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Angel: Is this your big strategy for gettin' the ring back?
Spike: I had a plan.
[Hurls Spike onto a car and pins him face first to the bonnet]
Angel: You, a plan?
Spike: A good plan, smart plan, carefully laid out. But, I got bored.
[Spike pushes Angel against a wall]
Spike: All that watching, waiting. My legs started to cramp.
Spike = our game style, we plan and then we kick the front door in.
Once we surprised ourselves by sticking to the plan and things were going so well we stopped and sabotaged ourselves by taking insane risks resulting in character deaths.
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I've run both, and I much prefer the heroic gaming style. I love the reckless, daring acts, the close calls, the edge of your seat brushes with death. Man, that's fun stuff.To me, that's the whole point of playing. I want to be a heroic hero who takes crazy heroic risks. I have a house, kids, a job, and bills in real life, I game to escape from that for a while.
I will say this though, having ADD can make ignoring the asides and OT conversations incredibly difficult sometimes. I'm one of those people that takes a bit to get focused, but once I do I'm good to go. Sometimes it's really easy to get knocked out of that focus and off into la-la land.
I think this is how I feel about darker-themed games. I add horror elements in my games and sometimes the heroes lose but overall I tend to stay away from the completely dour game. IRL I've dealt with some truly dark stuff, family issues, death and loss of a very personal nature. I lose as many life-conflicts as I win.
When I game I'm looking to escape that for a time. I actively pursue a game where fantastic things happen, heroes get rewarded and doing the right thing works out.
Really?
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I wrote this long thing up about why I prefer gritty lower level games but it got gobbled :( Basically I cant relate to high powered beings and prefer closer to life PCs. I read stories like Game of Thrones and Pillars of Earth and wish I was playing a character in that type of story. I read lord of the rings and comics and they are a nice light hearted fantasy escape but dont engage me. YMMV.
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Yeah that's pretty much the opposite of me. I can't stand Game of Thrones because I think it's too realistic. Scumbag backstabbing politics is the name of the game on historical earth. Why in hell would I want that in my escapist game/story?
What I want out of my games is more Final Fantasy - where there's evil in the world and the job of the PCs is to be the guy who runs up and kicks it in the teeth.
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Yeah that's pretty much the opposite of me. I can't stand Game of Thrones because I think it's too realistic. Scumbag backstabbing politics is the name of the game on historical earth. Why in hell would I want that in my escapist game/story?
What I want out of my games is more Final Fantasy - where there's evil in the world and the job of the PCs is to be the guy who runs up and kicks it in the teeth.
Depends on which Final Fantasy, really.
Of course, where my namesake came from was basically a guy who, in his world, was trying to do what the typical FF hero does in the second paragraph, while the rest of the world was engaging in the first paragraph and the ending is ambiguous at best...
Either he survived and lost most everything - except his family - and was reviled forever, or was turned into a ghost. I like the former one better, and feel it's more strongly supported, despite its implicit disgust at human social tendencies, but, you know it's ambiguous enough that it could be argued either way.
Regardless, his best friend became king and... diiiiiieeeeed...?... or lived, but was stabbed?... after betraying everyone because the queen went... craazzyyy...?... paranoid...?... something... and stabbed him when he brought her flowers for her birthday? Eh, I don't know, it was just sad and kind of mind-blowing at the time. Way better than MacBeth, at any rate, and got the same message across: doing evil sucks and you don't win in the end, even if you win in the end.
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Yeah that's pretty much the opposite of me. I can't stand Game of Thrones because I think it's too realistic. Scumbag backstabbing politics is the name of the game on historical earth. Why in hell would I want that in my escapist game/story?
What I want out of my games is more Final Fantasy - where there's evil in the world and the job of the PCs is to be the guy who runs up and kicks it in the teeth.
See I can visualize those types of characters it allows me to examine life in even more depth than I do everyday. I guess I cant get enough real life that even my fantasies are painted with it. Exploring these elements in game has also allowed me to be mindful of how I am with my family and at work. For me its an exercicse of perspective and I cant percieve a world thats black and white or superpowered.
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I love my games (when I am the GM) to be serious and capricious at the same time. This is partially do to who my favorite villian/heroes are.
