A plus to whatever...

And so yes, in another of my rambling, I'm on a cocktail of painkillers and don't you know it, hikes through the valley of my MMO gripes - item bonuses.

If you've been following my lastest posts on crafting, run-speeds, and that other why I may have done, or may merely have imagined - I wanted to spend a cutler-three paras talking about magick items.

In my P&P games I pride myself on the creation of exquisite magick items.  My rationale behind this - because there should ALWAYS be a rationale - is that if you were capable of creating a magick item, would you churn out just yet another production line Skoda with the same stats as a thousand other items?  Or would you approach the project with some artistry?

In my P&P games actually both happens.  The rationale (always with the rationale!) behind this is that in some circumstances - i.e. when preparing for a war - an enchanter might be asked to create a batch of swords with specific bonuses with which to equip, for example, the royal guard.  Hence you get the Royal Falchion - of which two dozen were made, and they are all identical.  And this goes for many other types of enchanted items created in batches for a specific purpose.

But then there should also be a bunch of one-offs, and with these all manner of interesting and quirky magickal effects should be available.  Essentially, the thinking behind it is in mechanics terms, if the game provides a stat for something, then that stat should be able to be tweaked by magick.  And more, in fact.

Have weapons that deliver especial effects but only at midnight.  Have items with an intelligence all their own. Have equipment that activates only in the hands of certain people / races / conditions.  Basically, if it adds to the story, and can be measured by data, let the game provide it.

The bottom line is: it WILL make the game more interesting.  And thus it will provide more player satisfaction.

I hate crafting!

There!  I said it!

Of all the MMOs I've played, of all the levels of various characters I've journeyed through, I have spent very, very little time crafting anything.  And this is primarily because a) its boring, and b) I fundamentally disagree with how most of it is handled.

Before I go on, I'll wave my get out of jail free disclaimer and state once again that all this is IMHO and there may indeed be a game or games out there that do things differently, and do things well.

But first up on my list of criticisms is: I do not believe leatherworkers should make magickal items.  Or indeed armour smiths, or swordsmiths, or basket weavers or the knitters of novelty tea cosies.  I don't care what your chosen material is.  You should not be able to natively produce a magickal something, just by stitching a few bits of leather together - for example.  Provide magick with the mystery it deserves and provide a particular crafting profession with the ability to imbue magick into physical items.  You could even have such 'workers of magick' specialise in imbuing specific types of magick into items.

The next thing you do is, make creating a complex item the work of several people.  If you want to make a magick sword, have it require a swordsmith to make the blade, a leatherworker to make the grip, a gemcutter to help in the creation of the pommel and a runecrafter (or whatever you want to call those 'workers of magick') to imbue the blade with spells.

On his own, the swordsmith might be able to make a very good sword.  And this is where my notion of non-magickal bonuses come from.  I like the concept that in a fantastical world certain materials provide innately some degree of non-magickal effects.  i..e for want of an example - a sword made with silver provides a non-magickal bonus when used against werewolves (due to some kind of allergy lycanthropes have to silver).

In crafting several different aspects combine to create a masterpiece.  Firstly we have quality.  This is a basic description of how skilled the crafter was at producing that particular item.  And for something like a sword we can say that a high quality sword is durable and well-balanced and can provide the wielder with some non-magickal bonus in using it.

Secondly we could have an aspect of ornamentation.  How exquisite an item is, i.e  a measure of the artistic aesthetic that has gone into the item's creation, including the use of exotic materials and / or ornate workmanship.  Ornamentation could in some cases actually go against the effective use of the item.  i.e. in the case of a ceremonial sword - but greatly increase its value.

And thirdly we can include the arcane contribution.  What magickal powers has the item been imbued with.

Thus a complex or intricate item might require four or five craftsmen collaborating to create it.

But this is only one side of crafting.  The aspect that really bores me is the yawn-inducing acquisition of the raw components followed by the soporific assembly of watching a typically painfully slow progress bar whilst your avatar twitches their hands next to a forge like they're fiddling with a rubix cube.

