Games of State

Due to various factors, I missed out of spending my youth enacting grand battles with Space Marines and Orks and such like. It’s a bit of shame, because while the Warhammer 40k universe is a bit straight forward, it seems to be very good fun to mess about it. You can have all sorts of fun running around as a state sanctioned psychopath.

In fact just last week, my assassin was attempting a cult infiltration wearing a costume made of corpses. This was followed by what can only be described as an altercation which resulted in another party member sacrificing me in return for a pact with a Chaos Demon. Probably just as well however, since I had just preformed a ritual sacrifice as part of the infiltration and probably due some serious time in my Inquisitor’s Cathedral of Pain.

I’d been due to roll up a new character away. Using the “roll for complete creation” process in the Dark Heresy rulebook, I ended up having two career paths vetoed (Cleric because we have two already and Psyker because they are pretty overpowered), and finally rolling a Tech-Priest (subject to GM approval on Tuesday). My one problem with the Tech-Priest is that the standard template Tech-Priest is a multi-limbed cyborg, which doesn’t really help matters in an infiltration or really any situation which requires discretion. So, I’ve had an idea for a character background for a minamalist Tech-Priest who has been sent to the Inquisition to have some sense knocked into him.

My knowledge of the 40k universe isn’t that great. I want to know if I can get away with this character before I take it to the GM next week, because I don’t fancy having to reroll or rewrite the bio on the fly. So, ladies and gentlemen of Imperium, in the name of the Machine Spirit and the Emperor, I present you with my character bio for critique.

I know it’s not particularly well written, but I’m look for ways in which it does and does not fit in with Warhammer lore rather then ways to improve my writing [Read the rest of this entry...]

Every generation of games has it’s hallmark. The second generation of games systems were characterised by platformers such as Donkey Kong and the Mario games, the fifth generation, which included the PS1, Dreamcast, N64 and Windows 95 PCs saw the rise of first-person shooters, changing the face of gaming. The sixth generation, that is the PS2 and original Xbox, saw experiments aimed at bringing a new form of gaming to the mainstream, the open world games. Key amongst these were Grand Theft Auto 3 and it’s two follow-ups.

Open world games aren’t that new. The Final Fantasy series use open worlds with random encounters, but with very little detail. Likewise with the Legend of Zelda to a degree. However, these early games often involve railroading of a kind, intended to keep a player out of a certain area until a plot point is uncovered, power gained or some other condition is met. On the PC, the Elder Scrolls games set a pretty good precedent, with one featuring a virtual world the size of mainland Britain, but they were highly criticised for reusing textures and other short cuts to create large game worlds.

What is new, however, is the detail, quality and movement to creating replicas of the real world. This has been approached in various way – Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is very much the first seventh generation open world game, featuring a massive landmass, a world which reacts to the action of the player and a reasonably realistic environment (barring the whole swords & sorcery thing of course). It was, and remains, one of the most graphically stunning games ever released. On the other hand, Grand Theft Auto 3 presents us with a small, but detailed world, albeit with parts of the map initially sealed off.

Since Oblivion and the GTA3 series games, open world games have become more and more common. Crackdown, Far Cry 2, Assassin’s Creed, Red Faction: Guerilla, [Prototype], Fallout 3 and InFamous have all met with critical acclaim in the past two years, with many of them to see sequels during the lifetime of the PS3 and Xbox 360. There are also a number of other semi-open world and open world games in development.

This sudden jump in games which give the player an unprecedented scope for fun, carnage and improved gameplay seems to be indicative of a future trend. I believe that the proportion of open world games is going to increase drastically in 2010 and 2011. By the time that the next generation of consoles reaches the market, I’d expect franchises which traditionally rely on railroad gameplay, such as Call of Duty, to make the move to an open world format.

At the same time, I think we’re likely to see a merging between MMOs, traditional online multiplayer and single player games. We’ve already seen first hints of this – Sony is working on a FPS which supports several hundred players per map, Tom Clancy’s Endwar features a meta-game in which a global game is affected by the behavior of players in multi-player. Effectively, the gaming industry needs to move away from the model of Ultima and World of Warcraft to a model which requires less time investment, more casual gameplay and is free or nearly free to play.

Of course, this is all speculation ad opinion. I can’t recall seeing any experts or analysts who actually agree with me. But it’s an interesting question nonetheless. What do you think holds for the future of video-gaming?

Bethesda Softworks have been responsible for some of the best RPG videogames of all time. Both Fallout 3 and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion rank amongst my favourite games, and have taken up more of my time then I care to admit.