I LOVE using the Fey, they are interesting, funny, but also grim and, quite honestly, terrifying. The fact that the "good" fey and the "bad" fey are not quite so clearly defined also helps :)
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Tacticslion, you have pretty much become one of my top favorite people on these boards EVER (somewhere around the top, with Ashiel). FFT is easily hands down my single most favorite video game in the history of my 23 year video gaming career... Better even than Dragon's Lair (don't care who ya are, that princess was hot...).
Which begs the question. Thy name is Ramza? (assuming I'm not mixing up characters, it's been a while since I've picked up a PS1 controller...)
That said... Fairly certain I've posted here before, but here's a more up to date feeling on my games.
I like it to run the gamut, like the novels I read. Some serious, horrifying, world-threatening terror is threatening the world. We heroes need to go save it. Add in whatever elements are integral to the plot, horror, politics, what have you. Keep it serious, but make room for hilarity.
I'm sorry, I can't enjoy a story if it doesn't have points in which it makes me laugh. As much as I loathe Twilight, the first novel had some funny parts which made it stomach-able. Potter was full of laughs, which had me reading from the beginning of book 1 to the end of book 7 in a single, full-day sitting. Marla Mason, Matthew Swift, and the Noble Dead sagas were all pretty serious (and rather grim, in the last books I read for them), but at the same time, pretty damn hilarious and light hearted at just the right points in time.
So, yeah. When I run, I've got major empires at war with back stabbing politics, and if the PCs are well-known, might try and recruit them in the middle of their save-the-world quest. For more evil nations, that's when the hunting begins if they refuse (I hate having background elements that don't affect the story in some way, see Checkov's Gun, if I'm getting my terms right). The world will be alive, complete with fluctuating economies, potential wars and disasters, and an NPC they saved a year ago that promised them life-time free room and board at the Bannered Mare may have been eaten by a different bugbear. To say nothing abou traveling inept kobold bards, contracts put out for the worst orc bard in history a raffle needs to be held to determine which one is chosen, and a magical gnome who travels around and hammers the "Melvin Award" to the corpses of stupid adventurers who died by doing stupid things.
At all times though, I make sure there's serious chance of character death. Yes, you may wander into a dragon's lair at level two if you don't heed the warnings (Hi Melvin!). No, just because you're bad-ass adventurers, the king will not roll over and let you extort him for money to protect his kingdom, that's what his army is for, and his wizard that's about to fireball your face. Why are you getting angry about dying to an explosive-rigged pit trap, it's a kobold warren, you didn't expect to look for traps? Congratulations, the nation you were trying to save from the hideous secretive evil cult just got ransacked by a barbarian horde you were asked to deal with, enjoy that walk through town.
Somehow, I get the feeling how I like my game got lost in all that. For those who couldn't follow my ramblings... I like a living game world, where chance of character death isn't astronomical. At the same time, the tone should be what it should be for that point in the story, but if it doesn't have it's light hearted moments, it's not engaging, nor is it as memorable as the serious stuff will dull and have less effect over time.
Just my two pence.
Tacticslion, you have pretty much become one of my top favorite people on these boards EVER (somewhere around the top, with Ashiel).
Woah. Thanks. O.O
Which begs the question. Thy name is Ramza? (assuming I'm not mixing up characters, it's been a while since I've picked up a PS1 controller...)
Hahahah! No, though I can see how it really does read that way.
No, what I meant was only my user title Tacticslion was inspired by said game, in which the hero does the stuff I mentioned.
(And my typical avatar, where possible, is directly from that game. However, it is not Ramza. And, of course, it is not here.)
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See I can visualize those types of characters it allows me to examine life in even more depth than I do everyday. I guess I cant get enough real life that even my fantasies are painted with it.Yeah that's pretty much the opposite of me. I can't stand Game of Thrones because I think it's too realistic. Scumbag backstabbing politics is the name of the game on historical earth. Why in hell would I want that in my escapist game/story?
What I want out of my games is more Final Fantasy - where there's evil in the world and the job of the PCs is to be the guy who runs up and kicks it in the teeth.
Yeah, that's the difference. I don't want to examine life in more depth - especially when I'm trying to play out a fantasy story. I want to be as far away from real life as possible.
Depends on which Final Fantasy, really.
