Double Magic Wednesday

I wanted to point out how stupid the latest convoluted crossover, Avengers Versus X-Men, but because its idiocy exists in a great disproportion to the actual number of issues released, I'm holding off until I can pick and choose just the best parts to ridicule. In light of this being my week for mid-terms, I'm spending this time  to explore the Magic campaign system I've been working on. 

The Magic: the Gathering: the Campaign System is based on a simple desire; I want to play a game of Magic with a larger scope and different victory conditions. Last weekend, Terry and I play-tested the first edition of Magic: Clash Across Planes (Hereafter, CAP).      

The Game's The Thing: Why We Play Rehash

The basic question for this thing is: “What do players get out of this?”

I’ve gone over this before, but I’ve both given it additional thought and read over a number of quality essays on the subject.

Players, to varying degrees, like Interacting with a setting and other players, participating in a Story (either of a character or a larger setting), and Accomplishing something.

Story is a player’s interest in playing a part in an epic story or a role. A character wants to participate in a fantastic setting and become immersed in it. It includes both simple escapism and a more complicated desire to be something instead of just being something else. Players who want to roleplay something very different from themselves, see where the storyteller’s narrative is progressing, and interact with the environment as a real person might, irrationally or no.

The Game's The Thing: Play By Email Strategic Roleplaying Game

As I often do, I’ve gone on about the principles of a Play By Email Strategic Roleplaying Game (PBEMSRPG, or P*S*R) without actually explaining what it is.

A typical turn of a P*S*R would have a player receive an email. It’s a piece of fiction, in-character communiqué, or a bare-bones description of events in the universe. These events could include a new issue that’s arisen worthy of a leader’s attention (either mild unrest, an invasion, political maneuvering, an intelligence report on enemy activity, etc.), the results of an ongoing project/storyline (like an update from the front in a war, the latest success in an intelligence war, or details from an economic revitalization effort), or a communication from another faction (like a message from another player's character).

The Game's the Thing: Strategic RPG

Technically, I’m in a committed ‘projects’ with Terry/Richard right now, but we all know how crap I am at commitment.

Most of the people I game with know that I’ve long wanted to run a Strategic Game where each player runs their own nation. Something like Risk, but with more granularity. The guys who ran Battletech released one a few years ago that (surprise) wasn’t well play tested, was missing some rules, contradicted itself in parts, and (of course) required a 5th dimensional spreadsheet to play. None the less, my appetite was thoroughly whetted by this disaster of a game.

Why? Masochism.

The Game’s The Thing: Collective Settings

So, raise your hand if this is familiar: You’re running a roleplaying game. You’ve put a lot of work into the setting. It’s not modern day Earth or a popular franchise everyone is familiar with. Your characters don’t know where they came from, have no idea where they are, and don’t @&$^ing care either. They don’t engage the setting and since in most roleplaying games, you can’t go too far wrong by rolling initiative against the guy with the thinnest mustache, they make a habit of driving the razor blade industry and wenching with Dwarven women.

Not their fault. No one wants to play the political game and get tripped up on some nuances they missed because either the storyteller didn’t make it clear enough or because they forgot, what with having a life, family, job, etc..

But what if players got to help make the setting?

The Game's the Thing: Kris

Instead of my usual "It's the Magic" feature, today is a general gaming feature called "The Game's the Thing."

I once told someone that I was the luckiest guy on Earth. I've got some first world problems, which aren't bad problems to have. There are some rough and dark parts, but everyone has their crosses to bear.  I've got the better parts of my Dad's genes, and only a few of Syl's crazy genes, I've been accepted to the US Naval Academy, I spent an amazing year with amazing people in South Carolina, my family loves me, and I've got friends who don't always get me, but who, unbelievably, just keep trying.

My bad luck actually manifests in the form of my escapism. I love playing with dice and cards, but dice and cards do not love me at all. I've drawn eight lands straight in Magic, rolled double '1's in Dungeons and Dragons, and performed so reliably poorly in Aberrant that I had to, as Storyteller, reverse the Target Number paradigm for ten-sided dice.

If you're not familiar with those games: 1 in 1,035; 1 in 400 and baby-punchingly abysmal.

There just wasn't enough room for a second, -21 ultimate "Punch all the babies."

The Game's the Thing: Three Campaigns, Part Four: Son

The Doom Effect abides by many of the rules I've put forward in the last Three Campaigns blog, but it also violates a number them. I'd like to walk you through my plans for my new campaign, in the hopes that it will help me focus as well as motivate you to add some input that will help me make sure my players' needs are met.

The Doom Effect will not be serious. That will help keep it flexible, but also acknowledge that this isn't a continuity-heavy, story; this is guys getting together to blow shit up and high-five about it.

The Game's the Thing: Thee Campaigns, Part Three: Summation

Keep it Gay
Roleplaying games do very well when they can be flexible. Humor is good for this because, hey, it is just a game after all. The goal isn't to gain experience, achieve a vicarious sense of accomplishment, or even to add numbers to more numbers to have the best numbers. No, the goal is to spend time with friends and have fun. Yes, a serious campaign of seriousness is a good idea, but it takes not only a prepared storyteller, but a cooperative set of players as well. I think because humor is the basis of a flexible campaign and because everyone is there to have fun, poking fun at the incongruities and laughing at the flaws are something that everyone's used to. It's like quoting Family Guy: it's an easy, safe way to get a laugh, but you have to get past it to get to that next level. Unlike Family Guy, getting into a serious campaign requires the dedication of an entire group, but promises greater rewards. On the part of the players, it requires a level of interaction greater than ignoring incongruities, but less than outright lampooning them. For the storyteller it requires distinct, consistent characters, easily readable tone, clearly explained plot points and devices, enough events to compel players to return, and a story sound enough to hold up to the scrutiny of characters (not players, necessarily).

