can create some interesting, unique names for your setting and creatures.

The villains of Wild Arms are really spectacular in their memorability. The primary villains of the game are the Quarter Knights, the four demons who lead the demon armies in trying to take over Filgaia. Each of the Quarter Knights has their own look, powers, and personality. Zeikfried is the leader and wants to claim the planet to replace the demon’s destroyed one, Alhazad is the thinker and just wants to experiment on humans to create new monsters, Lady Harken is a warrior controlled by Alhazad, and Belselk just enjoys chaos and killing. When Belselk dies early on, he’s replaced by Boomerang, who is seeking the ultimate fight. In addition, the demons take control of (most of) the eight legendary golems, each with a different elemental affinity. You hear about the golems in legends early on, and get to see three of them inactive, and the Quarter Knights are introduced early on through a cut scene. Establishing the villains through non-fighting ways is important in tabletop games – if the PCs get into a fight with someone, you can’t guarantee that person won’t die horribly! Doing something simple, like having a group of villains each with a particular favored minion type can work really well. If the PCs know that most undead they fight are being sent by Baron Deathguy, while the elementals and demons are under the command of the Wizard King, then you can recognizably have the bad guys acting in the world without showing themselves, have their seconds-in-command make big speeches about how the PCs are doomed (and then promptly get killed), and even let the PCs suspect that something is up by the presence of minion type X in the area, before anything is confirmed.

There are a lot of little things that go into making each of the Quarter Knights memorable. Their individual goals and personalities are emphasized. Zeikfried wants to claim the planet for the demons, and his original plan to do so is to revive the powerful demon Mother (both a name and a literal description). When he learns in a cutscene viewable by the player that Mother had devoured the demon homeworld, and now plans on devouring the planet, he and the other demons are clearly panicked. So when a mysterious cloaked figure helped the party to infiltrate the demon base, leading them towards killing Mother, it’s predictable – but not TOO predictable – that it’s Zeikfried in disguise. By letting us know what his actual goals are, and having them come into conflict with the goals of other villains, the plot is far more interesting. And later, when Zeikfried is planning on destroying the planet, in direct contradiction to his previous goal, that’s another hint that he’s not his old self, and that Mother is actually in control. All subtleties that only work because who Zeikfried is is well developed.

Sound also plays a large part in helping to distinguish the villains. Two of them, Boomerang and Zed, each have their own unique theme. These two also have the most un-demonic of goals – Boomerang just wants to fight strong people, and Zed just wants recognition. Each also has a strong sense of style – Boomerang is a black clad ninja with crazy attacks, and Zed is a showy, outrageous swordsman who gives his attacks complicated names. The music each fits their style, and isn’t the normal boss theme. If you use music in your tabletop game, consider giving major groups or villains their own theme, something that well suits them, and helps to reinforce who they are to the players, as well as helps them recall all the previous times they fought.

Finally, Mother also has an interesting auditory cue. While there’s no voice acting in the game, Mother has a creepy, ringing laugh that plays whenever she’s discussing wiping out the human race or devouring her demonic children. Small cues like that can easily be ported to a pen and paper game, be it a distinctive laugh or other sort of sound (I had a kobold hunter in one game who had a distinctive ‘eeeeeeeh’), physical movement, habit, or similar.

A Look At: Wild Arms

2010-07-03T15:02:00.000-07:00

After Suikoden, I’ve been playing Wild Arms, another playstation RPG from the system’s early years. It’s the first game is what has since become a series (the sequels, especially #3, my favorite, I’ll cover later). The series has always had a sort of fantasy western feel to it. While its light in the first game and more of a “desert punk in the second, the third is also filled with it.

Wild Arms feels a more like a tabletop game than many other RPGs. You have three members in your party throughout, and their personalities develop through the story. Each has a different type of abilities they can use, with how they gain them varied as well. Most uniquely, each character gains different tools that are available outside of combat, and are used for the many Zelda-esque puzzles in the dungeons. There are bombs, grappling hooks, treasure locators, watches that turn back time, and so on – there’s an actual element of problem solving, rather than just exploring areas filled with nothing but random encounters.

