I’ve always been a fan of game systems that break down things that are intuitive in real life in an attempt to understand or simplify them for players and game masters in a RPG. For this reason, the morality systems that most role playing games have attached to them fascinate me to no end. I think they’re ultimately the result of a group of villainous players who took the rules and living vicariously through their fantasy proxies, proceeded to rape, loot, pillage, and otherwise commit horrendous acts of depravity. Because of them (at least in my own imagination), alignment and morality systems became the norm in role playing games. These systems are the reason players don’t just do whatever they want with their powerful brute/dude who can cast real magic/supernatural beast etc. characters.
The flip side of that imaginative coin is that alignment systems are actually a tool for game masters, so that they have a basic belief system in place for each non-player character which the players interact with. But then, why all the fuss about alignment and such for players, too?
AD&D
Ah, alignments. I sometimes feel that this system was put in place simply to “balance” some of the more powerful classes in the game. Paladins had tons of special abilites, but they had to be law-abiding goodfellers. This often was played for comic effect as Lawful Stupid, but I digress.
Alignment in AD&D was divided along two axes, the good-neutral-evil axis, and the lawful-neutral-chaotic axis. A player would choose one from each axis (evil was often discouraged by both the rulebooks and the dungeon master) and then they’d have a basic outline for their character’s feelings about order, society, and freedom, and looking out for number one. Chaotic good tended to be the default morality for most of my characters, because blindly following the orders of a society seemed silly, but “doing the right thing” seemed like a good way to play the game.
Of course, there are only a few other reasonable alignments (besides chaotic good) to play. The rest are all clinically insane. Lawful evil was interesting (be selfish but honor your agreements and keep to the laws), and neutral good (“do the right thing” most of the time) and neutral evil (do what’s best for you and screw everyone else if it isn’t good for them) are pretty clear cut. But lawful good, lawful neutral, later editions of true neutral, chaotic neutral, and chaotic evil are all pathological nightmares. They, respectively, in the first two cases slavishly adhere to law and order like some kind of OCD crusader, in the next always seek “balance” so that everything is always meh, or in the last instances do things for entirely random reasons, sometimes in the name of wanton destruction.
So, overall, the system was whack. The penalty for acting out of alignment was a stern talking-to from the DM. If you were naughty while playing a character who needed to maintain a good alignment (say, a Paladin), then you’d lose your awesome bonuses from being a haughty fucker until you were a proper haughty fucker again. 1.5
AD&D 2nd edition
As you were. 1.5
Rifts
To me, it seems like Rifts took the AD&D morality system and simplified it somewhat. Instead of the grid o’ alignments there were discrete choices to make: Principled, scrupulous, unprincipled, chipotle, aberrant, cake ‘n’ bacon, warm vanilla sugar, diabolic, and lame-o. It was sort of like someone looked at the D&D conventions, and then removed most of the clinically insane ones and changed the names. So, no chaotic neutral. No lawful neutral. I was so sad to see these go. Rifts had such a slapdash system at times I wondered what the hell was going on, but this particular aspect of the whole thing was pretty good in my opinion.
The penalty for acting out of alignment was similar to D&D, but alignment meant little outside of “know alignment” type spells that could broadcast to local do-gooders that you were a selfish prick. Scary. 2.0
Vampire: the Masquerade
Oh, the Humanity. In vampire, each character has a Humanity rating that describes how close to their human origins their vampire self is. Most characters started right around seven Humanity on a scale of one to ten. If the character did villainous things (or even antisocial things at high ranks of Humanity) then they had a chance to lose Humanity. Losing Humanity was, at first, a good thing. After accidentally killing a human during a feeding frenzy, having to sulk and be all angsty got old after a while. Going down to like five Humanity was alright because around there “murder in the heat of passion” wasn’t so bad. Call me jaded.
The penalty for being a depraved monster was that the character actually looked more and more like a depraved monster as Humanity diminished. At zero Humanity the character is handed to the Storyteller, because they have become a savage predator without thought, only instincts. That’s some serious shit right there. Of course, when the character is down to one Humanity they have to do some seriously evil shit to lose the last point, but I guess if you’re really role playing “the beast” you might go there. 4.0
Vampire: Other Moralities
For those players who liked to be villainous bloodsuckers, the later supplements added Paths of Enlightenment that could be taken instead of Humanity. Each one functioned similarly to Humanity, but the “Hierarchy of Sins” table was different for each. For instance, not lying to someone when it would benefit you was a level 5 or 6 Sin for adherents to the Settite Path of Typhon. So if you were that guy you were pretty untrustworthy.
