TTRPG vs MMO

Not completely sure what got me thinking about this, but here you have it. I recently got involved in a weekly, livestreamed TTRPG with some friends. (Saturday's 8-11pm Eastern twitch.tv/kazooaloo) so I'm sure that's part of it, but some how that got me thinking about the nature of roleplaying and tabletop games and how, MMOs and cRPGs have tried and failed over the years to capture the same thing.

Now first, let me say, that cRPGs and MMOs will never truly match TTRPG because, the role of a GM, that ability to interpret and translate the ideas and actions of the players into not just the system but into the story, isn't something that can completely be programmed for. The player will always find a way to come up with something that the GM (or programmer in the case of a cRPG or MMO) didn't think of. But where a GM can asses and make a ruling for anything that's coded if it's outside of what the established options are there's no way to do it in the game .... dialog is a prime example NPC says 'what do you want?' and the player is offered choices, usually 4 or 5 tops, that may not actually encompass what they feel their character would want, but have to try and decide which is the closest to what they want. A player in a TTRPG just says what they believe their character would want and the GM reacts as needed ... the GM may still decide that they CAN'T have a mini nuke launcher but at least they could ask for one.

Of the games I've played, the original Everquest probably did the best job of making a game that FELT like a TTRPG. You could say anything to the NPCs that you wanted, they'd only respond to specific key phrases or words, but you could still make it fit your character's style. If the key word for a quest was 'Rats' (for example) you could say "Hey, I hear you're have a problem with rats here" or "What's the deal with all these rats?" Likewise, much like most TTRPGs the world in Everquest was just there, you lived there, that was your connection to the world ... any back story you cared to make up worked as long as it was set within the world of the game. They didn't try to make you the center of the world, you were just a person in the game ... You could make yourself into something in your own story, but the game didn't make any pretense of revolving around you. Likewise, the 'story' of the game was the lore of the world and the events that happened as they added expansions. Beyond that it was a sandbox in which to tell your character's story, to meet other players, and begin building a story all your own. It was a world, a structure, yes there were quests and stories to find and learn in the game, but it was just a world and much like life, your efforts were a small effect on the world as a whole. ... You weren't going to stop the gnolls from attacking Qeynos so it was no surprise when you saw them later, still attacking the city, that was just the world.

Later MMOs started trying to 'involve' the player more, tried to make the story of the game mean more to the character (and thus players) and many of them began to focus to a greater or lesser degree on the 'story' of the game often creating a tutorial or early levels that focused on the story and, often, how the character was important to that story. I would say that one of the biggest ones to make this mistake was the game TSW (The Secret World) ... a great setting, wonderful world building, but ultimately it was a game that didn't know what it wanted to be. It would have made a great setting for a story driven single player or co-op game (like Balder's Gate or other more recent games) where the player could immerse themselves in the game and their character and enjoy the story of this dark modern mythos setting. But they decided to make it an MMO ... One of the problems here is in an MMO, by nature, you need to pace your characters, you need them to repeat content to get drops, complete quests, and take time leveling up, but in a story driven game .... we defeated the evil cultists why are the minions still attacking? Why is the evil cultist back in the sewers summoning undead? The story doesn't work and the immersion gets lost meaning that players start to focus on the grind OR once the 'story' part of a section is complete then they move to the next 'chapter' of the story ... but that invariably means that the players, even the casual players, will consume story and content faster than the developers can create it ... sooner or later they run out of story and stop playing until the next update, leading to a rising and falling player base based around updates and usually those falls get deeper and the rises get smaller each time .... TSW had other issues as well, an implied PvP faction system (Templar v Illuminate v Dragon) that was just a glorified arena battle ... like I said it was a game that really felt like it didn't know what it wanted to be ... a great setting with a series of half-hearted elements duck taped together in an attempt to please everyone.