Of course, where my namesake came from was basically a guy who, in his world, was trying to do what the typical FF hero does in the second paragraph, while the rest of the world was engaging in the first paragraph and the ending is ambiguous at best...
Yeah I would love to play Tactics but the battle system is a complete and utter turnoff for me. Reading a synopsis of the plot, it's a bit darker and more cynical than I would probably enjoy.
No, as I've gone over in many threads, my FF of choice is VI. In which horrible things do happen, including possibly the most successful villain triumph in the entire series, but other than short moments of doom and gloom the main characters never fully give up hope of setting things right, and moments of backstabbing and betrayal are relatively few and only performed by the actual villains - unlike something like Game of Thrones, where everybody is a doublecrossing schemer, because the ones who aren't are all dead.
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Very true on VI.
I don't mean like activating the MacGuffin, or making a significant victory, I mean he outright wins: the good guys are beaten and scattered, the world is ruined (hence the name) and the vast majority of the population dies at his whim.
He literally wanted nothing else the entire game. He won.
The fact that you later defeat him is hardly relevant to the fact that he was successful in destroying so many and so much.
Made it that much more awesome when you went around making the world a little brighter. And, of course, killed him.
... of course, saving Cid (which I always tried to do) was kind of weird, though.
While you might not like the battle system, and the story may sound dark, I'd still heartily recommend FFT to you Orthos.
The thing is, no matter how dark it gets, the good guy is always a good guy.
Yeah, he questions himself, his motives, and his abilities, but he never stops being good... even as it costs him most things that he once thought he held dear. Of course, ...
... which is pretty awesome.
Oh I've had it recommended for me several times, and I'm sure I'd enjoy the plot and the main characters if nothing else. The other games in the Ivalice universe were enough to prove that.
All that's fairly nil if you can't get past the first handful of battles because the system is like pulling teeth to you, though =)
HAHAHAHAH!
Oh, man, those first battles.
Let me guess: the fight v. the thieves (the first one with Delita), and then the first one with Algus?
Pffff~t, yeah, I shelved the game for the first few months because of those.
(The first one was mostly because I didn't know how to add more people to the battlefield on me team. The second was because "DANG IT, I WON'T LET YOU DIIIIEEEEE~~!")
But seriously, once you get the hang of it (and do some serious power-leveling - Ramza is great for that), you can start to blow through the story mode and even enjoy it.
If you've got the original PS version, I can even give you exploits, though I'd recommend against using them.
Oh, and important: don't level up only Ramza. Level the heck out of everyone else to keep pace with him!
(Because the random enemies level with your strongest character...)
I do have the PS1 version, tucked away in my boxes somewhere with my other PS1 games (FFVII which I have on steam anyway, FFIX, Castlevania SOTN, Star Ocean II, a few others...).
It's been years since I tried it but yeah something about thieves sounds familiar.
The first battle isn't lose-able. It's almost a cutscene that you play.
The first battle you actually play, has a guest named Delita. It's... hard, because you're level 1, and they've got unlimited resources. The best strategy was to take out the chemist.
The thing with the second one was that your options amount to (on my reading) "save him!" or "forget that random dude: shouldn't have got jumped by thieves - we'll kill thieves ourselves!"
That... is kind of hard to swallow as a constant "good" player. It rather sucks that it's one of the few "totally your choice" moments in the game, it's impact is only on the one battle (it literally has no impact on the greater story) and I'm pretty sure they messed the coding up, such that if you select the "good" action you lose Brave and the battle is hard, but if you select the "callous" action, you gain Brave, and the battle is tremendously easier.
If you're nice, if the guest Algus goes down, you lose the battle.
If you're callous, if the guest Algus goes down, oh well, the game carries on.
(Also not helping was the fact that you had no way of knowing you'd need to stock up on potions like a fiend before going into this battle.)
Either way, those two battles - one right after the other - can be really brutal on anyone who doesn't know what to expect, and leaves a very high "Wall" for people to pass to get into the game.
Of course, if you're in Ocala, I'll go over there and play through 'em with you... :D
(Or if you're on Roll20, PM me, and we'll chat. It's the only AIM/WLM-style chat thing I have at present. XD)
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Heh well my main obstruction to playing the game is A) Finding it in my boxes, since I just moved, and B) not having a PS1/2 at the moment, something I plan to rectify around Christmastime if all goes well.