The three characters in the game are Jack, a swordsman, Rudy, a gunslinger, and Cecilia, the mage. Rudy, the toughest of the group, can use the artifact guns of the game called ARMs, which require some sort of psychic link. ARMs can be found in different dungeons in special chests, and it’s always a rare, happy event to find one. Each ARM has different attributes, and has its own bullet counter, that can be refilled for a tiny bit of cash back at town, or through the use of a Bullet Clip item which is very rare. There are also shops where you can upgrade each ARM, in damage, accuracy, or ammo capacity, also for money.

Jack, strongest and fastest, uses special sword techniques called Fast Draws. There are different events through the game that give Jack a hint for a new technique (many are hidden) – running into a pick pocket teaches him how to steal from enemies, or feeling the blowing wind on the mountain path inspires him to be able to make wind strikes that cut through enemies. These abilities are all on a typical mana-point basis, although there are rare scrolls which can reduce the MP cost of an ability of your choosing.

Finally, Cecilia learns her spells by finding Crest Graphs. There are two separate 4x4 grids, one for light magic, and one for dark magic. Each grid has the four classic elements along each side, and you choose where to place the graph, learning the spell for that location. WindxWater on black gives a thunder attack spell, while the same combination on the white grid is a dodge-up buff. You can see what spells will do before you gain them, and are freely allowed to switch them around in town. All of the spells are on an MP-basis. The really neat thing is that you’re allowed to freely name the spell whatever you want. While there’s a “default” name, you can call the fire attack Flare, Inferno, Torch, or whatever. It’s a little thing that goes a long way towards adding a lot of flavor.

The game starts in a memorable, unique way – the three characters are presented, and you pick one to play. That character gets an intro, and then you pick the next, until all three have had an intro adventure. These intro adventures do a pretty good job at setting the tone for each of the characters, and provide a nice bit of background. The best by far, however, is Jack’s. He’s exploring an ancient ruin for treasure, when he stumbles upon just a few traps – as the intro music plays, and the text gives some detail as to who he is, he’s dodging spear traps, running from multiple Indiana Jones style boulders, and dashing over collapsing floors, until he finally falls down a pit, and reaches an area of safety where he exclaims “Damn, that was cool!” If you want to show that a character is a danger-loving adventurer, I can’t think of a more effective means to do so. After each character’s intro, they’re brought together on a basic quest to help excavate a giant golem to be shown at a local fair (the “Ruin Fair”). Later, while they’re enjoying their time at the Ruin Fair, the fair is… well, ruined, when the main quest arrives and causes chaos. It’s an effective way to start the game. In a tabletop game, it's probably not enough just to have each player have a solo session before the main game. If you do do a solo session, consider summarizing each player's session, or at least the part that made their characters cool, somewhere the others can see it - maybe right before you start the first group session, if the solos pertain to the main plot. That way it helps the player understand and establish his character better, but also lets the other players in on understand that character's concept and powers.

The character backgrounds are also handled well – each has a background that’s used in the story, and the only one we’re told about up front is Cecilia, who is a princess, which isn’t the interesting point of her background – it’s how she views her title and role, which is revealed later. Rudy is a wandering outcast who can’t seem to find a place to belong (and we learn why later), and Jack is seeking the ultimate power so he can obtain revenge (and we learn why later). These backgrounds are hinted at in the intros, revealed a bit further in an early dungeon (through the classic “illusions testing your character” trope), and played on through the game. Every time they come up, the character gains some sort of new ability, further emphasizing that this was “their thing”, and that they’ve learned and grown from the event.

Changing subjects for a moment, many of my readers have likely seen Frank Trollman’s game design flowchart, on how to design a roleplaying game’s setting, and do a lot of the groundwork. The very first thing was “Name the party” – are they adventurers, shadowrunners, heroes, etc? - a seemingly odd thing to ask for the first question, until you really think about how much that describes the mood. In Wild Arms, the adventurers aren’t called adventurers. They’re called Dream Chasers. They’re not out for money; they’ve got their own goals they’re seeking. It’s a nice touch.

