Yesterday was a “walk and mingle” day. Went to see the Vigaland partk, will hopefully have pics of that at some point somewhere. My feet haven’t hurt this much in a while. The new knutebook looks really nice. Also, the Danish are multiplying. Now there were four.

“Someone better tell Norway, they were pretty close”

Sitting on a balcony, somewhere in Oslo.

Yesterday I arrived at Oslo airport at 18:30, managed to get to the apartment I’m staying around 19:30 and was whisked about to a restaurant around 19:35. Lots of nice people here. Went to bed sharing the flat with two Latvians, woke up and the place is now filled with Danes. Sometimes I wonder..

Also, if you ever have the opportunity to eat the special kebab at noah’s ark. do so!

I just need to get this damn post written before I head to Norway, so here goes, boring or not. Blogging from the Helsinki airport, connected to what is possibly the worst WLAN I’ve met in a while.

I’m known for how I like to run games that aren’t based on the world of any known system. Preferring to draw stuff purely from my own imagination, or at least dilute and remix the original source so much that the result is something that no longer resembles it. When I was asked to run a game for a group of mostly first-timers (including Spikey, who hasn’t played a single honest RPG in his life, just things like College of War run by me), the first natural instinct was to run something home-brew. But for some reason, I ended up running a game of Changeling: The Lost to them. And most surprisingly, it was more or less by-the-book.

The player characters were a group of people abducted to serve as pets and playthings of a couple of insane faerie sisters. Mikko played a burglar who had stolen a ring from the White Sister and because of this, spent 10 years as a pet of some sort to the pair of Gentry. Desperate to hide from the wicked one of the sisters, he hid in the trees, and eventually developed squirrel-like traits in the process. Taija played a emo/goth chick who ended up as a dancing marionette for the sisters for what felt like an eternity and then discarded like an old toy. When she returned to the human world 5 years after her disappearance, she was partly doll, unable to close her eyes and having hinges in her joints. Spikey’s character disappeared from the real world in 1973, and returned to a new, completely alien surroundings after being something of a Mr. Potato Head for the twins, who cut off his nose, ears, chin and whatever and replaced them with others so many times that holding on to what he was might have been difficult. The end result of all this was a man made of mirror able to switch his appearance on a whim to pretty much anything he wants to.

The two games we’ve run so-far has sparked a renewed enthusiasm in me to get first-timers to game with me. They aren’t burdened by years of action and adventure by Dungeons and Dragons, and things that might be “old” to the mainstream RPG crowd still provide endless amounts of entertainment for them. The game has gone into fantastically dark places and feels like what Vampire: The Masquerade should have felt like back in the day when we were playing it. We’ve so-far focused on the little and personal aspects of the characters as they’ve moved back to the real world. Mikko’s character has been replaced by a fetch made out of sticks and stones, who is now the father for his child and a husband for his wife. Spikey’s replacement is a shrewd bastard like the original, and seems like it’s taken an active role in finding Spikey. Something that is only made worse by the fact that he’s in the State Senate. And Taija’s character found out that her replacement had died, and its death had driven her family apart. And as said, I’ve been playing the game by the book, without the need to come up with something even more fantastic, because the players don’t know what to expect from the actual game. This is something that bothered me about Vampire: The Masquerade back in the day – EVERYONE knew the big secrets, and the little secrets.

It’s noticable how the players’ play styles differ. Spikey’s been mostly playing in over-the-top freeform high fantasy games GM’d by yours truly, so the notion of rules sometimes baffles him, he’s mostly a player who pokes at the game world to see if he can break it from within somehow and then laugh at the result. Manatic’s an old fox and it’s easy to see when he wants something to happen – he steers the situation towards it and makes it happen (which is ok, of course). He’s the closest to a story-focused player we have, and even he’s quite character-centric. And Taija is really immersing into the character. Pure character all the way. So a nice mix.

When I get back to Helsinki, I have to run some more first-timer games. So much fun. Now, I’ll be heading to the airport bar.

I love time-travel. Yet there’s something about the way Heroes handles it that bothers me. Today it struck me.

The time-travel of Heroes is watered down. Zap, someone goes to the future, omg, there’s danger. Then you just blomp* back and yodeloo* the danger away. And then there’s cake. Until the next horrible future is envisioned and then our heroes change it so that it never happens.

