Dreaming of Dice

[dreamingofdice]

Dice Systems - Basic Roleplaying

Recently I've started getting into a lot more board games, of various designs. My group has one person who hates the d20 system, and absolutely loves Basic Roleplay's System. This is because, to him, its easier to succeed in Basic Roleplay than it is in the d20 system. When I had tried to point out the slight flaws in that argument, I was presented with things like "No its easier because..." But lets explain here, Basic Roleplay, or BRP, uses a d100 system. This gaming system is suppose to be a very simple way of playing a game, and it is. For that I commend it very much. And I might be viewing it from tinted glasses as I'm lacking the actual book for the system, and only have been playing in the games he created. Which while they can be fun, lack a certain something. Lets start off with character creation, BRP is a blend between point by and dice roll, which could leave you sorely lacking in ability. Some DMs might take pity on your poor soul, others not so much. You roll four or five stats with 3d6, and the last three with a 2d6+6. Some other 'power levels' might have different methods of rolling, but we've not quite experienced those yet. Now each of your stats have derived stats, things like Luck, Know, Effort etc. As well as some skills that directly are affected by your stats. Such as own language, dodge and gaming. You might have options to pick races (up to the GM) and you'll typically pick some sort of class (again, up to the GM)

Your EDU stat allows you to put points into your class skills. Or sometimes you'll have a preset number. Again, up to the GM. If EDU is used for this, you get skill points of 20xEDU Your Int stat allows you to put points into not class skills. Which is 10XInt amount of points. Then a skill can only max at 75% with all bonuses and modifies at creation. I'm a little hazy on these details as its normally not something that comes up. Now if you want to skill, lets say you're a cloak maker, you can put 70 points into craft cloak, and with the skill's base stat, you'll fail 25% of the time. On the flip side, at least by how my GM was doing it, it means that 75% of the time you'll get a check (To level the skill) and only 25% of the time will the check succeed and give you skill points. This is were I start having a problem with the system. Replace Craft Cloak with whatever skill you want, the result is the same. 1/4th of the cloaks you craft fail, now its up to the DM to say how bad you failed you failed. Which could be anything from a poor hemming, to you accidentally made a shelf instead, or on the most extreme end, you pulled an itchy and scratchy and made the cloak out of your own skin. And worse, you only get better on 25% of the sessions you made a cloak. I don't know about you all out there, who are reading me again, but I seriously wouldn't want a doctor that kills his 1/4th of his patients and has a very hard time learning from his mistakes. Especially when you've got a 1% chance that the doctor ends up making the human centipede out of the patient instead of just simply pulling little Susie's wisdom teeth.  When you do finally hit 100 ranks in a skill, that is pretty much it. You can't really get higher. You're at the peak of your ability. You've still got that 1% chance of turning the patient inside out, but at least you can heal most patients, until of course the DM decides you've been having it to easy and makes all the checks "hard" (You've got to get under half your skill.)

[dreamingofdice]

Stories of the Game - Character to Player disconnection

One of the most annoying things in a game is Metagaming. You know the guy, the one who constantly knows everything thats going to happen in the game before it happens because he did the module before. He knows the stats of every enemy and monster. Over hears conversations and his character suddenly acts on knowledge in another in game room in another in game town. But there is also the reverse of this. A sort of Metagaming where the player doesn't know things their characters should know. Were the player is acting on his own base line instincts and desires, because the information he should have known, due to his character knowing, never came to him.

I've had a few DMs that do this, some of them to the extreme, some do it in such delicious irony as well. Some DMs expect the player to do things that the player cannot do without metagaming. Sometimes neither the player nor the character knows the information that the DM thought they would know or a clue they would get. DM 1 - Town of Death

So the game is already at a pretty rocky start. Before we come to the town of death, we start off at some caves were we were suppose to find some sort of special treasure inside. There is a couple of pitfalls here and there, as well as this one tunnel that the DM basically had the characters keep rolling escape artist checks until they got stuck. Probably not intentionally like that, but that is what happened. Mind you, at this time, only my character, an archeologist bard, could really even hope to pass the DC on a constant basis. This first session pisses off our sushi chef barbarian to the point he has to get up and leave his computer (We do this online)

So we find some poem password thing, and go to the treasure vault door. Seems simple and easy. We read the password, nothing happens. After much frustration and groaning we find out that we never said /to/ the door, hence nothing happening. Alright fine. The treasure turned out to be dirt. Special growing dirt, and we figured out its puzzle much faster. Now we also had reports that someone before us disappeared in a certain spot, near a bottomless pit. We investigate and drop a few rocks down it. No Sound. As Expected of a Bottomless pit right? Well apparently the lack of sound was suppose to be a clue that it /did/ have a bottom, and that bottom was covered with a body. We couldn't see past 40 feet into the pit, so we weren't risking anything to go down a bottomless pit that we've confirmed was lacking of the bottom of pit noise making capabilities.

