Posts filed under 'Roleplaying'
I very seriously doubt I’ll still be playing WoW when the Warth of the Lich King expansion (newly announced by Blizzard) is released, but here’s a quick list of the interesting features:
- The first new WoW class since release: the Death Knight (a hero class; you can create a character with this class, starting at level sixty-something or higher, only after completing a quest with some other high-level character)
- An increase of the level cap to 80 and the profession cap to 450
- The content of Northrend, open to characters 68 and above
- Siege weapons in an outdoor PVP zone
Those, at least, are the features that are interesting to me. I don’t mind the increase in level and profession caps, as getting those up is supremely easy and presumably means there are new and interesting abilities to play with past 70 (and 375).
I like to content, so this ten-zone continent of Northrend may be fun. I didn’t wind up liking the Outlands all that much, apart from Nagrand. They felt too alien and strange to me, too different from what already existed in the game.
As for the Death Knight class, well, new classes are fun. I enjoy learning the mechanics of each class. But Blizzard has always been committed to making the classes truly unique. To do that with the Death Knight, they’ve had to invent what sounds like a fairly bizarre mechanic, with a new sword bar that has runes etched on it that get spent but can be re-etched after a certain time expires. Different, yes, but weird!
Also, I’ve never liked the mechanic of creating a completely new character simply because you’ve achieved something with a different character. It spoils my already very tenuous willing suspension of disbelief, underscoring the gamey side of things instead of the simulation, immersion, and roleplaying that I really like.
But more interesting options for PVP? That I can get behind 100%.
For more details, one great write up is at 1up. Check out their detailed write up here. Or just watch WoWinsider, where there will no doubt be hundreds of posts on the topic of the new expansion over the next few months.
August 3rd, 2007
| I don’t just like games; I’m a foodie as well. On Fridays, I publish a drink or cocktail recipe that I enjoy as an accompaniment to some sort of game. These aren’t necessarily drinks I’ve invented, but they are superior potations that gamers who tipple are liable to enjoy. |
This post continues my discussion of the great cocktail the Mai Tai, which began here.
The Mai Tai exemplifies something that can invigorate tabletop roleplaying campaigns with a sense of verisimilitude: namely, the fact that a single splash of an exotic ingredient can transform something ordinary into an extraordinary delight. Rum punch is nice, but no amount of paper umbrellas and miniature pineapples makes them miraculous. A simple splash of orgeat, though, and you can imagine you’re sitting on a beach in Tahiti.
In any campaign, throw in an ingredient that’s unexpected and rare (or at least apparently rare). Pages have been written on interesting hybrid settings, but this is something simpler. Instead of trying to install cyberpunk hardware in a high fantasy setting (which could be damn fun!), just add a little flavor of technology. Many settings now do this, like including mechanical “life forms”—that is, robots—to a setting
loaded with magic. Likewise, the world in the marvelous The Golden Compass
by Phillip Pullman takes a pretty standard Victorian setting and throws in “daemons”—externalized animae that everyone has—and creates a vivid and fascinating new world.
When inventing your own campaign, you can do the same. Instead of melding two genres, pick a familiar one and add a foreign element. One of the best ways to do this is set the campaign in your own home town, but add something strange. This not only assists in campaign creation (you already have pre-made maps, NPCs, and a good estimate of how to get around), it also adds a certain eeriness as players encounter mysterious things on familiar streets.
You could make your own town the locus for a vast conspiracy, with neighbors disappearing and sightings of men in black at the street corners. Horror works well, too. If classic black witchcraft is real and attracts the attention of dark powers, then when a neighbor starts dabbling, the PCs may have their hands full fighting off monsters from beyond—in the players own back yards!
And now, at last, the recipe.
Mai Tai
Ingredients
- 1 oz. light rum
- 1 oz. dark rum
- ½ oz. triple sec
- ½ oz. orgeat syrup
- ¼ oz. fresh lime juice
Instructions
Shake all ingredients in a shaker half full of ice. Pour over shaved or crushed ice in a cocktail glass. (I like to use a brandy snifter.)
Garnish with your choice of maraschino cherries, baby pineapples or pineapple slices, and orange slices. If you have one handy, make sure you use a paper umbrella to perfect the drink.
August 3rd, 2007
| I don’t just like games; I’m a foodie as well. On Fridays, I publish a drink or cocktail recipe that I enjoy as an accompaniment to some sort of game. These aren’t necessarily drinks I’ve invented, but they are superior potations that gamers who tipple are liable to enjoy. |
The great Mai Tai, perhaps the froofiest of froofy drinks. I have so much to say on this that I’ll be breaking the post in two. The first contains a discussion of the Mai Tai itself. Later today, I’ll post my thoughts on how it relates to gaming, along with my own favorite recipe, of course.