Unfortunately, Bethesda have been known to drop the ball from time to time. Such as when they produced and published the abysmal Star Trek strategy game Legacy. Or when they rushed Fallout 3: The Pitt to release.

The Pitt

The Pitt is the second downloadable content for Fallout 3. It allows your character to travel to Pittsberg, which in post-apocalypse has a booming steel industry manned by slave labour. Like Operation Anchorage, you loose most of your equipment. Who’d have thought that slavers don’t like heavily armed killing machines walking around in their settlement? Fortunately you are quickly launched into the plot and rearmed, with the rather cool auto-axe (think a cross between a chainsaw and an axe).

From here, you are once again on a rather linear quest chain. It’s not as bad as Operation Anchorage, with various different activities popping up, including an all too brief trip to an Oblivion-style arena. The plot is thankfully more involving then Operation Anchorage, with nice twists and some interesting moral choices, but again, I found myself wishing it was longer. The newly added weapons aren’t quite as good as those on Anchorage, but they focus more on melee and defence.

What lets The Pitt down is the fact that it was rushed to release. Bethesda had already delayed it by a month to ensure completion, but this clearly wasn’t enough time. On the day of release, the add-on was causing major problems for users who bought it. Despite a quick fix and re-release by Bethesda, many bugs remained. During my playtime, The Pitt caused my Xbox to crash four times and corrupted my save file. Not the most positive of gameplay experiences.

My only other quibble with the add-on is the map design. Both The Pitt and Operation Anchorage have had quite small maps. Bethesday have got round this in two different ways – in Anchorage, it was to use few texture variations and lots of cliffs to block long views. In The Pitt, the map cointains a great number of levels, with endless stairs, ramps and gangways connecting them. It is far too easy to get lost in this network of rooms.

Despite the addition of an Ammo Press which converts any ammo into any other ammo, I can’t see myself revisiting The Pitt any time soon. The add-on is certainly not worth the money as long as there are still some nasty bugs showing up, and is disappointingly short.

Fallout 3’s third downloadable addon, Broken Steel, which sees the player resolve the conflict between the Brotherhood of Steel and the Outcast Brotherhood, is due out on the 5th of May, again retailing for 800 MS points.

There has been a furore of late within the RPG Blogging community regarding “Old School” gaming.
The definition of “old school” remains vague, and everyone seems to have their own variation – be it homebrewed systems based on the Blue Box D&D, original World of Darkness, legacy GURPS or even classic Cthulhu. I’m not going to quibble over definitions however – for the sake of ease lets just take “Old School” to mean any game system that is still being played despite being replaced by a newer products or abandoned by it’s publisher, or any game which seeks to emulate such products (ie Pathfinder).

My recent survey regarding the age and length of gaming careers of RPG gamers, places the average RPG gamer in their mid 30s with more then 20 years of gaming experience. The respondents in their 20s were in a distinct minority.
On the other hand, Project Daedalus – a sociological survey of MMO players – places the average age of MMORPG players between 18 and 28 with 24% of surveyed males and 15% of females aged between 18 and 22. 23% of males and 27% of females were aged between 22 and 28.
Now, the numbers here aren’t very scientific, but this does suggest that I’m on the money. The average age of RPG players is continuing to rise and they aren’t being replaced by a younger generation because us young whipper-snappers tend to play MMOs instead (thanks to being drained of social skills by this thing we call the interwebs…j/k).

This is a bad thing. As gamers get older and older, two things start to happen: we die and other interests take over. It also gets harder for younger people to get into the game if the perception of RPG gaming changes to it being an ‘old peoples’ game.

So what does thing have to do with Old School?

Well, Dungeons & Dragons, love it or loath it, is one of the most popular RPGs in the world and the best supported by a country mile. In my FLGS the only other games which comes close to the amount of shelf space D&D takes up is Call of Cthulhu and World of Darkness. If people pick up an RPG book because they think it sounds like fun, it’s probably going to be D&D and it’s inevitably going to be 4e rather then the legacy systems.
John Smith with his newly purchased set of core rule books and WOTC branded dice set will need some help trying to get friends together, writing a campaign and even just playing for the first time. He’s probably going to turn to existing communities for advice.

And he’s going to find quite a lot of blog posts and even businesses rubbishing 4e. Now, everyone is entitled to their opinion and no-one should be evangelising about 4e if they don’t like it, however we as a community have to recognise that 4e is the single best tool we have to get people into RPG gaming.