So we loose out on some treasure and such. Then we head out again to the city of death. As we walk up, suddenly we get ambushed by a bunch of barbarians that kill and viciously dismember most of us. One of us dies from rocks falling. Oh boy did this make the sushi chef mad again.

Fear not though, we come back to life the next day. Now I, and one other were playing a pony race that our sushi chef made up for the game. I was Daring Do, and he was Snapsight, my loyal wizard scribe. We wake up in a manger and get stared at by small children and adults. The humanoids wake up in the inn.

When we talk we get called demons and some other such nonsense, but hell, we're talking technicolored pastel ponies. Before we get regrouped and finish freaking out from being savagely torn apart early, this hulk of a woman comes charging in and begins yelling at us and demanding we leave. Shortly after she begins dragging us out, giving us a story of the village and like just before, and before we get out of the village, the barbarians attack us again, killing everyone again.

So now on to our second death, we wake screaming again, my character is really freaking out and we start getting "real" the story from the barbarians that have been killing us. We get told the she-hulk was planning to kill us and toss our bodies over an imaginary line so we don't come back to life, and around a certain time, everyone goes crazy and starts killing each other.

Of course, we can't prove either groups story. But one wants to protect this device to keep the village alive, and another wants to destroy it and end the madness.

Its about this time as well, the wizard, who actually has passed a number of knowledge checks and the like, suddenly starts getting aloof and quite. He only tells us a few things, and mostly, is something kinda broken up like this...

"Aarrgh.. its got to stop.. heh.. the demons.. argh.."

So, our well of knowledge drys up. Supposedly this was partially because this guy (Who also is one of the same DMs that does this disconnection thing) was a co-dm in the city of death adventure.

So we've got nothing to go on but a he said she said story and all our answers lie in this tower in the center of town where the spell is cast.

We start trying to sneak stealthily up there. Of course kids stop us and gawk, especially when a forth party member shows up. She hulk appears and immediately grabs the new PC and begins strangling the life out of her. We're all powerless to do anything because she's got all sorts of magic items on that increase her AC well beyond what we can do. She rolls a one though, and we manage to start running and attempt an escape. We decide that we're getting out of the town, and start fleeing.

This worries the DM due to having his entire adventure now being thrown aside cause our characters are CLEARLY out matched. Even with our best plans(like trying to use distractions and smoke, and hallucinations), having She hulk or the barbarians descend down on us means instant death, an experience that is slowly warping our character's minds.

The Wizard becomes increasingly anti-social, My character become increasing enraged, the barbarian becomes increasingly depressed and seeking to go back to being a sushi chef, or down grading herself to noodle maker. The oracle becomes increasingly confused (As the DM never informed the player on anything before hand and even we couldn't fill in the gaps enough)

We had a plan to create fire and smoke and distract them long enough to get in the library and figure out what the hell is going on. But the wizard and oracle get separated and for some reason can't seem can't get to the rendezvous point before we head to the library.

Instead the Oracle starts taking gunfire, nearly killing her again, because randomly someone shows up wielding a gun. Or possibly a bow and Arrow. I forget which exactly. And the wizard suddenly becomes one with the shadows and lurks around in the shade for some reason.

Once the oracle finally gets to us, we're being attacked by the other ranged character, and they see each other and us, and we bolt the heck out of there. The DM tries to assure us about things like mutually assured destruction or some silly such, and if we just sit and watch the two fight, we'd be able get in.

Our characters though are like heck no. The likely hood of that happen is low (Even if we knew metawise, that it was going to happen) and try to get out of the town and out of the adventure.

He begs us, don't go! And so we're like alright, but you've got to give our characters.. SOMETHING to want to try again. A clue, a sign, a dream, SOMETHING. That something came in the form of a quick dream to our oracle about a book inside a cave. We go there, to find the book and through some difficulty (As the book was turning to dust right there), discover a secret entrance into the library. We begin heading there trying to wrap our way around to the back of the  library to get at the door. It was hidden as to be expected, and I do my archeologist stuff to try and find it. And find it I did. But this is were we start having more problems of what characters know and what we know, and the 'wording' of things becoming important.

I'm told there is a large stone as the door and its been worked into the wall and to look like the rest of the wall. I roll some checks to try and figure out how to open it. The DM goes on about how its an upright stone about 2-3 feet thick. And somehow, that description is suppose to be a clue to how the door would open. The barbarian tries to break it, but does nothing. About this time, the oracle starts giggling and pulls out a wand to cast spells on us all, in the middle of a high stress situation, when we don't know anything going on and every time we get "answers" they don't answer anything...

