I think I should discuss my design principle here. With D&D the idea for this type of monster to capture the essence of the creature and translate that into game stats. In Superman’s case its a matter of detemining his iconic abilities and then giving them some numbers.

I figured that Superman should probably be a low epic tier opponent, so he gets to be a level 22 solo encounter. From there the other kyrptonians are less powerful than Superman so they end up at lower levels making them mid to high paragon tier. They share similar powers to Superman but with enough differences to highlight their own roles.

At any rate here’s some monsters.

Kryptonians are tall and muscualr but otherwise appear human. Their appearance belies tremendous power though, for they are far stronger and vastly more resilient than any human. All kryptonians are possessed of the ability to fly under their own power and all can fire beams or intense heat from their eyes.

The kryptonian striker a fast moving front line combatant. While capable of moving at blinding speeds rely on their large brethren to provide cover as they dash between their foes laying waste to everything in their way.

Tactics: The kryptonian striker will typically open their assault by attempting to freeze their opponents and then use furious assault while they wait for kryptonian juggernauts to join the fray.

The kryptonian juggernaut is a hulking member of the kryptonian species. Larger and stronger than many of his ilk the juggernaut wades into combat with relish and dealing tremendous damage by superheating his own fists with his eye beams.

Tactics: The juggernaut’s tactics are simple. Knock over as many opponents as possible and then pound them into goo.

Looks like I’m a Behir, whoop ass!

Edit: Alignment corrections

I fully plan on running Eberron 4E once the campaign and player guides are released in June/July 2009. Something about the setting just caught, maybe its the logical progression of understandable controllable magic, maybe its the crazy post war Indiana Jones world hopping, red line traveling fun, or maybe its warforged. Yes, warforged. They are very, very cool to me. A constructed creature imbued with a soul, some good, some bad, some in between but all of them are cognizant of their place in the world and needing to find a new place in the world. That is what I like about a campaign setting, it makes it easy to find a place in the world for the players. That is what I try to create whenever I get to starting a new campaign, a place in the world for the PCs to take charge.

My newest attempt is a rebuild using D&D of a shamelessly stolen idea from a player. The idea is to defend a town from an incoming invasion of monstrous hordes. The wrinkle is that only the players know about the invasion, none of the NPCs will believe them, at least nobody that can do anything to help. Right there we have a hook that puts the players squarely in control of the game direction. They get to choose where, when and how they try to stop the invading hordes. Or not, but thats completely up to them

My favourite settings all do something similar. Freedom City makes your characters superheroes, and by the default game standards they aren’t scrubs either. They are powerful, talented and capable. At least as capable as the X-Men, and this gives them an immediate place, because they can take care of themselves. Planescape did very much the same thing, since belief and how that affected the world worked much the same way. The characters could advance multiplanar schemes and conquests and still be level one, as I recall the Factol of the Athar was a level one petitioner to use AD&D Second Edition parlance. The PCs could be that guy, and that was the fun of the setting.

What are your favourite campaign settings? Why do you love them so?

For a bit of background. I worked at a call centre, until my recent layoff and its generally pretty crappy, the only light is that I worked with my fiance so she makes me smile all of the time. Writing about her now is making me smile, so I have that going for me. In my position I have to deal with customers of a major telecommunications company in the United States, for whom I provide tech support to PDA devices. That makes me wonder about how I can use that experience in a game. I could as a GM create NPC caricatures of my managers for the PCs to beat the living snot out of, butthat’s not really what I’m talking about. I’m talking about how to turn a job, sometimes a crappy job, into exciting games and adventures. My experience that I’m a specialist, I deal with only certain situations. I don’t answer general billing questions, I don’t deal with most standard phone type devices, I do however deal with some of the most difficult and confusing technical issues for devices thatrenowned for confusing technical issues, I have specialized tools and training to do what I need to do, I am the call centre equivalent of an adventurer. So how does this working game? Read on and I shall explain.

