Party Leader verse Player Leader Part I

My eyes swept over the walls. I had steady reports and knew the situation, but now that I had returned to my command post I instinctively looked for myself. The battle raged and we were being pressed, but still we held.


I looked down calling “Tevian!” although it did not register until I said his name that the boy might not have returned. I felt a small measure of relief when he appeared beside me, covered in soot and blood looking much I must have looked.


The enemy had breached the wall nearby and I had lead the command staff and guard contingent into the fray to push them back. The boys, doing their duty, had followed to run messages and maintain the communication with the other sections.


“My compliments to Captain Arian and Lord Woolsack. Ask them to report at once.” Without a moment's hesitation the boy was gone. For a moment, I envied his youth and energy, and then wearily returned to battle.


“Gentlemen, the enemy breached our defenses. Although they could not maintain their foothold, it is a victory that will embolden them. Their next thrust will be devastating.”


Woolsack was an old man of many years experience, this news came as no surprise to him. Arian was younger, but a competent officer. Both shifted their eyes to the enemy.


“They prepare to pull back, my lord, …” observed Arian seeing the same thing I had seen.


“With enough daylight left to reform and come at us again.” Finished Woolsack, echoing my thoughts.


It did not matter that they assessed the situation the same way I did, nor did it matter what else they were thinking. I did not call them here to seek their advice. What could they give? My men were spent. If the enemy came again today, we would loose the wall. I knew it and they knew it. No I did not seek advice. I called them to issue orders.


“Woolsack, call up the Reserves and Rear Guard. I want every man and every bow on the wall.” I could see in his eyes the resolve to fight to the end, he approved of staying on the wall and not falling back.


“Arian, rig the catapults for maximum range. I want them loaded with the fire oil. All of it. When the enemy blows their recall, unleash hell. We pin them between arrow and fire.”


Woolsack and Arian looked confused. Both understood the orders, but could not see the purpose. Breaking a forward charge they could see, but hitting an enemy pulling out was just wasting our own time to rest and re-group.


“You have your orders gentlemen. Everything. Hit them hard.”


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The men huddled and were afraid. Their horse’s pawed nervously on the ground, sensing their riders’ unease. ‘Suicide’ moaned Kron. They were beaten and they knew it. Falling back to the keep made sense, what the name of the Seven where they doing in the marshalling yard? The entire Calvary was there, and Kron could see only one reason for it.


Five minutes ago, the enemy had blown their recall, the walls above singed with bows and the heavy catapults crashed near by, the heat of their destructive payloads could be felt even here. It would be hell on the other side of the gates.


The clink of a bit, the rub of leather and quite muttering of five thousand men silenced between two heartbeats. Lord Erland entered the yard. Kron watched him as did every man there. Watched as he mounted a charger and moved to the front of the formation.


The terror of knowing that they were going to sally out into the madness on the other side of the wall was gone. The King was coming with them.


“Riders! Stay with me! Hold the line! Our archers support us on either side. The enemy stands before us. Our catapults have blocked their orderly retreat. With horse and steel and courage ... We will drive them into the flames.” He spoke in a normal voice, almost quite it seemed. But every man in the yard heard his words.


The gate swung open and the sally ramps dropped with a crash.


“Let us go among them.” He said calmly and spurred his horse forward.


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Woolsack stood on the wall. The catapults lay still. Eighty thousand men cheered. He shook his head as he watched the riders return. Beyond them the enemy fled. Woolsack looked down and saw his King, bearing a wounded man across his lap back into the city and felt a flush a pride, honor, and most of all hope.


An hour ago, he was sure all would be lost. The enemy had the advantage; they had captured a section of wall. They would have taken it had they come again. First the wall, then the city, and then the keep.


His King had snatched that from them. As the enemy withdrew to regroup for another charge, he had mauled them. Throwing fire into their path and peppering them with arrows, then the charge. That is what had done it. An orderly withdrawal had been turned into a route.


