How Fantastic Roleplayers kill my Roleplaying Games

By T.R.S. Burns

I’ve been playing Dungeons and Dragons since 1998 or so and once we got past the teenage hack and slash that our particular group didn’t enjoy and waded into the political webs that would be our later life gaming we encountered the issue I’m writing about today.

I’ve had the privilege over the years to game with some truly phenomenal roleplayers and it saddens me that at the time of my life I’m writing my most intricate plots and stories the people who could truly benefit from them are no longer available to play for one reason or another. However, straying back to the point at hand, each and every one of these people brought to the table deep, rich and nuanced characters.

The distinction here  between my roleplayers and the rest of our groups is that each time they came to the table they brought a _new_ character, not a re-badged or rebuilt version of their previous character and this made them terribly unpredictable. I will go into some examples in a moment.

In my current game one of the players decided that the Eberron setting would lend itself well to playing a Wizard/Academic working out of Morgrave University, the rest of the group had settled on an expedition to Xen’Drick motif so his character fitted fine. As is his penchant he intentionally wrote a character who was less useful in combat than he was out of it and yet, the more sessions we play the more the plot and the other players linchpin on his decisions and now three sessions in _his_ goals have become _their_ goals because his compelling and skilful portrayal of his character has convinced the players and thus their characters that he is right and just in his goals.

Which he is not. His character is a bastard whose only real goal is finding something in Xen’Drick which will get him either a position with the university or a transfer to another university with a better reputation. He has absolutely no care for the other characters goals and needs and is willing and able to walk away at the first sign of trouble. But the other players have no idea, why?, because he is hiding it all behind fantastic roleplay.

Will it kill the game when it comes out? Will the interest in his goals fade? Is it just a phase at this early stage in the campaign?

I don’t know. I honestly believe it is possible to play your character too well.

So this past weekend I got together with my long standing gaming group and we wrote characters for a new campaign set in the world of Eberron. I wanted to try and capture the dark noire feel that the author of that setting intended as well as the pulp flavour of our usual games (which he also intended) what I got is not exactly what I was after, but close.

Over the rest of this post I’ll detail the characters that were created and there tie-ins to the setting. This will require some Eberron knowledge on your part. I’ll also touch on the method we used to ge there.

I had the players each take a scrap of paper and write down five interesting things about their character, anything at all they felt was relevant was fine and then they handed those scraps back to me and I read them over and handed them back. I had them flip their scraps over and write four interesting things that happened in their character’s past and hand them back to me.

I took those four things and factored in the original five and used those events to tie the characters together. You know bill because you were a mercenary during the war and bill was a forward scout whose platoon you were assigned to type stuff.

The characters we got are;

Charles Banks – Geologist, Botanist, Wizard

Charles Banks is a rising star of House Vadalis, having been sent to Sharn to study at Morgrave University he return with high accolades in both Botany which was immediately useful to his house and Geology which would only prove it’s worth in the years that followed when he invented the Sonicprobe.

Harnessing his magical ability to make sonic blasts into a technology he could use to detect caves and pockets of air below the surface of the ground. Armed with his prototype he made a lengthy and dangerous geological and botanical survey of the Eldeen Reaches and began to compile a system to chronicle botanical samples by family and strain. It was on this survey that he uncovered Naan.

Naan – Warforged, Cast-Off, Druid

Naan was a relic of the last war a fiercely loyal and trusting Warforged and a perfect example of House Cannith engineering and so when she was ordered to Guard a forward camp in the Eldeen Reaches late in the last war she did and when her unit did not return she stayed in place, unmoving, un-breathing for more than a decade, lonely but loyal.

It was here she was found by the Gatekeepers a circle of Druid’s dating back to ancient times who saw more in the Warforged’s mossy rusted form than a weapon and trained the highly intelligent living constructed in the ways of their circle. Naan became the defender of the grove she had been set to guard and stayed there until she encountered Charles Banks on his survey and agreed to accompany him on his survey of the Reaches, when the survey concluded Naan continued on as Bank’s Assistant.

