Morale

No update for this week, but I do have a thought I'd like to try and expand on.

I got an email from a video game website called Gamasutra.  It was an advertisement on behalf of a book claiming to be able to improve the reader's writing skill in things such as quests, missions and puzzles.  This line alone sent me thinking.  So I'll set it up with an example of a very noteworthy experience in MMO gaming I had.  Specifically a Quest/Mission/Puzzle.  A Quest/Mission/Puzzle that ruined me forever in the world of Quests, Missions and Puzzles.

The setup for the mission was rather simple.  The player didn't have to seek out a quest giver, they all had it already and decided to do it on their own.  However, the quest didn't have a defined destination and furthermore the ACTUAL destination was one of those ones that moves around.  In this game there was a HUGE world to explore and the destination could pretty much be ANYWHERE.  Finally, there wasn't any mission text associated with the quest.  It was just kind of a known thing that had to do something to get the reward.  Strangely enough most people just knew the basic idea of what they needed to do.

The execution for the mission was a bit more tough.  Depending on the amount of tools you had you could use expensive expendable items to narrow down the search to about one of 20 giant zones.  If you didn't, you had to play a game of hot and cold on each of the zones and compare the best 'hot' result between all of them to find out which spot was the actual reward.  Anywhere else would be a lesser reward which might be acceptable for lower tier players, but at the upper echelon would simply not do.  Each of these giant zones could take a day to explore in any reasonable manner as well and were populated by extremely dangerous enemies at times.

The difficulty was compounded by the fact that the reward could be claimed by another player preventing you from claiming it yourself if you were too slow.

This reward was not something a few people were seeking every once and a while.  I guarantee you were in competition with at least 30 or more people at any one time.  The task was cutthroat.

And even if you spent the time and found the reward, it wasn't something useful to start with.  Firstly you had to have expensive and specialized equipment to claim the reward.  It wasn't instantly gained, it could take hours before you saw ANY of the reward.  Once you claimed the reward it wasn't worth anything but what other players would pay for it.  It, in and of itself was worthless.  It wasn't a weapon, armor or consumable.  It had to be converted to something useful.  This usually required searching for THE SAME KIND OF REWARD AGAIN.  Possibly several more times.  If you didn't, it might have well been some shittier version of the reward.

After that, you had to have developed super high quality skills, purchased amazingly high quality tools and work with other people who have done the mission as many times as you, and have similarly high quality tools and skills to turn the reward into something useful.  Did I mention to get these skills you had to develop your character to have them from the beginning?  Furthermore odds are, this useful item was worthless to you and you would have to SELL IT TO SOMEONE ELSE or give it to another very high skill character of yours to use.

And it was amazing.  It was beautiful.  It was the best Quest/Mission/Puzzle I had ever done and would ever do.  It ruined me for every Quest/Mission/Puzzle I had ever done.  And do you know why?  Because there was no written story.  Nobody had taken the time to come up with the plot for this.  This was the highest tier of crafting for a game called Star Wars Galaxies.  The people who were able to complete these quests played as a class called the TRADER.  They literally had a class for crafting.  A class that had no quests past the first starter quests.  The most elite would complete this 'Mission' and be widely known as the one with the best blasters, armor or lightsabers or whatever it was their specialty was.  Because you couldn't even do everything!

This sounds like a horrible mission, but it wasn't, because the people who surveyed whole planets looking for the best metal did it willingly.  They did it to be the best and succeed at far greater skill than anyone else.  They had to level up BY CRAFTING to get to that point.  Monsters gave no XP to Traders.  They enjoyed it because it was the path they had chosen.  Not because it was shoved down their throats by someone who thought we would want to save the Jawas by fetching them 3 idols of Jabba the Hutt after killing twenty Gammorians.

So why the hell would I buy a book about writing great missions, when the greatest mission I ever pursued had no writing?  I just can't keep my morale up while grinding through the 30th Gungan.

Delayed Update for 2/22

Was supposed to be a very busy weekend.
Had three games planned and had to get the system playable for Monday.


Two games cancelled and one downgraded to online resulting in having a lot more time, but also resulted in me forgetting about posting.  Should set an alarm or something...


ANYHOW


The first game with the system in use went much better than expected.  The players caught on quickly and the system went through a functional combat.  I need to come up with a pilot sheet and maybe some counters to shift around to make things easy, but I think it's looking good.


Areas that need development.  Warp, aside from needing a new name needed to be written down and jump delays evaluated.


Salvaging needs minimal functioning rules.


Cargo space needs to be developed into minimal functioning rules.


Chases need to be developed into having slightly less bias towards ship agility and more bias towards skill.  I think I've already got a handle on this.