I didn’t play much of these systems. I think they’re interesting and dumb all at once. I like the Humanity system so much I like the tweaks on it that this system does. It’s also interesting as a Storyteller, because knowing that an antagonist or perhaps a mentor of the characters is thinking differently than the players can make for some interesting interactions. Still, at some level I feel like it’s a cop-out for those who want to commit vicarious horrendous acts of depravity. 3.0
Werewolf: the Forsaken
I don’t recall a morality system for this so much. I do remember that as the character gained in werewolfy power they became predators and creatures of the spirit realm more and more, and that humans were more and more uncomfortable around them. But. . .I don’t remember a morality system per se. I do remember that the “laws” of werewolf society were pretty much enforced by werewolfy powers-that-be. Is it freedom, then? Not really. But there wasn’t a morality system in play that governed a character’s actions, simply a societal one, with taboos to avoid. 2.0
Dungeons and Dragons 4E
This is a lot like the Rifts system melded with previous D&D systems, actually. There's only Good, Evil, Unaligned, and then the insane Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil alignments. I actually like it better than other D&D alignment systems, at least. Still sorta wonky. 2.5
Dark Heresy
The morality system of Dark Heresy is actually a sort of negative system. The characters all start out as relative tabula rasa, with no inherent flaws (well, you can give yourself quirks, but none are governed by gameplay. There’s no real reason to not commit acts of horrendous depravity, aside from the fact that if the character is caught doing so by other members of the Inquisition they will be slain in spectacularly painful fashion.
However, there are two trackers on the character sheet for Insanity and Corruption points, and as the character gains these, they become more and more unhinged and evil. Insanity points are what happens when the Warp (space? Evil space? Chaos?) breaks through to reality and some crazy shit goes down. Everyone floats for a while, or a banshee howl blasts the area, or a demon is released, or whatever. And then the character goes a little crazy. Or a lot crazy, in the case of the demon. Corruption points are similar, but they track how much the Warp has actually gotten a hold of the character physically. Characters will eventually become Mutants if they gain corruption points.
If the Inquisition finds out an adept is corrupt (or Emperor forbid, a Mutant), in any way, they will kill him in spectacularly painful fashion. Insanity points aren’t so bad, and actually, having some helps with willpower tests against the things that drive characters bonkers. However, having a lot gives the character some pathologies to roleplay, which I’m certain aren’t so good for long-term survival when the organization for which they work is willing to kill them in spectacularly painful fashion at the drop of a hat.
I don’t know if there is a way to get rid of either corruption or insanity points. I assume so, perhaps Psyker powers? Tech-priest machine-voodoo? Psychoanalysis? There’s not a lot of therapy in the 40K world. If something is broken, the powers-that-be tend to fix it by killing it in spectacularly painful fashion.3.0
-Merlin out
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Friday, September 24, 2010
Sunday, September 19, 2010
A Predilection for Wizards
It’s the name, really. When your middle name is Merlin you tend to gravitate toward playing sorcerous characters in RPGs. Trust me. I was fascinated with them from an early age, and as I played more and more RPGs I always wound up playing similar characters, at least in terms of party role. I generally don’t play leader-type characters. I don’t tend to play brutes in a physical sense. I play characters who use their wits and whatever force of will they can muster to alter reality to fit their needs. Wizards are a “mind-over-matter” character type. I dig that.
AD&D
The AD&D wizard was called a “Magic-User”, which lacks poetry. There’s a certain literalness to the original character classes like “Fighter” and “Magic-User”. They lack imagination, but I suppose they are at least descriptive. The original “Magic-User” was incredibly lame at low levels but gained godlike power in the later game. I never really got to the later game. It took a good goddamn long time to do so in tho’ days. For as influential as this class was, it lacked panache. 2.0.
AD&D 2nd Edition
2nd edition AD&D made wizards a lot of fun. For starters, there were multiple possibilities, such as the specialty wizards. Specialty wizards broadened the character concept somewhat, and in effect doubled the effectiveness of low-level mages without making the high-level ones too much more godlike. The complete Wizards Handbook added wizard kits to further customize the class. However, without those bells and whistles, the mage character was essentially the exact same as it was in AD&D, though perhaps a high Intelligence score would get them an extra spell. 3.0.