Take this stuff offline I say.  Take a page out of Eve's book and reduce the amount of progress bars your players have to watch by letting characters perform some of these more passive actions offline. This also makes a bit more sense to me, and kind of provides characters with a sense that their professions are like a hobby to them, and whilst they're not out adventuring (i.e whilst you're not online actually questing and killing stuff) the character is sat by a fireside somewhere, working on some impressive new piece of equipment.

The next thing that should be said of crafting is that the items made should be better than the majority of items found at that level.  If people are going to go to the trouble of sourcing a bunch of materials and collaborating with a bunch of other players in order to craft some especial item, it better be worth it.

I'd then go as far as creating a specialised form of marketplace, a la Auction Houses, to provide players with a simple interface for finding other crafters with whom they can collaborate.  This 'crafting house' should also provide an interface for the actual creation of items.

What do I mean by this?  Well, instead of having standard recipes that produce dozens of the exactly the same type of item, allow some room for creativity, and allow players to craft items they actually need / want.  In the creation of a sword for example have the swordsmith craftsmen choose from a selection of blade types / styles in order to get the form of the sword they desire.  This can be little more than an aesthetic decision in most cases, but that is still very important to many players.  The graphics of the game should allow for many different blade/hilt/pommel combinations and the swordsmith should be able to choose the design they are about to smith.  Of course we may restrict the working of rare or difficult materials to higher level craftsmen, but have a rationale behind it.  Gold is soft and easy to work, but a gold sword will not keep its edge and should be nothing more than ceremonial... for example.  Apply restrictions to fantastic materials with innate bonuses, they're generally easier to apply a rationale to anyway.

Allow crafters to imbue items with spell-like capabilities, not just stat bonuses.

Another thing that really annoys me is when the majority of items in MMOs provide just simple stat bonuses to the wielder.  Now whilst useful, it lacks imagination.  Yes provide for stat bonuses, but also provide for spell effects.  Flaming swords which cause additional heat damage, or staves which slightly reduce global casting time, or any other kind of item which provides bonuses to spell effects... i.e. a witch-skin pouch which doubles the casters warlock armour value.  That kind of thing.  But providing players with this kind of freedom we allow players to tweak virtually every aspect of their character.

My treatment of magick

First off, I always write 'magick'.  I learnt this from Crowley.  But I am referring still to P&P.
Secondly, in order to support my notion of  'story comes first', I have always strived to create the richest possible backdrops for my games to take place in. Regardless of system (no longer an issue, because I use my own) or genre.

In fantasy games, one of the things that frequently frustrated me, was the almost commonplace and throw-away nature of the concept of magick and spell-casting.  This, to me at least, sucked a lot of the atmosphere out of magick.  Magic-users in many games, being as about as unusual as bakers or blacksmiths.  So for my gameworld I set about sewing rich threads of magick into the tapestry of the land.

First came my historical understanding of what magic was, and it is this which I will begin by imparting.

In my games, magick is essentially a dialogue between sorcerers (the generic name for spell-casters) and intelligences that exist in dimensions beyond our own.  By 'our own' I mean those typically inhabited by the players.

And for you to understand what I mean by this, I need to really explain a philosophical concept I have concerning the nature of reality - and this applies to the real world as much as it does any gameworld.

On the one hand I believe that in all likelihood what you see is what you get.  There are no gods, no afterlife, nothing spiritual.  That said, you can kind of leave the subject alone, it requires no more thought.  And that provides one with plenty of opportunity to consider other possibilities.  And one concept that intrigues me is as follows.

And it goes a little something like this:

If one considers that potentiality - i.e. the potential that something might exist is a dimension of sorts, than this could have been the trigger to the big bang.  There was a chance that something could exist, so in one flavour of reality, something did exist, and in realising itself suddenly came into being.

And just as the big bang brought into existence the three physical dimensions we inhabit, and the fourth we call 'Time', then so it also brought into being all the other dimensions that theoretical physics claims may, or must exist.  And the probable many others we (as an inherently limited species) haven't a clue about.

So just as humans have evolved to inhabit and be aware of (to some extent) these four dimensions (we can call them 1,2,3 and T), we can sumise that we may rub shoulders with some other dimensions, and perhaps are even influenced by some we have no real grasp of.

