The Grass and It's Green-ness

A week ago, I had yet another rough session. The entire evening, I think I hit with one attack, maybe two. If I rolled above 10 the entire evening, it was no more than twice. I was complaining to a fellow player and made some vague threat to start playing 3.5 Edition D&D again and leaving 4th Edition. My friend responded that we had just as many problems when we played 3.5, "the grass is always greener." At the time I agreed, but more for a lack of any intelligent response than because I actually agreed. When it comes to comparisons of this current edition of D&D and previous ones, it has become harder and harder to make intelligent arguments for and against the new rule set. I've started to forget many of the problems of 3.5 and view it in a very idealized haze. "Absence makes the heart grow fonder" as it were.

So I decided to sit down and think it through. I have a lot of free mental time at my day job, so I ran through what I could remember of 3.5 and matched it up with the problems I've had with 4th Edition. And the one thing that stuck out at me was that the biggest problem with 4th Edition, the issue that made me want to throw down my pencil and dice and find something else to play was the frustration of bad rolls. I quickly realized that this was very similar to 3.5, though I rarely played characters that were quite as roll-reliant in that edition. In 4th edition, you can't avoid being roll reliant.

In 3.5, a Sleep spell was very similar to the general structure of powers in 4th Edition. You cast the spell, the monster had a chance to resist (a saving throw, rather than you rolling to hit, like in 4th Edition) and if it failed, which was fairly likely in early levels, it fell unconscious. If it resisted, there was no effect, and you had essentially "wasted" your turn. 4th Edition has mitigated this in several ways. The Sleep spell power actually does something from the onset, so you don't have to worry about wasting the action. Daily powers in general have some effect even on a miss, or are at least not expended on a miss. Some powers have effects that work regardless of the success of your attack rolls, and utility powers always work, assuming they don't have a trigger that never occurs.

Yet as I laud the efforts of 4th Edition to reduce the pain of "wasted" turns, I find that in some ways that same problem is now exacerbated by the added reliance on hitting by rolling many powers into attacks. I assume that the logic went something like this:

"Most people want to be affecting enemies on their turn. Nobody really likes spending their turn healing someone else, buffing someone in the party, or otherwise 'doing nothing important.' Let's make most powers an attack so that when you heal/buff/aid your allies, you still get to do some damage and feel like you're contributing to the eventual demise of your enemies and not just standing in the back like a MMORPG 'healbot!'"

It's not a bad idea, but it does make something as simple as healing your companions a lot dicier. Sure all leaders get two free heals per encounter (well they cost a minor action, but they always hit, and they ultimately always restore at least 1/4th of the ally's hit points) but if you try to increase your healing potential, you inevitably encounter the need to select powers that heal "on hit." I know my bard has one encounter power like that. Only clerics have such a large number of utility powers that heal that they can avoid encounter powers that do so and still have plenty of healing powers to go around. And when you've used two majestic words to keep the defender up as the black dragon pounds him with savage attacks, and the striker misses his melee attack and takes damage from the dragon's immediate reaction power and becomes bloodied, it is even worse than feeling simply like you "wasted" your turn when your Theft of Life power misses, because not only did you fail to deal any damage in the round (the worst consequence in 3.5 when you missed an attack) but you didn't heal the striker, who is now one miss away from dropping.

Now it sounds like I'm picking on 4th Edition, because at least in 3.5 you didn't waste heals when you missed attacks. That's not what I'm trying to say at all. In reality, it wasn't that much better in 3.5 because if you weren't a cleric, you had to load your prepared spells with healing spells anyway to keep your allies standing, and you had to run around touching everyone because that was the range of healing spells, and so you literally did nothing but heal as a "leader" in 3.5.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that my friend was right on the money. I didn't know it at the time, but I know it now. The grass will always seem a little greener as you peek over that fence, but remember how many house rules we had for 3.5? Maybe, just maybe, it's time to start making a list for 4th Edition. We've had a year and change, we're all starting to get a grasp on what works and what doesn't for our groups. I know I've got a mental list going. I'm sure you all do as well. I think next week I'm going to float some ideas for my DM, see what he thinks. And when I get back to running my game, I'm going to issue some new house rules. I'm actually very happy with 4th Edition, though sometimes I have trouble remembering why. Now I just need to polish off the rough edges on our relationship. But like all good relationships, it takes a little work, but it's worth every minute.

And He's Down....

