Archive for the ‘Gaming’ Category

Vampire: The Requiem Did Get Better

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

Somewhere around the 190 page mark, Vampire the Requiem actually became a good book to read.  It was full of flavor, entertaining to read, and even offered great advice to new players and storytellers.  The section on Travel was filled with some much needed humor.  The expanded advice for playing derangements was excellently written.  Ideas were put forth to create really dramatic games instead of useless drama.

This, of course, is still a massive contradiction against the first 40 pages or so.  But, hey, credit for putting anything good in there at all.   If the whole book had been written in the style of what came between Travel and New Orleans then I would have been absolutely, truly impressed.

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Vampire: The wretching.

Friday, March 12th, 2010

White Wolf is selling pdf files dirt cheap right now, so I finally broke down and picked up Vampire: the Requiem.

Wow. It’s like they took everything I hated from the old books, threw away the game crushing meta plot, and over-exaggerated every remaining unplayable element. The core purpose of the remaining game is to pretend you’re talking in some bar.

I’m 33 years old. Old enough to drink. There’s a goth bar in town where I can do that for real. It’s even called Elysium.

I’m just glad I didn’t pay full price.

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Balance Issues in Pen & Paper Roleplaying

Sunday, February 28th, 2010

My brother used to run Shadowrun games at conventions, back in the days of the 2nd and 3rd Edition rulebooks.  He could look at a party of power-gaming assault types, flowery role players, and quiet support characters, and give them all an important part of the story.

The assault type had to shoot down the doors to get everyone in.  The mage could usually help.  The rigger had his drone on the scene to record everything for verification purposes.  The face sweet talked the client for more money, then sweet talked the opponent into letting the party through with a minimal of damage taken before the inevitable firefight would start.  The insane Raven shaman could show off for the camera hooked up to the drone.

So now I’m looking at gaming again.  My wife and I both used to be avid gamers, and we want to play some more.  Yet so much of what I see is “lack of balance.”  This is true if your game is one-dimensional.  Shoot everything.  Talk a lot.  Pure stealth.

So, honestly, just look at the character sheets.  Look at the players.  Adding a spur of the moment detail to your game to include everyone rather than blaming the rules will not only make the session more fun, but make it more memorable.

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