Monthly Archives: October 2013

Return to 3:16

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First off, I’m very busy this week, but I don’t won’t to postpone this any further as I’m going to be out of the country next week (so this blog’ll probably be slower than usual), so you are going to get this very unedited (not that I generally use much time to edit these) version of my thoughts on the reactions my previous posting on 3:16 has evoked. This means I’m probably going to ramble even more than usual.

For those who are not familiar with the game, sorry about this. You probably won’t get anything out of reading this.

Now, this is a screenshot from our usage data. Guess which one is the day I posted the review?

tilasto-screenshot

On Creativity

People misunderstand creativity. Its not only about originality, even in arts, where originality is especially valued, creativity still has other components. You still need to work within a framework and part of being creative is finding the right limits to what you are doing.

Even in arts, where this isn’t necessarily appreciated, this is actually very important part of the process. If I’m producing a movie, I don’t want my casting director going outside the perimeters, but I do want him/her being creative with the choices. If I’m publishing a newspaper, I want the cartoons to be creative, but they still need to fit into the area I’ve designated for them. Even if these kinds of pressures don’t exist, artists will make them for themselves. Most online comics will use the same format for their comics all the time.

All creativity is actually based on limits. Even if you are starting a project, you’ll generally have an idea of what you want to do. You usually know the medium you are going to use. That’s a limitation right there. Once you get going, you are building more and more limitations. You are establishing characters, places and so on. You are making decisions on what the names look like on your fantasy world, or which corporation runs the chain of cozy diners in your cyberpunk world.

Those limitations are important mostly because they push us into unexpected directions. Lets look at Calvin & Hobbes (which I’ve been reading lately). The strips for Monday through Saturday are all the same general size for strips, but within that limit, Watterson finds great flexibility. Most of the strips are three or four panels, but sometimes less, if needed. This is why he was so great. He knew what being creative meant. He knew how to use the limits he was working with.

For a group of people to be able to work together, they need to have common limits. The system used is one of those limitations. So…

System as Communication

The most important part of a roleplaying system is what it communicates. The number of dice you roll, the stats, the damage tables, these should all serve the purpose of telling everyone at the table what we are working on as a group.

Every game should have a feedback system. That’s the major way the game communicates what its about. We know D&D is about tactical combat, because that’s what the feedback system tells us to do. There are other ways of getting XP, but that’s the major way.

Does 3:16 do this? Its definitely telling us that killing is important. It doesn’t go much beyond that. It isn’t giving you anything else.

One of the criticisms of my post was that I don’t seem to be getting it. Maybe. If this is the case, that’s a problem of the system. I can clearly see what the system is telling me. So, if I’m not “getting the point”, the system isn’t doing a very good job of showing me.

“Don’t Use the Mechanics” Is Not a Valid Defense of a System

Every game has corner cases which the rules don’t and shouldn’t try to cover. However, if the system simply disregards all problems by just waving a hand, that isn’t a solution. That’s just telling eveyrone that this systems sucks, live with it. Of course, invoking the creativity and roleplaying card makes this an attractive proposition, but clearly, this can’t be the supporting structure of the system. If it is, why are we using this system? Again, we need to lay out some common rules for the game, and this is clearly just dismissing that idea.

We do use the rules systems for a reason. Again, they are actually helping us be more creative. By not giving us that component, the system is basically worthless.

There’s a Distinction Between the Game and the System

As far as I can see, people have different interests in the game. Some people apparently like to parody the US military, some people like to kill aliens en masse. There probably are other less apparent reasons as well, and of course we have the more casual players who don’t really care.

In any case, the defenses of the system seem to be based on liking the game as a whole, not the system. The system seems to get a bunch of excuses, because people like the theme, whatever they think it is.

Now, this is wrong. Obviously, this system is specifically designed for this purpose, and I don’t know of any other, but this doesn’t mean it works. The concept of the game can be good, but the system can fail in its goal of presenting the themes.

In this case, if the the real goal is just to be an effective alien-killer, I’m guessing you could argue its doing a pretty good job (although it isn’t). If it has any other goals, its doing a very lousy job. Well, unless its trying to piss me off.

The Value of NFA

My assessment of the NFA as worthless seems to be getting backlash.

Than again, it is. No one has been able to present an actual case for it. Yes, I rolled NFA on some occasions besides the dominance rolls. None of those rolls mattered. Yes, at some point some of the characters were out of breath because I jogged them to our next destination. Did this affect them in any way? No. Did they even roleplay it? No, because it didn’t matter to them, because they were there to kill aliens.

… and again. If it actually had a purpose in, say, gathering intelligence or formulating a plan, the benefits are reaped by all players and therefore, as I said before, I’m basically sacrificing my character for the good of the whole, as my strengths are in an area which benefits us, whereas the other players, who put their emphasis in FA are benefiting mostly themselves.