The thing with a TTRPG is that it gives you a world ... maybe a map, some history and lore, but most of the details are up to the GM and players, sure maybe your going through a story, an adventure pack, or a published adventure, but the world is out there and, depending on your GM, you can go off script and go explore it, your group can make it's own adventure and the possibilities are limited only by the players imagination and the GMs willingness to put up with their shenanigans. 

Where was I going with this? I have no real idea, but maybe that's the point ... the ability to ramble, to create and discuss ideas. One take away for me is that there are 2 things that I want ... 1 is a old school MMO like Everquest was ... open, sandbox, exploration ... a blank canvas of a world that me and my friends can write our story in ... and 2 ... time to actually play it.

Still Here

I promise that I haven't forgotten this ... or my other blog for that matter. I have a lot to say and that, honestly, has been part of the problem. How to pick a subject and write? Also work has been grueling this last month and I've been ... well ... not in the best headspace.

A result of this is that I've been bouncing games a lot. Playing games I haven't played in a while, new games on game pass, games that I bought ages ago but never played. Unfortunately while I've been enjoying them, because of work and other factors I just really haven't really grabbed one as the game I want to focus on.

 So what new games have I been enjoying?

South of Midnight has been a lot of fun. A story based third person game based around some of the old southern tall tales. The game has a good feel, an interesting story, an interesting main character and world in which she finds herself. The style of the game is clay-mation based and the character design for the enemies and the mythical creatures and environments. The combat design is smooth and flowing, and the advancement feels rewarding. The environments reward exploring and the movement system feels good.

Finished this up last night and the ending wasn't quite what I had expected, but seemed fitting particularly given the focus of the game being on healing and repairing the damage of the past. If you want to take a shot at healing the trauma of a town's past, I will warn you that the story gets pretty dark in places.

Also played a bit of Eternal Strands another story driven single player game in which you become the new Point of a Weaver band that uses powerful magics woven into their shroud to explore and fight massive monsters. This is definitely a story based exploration game that I want to get back to, but I got sucked away into South of Midnight. (Odd that both of them use weaving as a magic system and came out so close to each other, but the two systems are very different and the analogy makes sense with both.) Where South of Midnight was a little platformer, a little puzzle, and some combat, Eternal Strands is more like a little exploration and a little Monster Hunter. 

I've also been playing a bit of an older game Shadow of War ... the sequel to Shadow of Mordor ... taking the great story and system of the earlier game and building on it. While Shadow of War is a great game, a lot of fun, and constant action with a good story backdrop rooted in Lord of the Rings lore (if I remember correctly both games take place in the period of time between the Hobbit and Fellowship of the Ring).

While Shadow of War is a great sequel, it suffers as so many modern games do from the idea of Games as a Service (Shadow of War originally released in Oct 2017 so while not 'new' it's new enough to have caught the 'Games as a Service' bug.) While I don't mind the concept of Games as a Service, I wish developers could realize which games benefit from it, and which are hindered by it. Some games thrive under Games as a Service, but in the case of Shadow of War it lead them to change to a loot equipment upgrade system and an online 'player stronghold siege' style of PvP that ultimately detracts from the over all game. (In my totally not humble at all opinion)

In the original game you had your equipment, which you increased in power through leveling up and completing quests to increase the 'legend' of the weapons. Only to get to Shadow of War and ... replace them. Replace the weapons that had deep meaning to the main character because he picked up a sword off an orc that had slightly better stats. I loved the Nemesis system that they designed in the original game, and it is front and center in Shadow of War as well, with the added ability to convert the Captains to fight for you against the others. Keep Sieges and taking territory, adding map control was a great thing (though even in purely PvE it is an additional thing to juggle as the Witch King will try to subvert and re-take territory as well)

Don't get me wrong, the loot aspect isn't a game killer. I just dislike it as a CHANGE ... if it had been that way in the first game I wouldn't have even batted an eye ... and the 'online' aspect of the game has minimal impact for the most part, it's just they both draw attention to the fact that it was added for the purpose of trying to get you to purchase things (upgrades to get better gear, better skills for your warlords managing your keeps and territory, better captains and warlords, etc.) in what really should have just been left as a single player story. In the end I would say the issue is less that Games as a Service harms the game, and more that it just doesn't make it a better game than it could have been without it.