No army who’s moral had broken like that could be made to fight again!


 It would be days before the enemy commanders could reform their troops. 


Days. 


By then the armies of the East would arrive.


They had not survived this day ...


They had won.

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It has been a long while sense I posted, the Holidays at work are brutal. But that doesn't mean I haven't been devoting some time to my blog. The short 'story' and I use the term loosely, is an introduction to a concept I've been thinking about: The Party Leader and Player Leader. The next two parts of this entry (coming in a few days) will deal with each in turn.

I would be remiss if I failed to note that the reason I've been thinking about these issues is that Jean-Baptiste has been elected Party Leader in the All For One game.

Till part two, Keep Rolling My Friends.

Names have Power

Amber is dead. The game that replaced it dead. Characters got almost made, but the GM couldn't get the high level of outside interest in the game he wanted. Now we will be playing (or more specifically are playing as we already had a partial session) Pathfinder, the Kingmaker line of adventures. Meh.

It's D&D. Granted it's not 4e (and thank god for that), but it's D&D. Basically improved 3rd edition. Or improved 3.5 or 3.75 or 3 and seven eighths or wherever the hell they left off before they bastardized it for 4e. Don't get me wrong, now that I'm ranting a little, 4e is an alright system. It's just not D&D. Don't look at me like that. It's not. It's table top MMO. Everything is equal and balanced and vanilla. It's too easy to look right through the fluff and see the system.  

3rd edition was deceit. So Pathfinder. My friend who is running it is a big fan. I was not thrilled with going back to multiple book, crunchy system, fantasy. Not that there is anything wrong with crunchy systems or fantasy (there is something wrong with multiple book, but that was a rant last month). I just wasn't in the mood for it.

So I decide on the front line fighter. Sword and Shield. That way I don't have to invest in the whole spell or special ability thing and can just play it simple. Have fun with my friends at the table was my goal for this game. The whole 'great character thing' kind of went out the window when planning for this game. Again, my attitude on the approach was 'meh'. I do take my gaming seriously, and while I didn't make the time for this game the way I was doing for All For One, when I had the time I did my due diligence and came up with the basic character concept. I also reviewed the rules and Kingmaker setting.

When we sat down at the table, to 'make characters' and play the first session, I had just about everything I need to play. A human fighter. Long sword and shield. Out came a character sheet and pencil to transfer everything over and fill in the details.

First on every character sheet ever made (alright, maybe not every, but 99% of them at least) is a spot for CHARACTER NAME. I thought for a second and skipped over it, writing instead everything I already had. While I was doing so, I looked back up at the NAME line. A borrowed rule book to look up tables and buy equipment and a glance back at the NAME line. I borrowed an Advanced Player's Guide to look up traits (the GM decided to play with them) and I glanced again back at the NAME line. I went outside to smoke (yes, I smoke, sue me) and thought about the NAME line. When I sat back down I wrote Cyrus in on the Character Name line.

And like that I wasn't playing a Fighter. I was playing Cyrus. A former student of the cloth who didn't have the calling. Not a soldier, but a leader, a warrior, a future general. Strong, tough, charismatic. A swordsmen he, no mere brawler. Tall, blonde and handsome. Friendly and loyal. A man of his word. Someone who enjoyed the simpler things in life. I began to wonder and make up more about him. Thinking of what his plans will be, how he will fight. Suddenly I began thinking I might want Cyrus to become the King of the lands we were out to conquer.  

All of that because of a name. Names have power. Names define things, make them real. It's why many older civilizations attached so much important to a name. Even to the point of naming ceremonies for new born children or the taking of an adult name when a child reaches the proper age. My own interest in the game didn't get sparked until my character was born. And that didn't happen until he had a name. Before that he was stats on a piece of paper. The information needed to play the game with my friends. Now, with a Cyrus, I will be in the game with my friends not just playing it.

Names have power.