There are many competing recipes, and this seems to have been true since the drink was first mixed! In the 1930s and 1940s, the Tiki-culture fad spread like wildfire across America, but the spark was lit in California. Two innovative restaurateurs—Trader Vic and Don the Beachcomber—catering to American’s hunger for a taste of the exotic, opened “Polynesian style” restaurants to dish out tropical drinks and flavorful recipes.
Perhaps the proud edifices of steel and concrete scraping the skies in America’s largest cities, a testament to the country’s emerging preeminence as an emerging superpower, nonetheless created a longing in its citizens for a simpler life. Lounging on tropical beaches with almost nothing to do, and perhaps with almost no clothes, must have seemed wonderful to the hard-working, driven office workers chasing the American dream.
They wouldn’t give up their jobs, of course, but they might pour some of their hard-earned cash into an evening at a restaurant bedecked with palm leaves, reed mats, and strong-and-fruity cocktails. The Tiki-culture restaurants, which actually served mostly Cantonese food and didn’t have all that much to do with actual Polynesian culture, eventually faded, replaced by Chinese restaurants, some of which actually serve food that people might eat in China.
When I was a child, though, most “Chinese” restaurants still had menus chock full of items such as the “pupu platter” and bars ready to shake up cocktails bedecked with pineapple slices and little paper umbrellas. The foodie community is a bit more sophisticated, today, and more concerned with authenticity. But this sophistication has given birth to a new delight in the campy, borderline absurd styling of such restaurants, and now both the Trader Vic’s and Don the Beachcomber chains are experiencing a strong resurgence.
The founders of both these chains claim to have invented the Mai Tai, and of course their recipes differ. Since the Mai Tai was first served, almost as many recipes for it as there are bars that serve it have come to light. Although they all include rum and fruit juice (and almost all include the cute paper umbrella), some are what I consider merely pleasant rum punch recipes.
A true Mai Tai is very sweet, almost heavy, but nonetheless ethereally delicious. The key to this is the ingredient that distinguishes true Mai Tais from all other rum drinks: the sweet, almond-flavored orgeat syrup. Nowadays, this isn’t hard to come by. Even the ubiquitous Torani sells a version. Don’t make the mistake of buying simple almond-flavored syrup. Delicious though that may be, true orgeat syrup is different and distinct, and essential to a good Mai Tai.
Check back later for my thoughts on how the Mai Tai ties into gaming, as well as my favorite recipe for the cocktail. When the article is up, you’ll be able to find it here.
August 3rd, 2007
Here’s a fun tool for tabletop roleplaying games and MMORPG players who actually want to do some roleplaying over Ventrilo and Teamspeak. Pulp Gamer is offering a dialect-training CDs. In the past, I’ve looked longingly at the advanced—and expensive—dialect training courses and coaches Hollywood stars use, but I’ve never been able to justify the expense.
Along comes Pulp Gamer, offering two CDs that cover various British English dialects. The first covers “Cockney and the Queen’s English,” which is just what I need for my surly gnome rogue in World of Warcraft. The second tackles “Irish and Scottish.”
Will these CDs help me attain true verisimilitude? I rather doubt it. The sample, for instance, sounds very good but not perfect.
But hey, I don’t want to spend years mastering a throwaway dialect for my upcoming Victorian countryside survival horror campaign. Instead, I want to sound good enough that I can voice several different characters convincingly enough that my players can distinguish them. If I can coax even a few smiles—or widened eyes—the $13.95 I blow on each CD will be well worth it.
While you’re ordering yours, you might want to subscribe to Pulp Gamer’s very good paper game podcast, too. It’s their main product, really, and well worth your time.
August 2nd, 2007
People have long discussed what it’s like to play a character of a different sex in an MMORPG, and there’s not much left to say on the subject, but a post by the Infamous Brad about the treatment of his female character in City of Heroes made me realize that men playing women may be shocked my something that’s all too familiar to women players.
Brad argues that, when other (male) players think the player is a woman, they will treat that player as stupid or, if the player is assertive, call that player a bitch. To such assholes (as Brad accurately dubs them), women players serve as viable flirtation targets, and possibly as audience for long-winded instruction they don’t need. But the assholes simply don’t think real women deserve respect.
I’ve found this to be completely true, I’m afraid. About half my MMORPG characters are female, and players usually assume (wrongly) that there’s an actual woman player behind the character. When they do, some—not the majority, but a significant minority—treat me like a fool.