Actually, I lied. There was one NFA roll which had actual benefit for me. In this case I tried to find ways of using it, so I used my turn to give out orders and get the men organized. The GM gave me a +1 on the next FA roll. Based on this, my 8 in NFA is actually worth exactly 0.8 in FA, if I use a whole turn. Basically worthless.

The Random Advance

A couple of people have defended the system by saying that I can get advances randomly. This idea seems very condensending to me. Basically, the designer is saying that I can’t actually earn those advances, so he’s just giving me a random chance of getting them. I’d much rather be able to earn them.

Why does this even exist? Because the designer knew the weakness of his system and threw this in there to cover it up. He knew very well that the system would favor the corporal in a huge way, but didn’t bother to actually fix that.

One Final Thing

The role of the sergeant has been overly emphasized in these texts, since I played that role in the game. However, looking at the whole, I think the other characters, those who actually thought about how much points they’ll put into each of the stats, are actually in a much worse situation. They have a very hard time competing with the corporal and if the sergeant starts messing with the others for his own benefit, those characters will feel the brunt of it just the same as the corporal.

I think that’s actually much, much worse. Those players, who actually tried to make something more than a one-dimensional asshole, are being punished by the system much worse than the sergeant. In our group, Peetu, who put 4 in FA and 6 in NFA is probably in the worst position. Because he did put some thought into these stats is never going to advance through kills, will never have access to the same weaponry the others have and so forth. And this is basically a punishment for actually caring.

What does that say about the system?

Vikings: Odin, But Not Really

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Again with not actual gods, but strong hints that there are gods. Another planeswalker actually.

Odin searched for wisdom. He did so by exchanging his eye for it, as well was pierced by his own spear and hanged from the Yggdrasil for nine days for the very same purpose. Now, by hanging from the Yggdrasil, Odin learned eighteen magical songs and eighteen magical runes. I’m not going to come up with 36 distinct abilities, but the idea of self-sacrifice for knowledge is something great.

Odin is clearly blue-black. Knowledge is a blue thing and ambition is a black thing. You might not think of him this way, because black has such a strong connotation as the evil color, but looking at these myths, there’s no question. Other myths might make him white, but for our purposes, I’m going with these colors.

Our purpose is this: Although earlier planeswalkers were pretty powerful by their own right, the current lore says that being planeswalker doesn’t bring benefits other than the actual moving between planes itself. They have to learn all the other nice abilities they have.

Therefore, one of these has come to this world to simulate what Odin did to become all-knowing himself. Of course she has some power already, but she wants more (I’m making her a woman, because our first planeswalker was male). She is, after all, black. Of course, she needs some other abilities as well. My first instinct would be some [scryfall]Jace, Memory Adept[/scryfall] style first ability, but that seems lazy. Beyond that, I’d rather come up with a character first and capabilities after that. Then again, I don’t want to step on earlier planeswalkers, either. The problem here is that Liliana has covered a lot of ground in black (discard, tutoring, raising the dead, weakness, spreading swamps, creature destruction), and the several blue planeswalkers have most of the aspects of blue covered. Finding design space for this gal is going to be hard.

What we do know about this person is that she is even more ambitious than other planeswalkers, such as Jace and Liliana. What separates this person from most black planeswalkers? She doesn’t just work for her personal benefit. Instead, she works for her personal benefit with a plan. Not just a plan for a quick heist or one murder, but instead, she has been studying this endeavor for years, possibly centuries, doing her best to mitigate risks and be as aware as possible.

At the same time, she is black. She isn’t just studious. She wants this power, so badly. She is patient, but at the same time, she isn’t immortal (even though she has elongated her life) and has really needs to work to keep herself alive. This is one step which will help her immensely.

So, she’ll take risks, but only very carefully calculated ones. She is deceitful, but not by nature. She just will stab people in the back, if she feels she can benefit from it in the long run, but at the same time understands that cultivating allies (not really friends, she doesn’t need those) is harder than making enemies, so she values those people who trust her. I feel like I should call her Lucretia, but that carries very different connotations. Still, can’t come up with a better working title at this very moment, so Lucretia it is.

Lucretia 2UB
+2 Up to one target creature gains -3/-1 until your next upkeep
-3 Take an extra turn after this one. Any player may sacrifice a creature to counter this ability.
-9 Lose half your life rounded up and draw 18 cards.
4

Feels about right… maybe. Definitely both black and blue, but I probably need to work on the first two abilities. Especially the second one. I was happy with it when writing it, but now I feel its not really her, if any creature can foil her plans. Well, I am really happy with the last ability.