Rifts
The Line Walker and Shifter are the basic “wizard” OCCs in the main Rifts book. OCC stands for “Occasionally Cumbersome Concept”. These classes both borrow heavily from AD&D in that low-level magic isn’t very powerful, but the disparity between low-level mercenaries (and psychics, and racial classes, and just about everyone else) and low-level wizards in Rifts is nuts. A guy with a gun is something like 2-5 times more effective in a combat situation than a line walker at level 1. Maybe they achieve parity at level 10, like AD&D? I wouldn’t know because Rifts sucks enough ass that nobody played that long. The Techno-Wizard class is pretty cool. And the world book supplements added a lot of cool magic OCCs. But overall, Rifts wizardry is blah. 1.0
Vampire: The Masquerade
The vampire equivalent of “wizard” was Clan Tremere, a clan made up of mages who stole the “secret” of vampirism and then went on a wild diablerie rampage to become a for-real “clan” instead of a bloodline. Weird and wonky backstory aside, Tremere are kickass wizards. Their in-clan disciplines give them access to blood (and other) magic, rituals, precognitive and extrasensory perception, and various forms of mind control. Those hit most of the classical wizard stereotypes from art and literature: the mysterious power, the sinister adviser/grand vizier, the prophet, the mind-controlling powermage, the sage. They were awesome, and well designed in my opinion.
The flavor wasn’t the greatest, as the backstory made them insular and backbiting puppets within their own little “wizard towers”, Chantries, in like every city, but it can’t all be gravy I guess. 3.5
Supernatural Creature: the Gothic Noun
Mage: The Ascension and World of Darkness: Sorcerer are two supplements/games that also dealt with magic in the World of Darkness. Sorcerer is dumb as hell, and the fact that it coexisted with Mage is even dumber. Mage: the Ascension was an interesting concept that led to either incredibly creative players or incredibly weird power-gaming. I saw more of the later. The Men in Black and the New World Order Technocratic Convention almost make up for all of it, however. That’s one of the better “tradition” books out there in my opinion. Why was the technocracy the antagonists of the game? I really liked those guys. 3.0.
Werewolf: The Forsaken
There’s some kind of Theurge-analog in this game. The Theurge was the auspice in the old Werewolf game that was all shamanesque. There’s another one in this game. They get rituals cheaper. In the game we played my boneheaded character was better at rituals than our boneheaded Theurge-analog. It might not have been the rules-system’s fault. I felt that overall WTF was a little samey in that all the tribes/moons/etc co-mingled a little too well. There wasn’t a big differentiation between all of them. Also, there was lots of rituals which didn’t have big game effects, they just cost XP so that you could like, mourn the loss of a fallen comrade ‘correctly’. For reals? Experience systems are generally trhere to make your characters “better” at whatever they do, and spending points on “flavor” instead is. . .weird. 1.5.
Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition
There’s something I like about the 4E wizard: it has some incredible combat-useless class features. It was a big complaint when the game came out. Almost every class in the 4E PHB has 3 or 4 class features that directly relate to some kind of advantage on the field of battle. Not so the wizard. He’s got one middling advantage based on whether he prefers his wand to his staff, if you catch my drift. And then he has Cantrips, which are little spells that produce minor effects, like Light or Mage Hand. These aren’t going to do much in a fight.
But there is the Spellbook, which lets the wizard powerswap his daily superspell when he regenerates it (uh, daily), basically. So instead of Sleep he could learn Flaming Sphere for a day. And then go back the next. This last feature was only useful if the players knew who they would be fighting in advance and the wizard said “shit, they have fire resistance, I’ll learn Sleep for tomorrow.” I dig that, but there were complaints. Fuck the haters. 3.0.
Apparently 4E has some new wizardyness in the works now, and it looks like the wiz is getting some bonus damage to a lot of powers. That seems alright. Apparently the haters were vocal enough.
Dark Heresy
Dark Heresy doesn’t really have wizards as such. There are scholars, who can get some psychic powers late in their career, and there are psykers proper. Psykers really fulfill the role of both wizard/artillery and healer/cleric in this system. It’s a little wonky that way. Also, psykers have a base 10% chance to interact poorly with the Warp every single time they use their powers, so it’s a risky proposition. I’m actually not a fan of the system. Psyker powers seem incredibly powerful even at the outset, and our psyker has already found a way to circumvent the whole “power has consequences” thing by using his psychic powers to reroll dice which accidentally engage the warp. So, the system is in effect made to be broken (before it breaks you), which is weak. 2.0
-Merlin out
AD&D
The AD&D wizard was called a “Magic-User”, which lacks poetry. There’s a certain literalness to the original character classes like “Fighter” and “Magic-User”. They lack imagination, but I suppose they are at least descriptive. The original “Magic-User” was incredibly lame at low levels but gained godlike power in the later game. I never really got to the later game. It took a good goddamn long time to do so in tho’ days. For as influential as this class was, it lacked panache. 2.0.
AD&D 2nd Edition
2nd edition AD&D made wizards a lot of fun. For starters, there were multiple possibilities, such as the specialty wizards. Specialty wizards broadened the character concept somewhat, and in effect doubled the effectiveness of low-level mages without making the high-level ones too much more godlike. The complete Wizards Handbook added wizard kits to further customize the class. However, without those bells and whistles, the mage character was essentially the exact same as it was in AD&D, though perhaps a high Intelligence score would get them an extra spell. 3.0.