To be continued in Part II

[dreamingofdice]

Game development philosophy - The four groups

As I look through all the MMO games out there that I've played, and seen played. The games that have been developed and the games that have fallen I've come to realize there are four types of players out there. They are all rated on if they have time or money, both, or neither. The Alpha group - This is the old traditional group that most game developers seem to cater to. They've got money they're putting into the game, they've got time they are putting into the game. How they have this varies, but the fact is, they have both things that a game developer wants, making them the perfect candidate to have everything go to.

Its actually fairly impossible not to cater to them, as if you cater to any groups, these guys will always have first rights. The problem become expounded when the cash shop of a game also items of power. Combined with their time they can pour into the game, they quickly rise to the top and dominate everything.

Time group - People who have no money to put into the game but they have a lot of time. It might not be so much they are poor, but rather, they don't see the point of putting money into the game. Traditionally, developers ignore this group. However this is an important group the ecology of the game as these guys, along with alpha group, create the population of the game. No population, no fun, no money.

Neverwinter Online Handles this group wonderfully with astral diamond to Zen coin trades. A person with money buys Zen Coins and uses it to buy Astral Diamonds. AD, kinda represent time in the game, as you can collect pretty good numbers of them by constantly playing the game. Then AD are used for almost everything that Zen Coins aren't. In a sense, these players can sell their time to players with money.

Money Group - On the flip side is another group that is often catered to, but only so much. Too often, developers try to trick this side into buying things of power, like a sword that does +300 dmg, when normally swords in game do only 30.

This creates a rather bad imbalance of the game, which causes people with only time to begin griping about how ridiculous it is that you can spend so much money to become powerful, rather than playing the game.

The last group is the most unfortunate of all, cause as of currently, I cannot figure anything to do for them. They do not have time nor money. They play the game casually, but not for very long, resulting them in dropping in power as they are not leveling or buying things to help them out.

Again, Neverwinter has done a little for them, where they could use thier phone to access various tasks and the like for crafting items and such, but it'll never pull them out with the rest of the pack.

[dreamingofdice]

Review - War of Omens: Flash game

Ah, CCGs, how I love and hate thee. War of Omens is one of these, a digital collectible card game where three factions square off to take on each other. Choose your faction, your hero and your cards.  A bit confusing is the terms used in the game. You've got a hero who works for a faction and you build a deck for the hero. Each hero has their own special card which levels up every for levels of the hero. The deck you built for the hero is called a bank. 

At the end of each turn you draw three cards (up to four in hand) and restock your bank, as opposed to most games that you draw from your deck at the start of the turn. 

Your deck starts off with about 11-12 coins, named differently based on your faction. These are used to build up your pool of resources. Gold use used to buy cards from the bank. The bank is located on the left hand side of your screen and contains up to four cards. If you go over this, the bottom one cycles out.

Usually when you buy a card from the bank, it goes from the bank to your deck. Then instead of a coin card, you might draw that card instead. Cards played from your hand are free now. There is four types of cards, Allies, Rites, Instants and Plots. The last two are card type names I made up. Allies are creatures, and typically have an on turn ability. Some have on feed or on play, or some other trigger. Unlike games like MTG there is no ally that simply has no abilities.  Rites are a special card that only Daramek (Red) have. After playing them, they sit on the battlefield and every card you play afterwards does something in addition to its normal effect, such as adding random resources or attacking. Instants are cards that have a one time effect and usually go into your deck after using them. Vespitole uses these a lot.  Plots are a Metris unique card. They sit on the battlefield doing their effects and are currently untouchable.  Your resources are:

Gold - Pretty much only used to buy things from your bank. Bounty is the only card that makes sitting on a gold pile into a powerful weapon. However you pretty much need to buy things from the bank to do things.

Food - While this resource alone isn't enough to defeat your enemies, it is enough to make it harder if not impossible for your enemy to defeat you if you've got enough food. It heals you, your allies and activates some allies abilites.

Skulls - This only has one use. Hurting things. You can kill off enemy allies or damage the hero with these skulls

Magic - This is the everything resource, but really only shows up in Vespitole on a constant basis. Daramek can get it too, but it is random due to their resource produces producing only random things. It does food, skulls and gold's effects. 

The factions you have are:

Vespitole - Green - This faction gets bigger and bigger. Every card draws at least one more card from your deck and practically everything builds more resources. Synod can restock your bank. Its not uncommon for Vespitole to start a nearly infinite loop of drawing cards from their deck

Daramek - Red - This faction is about sacrifice. Its allies mean nothing to them, and often are used as power sources for rites and other sacrificial things. Every ally that has the ability to attack other than Orphans attacks multiple times but eats an ally to do so.

Metris - Blue - Oh people hate to play against this faction. Its the only faction without allies. Its the only faction that doesn't build its own deck. Every card is destroyed after use There is a hero though that can prevent that 10% of the time. Which causes the card to go into your deck after use instead of being used up until it is restocked in your bank again. 