Vikings: Whaling

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Another interesting, but problematic concept. Vikings whaled. They had at least two methods. First, they scared the whales into the shallow waters of the fjords, where they could easily get the whale. Second, they just went out to sea and threw enough spears on a whale to kill it. This would usually take time, so they would just wait for the whale to beach itself and claim their share based on the spears, which would be marked as theirs.

Obviously, since the game only has a very limited number of whales (currently four), we can’t just have a creature that kills whales, unless we put plenty of whales into this set. That probably won’t happen. It will have one or two, but it won’t be a big theme, just to bring some flavor and justify whalers in the set. I already wrote about Transient Orca card, so there’s one, although I’m pretty sure they aren’t generally whaled (although other dolphins definitely were).

Whaling should probably at least resemble fighting. It doesn’t have to be that exactly, but that would bring the risks involved into forefront. If it is fighting, it has to be green or red, since fighting belongs to those two colors. Also, they are the enemy colors of blue, so that works out well.

Therefore, I’m thinking of a sideboard card. Probably only for limited, but you never know. I’m thinking [scryfall]Ulvenwald Tracker[/scryfall] with a different slant. Green isn’t really the color of organization (that would be white), but the whole enterprise is based on having large groups of people in a coordinated attack. So, I’m thinking the card should be something like this:

Whaling Expedition G
Creature – Human Scout, Uncommon
T: Whaling Expedition and any number of another target creatures you control deal their power in damage to target blue creature. That creature deals its power in damage to any one of these creatures.
1/1

Very straightforward. You can freely kill blue creatures, if you enough creatures of your own… and you can keep him on the battlefield.

It should be noted that the attacked creature doesn’t target. This should probably be worded differently, but I just wanted to give the blue creatures controller an out in certain situations, so he can feel he is playing well. Not often, but every once in a while.

Still, in most formats its quite a narrow functionality. Blue creatures aren’t generally very popular, as they do have the highest casting cost compared to P/T. And despite monoblue aggro deck winning the recent Pro Tour, mostly they are hardly seen. Even decks based on them, such as most [scryfall]Delver of Secrets[/scryfall] decks, are usually light on creatures.

But in limited, this guy could be great, if there’s a good environment.

Vikings: Huginn & Muninn

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I’ll try to keep this shorter this time. My previous card design articles sort of got out of hand lengthwise.

Anyhow, although I’m not going to put any of the gods in this set (save for our Loki-analogue who goes around causing misery in the world), I’d like the gods to have a clear presence in the world. One of the things that we could see in this set would be Huginn and Muninn, Odin’s ravens, who roamed the world spying for their master.

Huginn and Muninn are literally translated Thougth and Memory, or something close enough. I’m not sure what color Odin would really be, but I’m guessing he is going to be blue, as the wise man. Therefore, Thought and Memory (which I’ll be calling them for now) should be of the same color. That’s not strictly necessary, but feels right.

The usual way of simulating learning is drawing cards. Therefore, I think our creature should do just that. However, we have two creatures on one card, so flavorfully it would be nice to give them distinct abilities.

So, obviously, our birds can fly. I’ll also give them flash, as they are able to travel between worlds, so you never know when they appear. The other abilities are a bit harder.

So, I’m thinking our birds should have an ETB effect which lets you draw a card when it enters the battlefield, but to give it another, distinct, but flavorful ability, I’m giving it the [scryfall]Mnemonic Wall[/scryfall] ability of returning an instant or sorcery into your hand, but when it leaves play.

I also decided to make it 2/4. Pretty big for a bird, but then again, its actually two birds with divine beginnings. Casting cost? I’ll go with 2UU, which seems fine with the card advantage it gives.

However, this presents me with a problem. The newer legends have a big board presence. They are Baneslayers, not Mulldrifters. This one just doesn’t. I feel like I should find another approach, but I haven’t come up with one just yet. I’d probably play this card, especially in EDH,, although I’d wish it had smaller casting cost.

On the other hand, there is another viewpoint. Thought and Memory are actually better, because they are legendary. You can play your playset and not mind drawing redundant copies, because then you just cast one to draw a card and return a card from your graveyard to your hand. The 2UU casting cost is pretty much for this purpose, but probably often worth it. Maybe I should push it a bit? Maybe I should make it just 1UU?

Kagematsu – Where seduction is more tactical than D&D4

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Kagematsu is a game about shame, honour and love. It tells of a wandering ronin who ends up in a Japanese village in 1572, during the Sengoku era. All the men are at war, and only children, elders and women are left. The village is hard to defend. Everyone is afraid that the village will be devastated by an outside threat. It’s the women’s job to persuade the ronin to stay and defend the village.

Kagematsu, the lone male character, has to be played by a woman. That’s a rule. The rest of the players can be women or men, but I’ve played twice, and both times they’ve been male. Both games rank among my best roleplaying experiences.

