cat /proc/claus

“Say Yes” is a principle for running RPG games, which says that whenever the players come with some crazy and/or unexpected idea, the best course of action to the DM is to “Say Yes”, and run with it, integrating that idea into the game the best way possible. The opposite of “Saying Yes” would be to have ideas from players that are too hard, unlikely or stupid to succeed to fail with a whimper at their feet.

I must say that it is a fine idea that has helped me a lot in my recent games. The players want to disrobe the evil priestess, tie her to the end of a 10 foot pole and use her as a trap detector? Yes! They want to honestly join the creepy cult of strange gods being built by the shady NPC? Yes! They want to completely ignore two tribes fighting for “destiny” in a forgotten temple and head first to another ruin they had heard about hoping things will be easier there? Yes! They want to try and placate the raging alligator with a whip and a chair, circus style, instead of fighting to the death? Yes! They want to charge and attack into that NPC-GHOST? Yes! Yes! Yes! In my experience, all these “yes” brought their reward to the game.

But saying yes is not only good for the DMs. I believe that players, too, should take “Say Yes” into their minds when sitting at a table to play an RPG.

One recent example happened recently. Two friends of mine were visiting town, and I got together part of my regular group to play a one shot S&W dungeon to them. I have this one particular dungeon that I like to run every time I need a quick one-shot, adding a few new rooms/changing some rooms. One of the players, realizing it was the same dungeon I always run for one-shots, asked if he could use the same character he used “the last time” - that character was one of the few surviving members of a previous expedition. I thought that would be a great idea: The surviving character, after years dealing with the deaths of his friends, eventually decides to face his fears and finish his business with the dungeon, mounting a proper hired expedition this time. It tied beautifully all the other members of the group into the game.

Then, just as the game began, before anything happened, that player who was supposed to have called/hired everyone else, and to lead them to the dungeon decides that after all he is just too afraid of dying and don’t want to go into the dungeon any more. Cue meta-roleplaying of everyone trying to encourage him to change his mind. Ooops…

A few other similar cases. In a recent investigation game I was playing, one of the players was paralysed with fear that the group we were investigating already knew about our presence. The player would shot down every lead by other players and the GM with “they already know we’re here, they would be prepared for that”, effectively stalemating the game. In an old 3e game I ran, the group was a bunch of kids lost in a forest. One of the kids was a bookworm who had dropped her favorite book in the woods when the group had to run from a bunch of monsters, and the player decided that the girl would sit down and waste away because “that book was her life”.

That is the thing that gets me. A Role Playing game is a story about someone who enters in an adventure. But not only interesting things (the adventure) has to happen to the character, but the character must be also active in regards to the adventure itself. Of course, this does not mean that the players are supposed to follow every hint and lead that the DM throws before them just as they stand, but this does mean that refusing to act at all should not be an option. After all, we don’t have a movie about the teenager who thought the old geezer in the white lab coat was too geeky and refused his plea to help testing a time machine.

Of course a GM can try to adapt the story around players that insist in saying no. But just as in the case of saying yes or no as a GM, a gaming table moves much smoothier when both sides are saying yes and improvising around each other. The RPG is much more fun as a group dance than as a one man’s tap-dance performance in front of an audience.

Last week I ran the first part of the penultimate game of my 4E campaign.

Actually, the campaign was not supposed to end so soon, even though it did have a definite, planned end, but since two key players were leaving in 2 months, and myself am leaving Japan by October, I decided to pull the plug and wrap things up. It is something new to me, to actually bring an RPG campaign to a grand finalle! (both as a DM and as a player!)

As I have written last time, the group was exploring and abandoned island, in search for the riches left by a forgotten civilization, promised by a crazed NPC. They had managed to climb the highest mountain in the island and get a general view of their surroundings, which revealed to them the location of the old capital of the lost civilization (think Mayan Pyramids). They decided that whatever treasure this island might have, it would certainly be hidden in that island.

As they followed the river north towards the location of the old capital, the woods around they started to get creepier and creepier. Every so often, they had the impression of being observed. The weather was becoming darker. The group stopped as they heard voices coming from the woods - ghosts where about them!

