Houses of the Blooded: the Beauty of Systems

I literally had a three-hour sit-down with one of my players because she was curious about the system (but didn’t want to look stupid asking alot of questions: Trust me, asking someone about a system doesn’t make you look stupid), and a sticky question came up:

“Say I want to just sneak past someone.  Why can’t I, you know, just sneak past him?  Why do I have to roll it out.”

It’s actually the sort of question that routinely plagues RPGers.  Why use a system at all?  Some people get huffy: You use a system because you’re supposed to.  But that’s a cargo cult, people who do something because, well, that’s just the way it’s done.  I use systems because they are beautiful and, as one RPG.netter elegantly put it: “Rules shape play.”

The player in question will be under the shadow of the Fox and as I’ve designed the game, she’ll be loaded to the gills with Style (especially since she loves costumes) but her house lacks the resources and military power of other Houses. This will shape their ability to play the Great Game, shape who they ally with and why.  Her high cunning and beauty rewards her when she wants to play in an underhanded fashion or engage in romance, both of which are perfect for her, and her low prowess and strength punish her when she attempts to engage in combat and “adventuring.”  Tricks like the Black Kiss, Chambers of the Heart and the Most Subtle Weapon highlight the Fox’s dangerous mastery of romance, and their subtle ability to manipulate, in complete contrast to the Wolf’s All War All The Time tricks of Tooth and Claw or the Invisible Cannot Be Touched, or the Bear’s defensive, motherly tricks like Circle of Protection and No Fool.

Play must inform the rules.  As interesting ideas come up, they should receive representation within the abstract mechanics of the game.  Rules must inform play.  As you run headlong into rules, they should shape how your story flows, preferably in interesting ways.  Where rules do not do this, rules should get out of the way.

This is one of the reasons I selected Houses of the Blooded.  John Wick’s philosophy agrees with mine.  Aspects, Virtues, Blessings, Resources, all shape how the game plays out (Ever notice how Serpents all have a bunch of swamps so they can harvest herbs for their rituals?  Ever notice how those same swamps produce poison?  Food for thought…).  But unlike how our local Changeling group LARPs (using the standard, tabletop rules), roleplaying doesn’t grind to a halt whenever a mechanical challenge comes up.  They just played a session of “war” where everyone had to sit down for hours rolling dice.  Houses of the Blooded would tackle that faster, more interestingly, and in a way that suits the LARP environment (using the Hunting/Mass Combat rules, in fact.  Those with my version of Tooth and Claw would rejoice!)

She’s learned to avoid rules.  I suspect she does this because she believes that “she doesn’t get them.”  I think, rather, that rules have harmed her play, so she’s discarded them, a completely reasonable approach.  I hope and believe that Blood and Tears offers rules that will facilitate, rather than slow, play and I suspect she’ll actually use them (bribing someone with a couple of style tokens is easy and casual and requires memorizing nothing).

The real reason I wanted to post this: Making the characters has been a joy. I’m almost finished, in fact (just have the Falcon left to go), and the process highlights why I love good systems.  Poring over the Blessings and the other concepts in the game has shown me the “shape” and the “feel” of each house and how the game works.  I delight in that exploration, and I hope the color and flavor shows when people actually play.  Houses of the Blooded is very elegant: With just a few simple rules, you can explore so much with such detail.  Yes, it’s “rules-lite,” but it doesn’t lose richness as it shed complexity.

Rain

It always makes me want to roleplay

Callousness

I’ve made a mistake.

The SJGames forums has a discussion on the Callous disadvantage, primarily on how its disadvantages seem highly situational while its advantages seem rather common.  In particular, the -1 it applies to reaction rolls only applies if people have suffered your cruelty before, or if they have Empathy.

In G-Verse, all Tennin, including their little Goblins, have some level of Empathy (even the Goblins are Sensitive).  I’ve had the Goblins, in particular, react well to Lieutenant Sam Abrams, but she’s known for her Callousness.  Thus, they should probably react in a negative fashion to her.  I’ll have to discuss this the next time she’s in the game, and try to remember that Tennin should generally dislike Callous characters.