The only time I really remember there being some time-travel stuff going on that made my time-travel-fan-sense tingle was when the guy with the stupid face traveled to the future with a cute non-heroics girl and then left the girl there, and changed the future so that he couldn’t travel back to the girl because the timelines had gone all wibbley-wobbley. And that plot was never explored any further. I don’t think stupid face ever mentioned the cute girl ever after that.

*sigh*

* Blomp and yodeloo might not be real words, but they sure as hell describe well what’s going on.

There is a new Issue of City of Heroes MMO coming up, and with it, the Mission Architect that allows players to create new content to the game. It is currently in open beta testing, and this is a shameless self-promotion about the arc I wrote as a test for the system:

I assume I will be hooked on this game for years to come, which is nice.

On tonight’s “you sort of had to be there to get it”:

Alvan: Listen, all I’m saying is that clichés aren’t all bad

Spikey: Hear hear, people who are looking at things through a black and white filter, skin deep will go “Argh, another cliché! This ain’t original! It’s POOP!” And then I’ll be all horrified by their simplistic views and will have to fight with them about it.

Alvan: Clichés are Clichés because they’re things that have been proven to work.

Spikey: So say we all.

Alvan: Of course, it boils down to how you use them. The situation and presentation.

Spikey: So say we all.

Alvan: And there is nothing wrong with a guy wearing a dress.

Spikey: Providing one can stop the sniffage of glue on the correct date.

Alvan: So say we all.

So, remember back in the day when everything was simple. Evil was Evil and Good was Good. Or at least it was easier to tell who was backstabbing you because they weren’t a part of whatever side you were on. And this gave you more than enough excuse to stab them in the eye first. Because, you know. They were the enemy.

The older I get, the more I seem to appreciate the simple things like that. When you can simplify a large group of something in a game to just a large group of something and be happy about it. While games full of individuals are fun, it’s nice to be able to identify groups as well. And in a large scale games, even better so.

When people ask what my favorite video game of all times was, I answer Star Control 2 without hesitation (unless I’m feeling exceptionally nostalgic about some other game that very moment). A big great part of the affection has to do with the amazing job the designers did with the various races in it. The basic setup of the game is that there are these big evil Ur-Quan things that have pretty much subjugated the whole galaxy under their rule (read: They’re The Evil). Including the human race, who are now living under a slave shield, stranded on Earth. The only beacon of hope is the player’s Captain and his super-ship, who goes around the star-systems, meeting old alien allies who have turned hostile or gone into hiding, trying to convert them back to the good fight. And maybe make some new allies in the process.

The races (read: factions) in the game are wonderfully unique when compared to each others. They are made quite simplistic, so that they don’t have a huge number of defining characteristics. A big part is of course the speech-patterns and the way they look, but they also have quite a personality. Each race is like an extension of a very solid, vivid, coherent personality. There is the sycophant, the coward, the honor-obsessed, the angsty, etc. race. The race as a collective share the traits, but there might be individuals who are individuals, while still being part of the race. Each of the races have a couple of these character traits that they embody, and each have a very strongly defined society. They have their superiors and they have their political systems. They have their passions and they have their quirks. But, all in all, they can be discussed with caricatures. “Those hippie birds”, “The honor-obsessed kamikaze/samurai rodents”, “The communication impaired great old one fish” and so on.

And they have a wonderfully complex relationship with each other. No man is an island, so to speak. Even if in this case the men are alien beings that aren’t even remotely human. To quote something from the game:

“This may come as a shock, but the Shofixti are reborn. We have a Shofixti Captain here with us. Now do you believe?”

If this is being a true thing, there will be many changes.

But we are a species long wise in the ways of deceit.

Ye must be proving these words ye say, Captain.

Send the Shofixti to us as a way of proof.

Those were the words of the Yehat, a funny-looking bird-like race who lived and died by their code of honor. When they failed to protect their marsupial allies, the Shofixti, the whole race fell into despair, and only through the leadership of their queen, they managed to stay even semi-coherrent, and joined the Evil Side to forget the tragedy.