Unfortunately Ocala's a bit too far for me, I'm in northern Georgia ;) I'm on Skype myself sadly as well, but Roll20's something I've meant to look into for quite some time so that might be an option =)
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^ true that =D ^
Northern Georgia? Sweet! Which part?
(I lived way down south in Waycross for a while, but I also lived in North Carolina for a while, and traveled from Florida to NC/Tennessee often enough to get to know the area a bit. You wouldn't know it from my accent, however...)
As for Roll20, it's pretty great!
It's free (though it constantly asks you to give it money to negate the advertisements and get "Dynamic Lighting (and other benefits)!" whenever you load something up.
TL....we need to hang out....
We do! :D
I'm still really sorry my wife and I missed yours at Disney! :(
But maybe soon-ish!
It'll either be just me (and/or likely my three-year-old and afternoon, if it's not Ocala), or the weekend. :D
Speaking of... gotta go get 'im! :D
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Northern Georgia? Sweet! Which part?
(I lived way down south in Waycross for a while, but I also lived in North Carolina for a while, and traveled from Florida to NC/Tennessee often enough to get to know the area a bit. You wouldn't know it from my accent, however...)
Fort Oglethorpe. Just moved from Chattanooga, where I still work.
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Fort Oglethorpe sounds more like a pathfinder location than it does a place in real life.
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Fort Oglethorpe sounds more like a pathfinder location than it does a place in real life.
I know right? Even better when people ask me where I live specifically I can with a perfectly straight face say "Off the Battlefield". (Battlefield Parkway is the local name for the state road that cuts through the area, named for starting near a Civil War battlefield memorial site.)
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Chattanooga! You may well know my old college, TTU!
(Though they've moved out of downtown for a couple of years now, or so I hear.)
And yeah, I know Ft. Oglethorpe! Had to pass through it (more or less) on the way to Chattanooga when I attended there.
EDIT: Oh, yeah, and I've now acquired my son and returned home, in case it wasn't obvious. I mean, I know you were all on the edge of your seat to see that happen/know what I was doing, exactly... :P
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You can try reserving the first hour and a half of the session to BS, and declare that after that you have to play.
One of our group likes to cook (I consider him insane) so he normally fixes dinner for the group. So we try and keep most of the BS and socializing contained within the 30 minutes or so while we are munching.
..
A mystery game is fun, but if it turns out to be a mystery between clowns in a circus... Expectations aren't met.Yeah the story can and should dictate a lot of the characters' reactions. We are playing two different APs at the moment. We are starting Book 2 of Second Darkness and so far the lack of seriousness hasn't been a real issue. But we are well into Book 3 of Carrion Crown and that's the one that's really ruining my immersion. I'm a big horror fan and I love horror themed campaigns but I'm having a hard time enjoying this as much as I should because we have made it less Lovecraft and More Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein.
Some of this could just be related to the bolded part. I personally like playing a serious campaign, but to me horror themed stuff is just not serious.
I am not a big fan of horror movies/stories. Most of the things people try to do for horror; I just find to be annoying, frustrating, perplexing, or occasionally even childish.
Some examples I have run across in GM attempts at horror games.
1) GM described some foe in very exacting detail. Turns out he was trying to let us know it was the monster from some old horror movie and we had to kill it the same illogical way they did in that movie. None of the players had ever seen the movie.
2) The GM will use horror or insanity checks. Ok, I've been fighting undead for 12 levels but at the sight of this ghoul eating someone I don't know I'm suddenly going to run screaming into the night?
3) Haunts that you have to figure out what bizzare even led to their forming. I usually can't figure out how determine what happened. So there can't really be any horror. We put up a sign that there is a problem here and move on before it resets.
4) GM described how the evil figure was running his land. Eventually I said "So basically he has some power but acts like a spoiled 12 year old? Got it."
That doesn't even begin to get into the mechanics. Most of the things that seem like they could be horrifying actually aren't because raise dead, restoration, heal, and remove X are all so easy for even a mid level PC to get cast.
