Tattered Page

No… really. Haven’t been blogging much, as I was struck by a terminal case of SOMETHING last week. Been struggling through a haze of daytime/nighttime cold medicines for a week- and let me tell you- NEVER post with a NyQuil-addled mind… unless it’s for unintended humor.

Everyone at work was already sniffling, so I didn’t feel too bad about coming in & potentially infecting anyone… until yesterday. Of the 12 occupied cubes around me… 9 called in sick.

Only my mutant immune system kept me going, it seems…

I’ll be back to posting soon

Honest.

As I strive to cut my latest response to Psychochild’s design challenge into something more readable, here’s something a little different, courtesy of Secondhand Lions.

Just because something isn’t true doesn’t mean you shouldn’t believe in it. Sometimes the things that may… or may not… be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most:

• That people are basically good
• that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything;
• that power and money– money and power mean nothing;
• that good always triumphs over evil;
• …and…. I want you to remember this… that love… true love never dies.

You remember that, boy. You remember that. Doesn’t matter if it’s true or not.You see, a man should believe in those things… because those are the things worth believing in.

-Hub McCann, Secondhand Lions.

I have trouble playing bad guys. I couldn’t be an Imperial in Star Wars Galaxies. I couldn’t take the path of the dark side in Knights of the Old Republic (1 or 2). I can’t even force myself to turn on the GTA series.

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Ryan’s had a nice “Roast of Itemcentricity” going on over at nerfbat. He’s quick to say that he’s not opposed to itemcentricity, but he loves picking current design paradigms apart. That’s what made me a regular there.

If anything, I didn’t think Ryan was aggressive enough with his attacks on item-centric play, but I’m a bit of a radical here.

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Psychochild’s latest weekend design challenge (hey, I caught up) asks us to:

Point out an advantage of either a class-based or skill-based system that hasn’t been discussed to death yet. Or, if you’re feeling bold, describe a system that goes beyond either of these systems.

Now, I’m new enough to the debate to not know whether something has been discussed to death so badly that it isn’t even mentioned anymore. I had alot of reading to do… Luckily, Ryan Shwayder over in Nerfbat provided a good starting point earlier last week. (more…)

Damion over at Zen of Design said in a recent post:

…It’s actually really difficult to convince graphics programmers and artists, who not only want to push the envelope because it’s cool, but who are legitimately concerned their resume and portfolios might fall out of date…

It arose from an ongoing blog discussion on “what made WoW a success.” A lot of great tangents have spun off and I hope to get around to giving my 2 cents on a few of em- still haven’t learned to choose my battles.

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Ever come back from an AFK moment and find your chat window filled with some absolutely FANTASTIC comments? Those laugh-out-loud moments that you had a great follow-up for, only they’re now ten minutes old and the moment is lost?

I’m experiencing this now, going through my blog list. I’ve spent so much time at work / planning this blog (then scrapping the elaborate plans for a quick-n-dirty, get-it-started approach), that I totally missed some great moments out there.

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I started this as an answer to Psychochild’s “weekend design challenge” now a few weeks late. Since then, it’s taken on a life on its own. While a little long for a blog, I promise not to make a habit of this… after my novella on class vs skill…. honest.

This magic system does away with the “mage as paper cannon” of popular fantasy gaming. In its place, we have a magic that’s much less visible or tangible, one that can be denied as “merely coincidence” or “superstition.” Where visible effects do occur, they could be explained as “just volatile chemicals mixed in the proper proportions.”

Magic IS real, however. Those aware of its mysteries can guide the course of events and open the doors to secrets not meant for mortal man. This system could easily be applied to a “magic in the modern world” genre, gothic horror, dark ages, or even a traditional elves-and-orcs world. How many fireballs does Gandalf throw, after all?

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Psychochild’s got his new weekend design challenge up, but I’m still working on responding to last week’s: creating a new magic system. 

“…design some new element of a magic system that differs from the normal stuff seen in current games….Extra bonus points for creating a whole new system and posting it or linking it from here.” 

 

Then, this weekend’s challenge:

“Point out an advantage of either a class-based or skill-based system that hasn’t been discussed to death yet. Or, if you’re feeling bold, describe a system that goes beyond either of these systems.”

… which anyone that knows me knows it will take a month alone for me to focus on just ONE reason I prefer skill systems.

 

Since I’ve been chasing after the bonus points and running farther and farther behind,  I though I’d toss out some observations on other, not-as-traditional, pen-n-paper magic systems that can serve as inspiration.

Last week, grouchy gnome over at nerfbat had a lot of great things to say about the “class vs skill” debate in game (particularly RPG) design. While I can (and have) ranted VOLUMES on the topic (often exceeding the capacity of comment fields), I found myself sidetracked by one of his more offhand comments.

“I’m one of those players that has altitis–I continually reroll characters because I’m never quite happy with one, and it ends up taking me ages to get maxed out.”

I’m Chas York, and I’m an alt-aholic. City of Heroes boasts at least thirty of my creations… I needed the Station pass just for the extra EQ2 slots, and in SWG, I explored every galaxy with a different character. I’ve min/maxed with the best of them, and once took great pride in finding the FOTM long before anyone else thought of it that way… but after a week of thinking about it and discussing it with my friends- I can’t agree with the gnome’s rationale.

I don’t reroll out of dissatisfaction and I never really “get bored” with my creations.

I alt because I play like a GM.

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