Roleplaying, Bad Company II and the like.
The last few months have been interesting for my outside of uni hobbies, after losing my slot as medic for the Ju1cy Team Fortress II team I've had a period of limbo where I didn't find a focus particularly well. I tried various PC games, multiplayer and singleplayer, but nothing really fit too much. That is, until Bad Company II.
Bad Company II entranced me pretty much instantly, because of three reasons: The beta was free to play, Battlefield 1942 was the first multiplayer FPS I ever played save Counter-Strike, and...well, it kicks ass. For public play it rocks because you get to run around with 3 of your friends in a squad, being a part of a larger battle, resulting in me and mine having many 'war tales'. 's good relaxing time*. Competitive sees the stress level ramped up a few notches, but I tend to attribute that to my team not being as organised as they should be. Still decent fun.
*As long as there aren't too many people wielding the GUSTAV, the 40mm grenade launcher, or the M60 Light Machine Gun.
BC2 has sucked up a lot of my time, but as of late, my focus has shifted a lot from PC gaming, I don't have that same drive to get on the PC and rock out Bad Company, or Team Fortress that I did a few weeks ago. The reason? D&D.
Dungeons and Dragons has managed to catch my eye, probably because it was where the genre of game I love originates from, but I've found myself ranting to anyone who will listen about just about anything to do with it all.
At the moment I run 2 regular games, with a few more in limbo. I will talk about only one tonight, which is my university game, which I've run Keep on The Shadowfell for, and now are making their way through my 4e conversion of T1-4: Temple of Elemental Evil. It's always a lot of fun to play with those guys. I took a group of people who were either new to 4th edition, or had never played a roleplaying game before, and turned them into die hard fanatics. With a group that started with 4 players, I now have 8 coming to my sessions, and more asking about whether they can join. I must say it's very nice to have a sort of mainstream appeal, and it's fun to run for such a large group. Getting the pacing right, and keeping the game flowing with that many people is a refreshing challenge, as well as making sure that everyone says "Oh man, that session was awesome!" and not just three of the eight.
I doubt I'd be able to run the game as well as I have if I'd not listened to Mike Mearls advice for running games of different sizes however. When running with such a large group, it's easy to just slap in more monsters to balance things up, but that's the bland option, and it's much smarter to look at what's going to be different. For one thing, there are going to be more players to hit, so you can make encounters feel more dangerous by adding anything that has an aura, or deals AoE, my new favourite for this are Wraiths, especially the Mad Wraiths, with their Touch of Madness, they whisper in the ears of their targets, causing them to move and attack their allies, as well as having a 15 foot aura which dazes. For mid-heroic tier, they are definitely a fun monster.
Another consideration is the DPR. WIth more players means there will be more 'tank' characters, but this doesn't mean that you need to focus on hurting them, because one thing I've found turns players off, is when they don't feel like the game is dangerous, and if you only have the 'tank' characters taking damage, then everyone else finishes the fight on full hit points, or minus 3 or 4 from a small AoE attack. My theory, is you want a LOT of DPR, enough that you look at it and go "Wow. That is too much." - The reason for this is because you want to lump it on as many different people as possible. Where the sort of average output is something like 1d8+4, so, 5-12 or so, then I like to have things that atleast have a recharge or encounter ability with three times that. You want to hit them decently hard, for maybe 30-40% of their HP, so they feel like the fight is dangerous, and change their tactics from simply doing the same thing each round, because they know the enemy will die eventually, without actually putting their character at risk of dying. Then you can supply some AoE damage which isn't super ramped up, and then it keeps them on the edge of their seat because they know the rounds they can take take this damage is limited, but if they play their cards right, they can come out on top. This is what you want to achieve.
I've also found myself timing the keyword "bloodied". Now, I don't do this often, and I don't recommend you use it much, else you will lose your players trust in anything you're saying, but sometimes when I build encounters on the fly, they go wrong, they either have too much HP on the table, or not enough (it's usually the latter), and I will delay saying that the monster is bloodied, even though it is, for a hit or two, essentially letting a hit or two deal no damage, to buff the monsters HP by 10-20 points, because I know the pacing of encounter I want, and so I know that I want the bloodied word to drop right when the players are starting to get disheartened, because it gives them a second wind of their own, and they redouble their efforts to finish off the enemy. I don't like this, because I don't like fudging things too much, I'd much prefer to just get good encounters in the first place, but this is definately a band aid I've pulled out on an encounter or two from the uni game.