Rifts
The Line Walker and Shifter are the basic “wizard” OCCs in the main Rifts book. OCC stands for “Occasionally Cumbersome Concept”. These classes both borrow heavily from AD&D in that low-level magic isn’t very powerful, but the disparity between low-level mercenaries (and psychics, and racial classes, and just about everyone else) and low-level wizards in Rifts is nuts. A guy with a gun is something like 2-5 times more effective in a combat situation than a line walker at level 1. Maybe they achieve parity at level 10, like AD&D? I wouldn’t know because Rifts sucks enough ass that nobody played that long. The Techno-Wizard class is pretty cool. And the world book supplements added a lot of cool magic OCCs. But overall, Rifts wizardry is blah. 1.0
Vampire: The Masquerade
The vampire equivalent of “wizard” was Clan Tremere, a clan made up of mages who stole the “secret” of vampirism and then went on a wild diablerie rampage to become a for-real “clan” instead of a bloodline. Weird and wonky backstory aside, Tremere are kickass wizards. Their in-clan disciplines give them access to blood (and other) magic, rituals, precognitive and extrasensory perception, and various forms of mind control. Those hit most of the classical wizard stereotypes from art and literature: the mysterious power, the sinister adviser/grand vizier, the prophet, the mind-controlling powermage, the sage. They were awesome, and well designed in my opinion.
The flavor wasn’t the greatest, as the backstory made them insular and backbiting puppets within their own little “wizard towers”, Chantries, in like every city, but it can’t all be gravy I guess. 3.5
Supernatural Creature: the Gothic Noun
Mage: The Ascension and World of Darkness: Sorcerer are two supplements/games that also dealt with magic in the World of Darkness. Sorcerer is dumb as hell, and the fact that it coexisted with Mage is even dumber. Mage: the Ascension was an interesting concept that led to either incredibly creative players or incredibly weird power-gaming. I saw more of the later. The Men in Black and the New World Order Technocratic Convention almost make up for all of it, however. That’s one of the better “tradition” books out there in my opinion. Why was the technocracy the antagonists of the game? I really liked those guys. 3.0.
Werewolf: The Forsaken
There’s some kind of Theurge-analog in this game. The Theurge was the auspice in the old Werewolf game that was all shamanesque. There’s another one in this game. They get rituals cheaper. In the game we played my boneheaded character was better at rituals than our boneheaded Theurge-analog. It might not have been the rules-system’s fault. I felt that overall WTF was a little samey in that all the tribes/moons/etc co-mingled a little too well. There wasn’t a big differentiation between all of them. Also, there was lots of rituals which didn’t have big game effects, they just cost XP so that you could like, mourn the loss of a fallen comrade ‘correctly’. For reals? Experience systems are generally trhere to make your characters “better” at whatever they do, and spending points on “flavor” instead is. . .weird. 1.5.
Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition
There’s something I like about the 4E wizard: it has some incredible combat-useless class features. It was a big complaint when the game came out. Almost every class in the 4E PHB has 3 or 4 class features that directly relate to some kind of advantage on the field of battle. Not so the wizard. He’s got one middling advantage based on whether he prefers his wand to his staff, if you catch my drift. And then he has Cantrips, which are little spells that produce minor effects, like Light or Mage Hand. These aren’t going to do much in a fight.
But there is the Spellbook, which lets the wizard powerswap his daily superspell when he regenerates it (uh, daily), basically. So instead of Sleep he could learn Flaming Sphere for a day. And then go back the next. This last feature was only useful if the players knew who they would be fighting in advance and the wizard said “shit, they have fire resistance, I’ll learn Sleep for tomorrow.” I dig that, but there were complaints. Fuck the haters. 3.0.
Apparently 4E has some new wizardyness in the works now, and it looks like the wiz is getting some bonus damage to a lot of powers. That seems alright. Apparently the haters were vocal enough.
Dark Heresy
Dark Heresy doesn’t really have wizards as such. There are scholars, who can get some psychic powers late in their career, and there are psykers proper. Psykers really fulfill the role of both wizard/artillery and healer/cleric in this system. It’s a little wonky that way. Also, psykers have a base 10% chance to interact poorly with the Warp every single time they use their powers, so it’s a risky proposition. I’m actually not a fan of the system. Psyker powers seem incredibly powerful even at the outset, and our psyker has already found a way to circumvent the whole “power has consequences” thing by using his psychic powers to reroll dice which accidentally engage the warp. So, the system is in effect made to be broken (before it breaks you), which is weak. 2.0
-Merlin out
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