Perrin d’Thuranni – Thief, Would be Assassin, Dragonblooded Heir

Perrin is the half-blooded son of the offshoot house of Thuranni and operated out of their secret holding in the Lhazaar Principalities where he served as a guard at one of the houses fronts topside. He is as he knows highly expendable to his pure blooded house and works hard to make himself an asset to the family.

He recently capitalised on seemingly unrelated events when he thwarted the framing of a travelling artificer who murder attempt had gone awry and left the Principalities with that Artificer. Having overheard the previous night artificer’s intentions to visit the lost continent of Xen’Drick Perrin saw the opportunity to make a name for himself in the house and a small personal fortune besides.

Haptash Ka-Nala – Kalashtar, Dreamer, Artificer

Haptash was born a Kalashtar in the nation of Adar. Beset on all sides by the Riedran forces led by the Inspired intend on blotting out all of the Kalashtar Bloodlines. He fled the monastery forts of Adar as soon as he was old enough to understand the threat posed by so many Kalashtar close together and carefully made his way out of Sarlona. In Khorvaire he discovered his gift for Artifice and became a well respected Artificer serving a short time with the House Cannith Tinker’s Guild before the agents of the Inspired made an attempt on his life and he fled to the Lhazaar Principalities.

Haptash had been working in Lhazaar as a general purpose tinker for almost two years before they found him again and uncovered his secret nature as a Kalashtar. A battle was fought that that spilled bloody and terrible into the street with his magic beset by Inspired steel resulting in the death of his opponent. Haptash was taken into custody by the dark cloaked authority and was set for a short dirty trial and hanging as a troublemaking outsider when a local captain spoke in his defence. The same captain was charged with escorting him out of the principalities and continued on with him afterwards.

Rick Barry – Mixed Blood, Wrestler, Barbarian

Rick is a half-orc born into a human family who prized martial accomplishment and spent his youth as a prominent star in the greco-roman wrestling community. His family took his mixed heritage in their stride taking into account his lack of a particularly orcish appearance and his feats of strength and cunning which brought honour to the family. When he was old enough Rick marched off to fight in the Last War and fell in with the House Deneith Blademark’s Guild.

Serving as a Mercenary in their employ Rick fought for more than a quarter of the last war and served under the banners of all five nations. He was left suddenly jobless and destitute when the war ended and found himself wandering back to the Blademarks hoping that there would be more work for mercenaries in the broken kingdoms that were recovering from the war. He was in luck, JackBox Maul in hand he set out for House Vadalis to protect the travelling son Charles Banks as he undertook his research.

So there you have it, these are my players and soon I will reveal their story. I will post up an appendix to this post which includes their original notes from the character creation session and their descriptions and Biographies as I get them but for now I leave you to ponder.

This is my first attempt at writing for Eberron so bear with me;

The Khorvaire Courier

In the wake of the last war Houses Kundarak, Vadalis, Sivis and Orien banded together to form a company called the Khorvaire Courier.

In essence a newspaper controlled by its contributing houses the Courier holds a distinction over all other newspapers because of the nature of its patronage. Distribution. The Courier is created in mass quantities by House Sivis who move it into customised House Kundarak vaults which have been enchanted by House Orien to move their contents to identical Vaults in every major city on Khorvaire. From these depots the Courier is collected by the local agent of House Vadalis and delivered to its target audience by couriers on Magebred mounts.

The advantage here is that from the moment that the Courier is printed it can be in a city on the otherside of Khorvaire in seconds and delivered to the local populace within the hour. It also implies that the Courier has informants and information gatherers inevery major city on Khorvaire to keep the information relevant to all readers.

Its been some time since I last posted here and in that time I’ve been far from idle.

I spent a night in the hospital, got a new gaming group, organised my trip to GenConOz 2009, attended a funeral and lost all of my inspiration. Its coming back to me slowly now and I’ve decided to work on some short fiction.

The new gaming group necessitated the creation of a new fictional world for those self same characters to inhabit so I’m working on an island nation for that and its all in the “in my head” stage currently. I’m tossing up chronicalling my worldbuilding on here for all of you so that you can take something away from it. I’ve been looking at Campaign Cartographer for my mapping recently but it looks too… generic for me at the moment.

