The Dreaded D-Pad

I went to the Rugby on Sunday with several others including a good mate who is and always has been an avid console gamer. We've crossed paths with roleplay many years ago but he never took to miniature gaming, prefering D-Pad to D6.

Catching up gaming wise and chatting about Dark Heresy I was describing our various recent issues and frustrations and suddenly had something a of mini eureka moment. As a player group we've got in a lot of hours with the character sheets, we've all also played a lot of virtual RPG with WoW, Knights of the Old Republic and Skyrim eating horrific numbers of hours between us.

We qualify as proper geeks, just with the ability to shower more often!

At the end of the day all RPG adventures are essentially linear, you've got to get from the start to the end, but it's all about how you get there. To me the real skill of a GM is to create what I refer to as the "Illusion of Choice" i.e. that the players have actual choice as to how they go about things. I feel that a major GM skill is being able deal with things on the fly, it's soemthing I really enjoy as a GM. As such I tend to write most of my own adventures, often by bullet point, and when I use pre-written stuff I tend to strip them down and basically scavenge the bits I want, quite often from the pages of 2000AD!

In recent years RPG games have expanded their play area massively, the ability to just bimble about along with multiple character builds and options is a minimum requirement.

 Having recently played a LOT of Skyrim I took a mace and shield warrior build through to level 35 before needing a change. Restarting with an archer / asssassin the whole gaem ahs been revitalised for me. Avoiding the main storyline and pursuing the Thieves Guild story I'm level 35 again having avoided dragons like the plague and repeating very few previously completed quests and haven't even begun to slow down.

So, having eventually arrived at my point have RPG video games spoilt us or simply raised the bar? Plenty of poor RPG style video games out there but they've all been designed and playtested right? The AI engine controls the virtual enviroment and everything in it, so it should all be down to the quality of the programmers / writers? With a traditional RPGyou introduce the human element coin, i.e. the ability to feck up vs the ability to react and be inspired.

To be honest I think I may have become a bit spoilt becasuse as much as it can be about the GM's ability to deal with the adventure, including it's limits and flaws, surely it's also about the playing group's ability to do the same warts, limits, flaws and all?

May just be time to help Mr C rather than just give feedback......damn it!! ;)

Grinding it Out

As far as Painting Points go it most definitely wasn't the most prolific weekend but that's not to say I didn't achieve at least something........mainly on Skyrim.

With the snowy weather gifting me even more free time than I already had I realised that I didn't have a single current project figure prepped to go under the brush. As such I spent a fair bit of time tool in hand getting my Forge Father and Veermyn teams plus Gabe built and cleaned up along with Rob's Arbite and Charlie's Tech-Priest for Dark Heresy. 

Spraying everyone up, between the flakes, I tore myself away from the X-Box Saturday and Sunday evenings, Mr C was home so I was being polite :), to get brush back in hand. Fancying a few more single figures this is where I got to. Left to right, Tech-Priest semi basecoated, Gabe with his washes drying and Arbite West awaiting highlight. I did complete my Dreadball balls but I'm not going to stoop that low for a Painting Point.

Otherwise Friday night and most of Sunday was spent on the 'Rim turning oh so slightly evil whilst also engaging in a fair bit of mining, smelting, smithing and enchanting all to the point of turning myself a touch more big bad. Did go out and hit stuff too........and then bought a house, decorated it and stacked away my recent load of Dragon bone and scale.

They keep on finding me now, and generally just getting in the way. Shame I hadn't caught on to buying my own place earlier as I'd sold my previous load of bone and scales off. Oh well........only a game :)

Got five days off over the Easter weekend and, as well as actually leaving the house on occasion, have set myself the target of finishing at LEAST the Veermyn. Would like to get the Fathers done as well but still struggling for a scheme. I've done Black / Gold for Corp, Red / White for the Orx and will be going Camo Greens for the ginger Veermyn. When they arrive the Robots will be washed Metallics and the Z'Zor a bright Green / Yellow insectoid.

Blue seems the obvious choice, and seems to be the default scheme Dwarves of all ilks, but feels far to expected. The figures seem strangely under-armoured and I'll be painting an undersuit rather than skin. I don't normally do test figures might have to.

I'll let you know, otherwise suggestions on a comment would be very welcome!

It's a SIZE thing!!

 So, Thursday night's roleplay saw our return to Jon's D&D campaign and the welcome return of Aaron to the group. Having previously preferred just to play Star Wars Mr T hooped across the genre divide to add a Pirate, Warrior sub-class to the group.

That means that both GM's have six players to contend with which I'm aware is considered pretty BIG by most players. With introductions, recap and re-introduction we spent most of the session talking (debating / arguing) various courses of action to take in view of the scene laid before us.