I’ll switch to tabletop roleplaying for a moment – You might have heard of a game called Vampire: the Masquerade, where they came up with a great mechanic that has been later dubbed the clubhouse system amongst friends. Every character belongs to a club. Membership is mandatory. A character can belong to a single club. And can’t change their colors. The vampires’ clubs in Vampire: The Masquerade were their clans. You get bitten by a vampire who belongs to a clan and you belong to that clan as well. There was an artist clan, there was a businessman clan, there was a rebel clan, there was a clan of ugly vampires. And that worked damn well. It was easy to connect with, easy to vary, twist, mirror and all that. You could make a vampire character that was a part of the businessman clan, who was a brute. You could make him as much of a brute as you wanted. But he was still initiated into the vampires through the a part of a proud and long tradition of businessmen. He was chosen by the businessmen to become a vampire, and thus he is defined by the clan even if he wanted to be defined by it or not. If he had been a part of the artist clan, the fact that the artists had chosen to turn the brute into a vampire would have mattered as much, or even more, than the fact that he’s a brute.

And it was easy to build political structures for the vampires. Every relationship was in the end defined by the clans – even if some vampire boss managed to rule his city so that all the different vampires from different clans were one big shiny happy family, if one of the clans’ big names arrived to the city, the clan members were more than likely to flock under his wing. And usually even this wasn’t needed for the players to talk about things like “Wonder what the Tremere (the magician clan of the vampires) are up to, we haven’t heard anything of them lately” or “If we want to go to the woods, we may need some help from the Gangrel (the half-animal vampire clan)”. Even if the whole local Gangrel population was a group of former zookeepers and biology professors, the instinct would be to run to them when planning a woodland trip, because “The Gangrel, they know the woods.”

Besides the clans, there was the division between “us and them”, the Camarilla and the Sabbat. In the early works, Sabbat was pretty much an undefined terror that was only very loosely described in the source books. Camarilla was the group where the clans belonged to and that had all the player characters in it. Later, Sabbat got some clans as well, making it equal to Camarilla and as playable. But before that, while there might have been political squabbles and backstabbing between the Camarilla clans, when it came to Sabbat, there was a nice solid threat that everyone hated equally.

White Wolf released several games in their game line after Vampire: The Masquerade, that tried to follow the same mold, but only Mage: The Ascension came close to managing a good, pure mandatory clubhouse system. With games like Werewolf: The Apocalypse, where the clubhouse you belonged to was determined by birth (thus there being no “why is this character part of our club” thing) or Wraith: The Oblivion, where the clubhouses were kind of odd and hard to point out, it didn’t just work. In Mage, the character gravitated towards one of the clubs because of the similarities in their worldviews, which made the club something that could be more easily thought through.

Now, exit the old White Wolf games and enter the next generation. The clubhouse system evolved there. Each strain of bogeymen (vampires, werewolves, whatnot) have not one, but two clubs they belong to. The club they are born into (this might be the vampire’s clan, or the fairie’s type) and the club they join (the vampire’s ideology, much like Camarilla or Sabbat in the old days, or the court of faeries the critter belongs to, or something like that). This creates a far more complex network of relationships between various factions, as each character is usually loyal to at least two external bodies. And as they say on the internet, “OMFG TEH DRAMA” when these two come to clashes.

But it’s taken something away from it all. Without the clear-cut clubhouses, the factions have become blurred, and it’s no-longer a question of wondering what the Tremere are up to, it’s a question of the individuals in that particular city. It takes away from the grandeur of it all to know that you’re most likely just involved in local politics than to be, through the clans, actually affecting something greater. To return to the earlier example of Star Control 2 – the fact that you were dealing with a real faction allowed something like the following to happen:

“All right, I’ll send over the Shofixti.”

We are scanning the separation of a vessel from yer fleet, Captain and indeed, its configuration matches that of a Shofixti Scout vessel.

This had better not be a trick, Captain!

We are knowing the power of a Glory Device, and if you detonate the weapon near us the price for you shall be dear, very dear.

The Scout has docked, and we await the pilot’s appearance at the airlock.

The atmosphere cycle is complete… the door slides open… and

AWK!! BRAAK!! YEEP!! IT IS TRUE!!! THE SHOFIXTI ARE ALIVE!!!

Look at that furred muzzle, those shining black eyes, the sweet claws!

Our children have returned from oblivion!!

But now we are faced with the cruellest truth!…

…We who have sacrificed our honor! We who have lain with our enemy!