The easiest way work this into a game is as a game of intrigue, at least for those of us with office jobs. Think of how you would integrate the idea of office politics, which can be just as vicious as any those in any royal court and you have a good idea about the challenges the PCs should be facing. If we take my layoff for example that can lead to lots of adventure ideas. In my case I worked for my previous employer for just shy of five years and the only reason myself and several of my coworkers were let go is because of our tenure and associated costs of being kept employed in favour of somebody who gets less pay. Maybe your group’s services are no longer needed by their previous patron, they are forced to find their own work, which isn’t hard for a group of adventurers. If terms of costs to a patron why not set up a group that is doing the same work with same level of skill of a lower cost. You have a rival group that isn’t outright antagonistic to the PCs and that give a nice bit of drama to any series of adventures. The intrigue option is always valid. I’m sure that you’ve encountered that one person that is always riding on your coat tails or those of your coworkers. That one person that tangently attaches themselves to a project and somehow manages to get most of the credit through smooth talking and nobody else wanting to be seen as a jerk. This makes a good NPC for a game, that oneperson that manages to convince the king or your patron that it was their invaluable help that saved the day, despite only being tangently involved with the whole adventure. This also means this person maybe getting promotions or rewards beyond their station, or may even have a more sinister motive for their lies beyond just mere ambition.

Something else to consider is why that event has occurred even if the players never find out that why. A GM knowing why something happens can lead to more adventures by having the players getting to the root of a problem. Maybe the PCs have become an unfavourable group to have around after a shift in the power structure, and in an effort to cut ‘costs’ or clear detritus from the organization’s structure the PCs are cut loose. Maybe they are too powerful, or viewed as having too much power, maybe the royal vizier sees the bard has having too much of an influence on the king, so the vizier engineers a reason to unceremoniously dump the characters in the nearest gutter and have the king agree to do so.

Once more to my lay off for inspiration. Imagine the following scene. Local heroes who have been protecting the local townships from goblins, brigands and their ilk for nigh on five years are called before the local magistrate on behalf of the king. They are informed that their status of goblin and brigand hunters is revoked, they are to leave the kingdom due to the king wanting to have more royal support in the area. He’s sending out his own soldier under his own payroll because they cost less, even after taking into account the loss of funds due to goblin raids. Never mind the loss of morale of thefarmers , the heroes services just aren’t needed any more. But, they are told, if a dragon shows up the king will happily accept their help, at a greatly reduced rate. There are apologies all around, but really there’s nothing the magistrate can do, because of the king you see. So what are the heroes to do? Do they go to the king and appeal their case? Is what the magistrate says all there is to the king’s request? Is the king’s request genuine? Are the soldiers coming for the reason stated, are they there to quash afomenting rebellion, or is there something more sinister at work? All excellent questions and each one of them can lead to a whole series of new adventures.

Guess I’m a fighter.

In my case I’m fortunate enough that I get to live and work with my fiance. She is the love of my life, and she has an interest in gaming so she’ll play with me. For the most part my lack of regular gaming group usually means we play games like Zombies! or the Wizards of the Coast Star Wars and Dungeons and Dragons mini games. I’ve even her helped to create a Dungeons and Dragons Fourth Edition character (an elf paladin named Isla if you must know), but have yet to use said character in game. So where does this leave us? Well it leaves us at the point that you need to know what it is you need to know whether your significant other is a gamer in hiding, or just somebody who will tolerate your hobby. It also helps to know what it is that they like, my fiance for example very much enjoys the competitive nature of the mini games, and board games that we play. I fairly certain she’d enjoy the competitive nature of Fourth Edition combat as well, role-playing functions and other ideas implicit to the game I’ll have to ask her about more, but I’m also sure that she’d enjoy those as well.

So how do you get your non-gamer to join the fun? I think the first thing to do is to determine what, if anything, they think of gaming. Do they think its a bunch of 40 year old losers, plus you, hanging around in someone’s mother’s basement? If that’s the case you’ll probably want to start out that your aren’t the stereotype of the D&D player, and neither are your friends. If you were you wouldn’t be having a conversation with your significant other. I’m not the stereotype of the hobby, and my sweet heart certainly sees that every day. I’m willing to bet you aren’t either, and your significant other sees that as well.