I’m trying to light a fire under my creativity by doing some short fiction work and some character development. There are a few stories I need to tell and I’m working on easing those out. A steampunk tale of gearworks and blood magic, a samurai tale with a twist and the rest of my Gillis Svend story.

I’m flying to Brisbane a week from now for GenConOz 2009 and I’m getting more excited about that for every day that passes, it’ll be good to hit up some writing seminars and bury my head in the joy of volunteering at a convention that large.

Till then I’m out.

This is a small excerpt from an article I am completing on Dwarves;

Anti-Religion

The Dvergar are a post-theistic society who while believing in divinity and the greater forces that direct the flow of the world are at a stage beyond the worship of a deity or deities. Occupying a similar role in their culture is the veneration and respect for their ancestors and the earth from which they came.

Dvergar are naturally suspicious of magic having progressed to a point in their culture where they place far more emphasis on the creations of the individual through labour and time than through the manipulation of magic. This intellectual and spiritual suspicion of magic in its many forms makes the Dvergar highly resistant to its effects.

Ancestors

The Dvergar celebrate their ancestors and their actions and draw from their lives the teachings of the next generation.

Each Clan and Family venerates its own direct ancestors and exarchs as well as the communal ancestors of the Dvergar who are drawn from antiquity like Vigdis the Battlemaiden who fell at the last stand of Iron Hope.

The stoneworkers and metal smiths of the Dvergar call out to their ancestors for guidance when they ply their craft and in doing so work their tools with the experience of a hundred lifetimes which allows them to create works that are not possible for other smiths and masons.

Some Dvergar called Skalds can tap into this broad spectrum of racial memory and summon up the talents and songs of their ancestors.

The Earth

The Dvergar are by their nature creatures of the earth born from stone and mineral in the beginning of it all, they are drawn to the earth and connected to it in a fundamental way.

This very tie to the earth makes them uniquely talented artists and crafters because many Dvergar can “see” a creation in the raw materials they work from.

This also gave rise to the earth shapers;

Earth Shapers

While resistant to magic and beyond the need for divinity the Dvergar are still moved by the masterful skill of the earth shapers who draw their power not from the gods or the universe but from the very earth beneath their feet.

Gifted with the power to shift and change the world around them with their hands and their minds the Earth Shapers are the natural evolution of the link between the Dvergar and the earth and their paradigm shift towards creations made by the hand and the mind alone.

The Dvergar are not forward in their post-theistic beliefs and acknowledge and respect the existence of deities and the importance they play in the lives and societies of other cultures.

I figured I’d start with something I know a fair amount about and something that I get asked about a lot in my interactions with the gaming community.

4^th Edition Dungeons & Dragons

To give a little background I started out in the tail end of 3^rd Edition D&D and was consumed like my peers by the 3.5 revisions. I will note here that I never played 2^nd Edition other than the video games based on it. I will also note that when 4^th Edition materialized out of nowhere and everyone was raving about how the people who had invested their time and money in the product were going to be outraged I was one of those people, and I wasn’t outraged. At last count I personally own fifty nine 3.5 revision Dungeons & Dragons manuals and nine 4^th Edition manuals.

I played 4^th Edition for the first time at World D&D Game Day in 2008 and for the second time at GenConOz that same year. Since then I have been exclusively on the other side of the screen and have been running it every fortnight for my usual suspects.

Now on to the point at hand…

I heard the hype and I heard the criticism, I heard that it was basically a miniatures game with a role-playing element tacked on the end and I heard that it was the savior and the cure for cancer and below I will attempt through my own experience to give you an idea of its strengths and weaknesses.

The game can be faster, much, much faster but by the same token it can take a very long time to get simple things done. The combat system has been streamlined and the powers system means that each character has something interesting to do each turn but in my experience the new monster roles can leave a party with no real way to hurt a “Brute” who can more than injure them and is possessed of seemingly limitless hit points. It puts a real onus on the game master to read the stat blocks carefully and construct the encounters with care or mire the party in incredibly long combats.