WE ARE NOT WORTHY! WE ARE NOTHING!…We are less than nothing.

But wait! We are not Spathi. We are Yehat… OF THE STARSHIP CLANS!

We will NOT live this lie any longer!

Listen as I speak these words! If our Queen makes the dishonorable command

then it is THE QUEEN WHO HAS NO HONOR!

And a dishonorable Queen is NO QUEEN AT ALL!

We, the Zeep-Zeep, are the only Clan who remember the TRUE MEANING of honor we shall TEAR THE QUEEN FROM HER THRONE!

The two-thousand year reign of the Veep-Neep Queens IS OVER!

THE REVOLUTION HAS BEGUN!

Sorry. A bit carried away there. But if you’ve played the game, you know how much pathos that bit of text contains. I mean tha because it’s clear that the Yehat are a honorable race, and that they mourn over the loss of the Shofixti, it’s possible, that when the race (as an entity) is presented with a Shofixti captain, they will actually rebel against their queen. Not just go “oh well, me and Bob agree with this and think the system’s a bit bad now”, but have a revolution.

In old Vampire The Masquerade this sort of wholesome clan-movement happened a lot. One of the Camarilla’s clans actually got fed up with Camarilla and left. The Gangrel got fed up at some point with the system and decided they could leave it behind. Of couse a few individuals here and there stayed behind, but the Clan, the Club, as a faction, decided to call it quits. And when I spoke of how the clan defined a lot about the character, it came quite obvious at that point. If you were playing a Gangrel, you would be defined as “a Gangrel who stayed as a part of Camarilla” if you were one of those who didn’t want to leave.

While any game benefits from strong characters and individualism, I love to think that there is a huge benefit in being able to lump these individuals into generic boxes. Be it as simple as race “He’s a bugbear”, or profession “he’s an adventurer”, or something a bit more complex “He’s one of the people from the Northern Mountains”, it still makes cataloging the person when big wheels turn on the world. If you know the people from Northern Mountains have declared war, you have to make judgements about the people frrom NM whom you know.

Colossus, The Forbin Project (1970) is from my perspective something from the annals of history. One of those things that happened years before my birth that I would never hear of if it weren’t for freak accidents like manatic bringing it up (thanks for that!). So, today, I managed to dig a copy up and watched it. I had preconceptions about the film, that it might be a more polarized view of the Cold War politics, but in fact it turned out to be quite the opposite. This will contain spoilers, so be warned. Also, there is no fancy gaming angle to this – it’s just because the movie touches two things I’m interested – communication and the Cold War.

The movie poster, from wikipedia

The movie is based on a book, which in the end turned out to be a trilogy – something that explains the references near the end, where the computer mentions about something being built, that will take five years to complete (the second book of the trilogy takes place five years after the first one) and probably the reason for the very bleak situation it ends with, even if those weren’t exactly uncommon at the time when the movie was filmed. And while the book was published in ’66, which sets some backdrop to the events, I’d like to see the movie more as the product of those later years (69-70).

So it’s interesting how the Soviets are pictured in the movie. Considering that they “just” had invaded Czechoslovakia with their allies, the fact that the biggest atrocities the Soviets commit are exactly the same ones the Americans do (shooting of their own when presented with choice between that or destruction of a whole city), is actually quite endearing. And that both sides use the same, unified tactics to combat the computers brings them to light as not as polarized superpowers, but as simply members of the same human race. The Soviets in the film even don’t do things the way they usually are portrayed in movies like this – behind the backs of the Americans and in effect working against the heroes as their plans backfire. In fact, it’s the Soviets who get to pay the human price before the Americans do, and the viewer gets to feel sympathy towards them with no strings attached.

And there is a lot of that anti-war and unity-between-all sympathy in the movie. For example the president of the USA is pictured as something of a Kennedyesque character who wants to explain things to the public as frankly as possible and who is horrified when he has to explain to them that there’s been a nuclear incident, even if the administration at the time was in the hands of Nixon. And Nixon at the time was the conservative right wing man who approved secret bombings in Vietnam instead of being the president who negotiated the peace there. Also, the crew of scientists the main character is a part of is like the bridge of a Star Trek ship, filled with men, women, white, black, asian alike, with what seems to be equal status. Another nod at the world of man being at least somewhat unified.