However, this still doesn’t really cover getting your significant other to play a game. I’d say start with a straight forward board game. I personally recommend Zombies! for the horror genre lover. Its a fun little game where you try to run the heck away from an advancing zombie horde to the escape helicopter. Its fun and pretty competitive, and its not a standard board game, at least not in the Monopoly style board game. From there you might want to look into any of a variety minis type games, the Star Wars and Dungeons and Dragons games are pretty good on this front, although any mini game that offers some more complicated rules are probably a good next step. The idea here to gauge interest in how complicated the rules can get before interest wanes or becomes frustrating. There are lots of options for low rules systems, Risus for example, but for our purposes we’ll assume that you’d like your significant other to play with you in a variety of games including exception based rules systems like Dungeons and Dragons or GURPS. For the most part though what you’re really trying to do is show your significant other why you like games, and gauge what if anything they like about games. I think there is something fun in role-playing games for everybody, but there is no guarantee that your significant other is going to find anything they like. You may just have to accept they wont find any enjoyment in the hobby we all share. I’m fortunate that enough that my fiance is open to an interested in gaming, you may not be so lucky. That said as long as your significant other appreciates that you like role-playing games, even if they don’t, and everybody is still having fun than you’re definitely in a good place.

So what have you done, or are currently doing, to include your signficant other in your game?

The question is how are these two things related to the fun of the system. The simple answer is that they are as fun as you make them. I personally find roll 30d6 rather annoying as far as resolution mechanics go, which the WEG version of Star Wars was notorious (fairly or not) for allowing. The reason for that is that its too much at the table work. If you’ve played Warhammer Fantasy Battles or Warhammer 40K you know what its like to attack with a squad of 50+ greenskins, and that’s not even adding the results together. Still, there is a certain charm to dropping a bucket of dice on the table and hoping for the best, I do love rolling dice, no matter how crazy the results seem.

A bell curve is the preferred method of games like GURPS, which tend towards somewhat more human results. A fairly typical bell curve attempt is 3d6 and add to a target number. This will net you results of 3 to 18 with average of 10 or 11 depending on how you round. This means that most results will end up around 10 or 11, with only 1-in-216 results being 3 or 18. Like most humans the results tend towards the middle, which works for system attempting to model that level of reality.

That doesn’t answer our question of fun though, what does answer the question of fun is that the system of resolution needs to represent what you the gamer need it to represent. So for a game that needs big spectacular effects you might want to choose the Buck O’ Dice method, for games leaning towards a more humanly plausible result maybe trying for a bell curve is right for you. For me I like single roll a d20 and add some numbers, because its fast and simple.

Now I’m sure that I’ve missed quite a few resolution mechanics for any number of games (I understand Dead Lands use playing cards of example), but I like dice and I don’t know enough about those other games to make any comment on them. But I will leave you all with a question. What is your favourite resolution mechanic? Tell me why in the comments and we’ll see what we all have to share.

Lets start with our basics. What is fun exactly? From Wiktionary:

Noun

fun (uncountable)

1. amusement, enjoyment or pleasure.

   I want to go out this evening and have some fun.

   What fun we’re having!

   • 2000, Robert Stanley, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Adobe Photoshop 6, Alpha Books, page 377

     Grafting your boss’s face onto the hind end of a donkey is fun, but serious fun is when you create the impossible and it looks real.

2. playful, often noisy, activity.

So it seems that the basis of fun is to derive pleasure from an activity, idea, or place. Hmmm…. pretty simple stuff. But how does this relate to roleplaying games? Well, roleplaying games should be fun. You should be getting enjoyment from the game, some pleasure even. So why do game designer always say they don’t put rules in for things that aren’t fun? Who are they to decide what I find fun or not?

Both questions come from one answer. The designers put in what they think would be fun, usually for largest audience, but they can’t account for everybody. D&D doesn’t have rules for using the bathroom, I don’t think that strictly necessary to do so, although I’ve heard from several sources that FATAL includes them. Does thing make a game more fun? It might for somebody, but I can’t imagine how.

