The Boondock Saints used to be one of my favorite movies. Then I saw the sequel, which was kind of mediocre, but what really ruined the first movie for me, was the attitude of the director on the commentary track. He would critisize other sequels for their lack of understanding of how to do a sequel and he would then go on and do the exact same things in his own movie.
Back in the 50s, there was a workshop to decide what the field now known as artificial intelligence should be known as. For a long time, computational rationality was the forerunner, but in the end, we have what we have now.
Of course, I can’t really say that this decision affected much, but how much more does something like “artificial intelligence” spark the imagination then “computational rationality”. Would we have 2001: A Space Odyssey? Terminators? Asimov’s robot series? Deep Thought?
This post is a direct followup on Aki’s post from yesterday. It started out as a comment but quickly lengthened in a way to seemed like it should have its own post.
Advancement in this kind of a game is problematic. On the one hand many players want to see their characters gaining more skills and progressing towards something like a demigod status. You may advance your character according to the “spend experience” chart found in each playbook. It all changes when you advance to “tier 2”.
This is the threshold of problem. How to keep the character in the same mould but allow him to grow?
I think that something like the advancement of John McClane has always been my ideal of character development. They might get more and more things done but they loose a bit of themselves on the process.
One thing that occurred to me just while I read this post is adding a simple and elegant system for advancement.
“But”
In simplest for this might work out when you change your playbook. You develop from a dealer to the Avenger BUT. This might even be a Move. When “when you advance your character, choose 1” and then a list of shit that might hit the fan.
This idea is presented in some ways in various hacks and I just discussed about something similar with one of the players from the same group as Aki and myself. It should not be simple to do something or if it is there should be a cost for it. You could look it the way Aki said. McClane survives (ie. develops) BUT loses his wife.
The trick here is to build the conditionals in a way that would make sense for the narrative and for the character.
Lauri has been bugging me to write my own seasoned playbook for his AW hack, Wayward Sons (see Resources above, and the Wayward Sons -tag on the right). Just haven’t gotten around to it. Also, I don’t really have inspiration right now… which is a bit of a problem.
One thing I’ve been thinking about though: One of the characters has been becoming more and more sociopathic in his paranoia, while two other characters (mine included) have been becoming more and more relient on alcohol to get through their “adventures”.
Once I began the work on the “second tier” playbooks for my Apocalypse World hack I quickly realised this hack still has some major issues. Though in my mind the premises and the main idea behind this hack is clear it might not be for others.This was a point that I noticed while we get together to play it a couple of weeks ago.
Aki was wondering why would his character stick with the other characters. I realise that this is something that pops up every once in a while in any game. My current approach to this kind of a problem is to get rid of the character as soon as possible. Questioning the motives of a character is a quick way to kill the mood and diverse the story from what is actually happening. But this time was different. It got me think of the reasons any of the characters are involved in “the hunt”.
We’ve previously established that one of our major themes and keywords is berserkers. Berserker means the following: Whenever the creature is blocked or blocks, you can pay some mana and trigger the berserker ability (although its not worded as a trigger, but an activated ability). This gives the creature some temporary bonuses on power and toughness, as well as indestructibility. However, each of them comes with a negative consequence. Its hard to try to contain a berserker, after all.
This is actually the real challenge. The game has shied away from drawbacks since the early days. Although they have returned somewhat in the past few sets, there currently isn’t a real tradition of those. Well, gladly, finding enough flavorful ones for each color is pretty easy. So, here goes (in the priority order set previously, meaning RBGUW).
I might begin with quoting Aki’s post about resolutions. But screw that. I’m cutting (almost) straight into the good stuff.
Role-Playing Games: Finishing What I’ve Started
I’ll finish writing Wayward Sons and write the finale to the Master of Shadows-campaign for Liber Fanatica. The AWhack is more likely to happen but I am still so ashamed that I haven’t written the last part of this WFRP campaign that I just have to do it.
Role-Playing Games: RopeCon to the Max
This year’s Ropecon was more or less lost to me but next year I’ll GM something and try to participate at least into three sessions.
Role-Playing Games: More is more
I’ll be running too campaigns next year and I promise to keep them both afloat. I’ll try to catch as many games as I can, which should be relatively easy if Aki keeps his promise to run more games. This might mean that I’ll have to sacrifice some time from EDH but that’s no big deal. I think I’ll get enough of that once summer comes.
This Blog: More Everything
I’m constantly harassing Aki to use more images and others from our gaming group to write something. I will promise to write more by myself next year. I wont promise that I will write more than Aki. I can try to write at last half as much as him.
That is a lot of writing. And mostly in English. Therefor I promise to write something in Finnish too. It has been too long since I’ve done that.
I think New Year’s resolutions are a pretty stupid idea. Humans are weirdly programmed. Generally its enough to talk about something we want to do. People who share their goals don’t reach them as often as people who don’t. You get some of the sensation of accomplishment simply from talking about it and for most people that’s enough. Actual accomplishments require actual work and that’s hard. Today’s culture is much more about instant gratification than hard work.
Although that’s clearly a generilization, you should not – under any circumstances – make New Year’s Resolutions.
With that in mind, here are mine.
Last week I talked about the mechanics I might use in the set, but the more important thing is how to have each color have a pretty balanced set of these keywords.
Now, generally not all mechanics are or need to be keyworded. Things such as milling are fine without needing a shortcut for them. There are many such mechanics. However, sometimes people want names for these things. It just makes them easier to talk about them and brings certain completion (see yesterday’s post).
A caveat: I studied communications a bit in university not much, but some. I graduated eight years ago and started my studies in the mists of the last millenium, so maybe this isn’t something people in communications still talk about or subscribe to. Since my knowledge on the subject is quite shallow, maybe this was never a serious theory. Or maybe this is the core of communications theory. Who knows? (Well, people who have actually studied the field probably do.) There’s a strong chance I’m using somewhat wrong terminology, but I can live with that.
Here’s the core of it: When you want to keep your audience’s attention, you need to remember the these three things: familiarity, surprise and completion.
Lets take a sequel to a movie.