But then there’s the language theme that keeps popping up that parallels and mirrors the other questions of unity. Even as all men stand united when they face the technological threat, humans are ineffective because they don’t share a language. This comes up at many points – there is the need of interpreters between the Soviets and the Americans. People keep explaining that their language skills are lacking and others saying that their skills are much better than they were saying. There are conversations that happen in one language that needs to be repeated in the other because there had been someone in the group who didn’t speak the first language. There seem to be moments of misunderstanding when the interpreter is asked to explain things. And so on. Also, the computers don’t speak the same language from the start, but the first thing they do is develop a language they both can use equally well. They are effective. And when humans don’t understand the computers, the computers immediately respond with the language the humans understand – force. Eventually, when they have had time to communicate with their shared language they become one, the ultimate computer. Unity.

The president calls out for a “human millennium” when the movie starts, an age where they may get rid of famine and suffering. And the way to that will be peace through the impersonal guardian computer. The exact same words are later echoed by Unity, who has been working for that very goal, through the subjucation of the human race. Leaving us with the question if the needs of the whole human race are more important than the needs of each member of it.

And in the end, even if we kept asking for the end of war, of a world united as one, a world without suffering, when we’re asked to actually sacrifice our illusion of freedom and love Unity as our master, our defiant answer is “Never”.

Kings is an alternate reality drama about modern royalty and court intrigue. “based on the Biblical story of King David but set in a world resembling the present-day United States.” as described by Wikipedia. Very powerful acting, dramatic characters and strong, classic themes. Possibly the best thing on television in a long while.

Kings @ NBC.com

And The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency is a nice lighthearted detective series with an African flair from BBC and HBO. A dream production company combination if one could ever think of one. The characters are very likable and the mood of the show is quite unlike the typical European/U.S. detective series.

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency @ BBC.co.uk

I apologize to all three of my readers (myself and Spikey included) that I haven’t written anything in a week, but I’ve been busy with all the things that happen after you’ve been in bed rest for over a month and finally feel well enough to go out. Things like “go meet your boss for the first time this year”, “enroll to classes” and “play some RPGs with friends”. So when I’ve had time to pause between these things, I’ve been thinking a lot about creativity, fun, rules and the related concepts. And one of the big dilemmas for me when it comes to role-playing games – where do I stand in the eternal struggle between the game and the play.

Don’t know about you lot, but when I’m presented with a situation where there are strict rules in place, but a lot of freedom to what can be done with those rules, my first gut reaction is to start searching for ways to use the rules to create something that wasn’t planned for them. And I know I’m not the first one – most of the planets in Spore are filled with various monsters that resemble human genitalia and people use Little Big Planet to create mechanical calculators and other oddities.

When it comes to RPGs, this is one of the key reasons I like systems that have very detailed and strict rule set. They allow the player to get really creative with the limited material that is available. While the systems that allow a player to formulate things about their character more freely encourage the players to do exactly what they want to do, systems that rely on preset variables tend to inspire me a lot more with a “ooh, I could totally try this one out!” or “I wonder how I could make a character like this using this system?”

The other great thing about detailed rule sets is the fact that they also serve as a great wall of defense when someone else (usually the person who is running the game) tries to pull something off that limits my control over the options available to my character. I must admit, I become a bit of a rules lawyer the moment a game master tries to start railroading the game to only please his need to narrate his story to the players without having the players have any say in what’s happening. I’m one of those assholes who find it so much more fun when they are actually allowed to participate and change the outcome of events if they get stuck in an interactive environment. So, when there is a description of how the enemy bogeyman, who the characters have been after, runs to the portal to safety, I will be the one asking to get a dice roll to prevent that from happening because the rules say I should able to do that.

Now, I do have my dirty hippie side buried somewhere underneath that this. So I should probably say something to support the touchy-feely side of RPGs, where we have less rules and more just plain fun. When you’re playing a free-form game, where the rules are more set by the social contract (of not being an ass) than some rulebook, things can work out really great. The biggest plus side to this sort of games is the fact that there is nothing that even remotely points to “winning” – everyone is just having fun and enjoying the moment. And that’s something that roleplaying games should be about. We’ve all played like this as kids, and usually things went really well (until you got too tired and cranky and had to go take a nap), so why not do it as adults as well. Adding rules also adds to the need to compete.