The game focuses on seduction. The women characters have two active stats, Innocence and Charm, with seven points divided among them in any way. The women are after shows of affection (called Affections, in short) from Kagematsu: a stolen glance, a kind word, an introduction, a kiss, and so on. Some Affections you can only get by Innocence (a confession of love), some by Charm (a roll in the hay), and some by either one. If you succeed at the task with a single roll of dice, you lower your Fear. That’s the third and final stat, and the only use for it is in the end, when Kagematsu fights against the total Fear score of the women.

So you want to lower your Fear by succeeding at the die roll. If the woman’s player rolls more than Kagematsu’s, she lowers her fear score.

However.

You also want to gain Kagematsu’s love. But there’s no die roll for that. Instead, Kagematsu’s player makes a subjective evaluation on the scene, and decides whether your character receives Love or Pity. Love makes your subsequent rolls a tad easier, and Kagematsu uses the power of his most loved woman to fight the final battle. Pity, on the other hand, only has a psychological effect: it’s a different thing entirely to decide between a) giving a Love point or not giving any point at all and b) giving a Love point or a Pity point.

So as the woman’s player, you need to plan your way to Kagematsu’s favour. Probably your plan goes haywire. It seems so simple: first you make a good first impression, and then slowly get acquainted and gain his favour. But you can only try gaining each Affection once. What if you fail at making a good first impression? What if all your easier tasks fail, and it seems to you that Kagematsu hates you? How can you then get him to both touch you and love you for it? (It’s possible to gain extra dice by getting desperate. Desperations are a neat little mechanic which I won’t get into here. Basically they improve your chances at die rolls at the very real risk of gaining pity.)

It’s insanely challenging and gratifying! After the second game, one of the players uttered that the game is way more tactical than D&D4. In some games, waiting for your own turn while the others are playing can be a bit tedious, but here it’s not. You have to pay attention to what’s happening between the other women and Kagematsu, and what Kagematsu might be like, and what your next approach is going to be like.

And that’s only part of the fun. The theme and the unusual setup are sure to be provocative. I’m sure each player has her or his own thoughts about stuff, and they’re sure to differ from game to game. At my first game, this July at Ropecon, I thought a lot about representing female characters. When a woman explicitly evaluates how you play, at least I reflected intensely about how I portray women at roleplaying games on the one hand, and how I should play them on the other. Some of the game’s mechanics also emphasise the reversed gender roles: the women’s players don’t ever get to say how Kagematsu enters the scene, for example. It might not sound like much in theory, but if you’re as active at the gaming table as I am, it packs a nice psychological punch by forcing you to accept a more passive – in traditional terms, a feminine – role

The second time we played, I put a lot of my younger self to the woman I played. I made her an innocent, well-disciplined but shy 17-year old who tried to gain favour by gaining sympathy. She made a good impression on Kagematsu, who seemed to be a lot more sympathetic to her than to other characters; but in the end, Kagematsu who was quite old, couldn’t commit himself to someone much younger, to someone who reminded him of his past. It was heartbreaking! And a lot more personal, too.

The characters go through a lot in the game, and I don’t think it’s possible to stick to your initial character concept unless the dice really favour you. In the first game I had really bad luck with the dice and had to get desperate. I took Kagematsu for the Mr. Darcy type and tried lizziebenneting him. I failed miserably and loved it.

If it sounds uncomfortable, weird, and awkward, it can be! Especially the first session felt really weird and awkward. But not once did I feel threatened, or humiliated, or judged. It’s due to the players in part (thank you, Emmi and Laura), but also, I think, to the nature of the game. Kagematsu’s player doesn’t judge your attempt at being charming, but your character’s. They’re not wholly separate, but it becomes quite clear, quite soon that the character’s path isn’t necessarily the one the player wants. It’s a valuable experience to feel both vulnerable and safe at the same time.

Wayward Sons – 1st Session & Playbooks

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So we started our campaign two weeks ago. I had written five playbooks with Aki with following the ideas of the players in our gaming group. We had got together earlier to talk about the characters and so most of our group had a good idea of what kind of character they were going to play.

The main point for designing these characters was that they were more “a” than “the”. As the regular playbooks for hacks deal with characters that are the movers and shakers of their worlds in Wayward Sons the characters start out only as regular men and women. They have the possibility of grow to be the most important people of their kind – as well as turn into monsters along the way.

We followed the basic structure of Apocalypse World during this first session. Playbooks were distributed, players fill them out (complaining about bits and correcting others) and afterwards we discussed about the characters and their shared past.

