Gencon in Review

I was treated to a short adventure of my own on my way home from Gencon: my return flight was evidently booked for September 16, instead of August 16.  Of course, with a hundred thousand gamers leaving Indianapolis on Sunday, all of the flights out were fully booked.  Fortunately, a ticketing agent for Continental went beyond the call of duty and managed to get me on a flight out on standby.  I regret to say that I didn’t get his name.  I can only say that I was a bit stressed at the time.  Still, I’m very grateful and will definitely keep Continental in mind for next year.  I’ll also keep a certain ticket-brokering website in mind, in a less favorable light.

Enough about me, though.  I’ve got a couple of impressions about the convention to report about.  Some of them might merit further discussion later on, but best to get the bullet points down now, while it’s fresh.

This post is part of August’s RPG Blog Carnival, hosted by Chgowiz.

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Cryptic Offering Lifetime Subscription to Champions MMO

Cryptic Studios, formerly of City of Heroes, has been working on the Champions MMORPG set for release September 1.

They’re taking a page from Turbine and offering a lifetime subscription for $200.  They’re throwing in extra costumes, an in-game widget, eight extra character slots for alt-aholics like me, and access to the Star Trek Online closed beta later this year, along with the lifetime access.  The only catch:  the offer’s only good until the game launches.

In case you’re wondering, at $15/month, the lifetime subscription pays off in 13 months.  So if you think you’ll like the game enough to be playing it for years, it’s a pretty good deal, even without all the extra goodies.

On the other hand, it’s a lot to fork over for a game sight-unseen.  I played City of Heroes for over two years, and it was pretty fun, and I generally trust Cryptic’s game-development instincts (although I would hope Champions has a stronger endgame than CoH did).  But that’s a lot of trust.

They’re also offering pre-orderers a 6-month subscription for $60, which saves you $30, and also gets you Star Trek beta access and one of the bonus costume sets.  So if you like the idea but you aren’t sure the game’s going to hold your interest, that’s a pretty nice way to go.  Or if you’re interested in both Champions and Star Trek, I guess.

I’m going to need to think this one over.  I like the Champions universe, so it’s a very tempting offer for me, even though I’m mildly disappointed that the game won’t be using the HERO system.  Of course, it couldn’t use HERO fully, but I think HERO’s system of points, advantages, and disadvantages is practically made for an MMO setup, where you gain experience to become more powerful to gain more experience, and so forth.  A streamlined version of HERO might’ve been fun to see.

Even so, cheers to Cryptic for making a superhero MMO.  It’s a genre that’s sadly underrepresented at the moment.

Character Development: Quick and Dirty Backgrounds

Ever needed to sketch out a replacement player character or a major NPC when time is short?  Want to add a little depth to that cult leader or the deputy mayor?  Sometimes you just don’t have the time to dedicate to preparing a full, in-depth background — or you want to leave some room for a character’s background to grow and change as the game requires.  Maybe you’re starting a new campaign, and you want something that will break the ice without tying the characters down with too many specifics before they all know each other.

By asking a handful of questions, you can generate a usable character, with a skeletal background, within 15 minutes.

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Foxbat for President: Sacred Cows and Hamburger

Sacred cows make the best hamburger, or so the saying goes.  When it comes to RPGs, they tend to provide grist for the mill.

There are sacred cows aplenty in rules systems, of course.  That’s one of the reasons why we have edition wars:  change anything, no matter how inconsequential you think it might be, or how much better you think the new version is, and there’s sure to be someone loudly decrying the change and lamenting that the new version just isn’t the same game any more.  No more assassins or cavaliers in 2e?  Sacrilege.  No more THAC0 in 3e?  A travesty.  No more Vancian casting in 4e?  Well, that’s fine, but not for any game whose title includes the words dungeon and dragon.