My gaming moods lately

 Lately I've had a ton of different games going ... more so than normal .... but I've found my gaming mood all over the place lately. Partially because I've been stressed and my work schedule has been unsettled. Normally I don't have a trouble working nights, and I don't this job would really have been any different except for timing and other life issues. Traditionally it would take me about 2 weeks to fully get into a the over night schedule, but this job started and right as the 2nd week was ending Daylight Savings smashed me with a baseball bat .... I'm not going to rant about DST here, I think I've rambled about it before over on Path of Bones in any case ... needless to say IMO it is a dinosaur that needs to die and be turned into fossil fuel. One wouldn't think that something like that would through such a wrench into things, but disrupting a schedule just as it's getting into routine just messes with the head a lot more than you would expect. On top of that, I also had looming jury duty ... meaning I'd potentially need to, for a day or a week possibly more, completely swap myself back to a 'normal' day schedule ... again just as I was getting settled. 

Jury duty was canceled (no jury trials for the week that I had been tapped for so they told us not to report the Sunday before) ... but in anticipation of the possibility I had partially swapped my schedule so that the Monday wouldn't have been so drastic, but then other things came up Monday morning and ... I'll just say kidney stones suck.

What does any of this have to do with games? Directly, nothing, but where I was going was that I've had a lot of different styles of games that I've been juggling, and while they're all things I traditionally like, I'm not usually this scattered. Warframe, one of my go to long time games (Free to play and if you haven't tried it, I recommend it without any reservation ... hands down the best Free-to-Play model I've ever encountered, constantly evolving and adding new content and a dev and community team that I consider one of the best in the business.) It is, however, very fast paced and can be intense, so when I'm tired or stressed I can find it over whelming. So I've been playing other things depending on my mood. 

No Man's Sky is another long time favorite of mine and I've been putting in a good bit of time in it lately. A much slower pace than Warframe, and centers a lot more on exploration and discovery. It had a bit of a rough launch back in 2016 when it launched because a lot of people listened more to Sony marketing and/or heard some of the developers 'We want to' as 'We're going to' because they wanted the feature. Many of those did eventually make it into the game and, much like Warframe they have continued to grow, improve, and add to the game even though it's now nearly 10 years old. 

If you're not familiar with the game it is a sandbox Sci-Fi exploration game ... you wake up, find a ship, and begin to explore the galaxy ... no seriously I mean the galaxy:

Each of those dots is a star you can warp to and that is just a small section of the spiral galaxy in the upper left. I don't remember how many systems there are but I highly doubt anyone could possibly explore them all in a lifetime ... and ... if you make it to the center of the galaxy you can go to a new galaxy. Space flight, planetary travel ... on foot and vehicles ... space and atmospheric combat ... base building ... and story and lore to find along the way. Oh and fishing and underwater exploration as well ... with an aesthetic based off of the pulp sci-fi book covers of the 60s and 70s it has a charm that no other game like it has matched (imo). [Elite Dangerous matches the scope over all but is a more realistic sim focused on space exploration with minimal planetary interest, and you can't land on all of the planets.]

On the flip side ... you have Monster Hunter. I've mainly been playing Monster Hunter: Rise on the Nintendo Switch, but I also play Monster Hunter: World (and the Iceborn expansion) on PC. If you're not familiar with the franchise, you are a hunter tasked with going out and hunting down and slaying (or capturing) massive monsters resembling, dragons, dinosaurs, thunderbirds, oversized snowbunnies, and ... you get the point. 