Throughout the game you collect different “guardians”, ancient spirits that protected the earth and used to be wildly worshiped. Each guardian is attuned to a different element, concept, or emotion. They give you runes which you can equip that boost your stats as you’d expect, and if you’re equipped with a guardian’s rune you can summon them in battle. I’m going to cheat a bit, and mention that in Wild Arms 3, which guardians you equip determines which spells you can cast. Each character can equip a lot of guardians, but each guardian can only be equipped by one character. This is an interesting idea for tabletop when you consider trading who can cast what spells for each adventure, or having worshiped based abilities. What if in a religious heavy fantasy game, worshiping the god of the sun gave you a bunch of fire and anti-undead abilities, regardless of class (fire spells or flaming blades equally OK!), and worshiping the god of strength gave you a lot of might-based or might-boosting abilities? It seems a good concept to base a campaign or system on.

Part 2.

Deconstruction: Alternity

2010-07-02T04:34:00.000-07:00

Because I like to keep current, I want to talk about Alternity, a ten year old sci-fi roleplaying game published by TSR. I’ve recently got a chance to play in a game of it, and the system has several unique things worth talking about.

The Alternity system is meant to be a “generic” sci-fi rules set. There are classes (which I’ll go over later), but things are primarily skill based. The classes just give a few small features and discounts on some skills. While they present multiple races to use, I haven’t looked over them in great detail, and they’re mostly a side thing. Alternity also uses D&D’s six attributes, slightly renamed – Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Will, and Personality. Skills are divided by attributes, and each attribute has a fairly large list, except for Constitution’s, which is tiny. In addition, skills are divided under Broad Skills, which are groupings of them – you get six broad skill groups for free, and then have to purchase others individually. If you do not have a skill’s broad group and try to use it, you take a +1 step penalty (see next paragraph) and add only half of the appropriate attribute to the skill ranks. If you do have the broad group, but not any ranks, you just take the +1 step penalty. With any ranks, you suffer no penalty; your skill total is the number of ranks you have plus the appropriate attribute.

When it comes time to use a skill, you roll 1d20 and a situation die and try and roll under your skill total. If you roll higher, you fail – if you roll under, you succeed with an “Ordinary” success. If you roll under half your skill total, you get a “Good” success, and under a fourth grants an “Amazing” success, with each progress step giving some sort of extra boon. If you roll a natural 20, you get a critical failure – more on these later. The situation die starts at d0 by default, and is modified based on what you’re doing. A more difficult task, being untrained, shooting an agile enemy, etc, makes the die higher – from +1d4, to +1d6, and so on. If the task is easier, or if you have a special class or racial feature or a large number of ranks in some skill, you instead apply a penalty to the roll in the same manner. While it’s a neat idea, this tends to be kind of slow in play. When you’re taking a shot, you need to calculate autofire penalties, range, any modifiers you get from your class or dodging, the enemy’s defensive bonus, and so on. It can be a bit of a pain.

Classes in Alternity are called Professions. There are four primary ones – Combat Spec, Diplomat, Free Agent, and Tech Op. There’s also a psionic one, the Mindwalker, which I won’t be covering – I haven’t given the rules on psionics, cybernetics, or mutations a strong look-through. Combat Spec characters get a bonus to initiative, discounts on combat related skills, and a permanent step bonus to a combat related skill. Free Agents gain a bonus to action points and a defense of their choice, and a wide variety of “roguey” skills like stealth, security, and deception discounted. TechOps get bonus skill points at level up, and basically every intellect skill discounted. Diplomats gain all the personality skills discounted, as well as the skill discounts of another class of their choice, and either resources or contacts.

