The Pieces of Gestalt
Imagine a world in which personifications of concepts — Archetypes such as Winter, Death, and Determination — existed, having sprung to life in 1989. Now imagine that, in this world, a fairly large number of these personifications, these living symbols, chose to put on colorful costumes and become superheroes and supervillains. That’s the high concept of Scott Bennie’s campaign setting Gestalt: the Hero Within, which I was able to review thanks to Ed Healy of Atomic Array.
In some ways, this is not such a stretch for a superhero game. As Bennie writes in his introduction to the first chapter, “[a]ll fiction deals in archetypes, [and] comic books apply these symbols more consciously than other fictional forms.” The statement might be open for debate, but clearly comic books deal with archetypes. Bennie intends for Gestalt to go one step further, though: the characters are not making use of those archetypes; instead, the characters are the archetypes. The Gestalt (Bennie’s name for such a living symbol) of Winter might have cold and ice powers, but he’s not just a guy with cold and ice powers — he’s a living representation of Winter. The Gestalt of Murder isn’t just a common serial killer, or even an uncommon one — he’s Murder personified.
Categories: Reviews | Comments (9)
What is D&D, Anyway?
Jeff Rients of Jeff’s Gameblog, who ordinarily has interesting things to say, recently decided to instead rant about 4th edition in a couple of posts, starting with positing an unbridgeable gap between old-school and new-school. All of this was founded, mind you, on a misinterpretation of a single post by Trask of Living Dice. (Later he added a second post based on an editorial by someone at Wizards of the Coast.) Buried in the comments, though, he said something that’s actually thought-provoking and worth responding to:
3d6 chargen. Wandering monsters. Save or die. Rust monsters eatng my sword. Level draining. Random treasure (possibly no treasure). Dave the Game may be right and what I’m talking about is a ‘playstyle’ issue, but the playstyle that I learned from D&D is no longer one supported by D&D.
I find this interesting because it is, for the most part, a list of those things that I found most senseless and annoying as both a player and a GM in past editions. If this is how the “old school” contingent (and we really need a better name for them — too many of them, judging from other comments on Jeff’s post, are too ignorant or too vested in the One True Way of Gaming to allow them to co-opt “old school”) defines D&D, then I think it’s no surprise that the game no longer feels like D&D to them.
Categories: Philosophy and Rants | Comments (33)
The Making of a Villain
Since I promised to share some stories about adapting and running with players’ ideas along the way, here’s a topical one. It’s about a superhero campaign I ran almost ten years ago, and how through sheer serendipity I ended up with a villain who became a recurring antagonist through much of its run.
The Enigma was never intended to be a recurring character. He was a fairly stock character — a “superhumanly-skilled normal” motivated, originally, by fame. His modus operandi was the theft of bizarre objects; his targets included the world’s largest ball of string, a symphony orchestra, and several hundred tons of green tea. And he’d leave his calling card, reading “It’s an enigma,” in anticipation of the inevitable question: Why?
The Enigma wasn’t a very dangerous guy. He could have been; he was a technical and scientific genius, a talented athlete, a well-trained thief, and pretty handy in general. But he wasn’t interested in causing outright harm. He was certainly no murderer. He was simply an audacious headline-grabber. I imagined the characters would hunt him down, confront him, and ultimately emerge victorious. The Enigma was a gentle sort of villain-of-the-week, a four-color-style antagonist to throw into the campaign early to help establish the high-heroic flavor I was after. This was at a time when dark anti-heroes were all the rage, but none of us wanted to play that way, so the Enigma would be a bit of insurance against it.
Categories: Adventure Design 101, My Campaigns | Comments (5)
Hanging in the Balance
Game balance has become a relatively hot topic again this week among the RPG blogs. On Friday, Unnatural 20 posted Game Balance is Unnecessary for Fun. True or False? Among the responses is RPG Blog II’s Ok, Let’s Talk Game Balance.
It’s a topic that seems to occasionally recur since (at least) the release of third edition, and the release of fourth edition only seems to have given it new life. Some people see game balance as a necessity. Some think that it actually stifles the fun by normalizing everything.
I think one of the main problems is that the phrase game balance is used by different people to mean wildly different things. Additionally, these different areas are of different importance to a given campaign.
Categories: Philosophy and Rants | Comments (7)
Heroic Effort
One of the worst things that can happen to a game is a string of bad die rolls. Through no fault of the players’, plots can be derailed, plans can go disastrously wrong, and characters can die. One traditional means of handling this scenario is for the gamemaster to fudge — surreptitiously decide that an attack by the monster missed when the dice show a hit, or that the damage inflicted was minimal instead of a critical, or that the bad guy failed its saving throw instead of making it.
While fudging is effective, it must be used sparingly. Players need to feel that there’s some actual danger to their characters, or they become less invested in keeping those characters alive. Players who realize the GM has cheated in their favor generally lose interest in the game, in one way or another — why play, if they know they’re going to win?
On the other hand, it’s entirely reasonable to not want to fail just because a crucial die roll was missed.
Heroic Effort is a mechanic to help address that situation, while still retaining a chance of failure. It’s appropriate to cinematic games, but not intended for realistic ones. The idea behind it is that, in the clutch, the character is able to tap into an inner reserve and put forth a better performance than he otherwise might.
Categories: Original Game Content | Comments (4)