To some degree, I think it’s mostly players like the Infamous Brad and me—men who convincingly play female characters—that make a stink about this sort of thing. My wife plays, and plays female characters almost exclusively. She gets this sort of treatment all the time. But she doesn’t say much about it. I suspect that’s because she already deals with it in real life. Let’s face it; this sort of treatment isn’t at all unique to the anonymous online worlds where we slay dragons.
It’s endemic to academe and meeting rooms, too.
There are women players who roll with the punch, others who make a fuss even at the risk of being branded a bitch. But men simply don’t expect to have their ideas and suggestions dismissed without being considered. When men speak, they expect their contributions to be given due consideration. When they participate in an activity, they expect their efforts to be equally valued at least until they prove themselves unworthy.
So for us men, it’s absolutely shocking when we encounter it online. For women, it may be enraging, but it’s not altogether surprising.
Women simply don’t get respect from everyone. They consistently get dismissed, ignored, ridiculed for no other reason than that they’re women. Not by everyone, no. But there are enough assholes, online and off, that the experience can’t be all that unfamiliar to most women.
The real point, here, is that convincingly playing a woman may give men a chance to experience the downside. (The upside—free crap in exchange for typing /dance and acting like a complete moron in major in-game cities—is well-documented and not all that much of an upside.) Men, it’s your chance to do what Eddie Murphy did on Saturday Night Live so many years ago. (Go watch the video if you haven’t seen it. Hilarious.)
So if you’re a man eager to experience to prejudice and condescension women face regularly, roll up a female character and play her well. This is an interesting wrinkle to the roleplaying aspect of these roleplaying games, one that’s not truly available to tabletop gaming or online games with voice chat (but that is available to online interaction outside of games).
As a humorous endnote, I’ll mention here that I’ve had good success being perceived as a woman player when I play woman characters. I attribute this to a lot of the same things Brad mentions in his blog post. But I never expected it to have anything to do with my training as an editor.
Apparently, though, grammar helps! Several years ago, while playing my main in Dark Age of Camelot, a female mercenary, I formed a pretty good online friendship with another player. Eventually, he worked up the courage to ask if I was really a woman. I don’t know why, but I told him I was. “i knew it,” he wrote. “want to know why? because of the capitalization and punctuation. men don’t do that.”
July 30th, 2007
| I don’t just like games; I’m a foodie as well. On Fridays, I publish a drink or cocktail recipe that I enjoy as an accompaniment to some sort of game. These aren’t necessarily drinks I’ve invented, but they are superior potations that gamers who tipple are liable to enjoy. |
In a far-future science-fiction roleplaying game (it was basically the Traveller
universe), I played a Greek starship captain named Sophia Soulis. Unscrupulous doctors had genetically enhanced her to be able to move with blinding speed, but they hadn’t worried about the serious metabolic disadvantages that would result. Sophia was plauged by occasional bouts of epilepsy, a massively increased need for food, and strong dependence on an illegal drug. (Yes, her set of abilities was inspired by Miles Teg from Frank Herbert’s Chapterhouse Dune.)
She drank—often and heavily—as one of the few escapes from the discomforts of her physical disadvantages and the need to keep her illegal genetic modifications hidden. Loyal to the long-dead civilization of her ancestors, the Greeks, influenced her choice of potables. She opted for the strongly anise-flavored ouzo.
I don’t like anise. And I’ve never tasted anything with a stronger anise flavor than ouzo. Inspired by the (apocryphal?) story of method actor Dustin Hoffman insisting on eating garlic soup while he starred in Death of a Salesman simply because that’s what his character would do, I brought along a bottle of the stuff to each session and tippled while we trawled the stars looking for work while avoiding the galactic authorities.
Many countries have a national anise-flavored drink (Sambuca, pastis, raki, anisette, and so on). This Greek variety is very sweet without becoming syrupy. As I said, I’m no fan of anise, but I actually do like ouzo from time to time. (My wife hates olives but love olive tapenade, which tastes more like olives than olives themselves. Perhaps this is a parallel case.)
I’ve never been to an ouzerie (nor to Greece, for that matter), but I can recommend that ouzo is best enjoyed cold, with a small glass lasting a long time.
And I can certainly recommend bringing a character-appropriate snack or drink to the gaming table (with enough to share for those who are interested, of course). For instance, I knew a guy who brought pickled herring in sour cream to any session in which he played his Viking character. This Scandinavian delicacy repulses most people who hear about it (though I loved before I became a vegetarian) energized the roleplaying. The other characters were from more “civilized” parts of the game world, and the rising smell of vinegar-preserved ocean fish and thick sour cream added greatly to their disdained reactions to this northern barbarian.
Next time I play, I think I’ll create a character who enjoys outrageously expensive single-malt scotch!