This is where it gets interesting - one by one, the adventurers were taken by illusions. Each of them saw themselves as “king”, facing some sort of catastrophe. Some of the group members dove deep into the illusions, trying to solve the problems posed before them. Others tried to fight what they saw as “not truth”. Those that fought the illusion eventually became freed, and found themselves on a misty cemetery, with their companions heading slowly but surely towards a large stone structure, while shouting whatever they were saying in their dreams.

Afraid of the stone structure, the waking members of the group managed to stop and free the sleeping ones before they entered there. They decided then to investigate the stone structure, which seemed to be the centre of the strange powers which were about them. Inside, they found a large and very pompous tomb, surrounded by statues and minor tombs. On top of the big tomb was a ghost in the trappings of a king, tied by some sort of ethereal ropes.

The group promptly charged to attack that ghost! (Shoot first! Ask questions later!)

A big battle followed, in which ghostly defenders of the king attacked the party, as they tried to destroy the big ghost in the center of the cemetery. As they hacked into the king’s hitpoints, more and more ghosts assistants would appear, and the king would scream both for help and for freedom. Finally, the group managed to destroy the King’s material form, which sent its servants into sturpor.

At that moment, the ropes that tied the ghost king started forming his body again, and even more ghosts started to appear. While the group decided to stay and fight, Sincearu, the bard, chose to perform a ritual to sanctify the king to the Elder Gods. This ritual made the king stronger, and he started to fight against the magical ropes that bound him. The rest of the group helped Sincearu with his ritual, and soon the ghost King was freed from the magical bounds that kept him controlled.

He revealed to the group that he was the last kind of the ludians, the lost civilization of the island. That he was controlled by some sort of creature from the “World of Nothingness” that they had summoned accidentaly while trying to find a escape route from a catastrophe that was hitting the island. He pleaded with the heroes to help him defeat the creature that held sway over him and the remaining souls from Ludus, and in exchange he would reveal to them the secrets of the island.

==

The game itself worked pretty flawlessly. In the last session, one of the players complained about “senseless fights” where the group was basically walking around the island killing whatever moved in front of them, so I decided I would give them some “good guys” and “bad guys” to ponder about. I did not count, however, with them attacking the King’s ghost so viciously even though I dropped a bunch of hints that he was supposed to be talked to, not fought with.

In the “illusion” encounter, I wanted to try a way to resolve conflicts in the game that did not involve fighting or dice rolls. In the encounter, each player was faced with a facet of the last moments of the life of the king - yeah, they were being “possessed” by ghosts at the time. Each “round” in the illusion was defined by a scene playing out, and the player’s reaction to that scene. For each round, the character would sleepwalk closer to the tomb, and after 6 rounds it would be laying prone at the feet of the ghost king, ready to be sacrificed.

The solution for the illusion scene was to act twice in a row in a way that disbelieved the illusion (the first time would show some cracks in the illusion), although I accepted some alternative solutions, such the bard which decided to invoke his god during the illusion. The one thing that I (unwittingly) did right in this scene was to have the players describe his action, before describing the results of that action moving to the next player’s scene first - two of the players said that this resulted in a nice “suspense” effect. This was probably the highlight of the game.

In the ghost encounter, I wanted to go for a battle encounter where the goal was not to “kill all enemies”, but rather to finish a ritual which would free the king ghost. Ideally one or two characters could concentrate on the ritual near the ghost while the rest had to protect them from the hordes of guardians. However, I did not counted on my players being so bloodthirsty - I guess I did not train them that well. What actually happened is that they managed to beat the ghost king to a pulp WHILE kicking the guardians at the same time. I then decided that i would have hundreds of the ghosts show up at the same time to force the party to flee, but just at that time one of the players figured the solution to the puzzle So I guess no big loss.

Now to prep for part two of the game - infiltrating the Capital!