As the established fact was that all characters had had their first paranormal encounter they all decided what was their Angle. (This was something that we quickly realised needed to be presented in the playbook as a choosable option). Within a little over an hour we had created a detailed history for the characters and a horrible mind-map for me to use as a GM as the foundation of the campaign.

Following the advices of AW and told the players that this session was about their characters. We followed them around, used moves and got into trouble. We did not have a fight though. This was actually something a realised only later on. Another thing I noticed was that Wayward Sons probably needs a little more flavourful 1st session sheet for GM.

The summary for the events of the first session:

The characters had arrived the the city of Rapid Falls in North Dakota following the cryptic hint from a Well-Dressed Man. They searched a safety deposit box to and found a large set of papers, photos and 8mm video. While going through the material they realised they were all connected to it and to each other somehow. It all seemed to have something to do with what their fathers and their fathers had done.

Following the leads from the documents the party searched the city archives and tried to make contact with the manager of the bank where the documents where held.

I confess I actually had a basic storyline in mind before we started the session (this actually being a part of a campaign we have been playing for almost two years). Nevertheless the players had a huge impact on the flow of the story and the clues found. It was all in all an excellent starting point for the campaign.

We are getting together to play the second session tomorrow. Hopefully we can work out even more problems with this hack and still have a good time.

The first five preliminary and “this needs some serious editing” playbooks as pdfs:

Notice – Yes. They are all pretty much work in progress. I shared them for feedback.

3:16 Carnage Among Stars Review, Of Sorts

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Caveat: I haven’t actually read the game. This is purely based on one session of gameplay and reading discussions on the net.

Spoiler: This game is garbage. It might have some good hidden intentions, as Ville thinks it does, but despite that, its just awfully designed. It might sound fun, but it has huge fundamental flaws, which are apparently only addressed by the designer by telling people to deal with it. So, I’m dealing with it. I’m telling you how much this sucks.

The basic idea is this: You have a squad of soldiers, who are out there in space killing things. You actually compete about killing things. Its very minimalistic, with basically just two attributes, the Fighting Ability FA, and the Non-Fighting Ability NFA:

Lets start from the beginning. Yesterday we played our first session. We were instructed to make our characters. First, only name, reputation and distributing ten points among the two attributes, with maximum of eight in one of them. So, I gave my character the name Pjotor Azarov, had him have the reputation of a coward, gave him 2 in FA and 8 in NFA. I thought, maybe I can be a medic or something.

Then, I was told I’m the sergeant of the squad, because I have the highest NFA. Ok. I can work with that… I thought at the time.

We were given weapons. I got some basic rifle and a sidearm.

Then, I was told my goal was to keep everyone alive and see to it that our squad follows the orders given by our superiors. Except, I need to compete about the kills as well. This isn’t actually my mission, but since the game only feedback is that I get levels by killing more things than others, this is clearly what I need to do. Ville seems to think there’s some hidden genius behind this, which might be true if the rules in general weren’t such a mess.

The first encounter pretty much revealed all the problems with the game. Since I have a very high NFA, I can generally choose how each encounter begins. Since I have my sidearm, which works close range, while others don’t have any weaponry that does pretty much anything at that range, in order to win in the killing contest, I need to bring those fights to close range. All the time.

Obviously, this isn’t very logical. Why would my character do this, if there wasn’t a poorly conceived rule behind it? Instead of trying to do anything valuable, my character needs to shit on other characters time and time again. However, since the system is – again – so poorly conceived, this isn’t actually helping me. Its just giving me false hope.

Since my FA is so low, I can’t actually hit anything. In the meantime, the other characters will have time to get to better positions and then – since they have higher FAs and more efficient weapons – can beat any of my attempts at getting the high kill score. I just don’t stand a chance.

The other encounters we had were basically the same. I took us to close range, they moved into better position. Killing ensued.

If I had known how the system works beforehand, would I have made my character differently. Definitely. However, this has another problem. This would have lead to much more homogenous characters.

Since NFA is basically useless for more than one character, everyone would max out on FA. Of course, then some poor soul would need to take the bullet, so that the squad doesn’t get ambushed every time. That character would then be forced into uselessness. NFA is good for US, while FA is good for ME. In a game where you are in a situation, where you are supposed to compete, this isn’t good. You can’t spread your wealth if everyone else is keeping theirs.

Now, I do have an out. Each player has a strength. You can use this strength to immediately resolve a situation. Then you get to kill all the threats in the encounter. Sounds nice, but since my weaponry is so poor, I can’t get the kills I need even this way, because the other characters can easily get more in a normal encounter. Also, they have strenghts they can use. You get only one in the beginning, and you only get more by levelling, in other words by killing more than others.