And this is where the problems start. Right away, the Combat Spec class gets only combat skills discounted, and no real utility skills, heavily encouraging a player who sits around asking “Is it time to shoot something yet?”. The Diplomat especially gets to grab another character’s shtick, as well, while the Free Agent doesn’t have enough to truly distinguish him. The Tech Ops gets absolutely nothing to start except a wider skill list to choose from, which is problematic if a Tech Ops and a Diplomat who chooses Tech Ops skill are in the same party. The Diplomat starts with all of your bonuses, and then more.

The skill groupings also cause some issues. Like many skill based systems, individual weapons are their own skills under the same broad skill. If you want to use guns, you first need the Modern Ranged Weapon skill group, where Pistol, Rifle, and SMG are all their own skills. Want to use a crossbow, like JC Denton? That’s under Ranged Weapon Primitive, and is its own skill (with Bow, Flintlocks, and Slings also individual skills). A Stun Baton too? That’s under Melee Weapons, Powered Weapon – and if you want to be able to use a club as well, that’s under bludgeon. And yes, Blade is different if you want to use a knife. Note how we haven’t even gotten into grenades, unarmed combat, wearing armor, or dodging attacks, all of which have their own skills. If your Combat Spec character wants to be able to use Pistols, SMGs, and Knives – which I feel is totally reasonable – he’s paying more than a Tech Ops that has Hacking, Forensics, and Charm. One of those groupings is a nice, wide variety, the other is boring. Simply put, “Combat” needs to be its own skill, with Melee and Guns as the individual skills. Ending up with a super-SMG user with beyond human levels of handling those guns, but completely incompetent in assault rifles and pistols is silly. It’s not worth the points to buy all of those skills, and its immersion breaking for them to be separate. There are other skills that suffer from this problem, too. Buying Air, Land, Space, and Water vehicles separately is just too much. Survival Training requires you to treat it as a different skill for each environment. Do Botany and Biology really deserve to be separate? While it may seem like a lot of skills suffer from this, there’s enough that don’t, combined with the number of skill points you have, that show the spread out ones are problematic.

There’s also an issue with min/maxing the six attributes in the system. You start with 60 points to spread between these attributes, with a minimum of 4 and a maximum of 14 for humans. In addition, each class has a minimum attribute requirement. Tech Ops need to have a 11 Int and 9 Dex, which they were probably going to anyway – meanwhile Combat Spec needs 11 Str, which can be a painful requirement, and 9 Con, which is likely a given. Then comes the min/maxing – for someone who wants to focus on guns, having a 13 Dex is a huge bonus, and 14 is enough of one to make it worthwhile. The higher your intellect, the more skill points you get – so everyone’s going to want a high intellect. Personality, though? It’s never used as a defense, and for people without social skills, it’s only really useful for “Last Resort Points”, the action points of the system. Only, those require you to pay skill points on a permanent basis. If you have a 8-10 personality (and you won't have higher than 10 as a Combat Spec or Tech Ops) it costs around a rank in a skill you want (or at high levels, half a rank) to buy a Last Resort Point, and all they do is bump a result up or down one step. And by the time you have your stat in the 8 range, your chance on succeeding on untrained social skills is near nil – and the Diplomat can afford all those skills, anyway. So if you’re a Combat Spec or a Tech Op, you’re highly, highly encouraged to drop your Personality to 4, and use those extra points to buy up Intelligence so you can actually use more than one weapon, and maybe have some useful skills at a Combat Spec to help make your character interesting. The same thing goes for Strength for most characters except Combat Specs, who are required to have an 11. It’s almost the same thing for Will, if not for the fact that your Will+Constitution scores together need to equal 16 or you take significantly less actions, Will defense is actually used, and the all-important perception skills are under will. I wouldn’t be surprised, however, to see Tech Ops characters with two 4s, or close to. Encouraging such heavy min/maxing is annoying.