Dark Space Update: Robots

The Dark Engine and the “Angelic” intelligences that guarded it have long stymied me, as they’re a vital element of the setting but difficult to model well in GURPS.  I’ve finally managed to work out all the various elements: How they interact with the Dark Engine, how they can keep up with Sci-Fi Knights in Power Armor despite paying gobs of points for their shells, and so on.

I really struggled with that last element.  I envision the robots uploading themselves in shells like they do in Transhuman Space, except these are angelic, mythic shells made of awesome.  However, Possession and Puppet rules require you pay for your “most expensive body.” The shell I finally settled on as a “standard” combat shell cost at least 1000 points, 250 more than a Knight, and less effective.  However, if I discarded this rule and allowed you to simply purchase superior bodies as puppets (15 points for that 1000 point body), following the logic that the body is really no different from power armor, I worried they would be “too powerful.”  Eventually, though, this worry turned out to be of no concern.  A 750 point Angel with a 1000 point shell is about on par with a 750 point Knight with Power Armor and an Assault Cannon (a little weaker actually, and I’m ok with that).

However, this left the question of the Angel’s “base” shell.  If you can purchase a super shell for a mere 15 points, why bother to pay for any ST of your own?  I eventually decided that in the Dark Engine, you have to use your “native” stats, and that your “base” shell (the standard looking robot) also uses these base stats.  Interestingly, this discussion lead to an interesting idea:

The Angels draw their inspiration from Wraith and, indeed, most of the “Angels” are really uploaded human intelligences (“Ancestral Emulations”).  While pondering the fact that you had these static stats that you lost when you changed shells, I suddenly wondered if humanity might be able to “exceed the limitations of their shells.”  All robots in a Seraphim Shell have exactly 18 ST, but what if some humans known for their strength got a little more out of their machine, and pushed it to 20 ST?  I thought this provided an interesting mechanic allowing players to define their character a little more, and express their innate humanity in a way that the robots lacked.  It also made humans “special,” in a way that set them apart from their colder, mechanical robot kin.  Finally, it tied into this notion that robots tend to see humanity as “special,” almost worshiping their creators.

With that out of the way, I’m buckling back down on the core game concepts (the Knights and their kin) and working towards making this playable, as some local players have expressed interest in playing.  However, I’ve finished Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising, so I have no idea how long I’ll remain interested in this little project ^_^;;

Werewolf – the Final Offering: Speed NPC Challenge

I’ve got one week to finish prepping all of my werewolf material, including the setting, the plot, and about 25 NPCs.  I also have a test during this week.

Wish me luck.

Random Thought: The Japanese and (American) Football

In a bout of insomnia, I began to ponder the Japanese love of, of all things, baseball.  I won’t begrudge them the game, but football, to me, makes so much more sense.  Consider how in anime, as well as Japanese culture in general, the Japanese people display a love of the following:

• Convoluted, Complex Tactics: Hardly an anime goes by without some awesome fight during which either the hero or villain does something awesome or unexpected, and either he or some outside commenter stops to explain the implications and repercussions of just how cool those tactics really were.
• Big Guys Slamming Into One Another: Mecha, Sumo and Godzilla movies all have one thing in common: It’s all about really big guys grappling and brawling with one another.  Japan loves primal struggles pitting strength against strength, will against will.
• Awesome Costumes: Preferably with wacky helmets and crazy shoulder pads.
• Hawt Mascot Chicks: What male-oriented anime would be complete without some sexy female character flaunting her beauty and exhorting the hero to victory.  Why, some people even refer to such characters as “the cheerleader.”

Obviously, football is very much about these things, and yet, when the Japanese go to pick an American sport to be fascinated by, they pick baseball.  The only reason I can think of: Japan borrowed alot of western ideas during the early 20th century, when they were coming out of isolation.  For example, the “big eyes, small mouth” style of anime drawing actually descends from early American animation (for example, Betty Boop), and baseball was much bigger in America then.  Football didn’t really start to sweep America until the second half of the twentieth century, after the 1958 NFL championship game, at which point Japan was happily doing its own thing.