July 27th, 2007
Today, Tobold wrote about what may be the death of turn-based strategy games, pointing out that even though technical limitations don’t force game developers to opt for a turn-based model, in some cases a turn-based model can offer greater depth of play.
Attempts to move tabletop gaming online have mostly failed. For instance, I ran a campaign in Neverwinter Nights that didn’t work for two key reasons. First, it took an enormous amount of time for me to create the game world between sessions. Even if I’d had more and more time to practice developing the world with the provided toolset, I’m sure I would always be spending more time creating scenarios than running them.
Second, as soon as combat began, the players were hopelessly outgunned. I kept lowering and lowering the difficulty of the fights in the game, but the players couldn’t keep up. Dungeons & Dragons and other tabletop roleplaying games are designed to simulate combat to some degree of accuracy, but the all depend on a turn-based model.
Sure, this means a few seconds of battle can take an hour to play out. Sure, in a real fight people don’t have time to make such decisions. But it allows people pretend they actually have combat skills. No one’s ever penalized for not remembering a keyboard shortcut and losing because her war-hardened combat veteran character forgot to raise her shield at the right moment.
(Neverwinter Nights actually was a turn-based game, though by default set to simulate real-time action. In a multi-playered, game-mastered game, though, allowing all players to pause was impractical. It simulated D&D reasonably well for the solo campaign, but failed for group play.)
Porting board games to computers has been more successful simply because no one’s trying to change the rules. No one wants to play speed-Monopoly, with button-mashing magnates making a Trump-like killing in the real-estate market simply because they can roll their dice the fastest. (Okay, maybe that’d be fun, but only in a weird way.)
But something breaks down with roleplaying games. Computer RPGs are an almost completely different genre than tabletop RPGs, even if they’re built around the same ruleset.
I asked before (in the context of voice chat) about non-MMO online roleplaying. But I’m thinking about it even more, now, ’cause I’ve got a friend from college who wants to start a campaign up again.
How can I get the tabletop roleplaying experience with remote players? Now that video conferencing is effectively free, we can at least talk to one another. And I’ve mentioned Gametable before, which provides a shared map and die rolling.
But are there any tools that really take advantage of web-connected computers to simulate the game itself while still giving the richness of turn-based play? Any tools that can handle the intricate interplay of a multi-character fight—with positioning, fancy moves, conditions that persist from turn to turn, all the number crunching—while still giving the players freedom to choose at (at least moderate) leisure their characters’ next actions? If so, I very much want to hear about them!
Has anyone successfully moved a tabletop campaign online? If so, what tools did you use? If it failed, what didn’t work?
July 26th, 2007
This post contains no spoilers (unlike my other posts on the game). Instead, as in my first post about the advertising vehicle that is The Ultimate Search for Bourne, I thought I’d put the big question out there.
Is the game fun?
I have to answer, “Yes.” I enjoy solving the puzzles, poking around the web sites, and writing up quick blog posts about each challenge.
But it’s not huge fun. I don’t need this advertisement. I’m already a big-time fan of most Google products, and I’ll probably see The Bourne Ultimatum eventually.
And as a game, the Ultimate Search for Bourne has a few little problems:
- It’s too easy. Once you “get” how a day is likely to go, you can resolve the challenge in a minute or two.
- Camera placement may be random. This is an ongoing question, and today’s game may have the most obvious clues to camera placement so far . . . or it may prove that there’s nothing but luck behind it.
- The interface is buggy. On my Macintosh with Firefox at home, bits of the interface keep reloading. For the last two days, my wife has been unable to place cameras on her Mac or on my work PC laptop
- The game feels less and less like a spy drama every day. This is party because it’s basically the same game every day. The fact that, with almost no practice, it gets very easy also removes a lot of the cloak-and-dagger feel. And finally because the willing suspension of disbelief is harder to maintain the more I realize how the places and mysteries are calculated to create another day of play and advertise another tool or service, rather than to help a story unfold.
But I did say the game was fun, right? It is! I still believe, passionately, this could be the seed for a very exciting and innovative form of massively multiplayer roleplaying game. It has moments that do still feel delightfully cyber-spyish. And I still like solving puzzles that at least pretend to be tied into adventure and story, rather than just arbitrary rules resolutions.
And any chance at a free iPhone is hard to resist.
So what do you think? Are you having fun? What do you like, and what do you hate?
July 25th, 2007
World of Warcraft will definitely have built-in voice chat soon. Many other MMORPGs already have built-in voice chat. For games that don’t have it yet or won’t have it, most serious players use other voice chat programs. (This is not news.)
