What is a Gamer?

What is a gamer? Over the years, the term gamer has changed meanings and has covered different segments of the population. You need to get 10 definitions in on Urban Dictionary before you come across a definition that doesn't involve videogames.

The original term comes from the 1620's and refers to athletes. Right now, athleticism isn't usually associated with gamers. Before tabletop players appropriated the term, it referred to card game players, such as poker. Table top gamers appropriated the term and kept it for quite some time.

Then video games came along and exploded on the scene. In the mid-nineties, tabletops gamers began to reluctantly relinquish the term to PC gamers, since PCs were the premiere platform for videogames. As console technology began to progress, the PC fell from the high station of premiere to after-thought. So now Gamer typically refers to console gamers.

Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? It is just a thing.

RPG gamers take offense to losing the term to video-gamers, especially the dreaded sports video-gamer, people who don't know what it means to be a gamer. They don't know about the dedication it takes, the hours of creating a character. They don't understand the social aspect of sitting around with your friends and playing.

Who cares? In a sense, it has come around full circle on a different level. Originally referring to athletes, the term has come back to athletes (just digital ones). At the core, everyone is playing a game they enjoy. Let people have their fun. If you feel the need to be more specific then tack on "tabletop-" or "sports-" or "card-" to "gamer". Enjoy what you're doing and let other people enjoy what they're doing.

Aligning Misconceptions #10 - Alternates to Alignments

As much as I love D&D, the alignment system is somewhat (incredibly) flawed. The system may have made sense in the early days of gaming, but with advent of more story based systems (such as White Wolf's WWoD) the rigid and largely inflexible structure of the alignments is showing its age.

While doing away with alignments on one level would be great, they are worked deeply into fabric of D&D. The various planes in the game as well as the inhabitants of those planes are supposed to embody the alignments they represent. Various spells and even item enhancements key off of the wielders having specific alignments.

Is there even a "fix" for the system? I think an alternative to alignments isn't necessarily in making any changes to the system, but just altering our perceptions of alignments. The book currently makes out alignments to be moral codes of conduct. If you are Lawful Good you can't do this and if you are Chaotic Evil you wouldn't do that. However, alignments can be viewed as beliefs. Belief in something doesn't mean that you are able to follow them 100% of the time.

Real world believers of modern day faith have this problem. Incredibly few people can live up to the commandments of their faith; but it does not stop them with identifying with their faith. A character that believes in Lawful Good tries to embody the ideals and precepts of Law and Good, but may fail, intentionally or not.

Repeated transgressions may require a person to change their beliefs, mirroring previous alignments changes. However, this model allows for some flexibility in actions leading to richer and deeper roleplay. The difference is very subtle; but I think that it adds to the game.

Combat Roles #7 - Support

The Support Role is often the least glamorous, but one of the most essential combat roles. You don't focus on dealing a lot of damage, you make sure your comrades can do damage and there are a few different ways you can go about doing that.

The first way is by providing healing for your party. You keep your party members standing so they can keep dishing out the damage. Clerics do this well, druids are ok, and bards are passable. 3.5/Pathfinder have both taken steps to prevent clerics from being nothing but healing batteries, so you can do more than in earlier editions of D&D, but often the party will continue to look to you for healing, so be prepared to have at least a little bit on hand.

The second way to play a support character is to buff your party members and debuff the monsters. This means you try to increase the likely hood of your friends hitting, doing more damage, or improving their skill checks while hindering your opponents. Flanking is the easiest way to help people hit, while Aiding Another can help your party hit or make the monsters miss more often. Increasing or decreasing damage will typically require spells which almost all the casting classes have access to in some way shape or form.

While not glamorous in the least, you do play a crucial role. The vast number of +1 and +2 bonuses you can hand out to your allies quickly add up, making them (and often yourself when all is said and done) into truly effective combat machines. After you've done your "buffs" you can often wade into combat with decent efficacy, but you should always be prepared to stop attacking to help an ally in need, with either more buffs or more healing.

The Flaw in Flaws

I very much dislike the idea of the merits/flaw system. The idea is that you can select a flaw to gain a merit or a bonus feat (this variant is found in Unearthed Arcana). However, the premise as written is ridiculous.

If you are building a character that focuses on one thing, a flaw will almost never have an impact on your character. If you are building a character that only does melee, then taking a penalty to ranged attacks is meaningless. Penalties to skill checks are negligible to fighters, since they have so few skills to begin with.All the player is doing is accepting a worthless flaw for a free mechanical benefit.

Even if you are not min/maxing or specializing, flaws are pointless. From a roleplaying perspective, if I have always been terrible at ranged attacks, why would I bother to focus on ranged attacks later on in life? In everyday situations people employ the skills they are good at and don't worry about the ones they aren't so good at; people tend to hide their flaws or weaknesses. So mechanically and thematically, flaws are terrible. If you want flavor to your character, just play it out; there's no reason you have to take a flaw to play a flawed character.