Of course such inspirations don't work for everybody. Sometimes a rose is just a rose. While my character was being born, all of my friends were creating their own characters. One of them, before the game started, announced the name of his own character, a total and blatant rip off of a character's name from a novel. This drew and incredulous response of 'Really?' from one of my other friends while several of us just snickered. The friend with the stolen character name responded without missing a beat, hey I changed it, I added an apostrophe in the spelling. Too which I lost it and almost fell out of my chair laughing. I assume there was additional conversation, but honestly, I didn't hear any of it.

All of which wasn't totally fair. Names have power. If that name, or the character it represents, speaks to my friend and tells him something about his own character, then so be it. It's not like we are writing a novel here and are going to be sued for plagiarism or anything. Of course he is our friend, so we have been merciless in our ridicule of him. But none of us are totally innocent of doing the same thing, we are just not as blatant about it. I fully expect one day to be playing a futuristic space game with my own character escaping from the bad guys next to Han So'lo.

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." 
William Shakespeare 

Keep rolling my friends.

Supplement Rant

So the group is discussing starting a new game, more on why later, when one of my fellow players ask “Are we using the supplements?” My heart fell a little...

See, generally speaking, I hate rule supplements

I understand that game companies and individual designers make their money by selling books. I don’t begrudge them that. I will purchase the core rules for any game that interests me, happily handing over my hard earned cash for the entertainment, adventure and imagination that these books offer. Furthermore, should a game come out with some sort of supplement for, oh say a unique setting or a book of equipment, I will often times hand over more cash for it if it interests me.

It’s when these supplements include more rules for the game that I start getting pissed. I don’t want to lug three or four or five rule books around to play a game. I don't want to index my character sheet to reference which book stuff is in.

When designing a game is it too much to ask for the designers to put some thought into the process and include all of the rules in a single rulebook? Then publish their fluff books?

Sure, I get it when a game comes out and several years later, the game designer, having though up a whole lot of new and cool stuff wants to release a supplement for the game. I am actually ok with that. I’ll buy that book.

I am fine with releasing a generic rule set, then specific setting and source material and specific rules in another book.

What I don't need is six supplements with twelve pages of addition rules, skills, feats, training and or equipment packaged with two hundred and fifty pages of background, fluff and filler! Put those twelve pages into the core rules where they belong and if your background, fluff and filler book is interesting enough, I'll buy it.

This is annoying people!

Have you ever forked over forty bucks for a core rule book, then thirty more for a players guide, then thirty more for class supplement book, then thirty more for a racial powers handbook and after spending a hundred and thirty dollars the game company announces a new edition!

Other than a grab for money, what it the point of a new edition?

“Oh, we are fixing the flawed game system to make a better experience during play.”

Really fuckers? You didn’t notice that the game system had problems before you released twenty, now obsolete, rule supplements?

I will say that most game companies don’t make it their business plan to screw over their consumers. There is this game company, a bunch of spell casters who live by the seashore, you know who I mean, who's whole goal is now a blatant grab for as much money as they can squeeze out of their players!

This company, who was very creative and innovative back in the day, had a good game with lots of supplements, source material and history. Then they changed their core rules. Predictably then came the releases of supplement after supplement.

Not only do these supplements have additional rule material, but it’s the same recycled crap from the last rule system! What happened to creativity? What happened to imagination? This is role-playing isn’t it? Isn’t imagination supposed to be part of that?

How is this new version of the Dracula rip-off setting any different from any of the other Dracula rip-off settings you have already published?

We are gamers' people! I don’t know what I’m more insulted over; some company recycling a setting for their new rule system or lazy gamers who buy it. Again!

It’s a fucking setting! Nothing has changed!

Don’t drink the Kool-Aid people!

‘But they included setting specific rules for the new system, I have to buy the new version.’

No you don’t moron! It’s the same fucking setting! Things work the same way! Make up the setting specific rules based on the new rules and old supplement! This isn’t Tax Law! You don’t have to follow the official version!

'But if we make up our own rules, they might be flawed and upset the balance of the game.'