I don’t exactly fit a traditional gaming category. (And really, who does?) But I do like the storytelling, immersion, and roleplaying aspects of MMORPGs, for all that they’re virtually non-existent.
No voice chat tool I’ve seen really supports these things, but there’s no point in bemoaning the fact. Voice chat is too darn useful to gamers to leave out. All multiplayer online games will and should have it.
So my question is, how can people who are interested in immersive roleplaying continue to enjoy it while voice chat is inherent to the online games they enjoy? They could:
- Turn it off or ignore it
Which, of course, means deliberately crippling their game experience.
- Restrict RP to chat channels
Which means continuing to RP as they have in the past.
- Try to RP via voice
Which will interfere with people who wish to roleplay characters of of the other sex, will expose bad actors, and will upset the illusion of the gameworld. Of course, tabletop gamers are able to suspend their disbelief for these sorts of things, but one of the reasons RPers use WoW and other MMORPGs (which aren’t really a good vehicle for roleplaying) is because they can simulate some aspects of their character more easily than they could at the gaming table.
In the end, voice chat is another intrusion of reality into the illusion of the game world. Since UO, MMORPGs have become less and less simulations and more and more games. And I’m not really complaining about this. More people want games than want simulations that make you wait eight in-game hours to go shopping.
So perhaps the future of online gaming isn’t in the big MMORPGs with persistent worlds, but in bringing tabletop games online. I know of several products trying to do this (like Gametable), but I haven’t tried them yet.
And if some sequel to Neverwinter Nights makes campaign construction and game-mastering easier, that may be a solution too. I ran a campaign for about ten sessions. The story was good, and the roleplaying was good (and all text based). But preparing for sessions and actually running the game was almost impossible. But if something like that were easier and faster, I would eagerly give it a try.
Has anyone had experiences with non-MMORPG online roleplaying? What was your experience like?
July 18th, 2007
Back when I played in the beta and early release of Ultima Online almost a decade ago, I almost couldn’t believe my luck. This would really be the game I’d longed for. I could meet people online in a fantasy world, and together we’d have emergent, collaborative stories unfold of derring-do, chivalry, and virtue.
And vice, of course! Mustn’t forget the vice. I eagerly looked forward to the duels that would take place when one character took in-character offense at another’s words. I contemplated a Robin Hood–style character who would help himself to the contents of rich player’s purses and earn fame handing out my ill-gotten gains to newer players.
I relished the thought of being a homesteaded in an isometric world, carving out a place for myself in Britannia through the work of my own two virtual hands.
I had a horrible time. My big mistake? Assuming that other players wanted pretty much what I did from such a game—or at least something compatible.
I tried to have fun. I didn’t worry about whether other players roleplayed the way I thought they should. Instead, I wrote a guide on how to speak “Britannian.” (Oddly enough, it’s still floating around out there. I wrote it as “Josephus the Scholar.” It even got mentioned in a book! I had no idea. Too funny.)
And when my young and idealistic animal tamer got killed seven or eight times in a row, I shrugged and started to gather feathers so I could make some more arrows. Mind you, I’m not complaining about UO being too “difficult,” even though a post at Tobold’s blog on that topic inspired this little ramble. (Oh, and I see it’s actually to the new Hardcore Casual’s first post. Good post, Syncaine!) In fact, I argued passionately for three freedom to stab my fellow players in their backs and rifle through their goodies.
I just didn’t count on people who played the game simply to dominate other players.
The PKers did ruin the game for me. The in-game law enforcement meant I could create my wicked characters, and the PKers themselves meant I couldn’t really function as a good guy. My hard-won equipment would be stripped from my corpse, and I couldn’t even get to the interesting places I wanted to explore.
And, of course, the “gamist” players cared mostly about advancing their characters, a more-subtle incompatibility to my own preferred style of play. (I wanted to level, but I wanted to do it while roleplaying.)
The PKers were a malicious minority who really did ruin the game for a vast number of others. But I was in a small minority, too, dreaming of a game that just couldn’t exist.
I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if a visit to Britannia today would show me a game much closer to what I hoped for back in the day. Can anyone still playing tell me?
Great gaming minds tried to make UO work, and basically they failed. (The game hasn’t failed. It’s still going! But for a while at least, it was nothing like what the creators—and I for that matter—envisioned)
Could a massively multiplayer fantasy simulation be made to work, one where talk of PVE and PVP were irrelevant, because the world functioned and you functioned in it? I now know the audience would be small. Most people don’t want a game where vendors go to bed at night or where the goodies on their corpses can be taken. And in fact I can fully understand why. But if someone set out to do it and make it genuinely enjoyable, could it be done?
June 29th, 2007
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