But what if a player wants to take a flaw? First, ask them why. If they're doing it for a bonus feat, you may as well just give it to them and tell them not to worry about taking the flaw. If they're doing it for flavor, they don't need a (mechanical, rule based) flaw for the flavor, they can just do it.

An alternative to this system is to allow players access to bonus feats for flaws, but that you assign the flaw. From a thematic standpoint, the flaw shouldn't hinder what they're good at too much; if the flaw is too severe they wouldn't have specialized in that from the beginning. Make the flaw something that affects the player in situations.

If someone specializes in ranged attacks, perhaps they're almost neurotic about it. Give them a minor penalty to Will saves when they miss, reflecting a brief moment of doubt that overwhelms them. It shouldn't be crippling, but the players should feel it. This also requires that you work with the player to find something fair and equitable. The last thing you want to do is to make the character no fun to play.

Aligning Misconceptions #9 - Chaotic Evil

Chaotic Evil is epitome of evil. They are agents of chaos, with no regard for anyone or anything around them. This alignment can't work within a party, since they revel in the torture and mistreatment of others. Even within an all evil party, chaotic evil will have no regard for whatever goals the party has. They are interested in themselves only; what they want is all that matters.

Being Chaotic Evil doesn't mean that you are mindless in your evil. You can be methodical. You won't murder the shopkeeper without a reason, but the reason can be incredibly trivial.

Psychopathic villains are chaotic evil. Slaughtering an entire town to deliver a message to the PCs is the hallmark of Chaotic Evil.

The archetypal character that is chaotic evil is The Joker. He is Chaotic Evil to the extreme, often emphasizing the Chaotic more than the Evil.

There isn't too much to say about Chaotic Evil. It is called exactly what it is.

Props to the Group

I wanted to take a moment to throw out some props to my gaming group for their dedication and patience.

I came down with shingles last week and one of the players hasn't had chicken pox, so he couldn't be around me. We already video-conference in two people for the games, so the idea of adding a third was no big deal. However, Oovoo requires a plan to conference three people in. So I figured we'd just use Skype and move on. We tested Skype individually and made sure all was well and then waited until game time.

Come game time, we connect to one endpoint and are chatting. Then the other endpoint logs on and we try to conference them in. Turns out that Skype currently only supports video between two parties not three. After some finagling and thinking, we manage to get a three way conference going.

We used Skype to conduct the audio portion of the conference. Then we each logged on to Yahoo! Messenger and broadcasted our webcams, since Yahoo! also didn't do three way conference calls. We each viewed each others webcams and we were underway. The computers were taxed a bit for all the data that was being uploaded and downloaded, so some things were a bit laggy.

Overall though, the game went well and fun was had; because the group I game in was willing to try something new and work with a less than perfect solution.

They rock.

Combat Roles #6 - Skills Monkey

The Skills Monkey is not necessarily a combat role, but the idea behind it is applicable in combat as well. The Skills Monkey focuses on having access to as many skills as possible, so that they are useful in as many situations as possible. They would dabble in some social skills, a knowledge skill or two, and whatever else they want.

This is the easiest role to define since the only requirements are that you have access to a variety of skills as class skills (in 3.5. Pathfinder has changed the skills monkey completely) and a good number of skill points. You want to have at least 6 skill points per level, before you add your intelligence modifier. Rogues, Bards and Monks do this best.

The Pathfinder skill system made this much easier, and also less crucial. "Cross class skills" cost as much as class skills and nearly every skill is available to every character. On top of that, they've combined many skills together reducing the overall number of skills. This opens up the skills to every class. Fighters now have access to more than just 4 skills that are completely useless; they can now bluff or be diplomatic, tumble around the battlefield, or creep along to ambush foes.

In the context of combat, the Skills Monkey makes use of the movement related skills the most. Jump allows you to cross difficult terrain easier and tumble allows you to position yourself to flank (or retreat if things have gone pear shaped). Hide and Move Silent let you ambush or vanish from a fight (or make use of the Sniping Rules). Bluff and Sleight of Hand play a role in feinting in combat to surprise the enemy.

Game Perceptions #1 - HP vs AC

This is going to be a series about how things are perceived in the game and possible suggestions to make those perceptions easier to deal with. Also, this post and the next few are being written while I am on Vicodin for pain. So if I am more rambley or hard to follow that usual, please forgive me. I hurt.

So Armor Class (AC) is a measure of how difficult you are to hit and Hit Points (HP) is a measure of how much damage you can take. This seems fairly straight forward. If I roll well enough to hit you with my sword, I get to do my damage to you. Things begin to break down when you factor in levels.

If I swing a sword at a commoner, I'll probably hit. I'm also likely to do enough damage to kill them. However, if I swing the same sword at high level adventurer (assuming I hit), I'll do the same amount of damage, but it won't kill them. They're still human, so the sword should be as lethal to them as to a commoner, but clearly it isn't. They can take more damage, but how is that represented?