And if you consider that a possibility, then it naturally follows that some other 'intelligences' may also have evolved to inhabit and appreciate other subsets of dimensions.  Some may overlap with ours, and some maybe so far removed from ours that never the twain shall meet.

In this model of the universe, it is not necessarily far-fetched to imagine that some intelligences have evolved which inhabit and largely dominate most dimensions.  To us, these beings would seem as gods.  And to stretch the notion one step further, then one can also describe a Supreme Being as that entity which incorporates all dimensions.  But we really don't need to go there.

Lets then apply this philosophical (dare I say theological) model to the archetypal P&P gameworld.  All of a sudden we are presented with the notion that 'Dream' can be a dimension, and even 'Luck' can be a dimension.  In my games, intelligences can utilise the dimension of Dream to converse through symbol and allegory with other intelligences.  And by studying such symbol and allegory a perceptive man may unlock some hidden secrets of how the universe works beyond the remit of his regular dimensions.  To the uninitiated such feats would appear as magick.

In the history of my gameworld, this is the case.  Gods (read: complex intelligences inhabiting many dimensions) reproduce not in the physical way that corporeal beings do, but by 'evolving' such lesser beings to appreciate (and thus be privy to) extra dimensions.  As such, magick is thus a route to eventual deification.  However, the journey is long and arduous and frought with disaster and the vast majority of sorcerers die before ever attaining the knowledge.

In the history of my world, the first age is known as the Age of Ancients, or the Age of History and although I have never set a campaign or run a game which operates in this first age, it is a backdrop to all of my games.  In this age, people were primitive, tribal and magic had not yet been 'discovered'.  One such tribe, known as the Eidemak, employed a soothsayer / witchdoctor type character to advise of matters spiritual.  During a routine hallucinogenic ritual, he and his apprentice witnessed what they referred to as a Falling Star.  A meteorite, which tore across the heavens and slammed into the earth.  Thanks to the use of their hallucinogens, the passage of this meteor was forever marked indelibly on their minds' eye.

The soothsayer sent his young apprentice out into the snowy wastelands to track the passage of this Falling Star to its resting place.

The star was in fact a method employed by higher intelligences of raising the conciousness of primitive folk such as these, and it contained two materials, a mineral substance, which later became known as Arcanite, and a metallic substance called Star Iron.  In conjunction these two materials served to warp and enhance some subtle dimensions which rubbed shoulders with these physical planes.  And notably that of Dream.  So as the young Eidemak - as it is lost in the history of my world if the name of the people was Eidemak, or it was the name of the apprentice, specifically - gathered up some samples of this meteor, he opened himself up to the realm of Dream and using this channel strange intelligences whispered to him each night as he slept, and taught him secrets about the world.

By the time he reached home, he had become the land's first sorcerer, able to bend reality (albeit not very ably initially).  And so it came to pass that magick was brought to the world.

So thats the first thing I did.  Explain magick.  But in doing so, hopefully I have kept some mystery.

So in the history of my gameworld, all magick can be traced back to these simple origins.  And from there I draw out a family tree of notable sorcerers.  Across the two subsequent ages when magick evolved rapidly, different schools of magick came into being, with notable exponents and originators.  Essentially, what I did here was give a slight nod to D&D and expand massively (on what I believe to be their failing).

In D&D you have spells like Tenser's floating disc, and Milf's magic arrow.  Or something like that. =)  I can't remember exactly, its been a long time.  Because I used the Rolemaster system, I had all the RM spell-lists as the basis for magic in my world, and what I did was create particular and specific personalities to support those spells.  i.e. I have an infamous NPC called Ladumon (of the 2nd Age), who is generally accepted to be the originator of all spells which distort physical dimensions, i.e. teleportation and bags of holding are all down to him.  I have effectively created a Who's Who of Sorcerers for my games.  So any spell a player casts has a history and ultimately an author.  This I have found to be extremely useful in helping to create a rich backdrop, and thus atmosphere for the magickal aspects of my games.

This also provides players with an opportunity to craft their own spells.  Following a school of thought, a particular style of magick, and the teachings of the Past Masters in that school gives them a direction in which to further evolve that school.