  

 

(Top - Monster Hunter: Rise (promotional screenshot), Bottom - Monster Hunter: World (from a recent hunt of mine))

The monsters are no push overs and can be very challenging to virtually impossible solo (unless you're very over geared for the fight), but the game is usually intended to be played in a group (something I rarely manage to do) and in world you can fire SOS flares to have other hunters join your hunt to help out. As there's no PvP and you all get your own rewards usually the worst thing that happens is you get a really high level player that over powers the hunt making you feel a little useless. 

I've heard Monster Hunter described as a Souls like for people that don't hate themselves. And in some ways that is accurate. Monster Hunter has very limited invulnerability states like a lot of games do while dodging or animating (often referred to as I-Frames) which is to say that if you're dodging and the attack hits ... you get hit. Likewise the 'hit boxes' of both you and the monsters are very tight to the mesh so to hit (or get hit) you have to hit. Everything goes both ways of course and I have rolled right under a bite, or the animation of my attack missed but because my character was bent over the monsters tail lashed right over my head in a sweeping attack that would have knocked me sprawling. As such, much like the Souls games, it does come down to learning the 'tells' of the monsters and anticipating their attacks, and a well timed weapon blow can interrupt them, just as them hitting you while you're winding up will interrupt your attack.

Monster Hunter: Wilds just released recently and I'd love to be working my way through that, but I have enough games and I don't need to be buying new games. Besides, if I did by a new release at the moment it would likely be Space Marine II before anything else.

 How does this come up when I'm looking to relax? Well, the fact is that while I often get frustrated, the feeling of a successful hunt is a large part of it, but even if combat can be very hectic it rewards precision and patience more than button spamming. The over all pace is methodical and a well done hunt does to some degree feel like a dance, as well as a triumph of the small hunter over the massive monster. Which sometimes I think is a good thing to be reminded of.

Then ... Then there's Ale and Tale Tavern. A cozy tavern keeper game that my wife and I have recently become slightly addicted to. You play as the new owner of a run down tavern in the middle of the woods and you need to get it cleaned up, and open it back up. Serving customers, growing crops (to serve to customers), hunting boar (to serve to customers) and doing quests (to unlock new recipes, abilities, or aspects of the tavern ... or just acting as a fantasy uber eats delivery person to make some extra coin.)

So here we're frantically trying to cook and serve food to customers to keep our ratings up and using the time when we're closed to add tables so we can serve more customers. Now we do have helpers, these little owl people that we've hired to clean and help wait tables. The game recently added the Inn upstairs allowing you to put in beds and rent rooms once you unlock them, meaning you get to add changing and washing sheets to the list of cooking, cleaning, doing dishes, and farming. Still it is incredibly cute, and a lot of chaotic fun .... particularly when you get to the point that you have special visitors that think they have the right to order things that aren't on the menu.....

I've got a lot of games to talk about if I'm being honest. Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader (An excellent CRPG set in the 40k universe), Civilization VII, Aloft, Satisfactory, Return to Moria, a more in depth look at the games here ... and more ... all I need is the time and energy to write about them.

Time

 I mentioned in the last blog that I don't have the time to game that I used to. It's honestly why I stopped streaming. I'm writing a novel, my wife and I opened our own business, and while I enjoyed streaming a lot I was never going to put the effort in to be serious about it. I enjoyed streaming, playing games and chatting with those folks that came by to see what I was up to, friends wondering what I was up to, new people wondering about the game or just interested in talking. It was fun and, as I live ... shall we say 'off the beaten path' it gave me a bit of socialization that I missed ... the hanging out with friends and playing a game.

 I mean when I was younger, a lot of the games my friends and I liked weren't necessarily multiplayer games ... story driven RPGs, Flight Sims, or a lot of the ones that were were turn based strategy games, but we'd hang out, play, joke, and laugh watching each other, congratulating the player on a great move, or laughing at an epic failure. It was fun, but I never wanted to be a 'big' streamer, a few regulars to laugh and joke with was about it. And with so many pulls on my time, I just had to come to terms with the fact that, unless I won the lottery, spending time on something like that ... something I had no intention of really putting the work in for or really any desire to improve ... wasn't really the best use of my limited time. I still game, mostly with my wife and we have a ton of fun, but there's still something missing.