The game has also taken on a somewhat generalist vibe, the classes still have roles within the party but there are elements of at least two roles hidden in each class I know a number of people personally who this does not sit well with, because their characters class is their “thing” and having a whole party who can do it just not as well is not sitting well with them.

For example our current group has a Paladin who is a warrior for his god who uses his sword arm to fight evil and his offhand to heal the sick with his lay on hands; this is the core of his character concept. However the party also contains a Cleric who is vastly more proficient at healing though not so great at combat and a Warlord who through here character concept and build is both a vastly better healer AND fighter. This has left our Paladin feeling superfluous.

This I think is probably common place. It will require either a fairly serious group discussion before game start about who wants to play what character and what will tread on their toes or a shift in the  way that character concepts are centered away from character abilities.

 Even the people who are highly critical of the game are giving credit where credit is due, the 4^th Edition manuals are vastly superior in their art, their layout and their indexing. I think Wizard’s of the Coast have listened to their feedback and made the changes that people have been asking them for in the last few years. Information is well laid out and easy to find in all the books I have purchased so far.

I won’t speak for anyone else but I really like what they’ve done with monsters or adversaries to be more accurate about it. The way that powers work (which I will cover next) has really given monsters some of the cool flavor the PCs have always had and its made each monster a force in its own right. My current group for example does not fear Orcs, they do however fear specific KINDS of Orcs, mostly Shaman and Berserkers.

The revolutionized encounter building system based on XP value rather than Challenge Rating means that encounters are quick to build and easy to calculate experience for however this can easily slip into the issue that I mentioned towards the beginning about encounters that look great on paper and butcher parties in reality.

  Powers, Powers, Powers. This is really where the debate is on 4^th Edition, there is a sizable argument that the introduction of powers to 4^th Edition and even arguably to the Book of Nine Swords for the 3.5 revision have made what was traditionally a paper and pen tabletop game far more like a pulp styled video game or more specifically like a number of popular MMOs.

It’s my opinion as a long time player of Fighters, Barbarians, Bards and Paladins that all that powers did was make the game as exciting and varied for everyone else as it was for Wizards and Clerics. It is a wonderful feeling to have more options in melee combat than sword or shield. I think the range of powers will be more satisfying with the expansion of the product library.

In regards to this I do take issue with the way that magic is being handled under the new powers system, and that issue is the almost complete lack of utility spells. There are utility powers every few levels but almost all of these are combat spells which do not deal damage. I am hoping that the recently released Arcane Power supplement or another future supplement will address this issue.

I suppose it’s worth touching at this stage on cost.  It’s no secret to the people who know me that I’m irresponsible with my gaming spending. I have as previous mentioned more than fifty 3.5 revision manuals in my bookcase that are no longer part of the supported rule system and I don’t for a moment regret that and neither do I regret the money that I paid for my 4^th edition manuals.

I paid $70AU a book for my 3^rd Edition and 3.5 revision manuals when they were released and was prepared to pay the same books so the price coming down to roughly $40AU per book was received with much joy at least in my circles. It has also made 4^th Edition players handbooks my most frequent birthday gift.

 I suppose following on from there I’ll finish with the controversial online tools. I became a D&D insider subscriber about the same time the closed Beta of the Character Builder launched. Now its worth mentioning that the price for the Insider subscription is really reasonable, if you pay American Dollars, if you decide you want to subscribe say… during an economic down turn, with Australian dollars. Then it costs you twice what the American numbers are. However I am very happy with the service I’ve bought, the monthly PDF issues of Dragon and Dungeon Magazine contain content I would have loved to own but never would have bought in magazine format and the Character Builder is a glorious piece of software.

I heard online recently that someone has already cracked it to get around the need to be a subscriber to update the Character Builder and to be honest that upsets me but I can understand their reasoning. It’s a service worth buying in my opinion.

There has been a lot of criticism about software promises that have not been realized on schedule and to that all I can say is that, is the IT industry to be honest and I for one am enjoying the game too much to notice. I will admit though that I am looking forward to the new features.

That’s all from me on this and I hope it helped.

Riley Out.