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I know OF TTU, though I've never visited. Downtown is a place I avoid like the plague - I've had to go twice, once to visit a temp agency and once to settle a traffic ticket. Hopefully never again =)
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I do Roll20 pretty often, so we can totally do that. :D We can convert Orthos to a FFT fanatic like us.We do! :D
I'm still really sorry my wife and I missed yours at Disney! :(
But maybe soon-ish!
Yeeeeeessssss.... one of us! One of us!
Now, of course, with the young punks and their Record of the Lion War PSP nonsense! What with the faux-olde-English and the complete lack of Engrish translation errors, and their fancy-pants cutscenes! Back in my day, we had in-game graphics and liked it! Both ways!
I know OF TTU, though I've never visited. Downtown is a place I avoid like the plague - I've had to go twice, once to visit a temp agency and once to settle a traffic ticket. Hopefully never again =)
It's probably just as well.
It was a pretty big to-do with Highland Park Baptist Church up there, but it was necessary for the school, I think, and I suspect it assisted with the opening of the very Old Traditionalist* views that had previously been too thickly involved with the school into a more Refined Modern Traditionalism*, which will be very important for its continued survival and attracting more students, as well, I think, as expanding its educational options.
... buuuuuuuuuuuut that's a lot of socio-religious school/church politics that probably don't belong here. >.<
(I can be on track any time I want! Any time! :P)
So, uh... I totally imagined FFT-style rules and music in the old Ft. Oglethorpe reenactments that I attended one time. It... worked surprisingly well.
* I use these terms in capitals like they mean anything beyond this post that I'm making just now. Arrogance, thy name is me! :D
EDIT: Oh, yeah, and downtown is pretty much a huge mess. The campus was always beautiful, but the actual city, was... rough. Of course, when I attended, I took the optional Service of going even further downtown at 4-5 AM for the homeless shelter... of course, I also had to walk.
Remind me to tell you of that one time that I was being robbed and didn't know it. Or that time when I was being propositioned by a prostitute and didn't know it. On second thought, let's not, as they both ended the same way: the person in question freaked out when I offered to call a cab, call the police, or tell them about Jesus enough, and eventually ran away, hailed a shifty-looking truck - though a different truck each time - and got in and left. I was informed later of what had actually happened. Also those stories make me look absentminded and probably stupid. So, nope, not sharing 'em. Waaaaaaiiiiiiiiiit...
Regardless, for families looking to put their kids in college, it's a pretty good thing for the college to move for safet-
Okay, I'm rambling again. I can stop any time I waaaaaaaaaannnnt~!
EDIT: I can derail anything. ANYTHING, I say!
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@ Tacticslion: Ah, I see.... That's what happens when you're insomniac and been up all night!
That said... If I wasn't so damned and determined to finish Dead Money on New Vegas (I have tried like, twenty times, just can't convince myself to keep playing that FRUSTRATING add-on), I'd be loading FFT up in my PS3-fat.
Also... what is this nonsense that Algus is a hard battle? First time, yeah, sure, but after playing it twice I figured out how, where, and when to move.
Of course, after that battle, I kind of power-level-grind my guys for a few jobs until I've got all (or most) of their abilities paid for...
The PSP version was pretty awesome... I especially loved the fact I could actually PLAY A FREAKING DEATH KNIGHT! Which is good, since my old PS1 GS broke completely and I can't hack myself an assassin or a dark knight anymore.
Sadly... I lost my PSP.... With my copy of Crisis Core in it... Some time during one of the many moves I've had to endure over the past few years....
Ah, nostalgia... Makes me want to pop in Star Ocean II, Lunar: Silver Star Story Ccomplete, Lunar: Eternal Blue.... And still left wondering about Arc the Lad (which I opted to get Lunar over, and have yet to regret). May just drag out my Dreamcast and have a go at Grandia while I'm at it....
Edit: I'd offer to hang out, but I'm way out here in Cali's capitol. where I've been slowly burning alive over the summer. THANK THE GODS FOR THE DELTA BREEZE!... /edit.
Before I derail my own derail....
I find dimmer switches to help when it comes to horror games. I've only managed to have dimmer lights like, twice... But lower light conditions help a ton, especially if you've got just enough light to read your sheet/books over the table, and nowhere else.