The drive to make 4e old school and the debate around it is not going to help. It’s only going to confuse new players and alienate them from more established players.

When someone looks advice on 4e on the internet, they should be finding a helpful and supporting community. A community which helps them hone their skills, find players and provides a bridge into other systems. Not companies producing a product based on the fact that they don’t like the Dragonborn as a race.

That is why I believe that the old school debate, the forthcoming “old school 4e” products and the whining about 4e in general are bad for RPG gaming – they are helping to turn new players away.

But (and this is a big but)…the old school movement is amazing for established players.

The old school movement is doing a lot for gamer choice.

It’s amazing that games that are 30 years old are not only still being played, but being promoted and attracting new players. You don’t like one version of a game? You can pick up the books for a different version of the same game for half the price.

So, that’s that. There isn’t a good and bad side to this debate. Moral of the story: don’t rubbish 4e, we need it because it helps get people into gaming. But don’t rubbish old school either, because it gives us way more choice.

I always quite liked the idea of Warhammer. More specifically, I liked the idea of Warhammer 40k, because giant, genetically altered badasses wearing power-armour are always cool. Chainsaw swords are even cooler.

On the other hand, I lived in the middle of nowhere, the nearest Games Workshop was 40miles and a £10 bus fare away and my school’s gaming club fell apart shortly after I started there. By the time I moved to University and civilisation, I was entranced by other far more interesting things, such as alcohol, girls and student politics, so gaming of all kinds got pushed to the side. Still, as a red blooded sci-fi geek, I retained my love for all things muscular and power-armoured.

Don’t look at me like that. You know it’s amazing.

Anyway, when a friend offered me the chance to join in a Dark Heresy game, I jumped at it, despite knowing nearly nothing about the system or setting other then that it’s set in one of the darkest sci-fi dystopias known to man. And large armour is a key component to the setting.

Being the gigantic geek that I am, my immediate reaction was to seek advice about the game on twitter (follow me @Games_of_State), and track down a copy of game book. What can I say? Turning to books for advice is the true sign of geekiness – as is digesting the entire 400 page book in less then 24 hours. Woops.

Anyway, after two days of reasonably frantic prep (thanks to Uncle Bear for his Dark Heresy articles and Bob for a book loan) I felt that I had at least enough prep done to feel reasonably comfortable gaming with a group who I’d only just met. Thankfully, I was right – there was still some stuff that I wasn’t too sure of, but nothing that caused problems (or at least not that I noticed anyway).

I was playing someone else’s character though, which made me a bit uncomfortable. Firstly, because I had no idea if the guy was going to be coming back and I didn’t want to mess up his character, and secondly because said character is an Assassin.

Now, I don’t really do sneaking. Stealth mechanics annoy me. I like my characters to be blunt instruments, with heavy armour and short range weapons. Not lightly armoured, long-range sneaky bastards. On the other hand, this is a good thing – I had to think more about my actions, it expands my roleplay repertoire and I was certainly more useful in the situation we landed up in then a heavily armoured character would have been. Even if I did fail my concealment check and end up exposed on a tree branch a great number of meters about the ground as possible hostile forces closed in.

The downside is that the character doesn’t really have any back story and I’m really struggling to come up with one which isn’t too clichéd. I’m kind of stuck between the idea of honourable Robin Hood type and psychopathic thug. He was raised on a Forge World, which doesn’t really help matters, Forge Worlds being chiefly the domain of the Tech Priests. I have another week and a half to come up with something, but any suggestions would be very much appreciated.

The GM did say that once they were past the current portion of the campaign, I’d be able to roll my own character. I quite fancy a go at the Tech-Priest class, which appeals to me because of the zealous devotion to the Ommiassiah (literally the God in the Machines) and the fancy cybernetics which they get access to. On the other hand, Tech-Priests are meant to be very stand-offish with other classes, so I suspect it wouldn’t be the easiest or best class to role-play at first. We’ll see though. I’m wanting to do things by the book, which means rolling dice to determine origin, class etc.

I enjoyed the session a lot. The GM was good, I seemed to get on OK with the other players (despite being nervous about stepping on toes – although that is only fitting for a lowly assassin when two Clerics of the Imperium are present) and I really like the 40K setting. I’ve also been invited back to play with a slightly different group this week in what has been described to me as “medieval superheros”. I’m less sure about this game, because I’ve never been a big fan of superheros, not being a comic book geek (well, except for Namor).

We’ll see. Good times anyway. And thanks to Omar.