So, basically, I’m screwed. I don’t have incentives to play the game the way it says I should. I don’t have the tools to play the game the way it should be played. Every avenue I have is just poor. I basically have the following options:

1. I keep doing the same thing: I bring battles to close range and hope for the best. However, since the other players can get new weapons and become better at using them at close range, this options is quickly closed, if isn’t already. Since I have the poorest FA, anyone can easily best me at close range.

2. I can go for promotions. The thing is, I can’t really control this. You need to expend a strength to get a promotion, but I can’t get strengths by killing, so I have to rely on purely on luck. I don’t have any control over this.

3. I try to get the other characters killed. This doesn’t really work either. Since my FA is so low, I can’t take them on directly, but since I don’t have any other venues to do this, that’s my only chance.

Basically, I’m screwed. I don’t have any room to maneuver and I don’t have any tools to work with. I did some reading on the subject, and as others had come seen the same problems, they had apparently come to these conclusions:

1. The game is supposed to be played as a team, where people just let everyone level. Well, the system doesn’t support this in any way. It only encourages the competition, so if this is what we are supposed to do, why would we be playing this game?

2. The game is fundamentally PvP. Okay, seems about right. However, again, I don’t have the tools to do this, since I apparently can’t use my higher rank to mess with them and I can’t attack them directly due to my low combat capabilities.

Its a poorly conceived board game in the guise of a RPG. My capabilities are pretty much useless to me and if they somehow became useful, that would put the other characters in a very poor position.

Vikings: Loki

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While walking to work today, I had an idea. I’m not sure I’ll use this, but still.

Loki was Odin’s adopted son. He was actually a giant, not a god. So, maybe I’ll just use the ambiguity. Our Loki character might be a planeswalker, who just found a way to infiltrate this family of gods. Also, I’ll use the same idea I wrote about when I was still doing Exiled. I’ll let our Loki character only have abilities which will eat its loyalty. (Actually, WotC did this once with [scryfall]Sarkhan the Mad[/scryfall], I just didn’t remember at the time.)

That actually sounds about right. Loki is a fickle creature, who follows his urges without any long term planning. I’m not going to give it any abilities to protect itself. Actually, quite the opposite. Nor am I going to give it any abilities to raise its loyalty. What I am going to give it are abilities, which fit with his personality. This means he should be red. Maybe red-black, but I think I’d rather go with just red.

We have four red planeswalkers (well, actually three monored, nine with red in their casting cost, but I chose these four as they are a good basis for making mine feel different): Chandra, Koth, Tibalt, and Sarkhan. Chandra is the pyromancer character, who just burns things with certain amount of sarcasm. Koth likes his mountains. I guess he’s supposed to be some sort of geomancer. Tibalt is actually so close to Loki in feel, that I’m considering just bringing him back, but with very different set of abilities. Sarkhan works with dragons.

Based on this, lets give Loki the working title of Tibalt, Adopted by Gods. A bit clunky, but works for now. Although Tibalt seems to be much crueler than the early versions of Loki, maybe Tibalt has been living as Loki for a long time and has been more and more tempted by the possibilites available to him.

Since we want him to stick around we’ll give him a zero costing ability. However, going with the trickster ethos, this is something that will actually risk Tibalt himself. So, an ability, which risks Tibalt, but can be useful, but is still small enough to warrant the zero cost.

How about forcing attacks? This is mostly in blue, but often enough in red to warrant using it here, as it clearly represents Tibalt doing something to piss another creature off. Sounds like a great first ability to me. Actually, just word it in such a way that the creature must actually attack Tibalt. This would lead to situations, where you can sacrifice Tibalt in name of keeping yourself alive, which isn’t actually that flavorful, but a good possibility.

What else does Loki like to do? How about sticking his nose where its not supposed be and just gleefully doing what he feels like. This is a bit harder. I want a more random feel and I want payback for Tibalt. [scryfall]Sarkhan the Mad[/scryfall] has the following ability:

0: Reveal the top card of your library and put it into your hand. Sarkhan the Mad deals damage to himself equal to that card’s converted mana cost.

How about doing this with your opponents library? Obviously Tibalt can’t let you draw cards from your opponents library, but it can let you cast them. This feels pretty blue to me, again, but I’m just going to stretch the color pie. Randomness is a red thing and therefore this is a good starting point. So, I’d say Tibalt can exile the top card of an opponents library and cast it with his loyalty counters, or maybe just cast it for free, if able, and lose those loyalty counters. That way, you might get a huge benefit, but Tibalt will probably get rid of himself in the process.

Lastly, a variation on the original Tibalt’s second ability, which dealt damage to target player equal to the number of cards in that players hand. Well, working with Loki is always a gambit, so we’ll make that not targeted, but each player instead. Perhaps, as we want Tibalt to work against itself, this must be redirected to planeswalkers if possible.