This is a game report for my 1.5-monthly Saturday 4E campaign. (It ended up much longer than I hoped :-/)

The group is currently Lv 7, formed by two defenders (Bigo the Shifter Warden and Solomon the Half Elf Fighter), two strikers (Midori the Eladrin Rogue and Adum the Dragonborn Barbarian), Sincearu the Gnome Bard and Charlie the Human Wizard. They are currently part of an treasure seeking expedition organized by Xor, a crazed explorer, to the forgotten island of Ludus. Ludus is currently inhabited by a number of savage tribes, but it is covered in the ruins of some Meso-American like civilization, which is claimed by each of the tribes to be their “precursors”.

Part 1 - of Love and Rust Monsters

In the last session, the group defeated the Snakemen tribe, which threatened the territory of the group allies, the Dragonborn tribe. Now they were exploring the nearest of two great ruined cities in the island. After exploring the surface of the city for a while, they found a secret passageway to the underground in what they presumed to be the ruins of the palace.

The passageway was blocked by a giant cockroach - the size of a large dog - which was resting atop a large pile of residuum and rust. It didn’t seem to show any reaction to the group, so they decided to charge the creature. A rust monster in 4E has few HP, so they were able to kill it before it managed to flee into the passageway, but not before it managed to rust the weapons of Adum and Bigus a little bit - panic insued, specially when the group noticed the rusted remains of a magic door in the passageway, and guessed that there would be a whole nest of these things down below.

They ventured forth, and found a very large room (25 squares across), with plataforms in the borders and dry pools in the middle, full of ruined statues, roots breaking from the roof, mushroom grooves, and debris piles. But what caught their eye that about a quarter of the room was partially blocked by large piles of rubble, resembling a giant nest of cockroaches… and behind that rubble, the largest pile of residuum the magic users of the group had ever seen before.

The fight happened in two parts. At first the closest rust monsters charged at the surprise metal meal - then they retreated when they realized that the walking meals were biting hard back at them! Their nest had many entrances and exits, so when the group came charging after them, they were able to attack them from two different directions. Inside the nest there was a Dweomer eater (lv 11), a young rust monster swarm (lv 9), and three regular rust monsters (lv 6). Flanking allowed both defenders to shine, Solomon tackling the regular monsters, and Bigus blocking the path of the Dweomer eater. There was a bunch of interactive objects in the scenario (the vines could be climbed, the mushrooms could be kicked for spores, etc), but most that happened was the warden activating one of the spore clouds by mistake, and the Dweomer eater bull rushing the warden into a pit so that it could get its paws into the bard’s juicy songblade (the only time where the monster’s “dissolve item” ability actually worked - they kept missing with this attack).

In spite of losing a magic item, the group was pretty happy in looting the Rust Monster nest - it had a full level’s worth of residuum. Sincearu put it to good use by “object reading” the big statue in the center of the room, and learning more about the former inhabitants of the abandoned city. They were dark skinned humanoids who built the city all at once using bestial labor. The statue represented some sort of living leader, and the last sentient being to come close to the statue was a murderer in yellow robes.

Part 2 - This is why you should clean up your temple, young man!

There were 6 corridors leaving from the big room. Three of them on the south wall looked the same, and three of them on the east wall had each different drawings around them. The group picked a corridor with holy symbols and symbols of gods and goddesses. They followed the corridor for quite a while, and arrived at another badly ruined room. They determined that this room was the interior of the pyramid they saw aboveground, and could not find the entrance before. The room had also the same collapsed tunnels they found on the surface, which Adum the native Dragonborn had previously identified as belonging to the dreaded “land shark”. Scared of a creature who could bore such large holes in stone, they proceeded with care.

In the center of the room there was an altar with uncontrolled arcane energies coming out of it. Charlie and Adum approached the altar while the rest of the group stood back. As she tried to manipulate the energies of the altar, its precarious equilibrium was upset, and a strong gravitational wave started sucking everything into the center of the room. This also attracted the Bullete, which was sleeping in one of the collapsed tunnels, to investigate.