Might mesh well with some audio clips I've heard of that play at lower tones, lower than most humans can hear. Feel it in your spine, which induces a kind of dread feeling and agitates the player's nerves. Don't wanna use it too much, I would guess, or they'd get used to it.
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Seems my attempt at re-railing my de-rail was actually half a de-rail! Need to stop having 20+ tabs open... YET! It still kinda works... Even though I was thinking this was the Horror Done Right thread at the time for some reason...
PS... Typing on a ps3 w/ a controller takes an eternity!
Back in the day we played with dimmed lights all the time. It really did help set the mood. My eyes are so bad now though I have a hard time reading some of the print in the AP's even with all lights blazing.
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Tactics is the greatest Final Fantasy, though it always annoyed me that the named people you pick up with their unique jobs, are a hell of a lot better than those shlubs you dragged around since the beginning. I had a PSP once, and bought the FFT remake for it (along with FF1 and FF2 despite having Final Fantasy Origins for the PS1), but got rid of them as I didn't care much for handheld games (that tiny friggin screen is what kills handheld systems for me). Tactics was the first Final Fantasy I ever beat (beat FF7 and FF10).
Also, I too recommend roll20. It is a great virtual tabletop, imo.
To be more on topic: I already posted in this thread earlier in the conversation. I prefer the more serious games, with some humor. I can't really stand joke campaigns for very long. I also prefer the heroic fantasy games. I am not a fan of grimdark gritty shades of gray games. The real world is shades of gray, and I don't play D&D and such to recreate that. I like my black and white Good is This and Evil is That. I don't, however, care for the always evil enemy races.
A bit contradictory, perhaps, but that's how I feel. Orcs, gnolls, kobolds, goblins, dragons, etc. Coming up on a village of these shouldn't be an auto "Kill everything in sight because they are orcs and orcs=evil", unless they were destroying and killing a neighboring village just because.
And I won't get started on my feelings about how all the enemy races (orcs, goblins, etc) are primitive tribal cultures while the PC good races are civilized cultures. Because that is not a topic for this discussion.
Orthos: When possible, give FFT another try. Once you get past the Algus intro fight (I always choose the callous choice for that, since Algus's AI is suicidal and all around terrible), as the game gets sooo much better afterwards.
Orthos: When possible, give FFT another try. Once you get past the Algus intro fight (I always choose the callous choice for that, since Algus's AI is suicidal and all around terrible), as the game gets sooo much better afterwards.
No seriously, he is. It's so stupid.
You: "Don't worry, I'll save you! Come over here with us, and we'll help you in battle!"
Algus: "That sounds like a great idea! Even though I start out with low hit points, I'mma go rush these six guys by myself, all the way over here on the other side of the battle! You just take all of your actions - as level one or two characters, mind*, just trying to get over to me, while they surround me on three sides, attack me with weapons more powerful than the ones you have, and with probable higher levels* than you have! Nothing can go wrong!"
* (Unless you did that thing where you (probably barely) managed to level yourselves up quite a bit against the infinitely self-regenerating chemist. It's not easy to set up, though, and definitely not recommended for a first-time player... even though first-time players are the ones who would benefit from it the most.)
Ugh. Hate him so much**.
(He usually spends the better part of all of the battles "unconscious"... due, of course, entirely to "accidental friendly fire." Yes. "Accidental". Heh. >.> ... I'm totes a good guy, y'all.)
** I have legit reasons! You don't know!
EDIT: for a few editions
EDIT: Also, if you want it, This guide looks like it actually has a pretty decent idea of how the game actually plays - the others I read seem to project too much confidence and not enough understanding of what a newer player might go through.
Yeah that's pretty much the opposite of me. I can't stand Game of Thrones because I think it's too realistic. Scumbag backstabbing politics is the name of the game on historical earth. Why in hell would I want that in my escapist game/story?
What I want out of my games is more Final Fantasy - where there's evil in the world and the job of the PCs is to be the guy who runs up and kicks it in the teeth.
I got most of the way through the first GoT book and threw it across the room. I want at least some my characters in my fantasy books to have MCI (Main character Insurance).
So yeah, I like the non-realistic things more than realism. I play RPGs to escape reality, not get into politics in a game. Probably why I have never had a normal character in a game. All of mine are somewhat Neurotic :). Chaotic Good usually.. more like Neurotic Good :D