So, what about casting cost and starting loyalty? I’ll go with original Tibalt’s casting cost of RR and I’ll give him a pretty low loyalty to start with, so you can’t cause mayhem for an extended period of time. Maybe 3?

So, our planeswalker would now look like this:

Tibalt, Adopted by Gods RR
Planeswalker – Tibalt
0: Target creature attacks Tibalt, Adopted by Gods during its controller next turn if able.
0: Reveal the top card of target opponents library. You may cast that spell without paying its mana cost. Tibalt, Adopted by Gods loses loyalty counters equal to the spell’s converted mana cost.
0: Tibalt, Adopted by Gods deals damage to each player equal to the number of cards in that players hand. This damage must be redirected to a planeswalker if able.
3

I’m pretty happy with that. He want win games on his own like some planeswalkers, but if played correctly (which might require some skill and much luck), he’ll be effective and fun. There would be a huge backlash if this was actually printed, but I’d blame it all on Tibalt himself causing the chaos. Also, people’s expectations of planeswalkers are skewed by cards such as [scryfall]Jace, the Mind Sculptor[/scryfall] and [scryfall]Elspeth, Sun’s Champion[/scryfall] when you can get a huge advantage with different kinds of cards, like our Tibalt here.

I do hate how small the text became on MSE… Maybe I should change the middle ability just for that reason.

The Guild Sealed Tournament, Theros Edition

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Couple of days ago, we had our guild Theros sealed tournament. We got eight players, which was pretty good, although the number of players also meant it took quite a while since we play round-robin. I was home after 2AM, but I did win with six match wins and one match loss.

[cardlist title=My card pool]
[White]
1 Cavalry Pegasus
1 Decorated Griffin
1 Elspeth, Sun’s Champion
3 Ephara’s Warden
1 Favored Hoplite
1 Observant Alseid
1 Scholar of Athreos
1 Setessan Griffin
2 Wingsteed Rider
[/White]
[Blue]
1 Bident of Thassa
1 Crackling Triton
1 Fate Foretold
2 Mnemonic Wall
1 Nimbus Naiad
1 Thassa’s Bounty
1 Triton Shorethief
2 Triton Tactics
1 Voyage’s End
1 Wavecrasher Triton
[/Blue]
[Black]
3 Asphodel Wanderer
1 Boon of Erebos
1 Cavern Lampad
1 Dark Betrayal
1 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
1 Insatiable Harpy
1 Lash of the Whip
1 Loathsome Catoblepas
1 March of the Returned
1 Mogis’s Marauder
1 Pharika’s Cure
1 Read the Bones
1 Returned Phalanx
2 Sip of Hemlock
1 Tormented Hero
[/Black]
[Red]
1 Borderland Minotaur
1 Deathbellow Raider
2 Demolish
1 Ill-Tempered Cyclops
2 Lightning Strike
2 Messenger Speed
1 Ordeal of Purphoros
2 Portent of Betrayal
1 Purphoros Emissary
1 Rage of Purphoros
1 Rageblood Shaman
1 Spark Jolt
1 Titan’s Strength
1 Wild Celebrants
[/Red]
[Green]
1 Artisan’s Sorrow
1 Centaur Battlemaster
1 Defend the Hearth
1 Karametra’s Acolyte
3 Nylea’s Presence
1 Savage Surge
2 Sedge Scorpion
1 Shredding Winds
1 Time to Feed
[/Green]
[Gold]
1 Daxos of Meletis
2 Kragma Warcaller
1 Sentry of the Underworld
1 Shipwreck Singer
[/Gold]
[Colorless]
1 Burnished Hart
1 Fleetfeather Sandals
2 Guardians of Meletis
1 Prowler’s Helm
1 Temple of Deceit
1 Temple of Abandon
[/Colorless]
[/cardlist]

I try to keep the blog free of profanity, but yes, I got a fucking [scryfall]Elspeh, Sun’s Champion[/scryfall] in my pool (being white, I’m not sure she would approve either). That actually may have influenced my deck building process a bit too much, to be honest, but I couldn’t just leave her out, now could I?

The thing with Elspeth is that she can win the game on her own, but she has a CMC of six, which means it takes time to cast her. Therefore, I needed to make a controllish deck, which could keep the opponent in bay until I can get Elspeth online. Of course, the probability of drawing Elspeth in a given game is not enough to rely on her alone, so I needed other routes into victory.

If I hadn’t needed other wincons, I would have probably gone with black, since black had the best defensive cards. Actually, even the [scryfall]Asphodel Wanderer[/scryfall]s could have been wincons on their own, if everything else failed, but that’s just not the style I like to play. I like being more proactive. Not necessarily much, but somewhat.