Player morale is good, I think they're looking at exploring their options.


Damage effects NEED to be written down.


I need to take better notes during play.


Gotta figure out why Google Docs didn't have the most up to date doc on another computer (the one with a printer) <--- VERY IMPORTANT


Formations 'worked'.  Haven't tried with PCs in a formation.


Game started off with a crit fail on a warp check followed by a crit fail on a notice check.  This was amusing but had us start with a pirate ambush.

Progress 2/8/2014

Made more progress.
Roughed out some general ideas for interesting new character weapons.
Expanded on ship equipment and damage effects (hull breach, fire, malfunctions)
Expanded on some of the Chase vs Dogfight rules.
Started gathering resources for ship character sheet.
Started sketching out thoughts for the ship combat map.

I'm beginning to think I should actually start mocking up combat rounds.  Possibly starting with fighters (super simple and easy to draw up) then moving to mid range craft which will likely be piloted by a full party as a crew.

From there I need to start investigating the effects of subordinate extras on wildcards manning stations.

I think I should also start considering the idea of 'extra' space ships and what that means in this combat system.  As it stands I think there might just be a base guideline of size ratio difference being an automatic extra or wildcard as far as damage is concerned and a guideline for true wildcards as getting the bennies while effective wildcards don't.

The problem arises that wildcards in fighters will be VERY vulnerable to a single or even two steps difference in ship size.  This hazard drops some when going up a size or two, but is still pretty harsh.  Perhaps I will suggest only extras pilot fighters.  That said, if you need to do a trench run, I want a decent fighter as an option.

If you haven't caught on yet, the majority of the work on this system is effectively replacing the vehicle system Savage Worlds uses (which I hate) and replacing it with my own 'fast, furious, fun' system.

Furthermore the fact that I use two Google accounts for this blog is really a pain.  Maybe I can hook this one up with Google drive and share it so I can work on the doc with either.

It doesn't sound like much work to me.  I feel like I could do more, but I console myself with the thought that I am doing any work at all.  Given I'm in 2 'live' games, 3 online games, a project on a team of cool people and trying to spend time with my significant other, I think I'm doing alright.  Though maybe after she get's through grad school I can take a LOT of time off just to work on this project...  Assuming it isn't done in 3-4 years.  Which I hope is NOT the case.

Subtlety

So as I have decided I would like to try and do some more player centric posts until either I determine them useless, offend a GM who may or may not read my blog, or until I can get some REAL content. Bear with me, these posts are going to have stories and anecdotes and references to rulings or whatnot.  I'll try and be quick about mentioning the rule set in advance so nobody gets confused.

This post is going to be on subtlety.  I hope my GM doesn't mind my picking apart something even he admitted was not a success (perhaps not for the same reasons as myself).  Especially given it may have a long standing effect.  I'm fairly certain his players don't read this content.

The system is Savage Worlds, but mainly I would like to deal with story telling.  In particular my GMs attempt to create a low magic setting.  A setting where magic and supernatural are uncommon if not rare.  It at it's base was set near the gold rush period in western US.

I gave this GM a piece of advice before we started.  If you want to ensure the players believe in a low magic setting if they are surprised by magic and it becomes a special or rare thing, first and foremost you need to have mundane adventures.  Preferably multiple mundane adventures.  Furthermore, I feel like you should just lie.  Just straight up lie to the player's face.  No, no there is no magic.

The second the GM mentioned that magic existed, one of the players jumped on the possibility of magic and immediately began attempting to create a character that could use it.  Then when denied, a character that could use it in the future.  And so on and so forth for much longer than it should have gone on.

This felt like a poor start to me.  Perhaps I am wrong, but I think the effect would have been better achieved with a lie, or a lie of omission or something to that effect.  This problem was compounded about half an hour into our first adventure.  A mundane adventure by my advice.  Around when the army of cultists (obviously cultists) surrounded our inn, started burning it down and asked us for a 'something' that is clearly a reference to a religious item.

Personally I would have gone with a cave in.  Or a search for a kidnapper.  Or perhaps surviving a train robbery?  They're all pretty epic if done right, AND mundane as hell.  In fact, perhaps after several mundane adventures a gang of ruffians with matching tattoos shows up.  Then things start to get strange.  Just strange enough it could be edge logic.  Swamp gas and whatnot, then bam, almost undeniable magic for one scene if possible, then gone, out like a light with the climax you have hopefully achieved.

It's not easy, and the GM agrees the adventure didn't go as well as he would have liked.  And it is his game so perhaps he didn't really want mundane.

There you have it, a player post. Hopefully if anyone was looking for one of these I could get some feedback on how I could improve.