You know what? GOOD!

I want my game unbalance! I don’t want a simple, mathematically liner progression that makes the threat level my character faces exactly even throughout his entire career. If that were what I wanted, I’d never accept advancement and stay low level! The GM could give the monsters different names, different descriptions, a couple swappable special powers and we could have the same fight over and over and over again!

I like being the low level porn star spell caster, relying on the warrior type to keep me alive till it's time to blow my wad in one encounter!

Nap time for the mage!

I also like working my way up to the high level caster when the warrior type gets to stand by and watch while I blow shit up!

And if you just cannot deal with having your carefully crafted, balanced game disrupted by a flaw in the rules you made up… then fix it. This isn’t that hard people.

Murphy’s law states that if you mess with something for very long, you will screw it up! What do you think all these supplements are doing? Messing with shit! Knowing they will screw it up. Why? So they can declare the system broken and come out with another new edition and recycle all their old crap yet again!

Fortunately the GM decided on core rules only, so we're all good. Sorry about the rant.

Keep rolling my friends.

The Character Creation Section

"I am Jean Baptiste De La Pointe of his most Christian Majesty, Louis the XIII, Musketeers, at your service madam"

For whatever reason, I always get more of a feel for a character when he's got a name. A few quick Google searches for seventieth century French names and I came up with Jean Baptiste. I like the name because it's authentic and was popular during the 1600's in France. Plus it reminds me of Zorg from The Fifth Element (one of my favorite movies). De La Pointe is also authentic for the time period, but less popular.

After reading though the book I re-read the character creation section. There are a lot of Blog posts about the character creation section in RPG's. Opinions vary greatly from 'love them' to 'useless'. Personally, my opinion has evolved over the years. If they are well written, I have always seen them as a good resource. Normally information is presented in a liner fashion and all in one place making it easy to look up. Now, I also see them as the best guideline you are going to get for a given game. In All for One, the character creation section takes you step by step through creating a Musketeer. More importantly, it takes you step by step through creating a Musketeer. I know I just said that twice, but consider, All for One is a game designed specifically for playing a classical, right out of the movies or books, Musketeer. The character creation section in All for One and just about every other game on the market is geared towards making exactly the kind of character the game is designed for.

This is a valuable resource for both novice and experienced players. Many role-playing games produced these days are setting specific games. They are designed with a specific genre and style in mind. The character creation chapter(s) presented in the rules are likewise designed to roll up a character that fits within that genre and style. This is the type of character that the game was most likely play-tested with. As such this is the type of character that works in the game.

Almost all of these games present themselves as flexible to appeal to a larger audience. In fact many games are built these days using mechanical systems designed for other games. Some systems even claim universal setting adaptability. Other types of characters may work within the genre and style just fine, but it's always best to remember that the character created using the chapter(s) presented in the book(s) are always what the writers had in mind when making the game.

Game writers, like GMs, are usually loath to tell players what kind or style of character they should roll up. Guidelines are presented, but there is almost always loopholes and ways to go way outside of the box. Players like to make really cool and or unusual characters. GMs are no more immune to this rule-of-cool approach than their players are. But every step outside of the guidelines represents something that has to be worked into the game, or around in game, or added to the game, or subtracted to the game. In other words, something that is just as likely to be a problem as it is to be cool.

Besides, I have not as of yet, in my two and a half decades of playing, found a character creation section in a rule book that makes cookie-cutter generic characters. Following the guidelines in the books and a little imagination provides for a nearly infinite variety of characters that are just as cool and unusual as characters that are made up ignoring the text suggestions. With the added bonus that they almost always work in game.

In summary, the character creation section presented in the rule books is a valuable resource, don't be opposed to using it.

Who's 'That Guy'?

That Guy is a Great Character. Which is, unfortunately, almost totally subjective. There are no rules for Great Characters, no method for creating them, no way to even define them. Great Characters are like pornography. I cannot tell you what it is, but I know it when I see it.