Nothing is sacred, you can steal things from their deck, their bank, their hand, resource pool and even allies from their playing field. You can redirect and misdirect their attacks even. 

The good - Well the first thing is, every card can be purchased with just silver. Typically speaking at least. There isn't a rare card that can only be gotten if you spend 400 gems on a cash shop only booster back. 

There are two "free" boosters, one costs 100 silver (2 skirmishes worth) and the other 300 silver. The 100, contains every card there is, and the 300 skips the common cards, giving you better odds at a rarer card.  You can only have one of each card, but any time you redraw the same card again, you gain card exp. After four times it levels up. I don't know how many you need to level it up again, but level 3 supposedly is the max.

The bad - the 300 silver booster requires you to buy silver or gems to unlock it. Not too bad really, the cheapest silver pack lets you pick up 20 basic boosters.  There is no way to trade cards with other players. And due to the kickstarter there are some cards (most notably a coin) that cannot be gotten. This is the only card there is that is like this.

Also there is apparently something called a dead draw, where you draw all cards you've maxed already wasting your silver. And beyond the gem pack at the moment there isn't anything else to use them on.

Indifferent - One odd thing is when your in a multiplayer match, you don't know who you are with. Nor can you talk to them. Some people like this because a single player isn't going to get hate for doing things (like playing a blue deck) other people hate it because they want to know. 

9/10 dice. Its a fun and addicting game, that I quite recommend to play, but its still only just come out and will be interesting to see what else comes around with it.

http://www.warofomens.com/

[dreamingofdice]

Review - Dungeon Keeper phone game

Well this is quite an interesting piece of work. The game is a free to play, cash shop type of system that connects you to other "keepers" all vying for more power and to be more evil than the others. 

Now, I've never played the original, and from other reviews, this game seems to be nothing like them. Its fairly quick in set up where you've gotta dig your way out of the dungeon heart to get access to these mines that produce 2/4 resources you'll use in the game. Gold and Stone.  Stone is used for building almost everything and tends to be the most popular thing you're going to use to increase your dungeon's level.  Gold is probably second in that list and is used in one shot traps, a few structures and all the troops I've found so far. Third is the cash shop currency, Gems. These little buggers can be gained by doing achievements, digging out stone tiles, special raids, or just by buying them.  Lastly, the one I feel is usually least important is Mana. This powers your spells and really is only good when your attacking someone or doing NPC battles.  The good - Well the first thing I noticed is that you can gain gems for free. This is actually a pretty good trade for time, allowing you to rather quickly gain your first 3 imps. I also noticed you don't spend resources to repair things that get broke when someone raids you, and you don't lose /everything/ either. Not only that but you get shielded for a few hours and some other bonuses to encourage the player to strike back. The game can be played without really playing it. Just set up your imps, slap them around a bit and your good to go. Only times you've really got to pay attention is when your raiding or having an npc raid you.

The bad - Notice how I said have an NPC raid you? Yeah, if you get attacked by a real player, you can't use your mystical might to defeat them. You can't do anything you can do with a normal NPC. You can't even see /how/ they attacked you.  Because the game is a play and forget, along with cash shop for time, things take /forever/ to build after a certian point. Supposedly slapping your imps does double their work speed, but I can't really see it too well. Haven't brought out the stop watch. 

The game is also very recently seeming to have a hard time connecting to the server. Sometimes I can get the work done easily, other times I go do something and suddenly discover that the game is now reconnecting and some of my work was not remembered. Happens often when i'm slapping imps.

The controls though, perhaps its just my phone, but often I'll try to grab one thing to drag it, and dig a hole instead. Or fill my dungeon with dirt. Or after playing it it keeps wanting to move that object again, leading to a rather difficult battle of frustration. 

The game also bugs you at log in with a few downloads, the rap is a bit amusing but the wallpaper does nothing but eat up phone life.  Overall, I'd give it a 7/10 dice.

Its playable, functional and fairly well polished. But it doesn't really have anything that grabs me and makes me want to keep playing it over and over, beyond just a simple time mechanic. There is no real story or anything, the game is overall just pvp battles with a few npc stuff thrown in. And most of the humor is used up in the first 5 minutes of play. So if your a fan of tower defense against other players and setting up ways to out think your opponents, I'd suggest it for at least a little while. 

[dreamingofdice]

Please Pardon the Dust

Welcome traveler, stay a while and listen.

Dreaming of Dice is a branched blog of Alchemy Studios Ink's main blog, but this one is going to focus specifically on games. Board games, video games, flash games, and the like. Even possibly a few foods and places to eat for your gaming group. My goal is to provide different tools, resources and other such things for your gaming needs. Expect a sister site as well to this one for gaming after dark~