I'd love to get back to role playing ... but who has the time? Again ... I live at least an hour away from literally anyone I know ... Most of the people other than my wife that I consider friends are in different states if not countries. We could use online systems ... I've used Roll 20 in the past and it's a good system, but still, getting a time that works for a group isn't easy... especially when I am usually working nights.

Monday thru Friday forget it, even if I wasn't tied up with working, sleeping, commuting, or my writing it's not like anyone else would have time to do anything ... not counting that working nights means I would be AT work when most people would have free time in the evening. 

Saturday? Working nights means I often don't get home until early Saturday morning, so half of it is spent asleep, then when I get up I have all of the stuff around the house that I didn't have time for during the week as well as keeping up with business stuff (photos, listings, . I get a little time to chill with the wife in the evening before she passes out having become a *shudders* morning person.

Sunday? I mean technically this IS my free day, mainly that means playing games with the wife and painting, and trying not to think of the mountain of things that still need to be done. Sure, I could arrange time to do things on a Sunday afternoon once in a while, but unless my wife is going to join me, I'd be giving up my limited time with her to do it ... and again ... unless it's online travel time is not to be forgotten, going down to ATL to play games with friends (which I do occasionally if I can get schedules to line up) is a 2 hour round trip, I'm not just going to go down there for a 1 hour gaming session, it's going to be for an afternoon. Likewise I'm not going to ask my friends to come out to me, unless I can dedicate an afternoon of games to make it worth the cost of gas.

Wow ... this got way more depressing than I intended. But it does illustrate why I gave up streaming, just not enough hours in the day, enough days in the week. I enjoy a lot of what I do ... my job, painting, the company my wife and I have started and my writing, but that doesn't mean that I don't miss other things too. I'll keep gaming on Saturday evening and Sunday ... I'll keep plugging away at my book ... and painting my little plastic soldiers .... wishing I had more time to do all of it .... and more time to do other things too.

Dusty here....

Pretty much as dusty as it was over on the Path of Bones .... Which is a shame really. I could have done a lot with this in the 2018 to 2022 span while I was actually streaming. Played a lot of games in that time, had a lot of fun. These days I don't have the gaming time that I used to. Don't get me wrong ... I have soooo many games I WANT to play, but my gaming time is generally limited to Sundays and that's also my model painting time (oh yeah ... btw ... I picked an old hobby back up and I paint miniatures. I also opened up a business with my wife selling those miniatures as well ... so that's most of my time.) 

And as if to emphasize this I've been working on this post for 3 days now (I'm not counting Saturday and Sunday as I didn't write any of it then.... so five calendar days, 3 days of work) Work is getting crazy and to make matters worse I have jury duty coming up in a little less than 2 weeks. But none of that has to do with gaming ... more my lack there of. I did get some in on the weekend, playing some Warframe (which I've posted about before) some No Man's Sky (Great exploration game that fought it's way back from a rough start that was mainly the result of people getting over hyped about things that weren't promised) and some Eternal Strands story driven exploration and monster fighting game. I've also dabbled in Avowed CRPG set in the Pillars of Eternity universe which I've been enjoying. If I can whittle out some time I'll likely do write ups on all of those, and there are several others that I'd like to be playing ... Space Marine II, Monster Hunter Wilds to name at least 2 ... but I can't justify paying the price when I don't have time to play the new games that I have (Civilization VI) or old games that I haven't finished (Rogue Trader, Satisfactory, Return to Moria) .... The fact of the matter is ... It's a great time to be a gamer ... and a lousy time to be a responsible adult. 

 Something else I'll likely be doing some here, is talking about model painting and some of that, maybe if I can get my arch-nemesis to dust off his models I'll even write up a blog on a game of Kill Team .... Narrative style.