Now, when I’m talking about rules, I don’t mean that the game should be a strategy/tactical simulation of medieval warfare (been there, done that, we shall never speak of it again), but more a situation where, when conflict arises, the judgment of what happens next is not left fully on the shoulders of the game master. He should and could be able to rely on a strong set of rules that start with the basic rule of “say yes or roll the dice”. But I must say I’d like to expand on that.

The game master is often a self-proclaimed king of the game. He’s above the rules – what he says holds true. And he’s an artist extraordinaire, he can paint any picture, climb any mountain. .. and so on. He (read: me, usually) is a pompous artist who doesn’t have to live by the same set of regulations the other players do He lies and cheats and creates his own vision if the one presented by the game isn’t pleasing. He tells the players a little less than they deserve so he can take their characters down another adventure on his terms. He decides if there are 3 trolls behind the corner or 30. That calls for some limitations. That’s where I think most role-playing games need more rules.

As a positive example of what I mean by rules for the game master, I present this: In the game 3:16, the game master is mechanically limited by the game’s system. There is a certain number to the number of enemies he can use on a single planet depending on the number of players in the current game. And during the planet, the creatures the player-characters run into are actually defined by a series of rolls. And the players have an option of actually saying “no, we’re not doing this” in many different ways, from evacuating their characters from the planet, to blowing a tactical nuclear weapon on the planet, destroying the rest of the opposition. And the way the world reacts to the success or the failure of the players’ gaming is determined by simple formulas. This means that the amount of bullshit the GM can pull is controllable. He can’t create enemies that are somehow unbalanced, because the mechanical effects are limited and determined by the rules. And he can’t pull stunts like punish a PC because he feels like the character could use a snap on the wrist. If he wants to do it, he has to do it by the rules. And if he decides to make something so hard that the player characters will not be walking out of it alive, the players can opt-out of the mission and the game master has to accept that he can’t use the same tricks again. A delicate balance of things.

Another one that needs a nod is Bliss Stage, where the game master plays one character, just like the rest of the players. He (and his character) just has some responsibilities that the other players don’t. And it’s perfectly possible for the game master’s character to die, and be succeeded by one of the other players’ charactes, turning that player into a new game master.

Now, to extrapolate from these thoughts to think of a system that I would find most pleasing. On the player side, there would be a lot of crunch. Many moving parts – interlocking bits that create a character that has a lot of different effects he can use. Some combination will be of course be more specialized, some more generic, some quite unexpected, but still working. There would be a mechanical watchdog in place to ensure that all the characters would have the minimum amount of abilities to survive in the game, but have a lot of room to maneuver beyond that. If there is some sort of a balancing system, it will be such that it balances only the things that are somehow relevantly connected – if I want to play a former artist in a game where the player-characters are all assassins, me taking art skills shouldn’t hinder the assassinating of people. But I might have to make decisions if the assassin I play prefers knifes or rifles to do his work. Also, the mechanical system would be transparent enough so that I, as a player, can call, without the game master’s decisions, if the action of my character was successful or not.

And on the game master side, I am provided with a similar set of interlocked rules I am allowed to use to create the adventures. I don’t have to of course tell the players which pieces I’ve used while the game is in progress, but I would have to be able to produce the story in the form of the rules to the players after the players had gone through it, so they could look at it and nod at “yes, that’s what happened, and it was done by the books, very good”. There would also be rules that allowed the GM to pull some crazy stunts – sort of cheating even. But using them would mean that he would have to give the players something in return. It would be a beautiful harmonious system. These rules would of course leave the game master a lot of freedom to fill in the blanks, so the meat around the pre-set bones would be still done by him. And that’s where we come a full circle.

Don’t know about you lot, but when I’m presented with a situation where there are strict rules in place, but a lot of freedom to what can be done with those rules, my first gut reaction is to start searching for ways to use the rules to create something that wasn’t planned for them. That would mean that when I am, as a game master, given only three encounters to introduce the plot elements, and only two of them could feature creatures of any kind, I would have to focus on taking everything out of those available resources. I would have to actually be a bit shrewd to pull of the things I would normally take for granted. It would make me pay attention more to what I’m doing as a game master. And the way I would probably be doing the stories would be quite refreshing to when the sky was the limit.

We excel when we can’t have everything we’ve wanted.