And finally let’s talk about what annoys me the most in this system – critical failures. Any system with critical failures is doomed to have them be horrible things that sap away the fun. On a nat 20, something bad happens. If you’re firing your gun full-auto, a critical failure means you have a jam. Due to the fact that highly skilled, and high level people are more likely to get extra actions, they’re going to get more jams than lower level people. And unjamming your gun is repair, a skill that Combat Spec characters don’t even get a discount on. A reasonably intelligent Combat Spec character that chooses not to buy repair can be looking at a 10-20% chance of unjamming their gun per action, so you better bring a few spare SMGs with you. Other skills have it even worse. Resist Pain is a trained only skill that you roll as soon as you suffer enough damage to cause a wound penalty. You can only do so if you spent skill points to allow you, and succeeding on a check lets you ignore some pain penalties. But if you critical fail – you lose several rounds, stunned by the pain. Yes, for some reason the designers thought it would be a good idea to make characters who spent skill points on “Resistant to pain” to occasionally act out the Family Guy knee-injury scene, but weak, 4 constitution hackers would never be stunned by such pain. It’s ridiculous.

Overall, while Alternity has a lot of things that make it interesting, like it’s dice system, it’s also filled with things that are simply terrible. When you strip out and fix the skill lists, professions, horrible min/maxing encouragement, you don’t have much left. It’s an interesting framework, and one of the few sci-fi RPGs without a heavy implied setting, but it’s still largely forgotten for a reason. I'm still enjoying using it, but I see a lot of room for improval.

Quick Thought: Lunar Legend's Ghaleon

2010-06-30T23:38:00.001-07:00

So a short thought when playing through Lunar Legend, the GBA remake of Lunar 1. It’s a fairly typical adventure-themed JRPG, with predictable plot twists and whatnot. Early on you’re introduced to Ghaleon, one of the four heroes of the past generation that everyone idolizes, especially the main character. Ghaleon looks like this:

…and is really, really obviously the bad guy. I mean, seriously, just look at him. This is before you even get to hear his internal monologues about how humans are evil. BBEG, written all over this guy.

Early on in the game, he ends up traveling with you for a while. While you’re heading through a forest, you meet a forest man with a crazy accent capturing faeries and intending to sell them. Ghaleon offers to pay this man anything he wants for a fairy, and upon learning Ghaleon’s identity, the man runs away, leaving the fairy behind. Ghaleon then shoos the fairy off, and makes an internal comment about how humans are horrible creatures. About this time, you also start to get hints that Ghaleon’s is mad at his close friend, and the main character’s hero, Dyne, who sacrificed himself.

And there you go – there’s your villainous backstory. When Ghaleon turns evil five minutes later, it’s not really shocking, but it’s easy to believe he WAS a hero. Hearing how people like him isn’t enough – I’ve seen too many tabletop games where the DM tried to communicate “this guy is (good/evil/strong/important)” without actually showing it. By having Ghaleon show that he actually has a heart, and giving us an insight as to why he’s become corrupted – namely, he’s a cynical bastard who doesn’t think humans are worthwhile – we can feel for him. Hell, we can almost agree with him; that jerk capturing fairies was just a dick, but still so very human, right? So next time you want a villain who has some redeeming traits (and those are always the best kinds of villains) try showing off those traits before hand.

A Look At: Suikoden

2010-06-30T21:24:00.001-07:00

Suikoden was originally released in the US in 1996, for the Playstation. Like many RPGs at the time, its cover had nothing to do with the game at all.

Seriously. Nothing here has anything to do with the game, at all. None of these even resemble the characters.

Suikoden was the first playstation game I owned, and I still enjoy it. The basic plot of the game is that you are Tir McDohl, son of Teo McDohl, one of the Emperor’s six great generals. Though a few crazy mishaps, you find yourself a fugitive leading a rebellion army against the Emperor, and the witch Windy who is controlling him behind the scenes. You have to gather an army (and there are 108 recruitable characters in this game, so it is an army!), meet the enemy generals on the field of battle, and stop their overall villainous plans. While Windy and her sorcery play a heavy role in the story, the real meat is the rebellion, and the two opposing armies. You’re not saving the world from a crazy white-haired clown, you’re just a son of a famous general thrust into opportunity to lead people to freedom.