That’s not the sort I’m thinking about today, though.  I’m interested in the sacred cows within the settings.  The characters, locations, and other elements that are always present, if only lurking somewhere in the background.  The ones that define that setting, that — in a sense — make it what it is.  The ones that are iconic — not Tordek and Mialee, but the real icons.  The ones with names like Bigby, Mordenkainen, Raistlin, Elminster, Vecna.  (There tends to be a good share of wizards among them.  I don’t believe this is a coincidence.)  The guys you know and love.  Or hate.  Sometimes both.

A campaign set in one of these published settings must acknowledge its sacred cows at one point.  Either it kowtows to them, making use of the pre-existing body of lore that surrounds them (however nebulous it might be in some cases — how much do most D&D players really know about Bigby, other than that he’s the guy with the hand spells?), or it slaughters them, creating some explanation for why they’re no longer present or have no impact.  The former option limits the GM somewhat; the latter often infuriates players who have a fondness for that setting.  Witness the reaction of Greyhawk fans to Greyhawk Wars, or the more recent reaction of Forgotten Realms fans to the 4e redesign of that world.

Which brings us to Foxbat.

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5 Games I Want to Play

I’ve never played any of these, but I wish I could:

Even catchier than snakes on a plane...

Primetime Adventures.  I’ve got the rules and it looks like an elegant and rules-light universal system.  Universal because of its conceit:  the players play the star characters in a (nonexistent) television series.  Gritty crime drama, soap opera, shoujo high-school romantic comedy, post-apocalyptic cooking show, new Star Trek series… pretty much anything works as a topic.  If the group gets bored with one genre, nothing’s stopping you from skipping to another… possibly even using the same characters.  (We’ve all seen those “nothing will ever be the same” episodes, right?)

Spirit of the Century.  Pulp is another of my favorite genres, but one I get to indulge much less frequently than superhero (despite their similarities).  And look at that cover!  A gorilla flying a biplane, a masked avenger, a zeppelin aflame in the background… how can you not love that?  That’s pure Rule of Cool right there.  It’s not quite Giant Talking Space Monkey Pirates, but it’s damn close.  Also, Spirit of the Century uses the FATE system, which I’ve been wanting to see in play for a while.

Dogs in the Vineyard.  I haven’t got the rules for this one yet, but reading play reports intrigues me.  It’s a Western of sorts where you play a posse of divinely-sanctioned avengers.  You go from town to town, root out the sources of their troubles, and decide whose sins to forgive and whose to judge.  You’re the law of the faith — but not necessarily the law of the land, which might lead to some interesting conflicts.

Mutants & Masterminds.  I keep hearing good things about this, and it’s at the top of my to-read list… I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.  I’m a Champions player from way back, but I like superhero systems, for whatever reason; I’m always picking up another one.  If half of what I hear about M&M is true, it might just take the #2 spot away from the 1980s Marvel Super Heroes RPG.  Maybe even dethrone HERO, although I doubt that; HERO has the ability to do damn near everything, with pretty minimal effort required beyond the initial investment of learning the system (which is significant, but which I paid long ago).

Capes.  Speaking of superhero games… I’m not so sure about this one, actually, but the flash demo on the website intrigued me.  It seems as if it would be a lot of fun for a one-shot or a short campaign.  I don’t know whether it would sustain a longer run… but then, that wouldn’t be what I’d be looking to it for.  I’ve got HERO for that.  The no-GM, competitive-round-robin style of Capes seems like it might offer a different set of opportunities for story development, and I think that’d be a good experience for me and my players.  Never hurts to shake things up a bit.

Maybe at Gencon this year, I’ll be able to track down a session of one of these…

In other news, 6d6 Fireball is running an adventure writing contest.  Adventures need to either be written for 3.5e (and follow the OGL) or be system-neutral.  The deadline is May 12, which means time is pretty tight, but the winners get published in July.

And speaking of contests, don’t forget to enter to win a copy of the Open Game Table Anthology right here at A Butterfly Dreaming.