In many ways this is how all game designers look at their game rules. They need to ask does adding a rule for something make the game more fun? In many cases the answer is clear cut (urinating rules for example). However, you’ll end up with corner cases where the answer is maybe, and this is where the question of fun really comes into play. The reason you come up with a maybe is because it depends on the game. Take the following example. D&D does not need rules for changing your regular clothes, because it doesn’t fit into D&D’s style or genre of heroic fantasy. Mutants and Masterminds on the other hand does need rules for such a thing because its a superhero game and sometimes superheroes need to how long it will take to change into their spandex underoos.

So where does having a fun game take us? Well, to having fun with the game of course. These two things seem to go hand in hand, but they don’t always mesh the way one might want them to. Just because you think the rules for a game would fun, doesn’t mean the game itself is going to be fun. This seem odd at first but bear with me while I try to explain. I’ve played several White Wolf games and I think the rules themselves are fun. However, when put into practice I never found them fun because I could never really see how all those dots on a page related to the game at hand. Sometimes the rules didn’t make sense for actions I wanted to take even though I like the rules a whole, but in practical game play I wasn’t having fun. So what was I to do? Play a different game, that’s what.

All of that an here I am with one conclusion: Play the games you find fun. You don’t have to like everything out there, I know that I don’t. I just want to make one humble request, just becase you don’t like something doesn’t mean you need to be disrepectful to express your dislike. You don’t even need logical reasons, just be nice please.

And remember: Roleplaying Games Should be Fun!

So if this isn’t a review what is it? Well, its hard to pin it down exactly, but a review this is no, or at least its not intended as one. Lets call it a soap box in stead then. Its my Dungeons and Dragons Fourth Edition soap box.

To start my box of soap I’ll say this: I like Fourth Edition, its fun, really fun.

Why is it fun? Simple. Its easy to play, and it works for what it was designed to do. So what does that mean to us players and DMs? It means that D&D 4E uses a dead simple design concept and aesthetic to produce an easy to play game, and for DMs and easy to run game, that captures a really good high fantasy feel. That design aesthetic as I see it is summed as basically this: Mechanics should not make an option useless at any time. So for players you are never at loss of something to do in combat because the rules don’t give you something to do (see wizards without spells in previous editions), and for the DM the mechanics of the game make it feasible to give all characters something to do in any situation you care to present.

As for differences, sure there are some pretty big differences from the previous renditions of this venderable game, but for the most part it still achieves the same goals. Have fun with your friends by hanging out together pretending to be elves, dwarves and the rest while smashing bad guys in the face and being heroes: Big Damn Heroes.

That’s why D&D 4E is fun for me at any rate. It achieves it stated goals with finesse and panache. It make it easy for me a DM to run and setup a game from a mechanics stand point, which leaves more time for me to do the fun things like work out how my NPCs will react, and the history of our fictional world. For a player prespective the game adds surivability, but not invulnerability, to the mix allowing for more time to really get into the nitty gritty details of their character, and makes all characters useful at all times. No more linear warriors/quadratic wizards as a game mechanics issue.

As always: Roleplaying Games Should be Fun

Welcome world to my Blog. I’ll be blogging largely about gaming, of table top variety, for the most part. Whether that be game theory, design theory, or even tossing out a vew home brewed bits and pieces.  Sometimes I might jaunt off about comic books, sometimes I wont.

To quote myself: I’ve been gaming since the I was 15, some time ago now. I’ve played AD&D Second Edition, bother iterations of D&D 3rd Edition, D&D Fourth Edition (likely the bulk of my posts) RIFTS, Mutants and Masterminds Second Edition, all four versions of Star Wars, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying Game, Warhammer Fantasy Battles, Warhammer 40K, the Star Wars and D&D Minis games, and a bunch of other games I’m probably missing.

I live with my wonderfully, beautiful, love of my life fiancee. She’s everything I want, and I’m sure that there will be many a blog entry about her.

I’ll be trying to post at least once per week. But I’m a busy guy and sometimes I might not be able to.

So, here’s my blog, and the title is my view on the state of the game: Roleplaying Games Should Be Fun!