Apparently, all it took was a couple months for me to completely shatter the posting schedule I had created for myself. And as I suspected, once I broke the schedule it was inevitable that I would lose some inertia. So here's an off-day post that isn't really anything but an apology on the off-chance that someone out there was reading my posts and had some down time in the last two weeks that could not be filled with reading my ramblings.

Now that my wife and I are settling into our new house and I have functioning internet again, my OCD is kicking in and I am putting myself back to work on some blog posts. Hopefully, I'll start to build a stockpile so that in case another "Big Life Event" comes along, I won't drop off the grid like this time.

Sorry again, and I'll see you all Wednesday morning!

The Marvel Universe Roleplaying Game

Ever had a night where the Dice Gods are angry with you? I call them "Mondays." But seriously, I have often lamented the inherent "swingy-ness" of using a randomized number system to determine outcomes in RPGs. Sure, the night I roll four crits, I love my d20s; but when it takes me four sessions to hit with a new encounter power, I find myself struggling to not throw in the towel and go play solitaire. So what were we talking about? Oh, yes, The Marvel Universe Roleplaying Game!

I applaud the designers' intentions to keep this game streamlined and simple. The game lends itself to a minimum of accessories, which is certainly refreshing in this day and age where D&D is starting to feel a bit like Warhammer with all the mats, minis, cards, etc. The inclusion of play-ready stats for many super heroes and super villains means that a quick read-through of the rules and you're ready to hit the ground running.

I have to admit to a certain bias in favor of this game, since I've been a Marvel fan for a long time (though I'm not impartial with DC either...). Any game that gives me off-the-shelf stats to play Gambit has my vote. But setting that aside for a second, let's look at what makes this game successful.

The simplicity is great. The central mechanic of the game boils down to resource allocation. The rules generate numbers based on your character's statistics. These numbers tell you how many "stones" you have available for various actions. You then determine how many stones to assign to any given action. Assign too few, and you will not succeed, assign too many and you may find yourself short of available stones at a critical time later. This means that Spiderman never plummets to his death swinging through New York City because you rolled a one on your first "web-slinging" check of the night. This makes for an interesting, engaging method of action resolution, with a real possibility of failure (without which success becomes much less enjoyable) but without the arbitrary and often frustrating intervention of random numbers.

The other aspect of the game that I find outstanding is the leveling system. After completing a "Mission" the Gamesmaster awards 1-4 "Lines of Experience." These lines are a short sentence describing an activity you undertook at some point during the mission that lends itself to your character's improvement in a certain area. When ten lines of experience related to an "Action" (specific thing you can do in the game. e.g. Ranged Combat or Telepathy) are accumulated, you raise your action number by one, which increases the number of stones you can dedicate to undertaking that action, and raises the complexity of actions you can undertake. (If you have a Telepathy Action of 3 and "Creating a mental illusion" has a "Difficulty" or complexity rating of 4, you can't create mental illusions.) This system reminds me of computer games such as Betrayal at Krondor by Sierra, and the Elder Scrolls Series by Bethesda Softworks, where individual skills or abilities were improved through use, rather than a system such as D&D where regardless of the number of traps you have disarmed during your journey from first to second level, your rogue is now better at disarming traps.

Unfortunately, a simple game has simple innovations. I'd like to say more good things about it, but ultimately, these two features, combined with a strong encouragement toward roleplaying (lines of experience are partly awarded based on your portrayal of the character you play) make up the primary strengths of the game, and the main reasons I've found it so enjoyable. Where does it fall short? I'm glad you asked!

Lines of Experience are at once the greatest innovation and the worst implementation I've seen in quite a while. While the system encourages players to use the abilities that they want to improve, it does it hideously slowly. 1-4 lines of experience means that a hero must devote all lines of experience to a single action for two or more missions if they want to improve it as quickly as possible. And if the player is trying to keep the character well-rounded, it could take you ten or more missions to see a single point of improvement. Many people, myself included, derive a great deal of pleasure from watching their character grow and improve. Personally, I would examine giving more lines of experience, but capping the number that can be assigned to a single action per mission completed. This might allow for a faster growth curve, while keeping players from slamming all their lines into a single action to keep themselves "as powerful as everyone else." Of course, I haven't been playing the game long enough to see what kinds of balance issues this sort tweak to the leveling system might incur.

The final thing I'd like to mention is the vast player support for this game. The division of Marvel that created the game is apparently defunct, but the fan-base has kept the game alive and continued improving it. You can find general juicy tidbits, along with some miscellaneous stuff of undetermined value here. And here is a sourcebook for the Spiderman area of the Marvel Universe, created entirely by fans!