...I might post some more tips from my experience in GMing 4e again soon, but my mind has suddenly hit a brick wall. I blame university. And Josh.
Any comments, or thoughts would be appreciated
Bad Company II entranced me pretty much instantly, because of three reasons: The beta was free to play, Battlefield 1942 was the first multiplayer FPS I ever played save Counter-Strike, and...well, it kicks ass. For public play it rocks because you get to run around with 3 of your friends in a squad, being a part of a larger battle, resulting in me and mine having many 'war tales'. 's good relaxing time*. Competitive sees the stress level ramped up a few notches, but I tend to attribute that to my team not being as organised as they should be. Still decent fun.
*As long as there aren't too many people wielding the GUSTAV, the 40mm grenade launcher, or the M60 Light Machine Gun.
BC2 has sucked up a lot of my time, but as of late, my focus has shifted a lot from PC gaming, I don't have that same drive to get on the PC and rock out Bad Company, or Team Fortress that I did a few weeks ago. The reason? D&D.
Dungeons and Dragons has managed to catch my eye, probably because it was where the genre of game I love originates from, but I've found myself ranting to anyone who will listen about just about anything to do with it all.
At the moment I run 2 regular games, with a few more in limbo. I will talk about only one tonight, which is my university game, which I've run Keep on The Shadowfell for, and now are making their way through my 4e conversion of T1-4: Temple of Elemental Evil. It's always a lot of fun to play with those guys. I took a group of people who were either new to 4th edition, or had never played a roleplaying game before, and turned them into die hard fanatics. With a group that started with 4 players, I now have 8 coming to my sessions, and more asking about whether they can join. I must say it's very nice to have a sort of mainstream appeal, and it's fun to run for such a large group. Getting the pacing right, and keeping the game flowing with that many people is a refreshing challenge, as well as making sure that everyone says "Oh man, that session was awesome!" and not just three of the eight.
I doubt I'd be able to run the game as well as I have if I'd not listened to Mike Mearls advice for running games of different sizes however. When running with such a large group, it's easy to just slap in more monsters to balance things up, but that's the bland option, and it's much smarter to look at what's going to be different. For one thing, there are going to be more players to hit, so you can make encounters feel more dangerous by adding anything that has an aura, or deals AoE, my new favourite for this are Wraiths, especially the Mad Wraiths, with their Touch of Madness, they whisper in the ears of their targets, causing them to move and attack their allies, as well as having a 15 foot aura which dazes. For mid-heroic tier, they are definitely a fun monster.
Another consideration is the DPR. WIth more players means there will be more 'tank' characters, but this doesn't mean that you need to focus on hurting them, because one thing I've found turns players off, is when they don't feel like the game is dangerous, and if you only have the 'tank' characters taking damage, then everyone else finishes the fight on full hit points, or minus 3 or 4 from a small AoE attack. My theory, is you want a LOT of DPR, enough that you look at it and go "Wow. That is too much." - The reason for this is because you want to lump it on as many different people as possible. Where the sort of average output is something like 1d8+4, so, 5-12 or so, then I like to have things that atleast have a recharge or encounter ability with three times that. You want to hit them decently hard, for maybe 30-40% of their HP, so they feel like the fight is dangerous, and change their tactics from simply doing the same thing each round, because they know the enemy will die eventually, without actually putting their character at risk of dying. Then you can supply some AoE damage which isn't super ramped up, and then it keeps them on the edge of their seat because they know the rounds they can take take this damage is limited, but if they play their cards right, they can come out on top. This is what you want to achieve.
I've also found myself timing the keyword "bloodied". Now, I don't do this often, and I don't recommend you use it much, else you will lose your players trust in anything you're saying, but sometimes when I build encounters on the fly, they go wrong, they either have too much HP on the table, or not enough (it's usually the latter), and I will delay saying that the monster is bloodied, even though it is, for a hit or two, essentially letting a hit or two deal no damage, to buff the monsters HP by 10-20 points, because I know the pacing of encounter I want, and so I know that I want the bloodied word to drop right when the players are starting to get disheartened, because it gives them a second wind of their own, and they redouble their efforts to finish off the enemy. I don't like this, because I don't like fudging things too much, I'd much prefer to just get good encounters in the first place, but this is definately a band aid I've pulled out on an encounter or two from the uni game.
...I might post some more tips from my experience in GMing 4e again soon, but my mind has suddenly hit a brick wall. I blame university. And Josh.
Any comments, or thoughts would be appreciated