I think a good way of looking at it is that AC is passive/reflexive defense, you don't have to think about it your training, experience, and plate armor allow you to shrug off blows, while HP is active/intentional, you need to devote some attention to the blow that actually landed. So just because a high level adventurer got hit by a sword, it doesn't mean that they were actually injured. An intentional twist avoid the blow, grunting as your shield absorbs the impact, a frenzied parry; all of these things can represent HP damage.

So when do you actually start getting hit? There is no hard and fast rule for this. I think that if you are under 20 hit points or so, the hits you take should reflect some damage. Whatever is the most dramatic. That being said, critical hits should always do damage to the person. The players should be rewarded on a critical hits with drama and action.

Aligning Misconceptions #8 - Neutral Evil

Now we get into the true villainous character alignments. While Lawful Evil is still playable due to the Lawful nature, Neutral Evil and Chaotic Evil lack that.

Neutral Evil is the ultimate selfish alignment. You don't care what you have to do, who you have to murder, or what you have to take to get what you want. The only thing you are interested in is what benefits you. Altruism is a joke; laws are optional. The abused and treacherous minion is an excellent example. They will do what they need to do to gain power; even going so far as to plot against their master when the moment presents itself.

Neutral Evil can be a dangerous ally for the party to work with. They will gladly aid the PCs in anyway they can, but as soon as their needs aren't being met 100% or someone offers a better deal, Neutral Evil has no problems flipping sides.

A mercenary PC could be Neutral Evil, but the party would need to purchase his loyalty constantly, making it difficult to play if you want a cohesive party.

The best example of Neutral Evil may not be as well known as other examples but he fits the bill perfectly: Starscream from the Transformers.

Combat Roles #5 - Blaster

Similar to the Melee Damage dealer, the blaster is all about lots of damage as fast as possible. Unlike the Melee version, this role does not need to be in close to do the damage, typically this is done from range.

Arcane casters most easily fit this role, since they have access to a number of damage dealing spells that usually take less than one round to cast. This role functions best when the damage as dealt in as few attacks as possible. Unlike the Melee Damage where you can opt to do many attacks for less damage each; you want to deal the most damage in the fewest number of attacks.

As an Arcane Blaster, you suffer from a variety of problems. Low hitpoints being among them. You are rather squishy, so you need to keep people away from you. Also, you need to make sure that your targets find it very difficult to make the saves against your spells, since that often halves or negates your damage. Spell Resistance is also a concern; if you fail the check you lose the spell and the damage. Try to work in feats that will increase your DCs or reduce the Spell Resistance of the target.

Arcane is not the only way to do this though. You can also accomplish this as a specialized archer build (especially easy in Pathfinder with the Vital Strike chain of feats). The pro to this is that the only protection your enemies have is their Armor Class. The downside is your damage isn't usually as high as Arcane.

Melee characters can also accomplish this, in a roundabout fashion. If you are playing a Leap Attack/Shock-Trooper Barbarian build you are turning yourself into the cannonball instead of being the cannon, as archers and casters do.

Illness

Wednesday was missing a post because I was laid out for two days with random malaise. My apologies, I'll try to get some posts written in advance in case something like that happens again. Alignment discussion will continue next Wednesday.

I am bringing the Dirty Words to an end, but not closing the subject, as I think I've covered the majority of the negative stereotypes involved with metagaming. If someone has any ideas for continuing it, get with me to discuss it so I can see information that I haven't considered.

I'm currently accepting ideas for the next series for Fridays. If anyone has any suggestions, send them my way and I will gladly go over it.

We're light on content today, mostly because illness has thrown me completely off my game, even though I'm largely over it. On Monday we'll pick back up on Combat Roles.

Apologies for the missed post.

Combat Roles #4 - Ranged Damage

Ranged damage is important since it lets you soften up enemies as they get close to you. Additionally, you can deal damage across the battlefield, letting you reach units in the back or across blocking terrain.

Nearly any class can fulfill this role. Spellcasters and non-casters each have their own methods of dealing damage at range. Bows, crossbows, thrown weapons; all can be the center of a build to deal damage. Spellcasters have access to a  ridiculous amount of spells that operate at range.

Spellcaster or not, there are certain feats you need to take. Precise Shot and Point Blank shot allow you to shoot effectively into melee, this also applies to ray attacks. Weapon Focus applies to both weapons and ray attacks, so it is useful as well, as is Improved Critical (but only for ray attacks that deal damage).

If you're effective reach is the length of a battlefield, you should consider readying actions. A spellcaster may think he is in the clear when he starts casting, but if you ready an action to attack him when he begins casting he will be forced to make concentration checks, possibly loosing the spell. If you have access to things like Ranged Disarm or Ranged Trip, disrupting melee characters when they begin their turn can be a lot of fun.