This scene involved the laying to waste of a small highland town, with whose burgers we had lodged 30,000 gold in the form of a solid gold idol's head. The intent was to "invest" (acquire / enslave) said town BUT, strangely, after the marauder's attack it was not to be found!

Cue great debate as to our purpose, motivation and proposed actions. With six of us we cover a wide range of options boasting as we do a Human Paladin, Teifling Warlock, Dwarven Cleric, Elven Ranger (plus wolf), Halfing Rogue and now a Human Pirate. There's very little eventuality that we can't have a go at. Problem is we all want to have a got at them in our own way!

Eventually we did STUFF. Myself, Rogue, and the Ranger went out and tracked the Vampire led marauder band to a rock amphitheatre where thei tracks disappeared (planal transportation spell). The Cleric spoke to the dead for clues and the Warlock researched various magical glyphs. The Paladin healed people and touseled hair while the Pirate dug graves,.......it's a plunder thing apparently.

Stopping relatively early, at a convenient point, Aaron was slightly put out that he hadn't got to hit anyone. This was often the case with Star Wars, lots of planing the action often go in the way of the action!

Meanwhile I spent a bit more time on Skyrim last night, this time with my Steel Clad Orc Brute rather than my more delicate Khajit Rogue. Running through a relatively well known Vampiric hold I actively had a go at sneaking about and taking a number of pot-shots from the shadows realising that he was somewhat deficient in this respect and the practice would improve him significantly.

That's right, a hulking beast of a hack and smash specialist, in the making, sneaking around in full plate! He did rather well at it and then had the superior cleave and clear ability to back it up as required. The head Vamp chap died SO much easier this time, though not before applying a certain little kiss on the cheek.

A couple of hours later I was sufficiently impressed to cough up for a particularly keen magical Orc Bow to go with the Greatsword of Frost and the Orc Sword of Stamina eating / Mace of Shock combo that I'd tried out dual wielding (not as easy as I'd hoped). With good Heavy Armour and reasonable block, I learn!, he's quite the fearsome prospect in most situations and running a reasonable favourite.

I do however realise that picking either locks or a pocket is likely to end up with any number of breaks, locks, pockets......arms!

Tangenting to another part of my, eventual, point SIZE is such an issue with the hobby and not only just scale. BIG games become BIGGER with small figures and similar budgets. There does seem to be more of  a trend for skirmish over the more recent years but even skirmish games go BIG when played with action men. Bigger still seems to be perceived as better.

Thought: isn't it more a question of PROPORTION???

Flights of Fantasy

Continuing my, unpaid and unofficial, promotional drive for Fantasy Flight games I ran Shaun and a couple of the boys through Warhammer Invasion at the club Tuesday night.

In response Shaun then ran us through a four way game of Blood Bowl Team Manager. Generally speaking it was good fun and learning as we went quickly ate a couple of entertaining hours. Given the game time length I did at one point find myself wondering why we weren't just playing a four-way game of Blood Bowl but that was missing the point!

Basically, we played five rounds of upto five games. Within each game you only play the Highlights, one-on-one with a variety of different spoils and resources available to the winner of each game. As such you resource manage to build your team, both players, coaching and support staff, in the chase for as much Fan Factor as possible, which decides who wins.

So what I didn't cotton onto immediately is that you're playing through a five round league in an evening, rather than a single game! Probably best that I don't take anymore bangs to the head then :)

I think I still prefer Warhammer Invasion as it replaces a game that I don't want to play anymore with one that I do. I still WANT to play Blood Bowl, not that I dislike or wouldn't play BBTM again.

What it has made me think it that you could play your classic Warhammer Fantasy Campaign, be it league, map, Mighty Empires or whatever you fancy, just replacing the tabletop battles with Warhammer Invasion. Maybe best of three hands to win the battle? Something I could see me and people / gamers like me (the disenchanted whinger ones) going for. Just a thought??

Meanwhile I am struggling not to let Skyrim dominate my hobby time. Currently running two characters, a Khajit Rogue (a transfer of my D&D Halfling) and an Orc Warrior (another Warhammer replacement) I'm just enjoying myself far too much.

The plan was to try and limit myself to every other hobby evening. I managed an early finish yesterday and needed to get various domestics done so ear-marked it as a Skyrim night. I made the mistake of turning the X-Box on first and suddenly it was bedtime before I'd done a stroke of flat-work. Domestics tonight then which means I'm unlikely to get more than an hour or two with the brushes.......

I'll just play a bit more Skyrim then, especially as I'm halfway through clearing out a Vampiric keep! Friday night for brushes whilst I watch the rugby :)

As I've never been more than a casual gamer I can't really manage to feel too guilty for the distraction, especially as I'm running anything for the foreseeable, .......at least not for a while yet anyway. To keep me honest I'll keep my previous monthly Painting Point target of 20 and see where I get to!

January.........15 PPs to find :)