The other thing I did with magick is use Presence (Charisma) as the defining stat for sorcerers, and also made magickal aptitude extremely rare and marked by heterochromia (a difference between the colours of each eye, i.e. left eye blue, right eye brown).  This makes sorcerers 1) rare, 2) unusual to look at, and 3) mightily charismatic so you can't ignore them when they walk down the street.  This later element is not always an advantage.  As charismatic people are noticed and thus generally find it hard to blend into a crowd.

What I have found is this approach has certainly spiced up the roles of sorcerers in my games.  All of a sudden magic-using isn't just another character-class option.  It scintillates.

Its in ways such as these that a GM can create mood and atmosphere and ultimately get one step closer to the desired objective or painting the richest, most enthralling picture of an alternate world possible.  And a world that players buy into effortlessly.


I love it when that happens.  As this supports something I mentioned several posts earlier.  Part of the joy of roleplaying for me is setting up a scene and sitting back and listening to the players discuss it.  By providing players with the richest possible tapestry, its far easier to do this.

My recommendation then for those of you wanting to run your own game.  Know your world.  Populate it with well-wrought characters and events.  Create a timeline and well-defined settings, and give your players as much information (that they would be privy to) as possible.  Its like an author knowing their characters, so that when they write dialogue, that dialogue is believable.

This gives me an idea for two new posts:  1) General tips on running a game. 2) General tips on writing dialogue.  All of which under the ever-present IMHO caveat.

Schizo...

Not sure quite how to entitle this post.

A feature of many of my P&P games, and also a number of computer game proposals I have produced revolves around the concept of either switching forms, acquiring new forms, or absorbing abilities.

The longest running P&P game I GMed revolved around the concept of an ancient race, and an ancient, once lost form of magick that involved summoning daemons, slaying said daemons and absorbing their souls in order to take on their powers. This blend of original race, stocked full of daemon souls forever changed the player and turned them into a new being, a creature I called Shafaerinhai. Which - roughly translated from their ancient tongue - meant 'daemons in the blood'.

In a much later game set in the same world a couple of Ages on, I reworked this theme. In this game I had a cult of sorcerers attempt to resurrect Shafaerinhai magick, but fundamentally misunderstanding it. They used spells to summon daemons, and then excommunicate their spirits so that the daemon's corporeal form (which the daemon grew to journey within the material plane) was left an empty shell. The sorcerer was then free to excommunicate his own spirit, ripping it from his body and binding it to the daemon's empty shape.

In this way, sorcerers were able to acquire powerful, monsterous forms. And it made for a great game, even if I do say so myself.

This body-swapping concept I translated into a couple of computer game proposals. In one, the players played a sentient blob of jelly genetically engineered from an organic sample taken from a meteorite. The blob of jelly had the unique ability to blend with carbon-based lifeforms via osmosis and take over the brain functions of the entity, thus controlling it.

In this way the player had free reign to blend with guards, scientists, dogs, rats, birds and even some mutations from the labs as they sought and fought for their freedom.

I used another version of the sentient blob of jelly idea, in a game I called Evolver (later finding a game of the same name already existed - although significantly different) I changed the name to Wild World. Wild World was designed as an MMO with a difference. A vast perpetual world consisting of all manner of flora and fauna. Players start as the blob of jelly and slither around until they come across a creature with powers they want to incorporate.

In this idea, the blog can absorb the DNA of creatures it consumes and then mutate, taking upon some of the characteristics of its victim. In this way, somewhat like the Homunculus Jar, a player can end up with a creature sporting a complex array of different features... bat wings, toxic spines, acid spit, retractable claws, gills and so forth.

The basic principle was to evolve your creature and do battle with other creatures in the environment, attempting to acquire new abilities. There was a secondary thread about evolving an opposable thumb which would enable players to use ancient artefacts from a long lost, technologically advanced civilization, whose ruins adorned the world.

I'm not sure why exactly this theme of changing or utilisng alternative forms fascinates me. But whenever I have used it in games it has gone down very well with players. It breaks the mold to some extent in terms of established genres, but for me it extends still further the concept of acquiring news skills and equipment, and opens up a realm of new possibilities.