Here are some things that I noticed that relate to tabletop roleplaying games:

Styles are mixed, but never feel out of place. Look at the two characters above – one is dressed like a traditional European knight, the other a martial artist. Many complain that the monk class was out of place in 3.5 D&D. Yet somehow, Suikoden makes it work. The music generally has an asian feel to it, as to many of the characters. Yet there’s just as much scenery that fits our images of castles and knights. I have no idea what the secret to this is - I'd be curious to hear people's opinions in the comments. Is it that both styles are introduced early, and mixed freely throughout?

Mathiu Silverberg, a former military strategist from a family of military strategists gets more screen time than probably any other character. You recruit him early game to help lead your army, and he’s the one who comes up with the ideas for what you, the hero, will have to do next. While the ideas of patrons who give out quests are hardly unique for tabletop games, Mathiu is interesting in that he doesn’t want to help you at first. It’s only after you convince him to help, and he sees how corrupt the Empire has become, does he aid you. This leads to an important effect that could be duplicated in RPGs – it won’t feel as much like railroading if the players ask for the next lead, rather than simply being given it. When they know their patron is a genius who they’ve convinced to help, it feels more like they’re accomplishing something.

Kalekka is a town you hear about early in the game with regards to “The Kalekka Incident”. Mathiu has a connection to it, but doesn’t say what. Eventually, you have to pass through this town to reach a destination – and when you do, you find it a waste. Buildings are demolished, farm fields burnt. Kalekka is in total ruins. Later, you’re adventuring with Humphrey, a knight who rarely says a word. He meets an old friend, and the two catch up, with the friend asking why Humphrey was no longer in the Emperor’s army (which was unrevealed, up to this point). Humphrey explains that he left after the Kalekka incident, revealing that what he was ordered to do made him so angry, he killed his commander and fled right then. Never is it revealed what actually happened in Kalekka – it’s up for the player to imagine it. Sometimes, letting people infer something happened is more useful than outright telling them. Rather than explaining what happened at Kalekka, the player is left with the understanding that it turned Mathiu off of war, destroyed a town, and made the stoic Humphrey kill a man in rage. The exact details of the event don’t matter – how people have responded to it does.

Suikoden also has one big gut-punch. The Emperor has six great generals, and as mentioned above, the main character is the son of one. The first two are both acting like dictorial dicks when you meet them, and after defeating them, you discover they were being controlled and forced to act evil by a mind-control rune placed by the witch, Windy. The rune is removed, and you’re able to have them join your army. After fighting the first two generals, Teo, your father, is sent to confront you. Like the previous two, you’re first forced to do a fetch quest to be able to acquire the mcguffin that lets you defeat his army, and then do battle with him personally… only to discover that there is no rune controlling him. He was just a good, honorable man, doing the wrong thing out of a sense of loyalty and duty. He gives his blessing to your rebellion with his dying words, urging his soldiers to follow you. With a repetition of the same plot structure twice in a row, the player is naturally expecting it to occur the third time, and it seems to, right up until the end. The sudden lack of an expected element right at a crucial point comes as a surprise. There was no earlier indication to suspect that Teo had a rune controlling him – unlike the previous two generals, there was no horrible act he was committing – but that’s easy to skip over at first. It’s made all the more effective in that Teo was a good character doing bad things, something tabletop games need to include more often.

Welcome!

2010-06-30T18:47:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my blog. This is a blog about various things I enjoy – role playing games, video games, books, and the occasion rare TV show. This blog is mostly going to be dedicated to tabletop roleplaying games, however, so expect to see a lot of that.

I plan on writing blog posts about video games and other media, and how they relate to roleplaying games. In particular, analyzing story, mechanics, and similar, and what we can learn from them for tabletop games. I do not plan on doing video game reviews – there are enough blogs and sites for them.

My RPG examinations will be closer to reviews. For RPGs, expect me to go more in-depth on the mechanics, taking a closer look at what makes them tick, why they work well, or why they just plain suck. If you can’t handle rational, critical thoughts, turn away. I’m not going to go easy on an RPG just because I like it, so I’m not going to go easy on one just because you like it! A game can be good, and still have its bad points to it.