None the less, my goal is to create a Great Character. So, there has to be something that I can use to guide me on the way. And there is. Because it is almost totally subjective and because it will be my character, it is my subjectivity that counts.

While there is no way to define what a Great Character is (there are some things they definitely are not), there are a few things they all have in common.

Great Characters are fun. RPG's are a hobby. We play the games to have fun. If it wasn't fun, we wouldn't play. You can have a mediocre character and still have fun playing the game. After all, you're most likely gaming with your friends doing something you enjoy doing. Great Characters always add to the fun of playing for both you and everyone else at the table. It's a subtle difference. Having John at the table playing the game is fun. Having John playing Starstrider in the game is more fun. (Please note that both John and Star strider are fictional and any resemblance to real people or characters is just dumb luck).

Great Characters fit. The game master is telling the story, and every story teller loves to have great characters in their stories. A good game master can pull players and characters into the story and craft things around characters when necessary. Great Characters, by their very nature, contribute to the story and rarely need to be worked around. They fit the setting and the campaign. They don't play in the story, they are part of the story.

Finally, Great Characters are memorable for the right reasons. They almost take on a life of their own. Their players are invested in them and play the character, not the game. With the result being, the character becoming almost a separate person. It's like watching an actor in a movie. You know it's Johnny Depp, but you are seeing Jack Sparrow (sorry, Captain Jack Sparrow).

Bio

I get annoyed reading blogs without knowing anything about the author, so I am starting this one with a little Bio on the off chance that someone might read it. Hey, it could happen. I’m Thom (yes, spelled with the ‘h’ and pronounced without it) and I go by the screen name Erland (or Erland Nimz). I’ve been a gamer for 26 years; I’m overweight, bald with a goatee, never kissed a girl and still live in my parent’s basement. No, not really, well, not the last two anyway.

I game weekly (Sunday nights) in a three week rotating game schedule. I play in two games and am the G.M. of the third. I’m a RPG gamer who sometimes dabbles in MMO’s when I have the time. I don't play board games, card games or mini’s, they really aren't my style. From old school red box (although my first one was brown) Dungeons and Dragons to yellow box Marvel Comic’s Superheroes (Karma for RED!) I’ve played a lot of systems and styles. I would best describe myself as a recovering Min/Max Hack/Slash gamer. Not that there is anything wrong with playing that way, but as I have gotten older the setting and story have slowly taken on more importance for me. These days it’s more fun to tell the tale of how I cut the demon’s head off with my +5 Vorpal Sword of Badassness than it is to actually do the cutting.

So that’s me and this is my blog. Why a blog? I’m glad you asked. In my gaming group, one of our weekly games is coming to a scheduled ending and a new game will be replacing it. We decided this before Gen Con 2011 (great time btw) so I have been thinking and getting excited about the new game. I also had an epiphany. I don’t really like my character in the game that’s ending. I like the system and the setting. The G.M. has a great story and plot and the character is actually a cool concept. He’s just not… ‘that guy’.

You know the guy I’m talking about. That character you sit around with your friends and tell stories about. That character from the legendary campaign that loved playing in. That character that you thought about at work or school instead of work or school.

That guy. The Han Solo of characters, the John McClain of characters.

My character in the other campaign I play in (Erick Wujcik Phage Press, Amber, Diceless System) isn't ‘that guy’ either, but he has the potential to be. One of the characters in the campaign I am running (Margaret Weis Productions, Serenity, Cortex System) is ‘that guy’. In fact, that campaign has ‘that guy’ and a couple of potential ‘that guys’!

I want to be playing ‘that guy’; I want all of my character’s to be ‘that guy’.

Being me and having the time to really think about the new campaign, I decided to put in the extra time and effort to think about, research and chronicle the new character. So, a blog. And as I am starting one; I decided not to limit it to an online journal about the new character, but instead to make it a complete role-playing blog. I am looking at it as a chance to expand my hobby by writing about it.