Still, seems like they’d be a great match, two great flavors that go great together.  I figure it would only take one obsessive otaku anime artist to popularize the game in Japan.

And guess what?  I was right.  One quick search later, I’ve discovered Eyeshield 21, a relatively new anime about American football that’s really managed to put the sport on the map.  Who knows, maybe it’ll eclipse baseball in Japan the way it’s taken over the states too.

Software maintenance and RPG Design

So, interesting thing we learned in class today.  As a software engineer, you learn to develop software, but as a help desk worker, you learn to maintain it.  The instructor stated that while ICT education might suggest to you that development is the more expensive of the two processes, in fact, maintenance is the more expensive of the two.  Over the lifetime of a particular piece of software, approximately 30% of all money spent on it will occur during the development phase, and 70% of it will take place over the rest of its life, adapting it to new users, new systems, fixing bugs, smoothing wrinkles and keeping it up to date.  As a result, if you want to save money on a program, the best place to invest is the development phase, as spending 10% more during development to save 10% during the mainanence phase results in a net drop in the total cost of the software.

This instantly brought to my mind the importance of good RPG design.  RPGs resemble software in that they are tools used by an end user, rather than complete products you merely “activate” and enjoy the results of, like you might with a TV or a computer game.  A GM must interpret the rules he’s been given, and he must adapt it to the needs of his group, much as a corporation must figure out how best to implement a computer program, and adapt it to their needs.

The fans of broken, sub-par RPG games often defend their system of choice by crying that, with a little love, you can fix any flaw.  The same can be said of any software program too.  You don’t need an autosave function, or automatic updates, or security features.  If your program crashes your computer once an hour, well, with a little love, you can work around it.  On the other hand, this costs money and time, and if you had spent a little more money and time during the development cycle, you would save alot more during the actual use of the program.

Thus it is with RPGs.  Time and money factor into RPG enjoyment just as they do any application, though time more than money, and a bad RPG costs more time to work out the kinks than a good RPG, and thus, in a given time-budget, a good RPG allows a GM to spend more of his time worrying about how to make the adventure fun rather than how to make the adventure work.  A little investment up front saves alot of time in the long run.

Mass Effect 2

My god, it’s full of stars.

I haven’t anticipated a game so hotly since… er, maybe ever.  Perhaps some of the Final Fantasy games inspired me this much.  I seem to remember being awed by the sheer beauty of Final Fantasy III/VI, but I don’t think I was really looking forward to it as much as I have Mass Effect 2.  I suppose I understand true fanboyishness now, though to be fair, I’ve fanboyed pretty hard over RPGs too.

It was worth the wait.  At least, so far.  Look, just the first 5 minutes of gameplay exceed any sci-fi movie I’ve ever seen.  Try it, and you’ll instantly see what I mean.  The graphics are beautiful, the soundtrack is spectacular, and… Bioware has a true sense of the cinematic, of the epic.  What a way to start a game.

I will say this, though: “Solid Snake, is that you?”  Sounds like alot of the Metal Gear voice actors found a new place in the Mass Effect universe.  Crazy.

Slaughter City Update: Vampires

I finished the Slaughter City vampires. 25 in all! Woot! Wow, was that alot of work. I hope this is all worth it ^_^

Yeah, I haven’t been posting much. All I’ve done for the past week has been homework and work on Slaughter City, though I do have a few things I can talk about. Still, thanks for your patience

Doctor Who: the End of Time

I’m sorry, I have to geek-out. I’m not generally a fan of Russel T. Davie’s writing, but my god that was a good Episode. I can think of no better way to give David Tennant a proper send-off. This was truly a masterpiece, and you can see how Mr. Davies had this planned from the very beginning. I can really not say enough good about it.

Also: Matt Smith is already winning me over. It’s going to be an awesome season this year.

Good times! And already the year is off to a spectacular start ^_^