The Game's the Thing: The Core of Roleplay

I mentioned to Josh that we could simultaneously do a Novel Writing Month challenge as a way for him to get back in to writing and for me to continue writing. He countered with a ludicrous (sorry dude) idea that we make a roleplaying game together. In the spirit of challenging myself I gave us thirty days to come up with a system. With that in mind, I've started considering the very essentials of roleplaying.

Most roleplayers have their own reasons for playing, but the reasons are common enough for most players. Many players crave virtualism; they want to act in a world where the normal restrictions don’t apply. Whether that restriction is their inability to shoot fire from their fingertips to burn down an orphanage or their inability to express how they feel or an inability to communicate to others their creativity. When players seek exploration, they want to learn about a setting, a place, or a person. Some players explore through the setting, some do it by advancing the story to see what comes next, while others create a character and explore their response to situations as that character encounters them. Much like virtualism, people who play to escape want to be in a fantastic setting, not so much for the setting or the people, but because it gives them an escape to focus on something else for a change, something straightforward that can usually be solved by punching instead of whatever their real life problems are. The fourth major reason people play roleplaying games is because it’s a social activity. Their friends are doing it, so they do it to interact with their friends. Taken to extremes, they don’t really care if the party lives or dies because, hey, at least they’re meeting people.

The Game's the Thing: Three Campaigns, Part Two: The Father

The Ciaren Campaign

My first DnD game and the only game I'm currently running (technically). While I've only run three full adventures over eleven sessions or so, I think it's been a success. I attribute much of that to two factors: frequent play and minimalism.

MHz

Frequent play does a lot to keep momentum up. Players remember facts and characters. They stay energized and anticipate playing. I picked up a regular schedule (mostly), which keeps me pushing forward on stories and gives players time to get their own affairs in order for play. Especially for me, learning a new system, it keeps the rules fresh in my mind and running the same adventure over and over again helps. Even better, I'm running on a six adventure timer. I don't have to worry about Adventure 7 or 10; I don't have time. If I there's villain in Adventure 2, he's going to have to show up again by Adventure 6 or not at all. There's aren't--and can't be--a lot of interwoven plot threads where X affects Y because it's just six sessions and I don't have time for that bullshit. Sure, there are vague ideas about the second arc, assuming the first ends well, but I'm simply refusing to think of it until I'm done with this one. I'm focusing on, maximum, six stories at a time, usually self-contained. I've found it very liberating, which brings me to my next point.

The Game's the Thing: Three Campaigns, Part One: The Ghost

With the renaissance my friends and I have experienced in roleplaying games lately, I thought that it might be wise for me to reflect on some of our recent campaigns before I start my new campaign, The Doom Effect.

New Port City was originally Terry's campaign. When he lost interest, I was eager to pick it up; I'd had some luck with superhero games in the past, and as a comics fan, it's something I'm always interested. The most legendary games I ever ran were started by Terry before I picked them up, and I was hoping that with a versatile power system and some good inspiration, I could make that magic happen again. You've seen Runaway Bride, right?

The Game's the Thing: Experience in Multiple Techniques

For players, experience is a very simple thing; it's a bridge from the baby's first badass of their new character to the final boss battle badass that always seems inevitable just a few sessions before the campaign falls apart. It's a measure of progress and a return on their investment on having fun. What's the reward for playing your Batman-themed player character? Playing a better Batman-themed player character. For the min/maxers, it's bragging rights. For serious roleplayers, it's their character's mastery over things which have previously alluded them. For smartass snarkers, it's a license to snark to slightly more dangerous NPCs. For social roleplayers, it's...actually kind of a hassle.

The Game's the Thing: Everything You Know is Wrong

So, Terry proposed a collaboration on his new Aberrant campaign. He said he wanted to make Project Utopia believable in their role as savior of the world, removing most of the cynical and look-at-all-the-stupid-sheeple undercurrent of the canon Aberrant setting, where any moron could see that under the guise of being jerks, Project Utopia housed a dangerous, pro-human element. Sleepily, I agreed, suggesting a plot point where Project Utopia’s Team Tomorrow breaks protocol to help the PCs out, while he pitched the foundations of a ‘contact’ NPC within Team Tomorrow that humanizes the team.

Today, my boss took four hours of his morning to do his taxes. When he got back, I heard a random spiel about how the government messed up and wouldn’t start reviewing taxes until the fifteenth of April and all the returns would be late and it was all Obama’s fault, etc., etc..

The Game's The Thing: The Best of the Marvel Universe

So Terry’s going to be kicking around an Aberrant Campaign. He wasn’t sure at first if he was going to run a straight Aberrant campaign, use one of the stock ‘super universes’ (DC or Marvel), or go with something in between.

Now, if it’s one setting I love in comics, it’s the Marvel Universe. Yes, it’s ridiculous and stupid sometimes, but it’s not as abstract as the DC Universe. That is, cataclysmic, world-destroying events don’t happen every week. For the most part, it’s a normal world where normal things happen and the biggest, strangest things are usually confined to the superhuman community. While there are a few crossovers in Marvel that involve the entirety of Earth (Secret Invasion, Infinity Gauntlet), most don’t (Onslaught/Heroes Reborn, Secret Wars, Civil War, Dark Reign). As widespread as House of M was, I don’t think the rank and file citizen of Earth really even noticed anything happened. And while Ultimate Galactus managed to create cults all over the world and even (if I remember correctly) have a certain level of psychic presence as it approached, the 616 Galactus was just another giant guy with a giant, world-destroying machine. Unless he had destroyed the world, no one would’ve cared.

I like the Marvel Universe, because it seems more like the universe I’m familiar with and the heroes in it are essentially struggling to get by in the same world I am.