Therefore, I decided to go with blue. Ok, Daxos had a lot to do with it. According to the lore, Daxos is Elspeth’s friend, so they must go well together. Also, I had ways of making him hard or impossible to block.

White and blue had only 25 cards. I didn’t have much room to take out anything. After taking out the creatures which had activated abilities requiring mana of color I didn’t have ([scryfall]Setessan Griffin[/scryfall], [scryfall]Scholar of Athreos[/scryfall], [scryfall]Crackling Triton[/scryfall]), I was down to 22, which was a good number, but since I wanted to play a couple of the artifacts, I needed to take out a couple of cards. I decided on [scryfall]Triton Shorethief[/scryfall], which is kind of useless, and a [scryfall]Ephara’s Warden[/scryfall], which is actually great, but little on the expensive side and I already had two of in the deck.

I did weigh [scryfall]Guardians of Meletis[/scryfall] against [scryfall]Mnemonic Wall[/scryfall] quite a bit, but decided on the blue option, even though I didn’t have very many instant or sorceries (only four all in all). I probably should have gone for the mix, because I did end up chumping with them in many cases where the Guardians would have been able to take the hit. Also, a couple of times I just couldn’t get value from them, because I hadn’t drawn an instant or sorcery, or I didn’t want to play one just yet (although, I did bluff with this once).

Other artifacts I ended up playing were [scryfall]Burnished Hart[/scryfall] and [scryfall]Fleetfeather Sandals[/scryfall]. I chose the latter over [scryfall]Prowler’s Helm[/scryfall] because I wanted to be able to block fliers more frequently, although it was soon clear I had more fliers than anyone else, which also made the choice better because flying pretty much equalled unblockable.

The deck felt pretty light on creatures, but gladly there wasn’t much removal being played and the removal that was played was often negated by [scryfall]Triton Tactics[/scryfall].

I didn’t sideboard once. I just didn’t have anything to sideboard, unless I was ready to rework much of my deck, which might have actually been a good idea in some cases.

[cardlist title=The deck]
[Creatures]
1 Burnished Hart
1 Cavalry Pegasus
1 Daxos of Meletis
1 Decorated Griffin
2 Ephara’s Warden
1 Favored Hoplite
2 Mnemonic Wall
1 Nimbus Naiad
1 Observant Alseid
1 Wavecrash Triton
2 Wingsteed Rider
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
1 Bident of Thassa
1 Elspeth, Sun’s Champion
1 Fate Foretold
1 Fleetfeather Sandals
1 Thassa’s Bounty
2 Triton Tactics
1 Voyage’s End
[/Spells]
[Land]
9 Island
9 Plains
[/Land]
[/cardlist]

Now, I don’t know how the others felt, but I liked this. It was a very different experience from the prerelease, where everyone had huge monsters to play with (from the seeded booster). Here, two players put their eggs in the monstrosity basket (one of which caused my only match loss). Granted, the monsters were fun (and might have appealed to the players in this sealed tournament as well), but I enjoyed the feeling of these heroes going out and finding a way to win through cunning and support from gods. My deck was probably the one which most resembled this, as often I would pull out a win by using [scryfall]Triton Tactics[/scryfall] properly.

I liked it. Hopefully so did everyone else. Every card in my deck had a moment where it just rocked. I would have preferred other cards in my deck, but I can’t complain (who could with Elspeth).

Elspeth was very, very good, but often just a win-more card, meaning I already had things under control when I drew her. She did outright win the game on three occasions. On two of those she needed outside help from flying blockers, but on one occasion she just came in and kicked ass.

Foreshadowing

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Yesterday I talked about scrying in MtG. For those of you not interested in MtG, its a mechanic which lets you manipulate your library a little bit with the flavor of seeing into the future and being able to react to it, at least somewhat.

This got me thinking. I’ve always been averse about peeking into the future in RPGs. Maybe this is from my teen years, when I tried it a couple of times, but couldn’t really get into it, as I knew my players would moan if any possible predictions didn’t work absolutely correctly. Also, those games were so predictable anyhow that those predictions were basically superfluous.

…but now, things are different. Maybe predictions, or foreshadowing, if were talking about a more grounded world, could be great. They could basically be challenges for the players.

Lets take a movie. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is a good example. I’m not spoiling anything more than the movie itself does, so don’t worry (and by the way, if you haven’t seen it, what’s wrong with you?). It begins with the James Stewart character, now a US senator, returning to the town he was elected in. He is clearly known for being the titular character. Then we go back to the time when the place was just a small frontier town and the character is just arriving there.. and gets immediately robbed.

So, how did we get from getting robbed to being a senator? Just let the players figure it out. Give them a starting point and an ending point and see how you get there. You might have remind them from time to time, although probably at least one of them will remember it anyhow.

This might be an interesting experiment.