The encounter was a Bullete (lv 9 elite) with a “Gravitational Hole” (trap) modified to shoot some weak lightning at the nearest target (players and monsters alike). The bullete’s ability to move underground made for a fun fight, as it burrowed right past the defenders into the soft, unprotected Midori in the back, scaring the hell out of her. The group eventually got its act together as they gathered in the center of the room, the Wizard, Rogue and Bard standing on top of the altar as the tanks circled them. As luck would have it, Solomon and Adum started rolling a series of criticals which finally dispatched the hard skinned monster. One of those critical hits activated Zharib Falcon, Solomon’s artifact weapon, making him see again the mysterious woman in white, beckoning to him from the corridor at the other end of the room.

Part 3 - Thinking with the other head.

Having defeated the beast, Sincearu set up again to use the “object reading” ritual, this time on the broken altar. They see images of priestess making some sort of ritual over a man in yellow robes with his hands and feet tied down, and the image of the bullete hitting the altar after the temple had been abandoned, and breaking its delicate magical balance. After that, they decide to follow down the corridor where Solomon had his visage. This leads to a bare earth underground passageway, which continues for 6 hours, with a few exits to the middle of the jungle aboveground in the way.

After resting and continuing down the tunnel, they arrive at another pyramid temple, many times bigger than the previous one. This one has a smaller pyramid inside, upon which a ray of sunlight hits. The mysterious woman in white is on the top of the smaller platform, and calls Solomon to her. When Solomon brings her the artifact, she reveals that she is a spirit trapped inside it, which was created by “the gods of the earth”, the entity that was born out of the world itself, and was not bound either to the Primordials or the Outer gods. She explained to Solomon that the mission of Zharib Falcon is to free the material planes from the influences of those not born from it, be it of divine or demonic origin. It warned Solomon that demons were preparing to invade the kingdom where they came from, and urged him to become a Paladin of the Earth. Solomon accepted, and changed his class (a move I had discussed with the player in advance).

After the pyrotechnic display was over, they left the giant pyramid and found themselves far to the north in the jungle, very near the mountains they only saw at a distance back in the Dragonborn village. The group decided to head into the mountains…

Conclusion

It was a very satisfying game. I put a lot of preparation in the adventure, and it paid off, even though the group skipped most of the underground dungeon I had made them, and headed straight to the exit. Well, those other 5 corridors will still be there when they decide to return from the mountains… if they return! (insert evil laugh here)

Things that worked:

• The players had genuine reactions to the bullete, because of the foreshadowing from previous session, and the rust monsters, because of the natural hatred of players to these creatures.
• I really liked how the bard player liberally used the “object reading” ritual - it is a interactive way for the players and the GM to decide what kind of expository info they want, and how much of it they want. It also allowed me to add some of the information that the players had skipped by going straight to the temple. Expect more “readable objects” in the future.
• The Warden player was missing during this session, but the wizard player managed to control both characters just fine - it gave me more confidence to run games with a player missing without having to worry about rebalancing everything.
• The encounters did not take too long, I think I really got my hand right with encounter balance this time. The flanking rust monsters were nice
• Solomon having his class change satisfied both the player who wanted to try a new character, and the GM who wanted to keep continuity in the story.
• I tried ChattyDM’s suggestion of preparing a “Game Synopsis” and asking the players for suggestions. Bigus’ and Solomon’s players jumped right into the idea, and I was able to mix their suggestions into the adventure.

Things that did not work so well:

• The players did not use all the toys that I left in the Rust Monster encounter. Maybe they were a bit out of the way and not so obvious?
• The Bullete encounter was a bit too easy, because I put the bullete too far away from the trap, and the players managed to disable the trap before facing the monster. Have to keep in mind movement rates next time I use hidden monsters.
• The Solomon Scene would have worked better if I made all players be able to see the phantasm girl inside the big temple. Or if I had decided to pull that player apart from the table for that scene, although I hate doing that.
• On the same line, I should have left the phantasm girl to appear only after the players had cleared out the dungeon, if they missed the temple passage, instead of the first time they got to the temple.

I bought the New Super Mario Bros Wii this last thursday, the day it was launched here in Japan (for some reason, the Japanese lauch was delayed when compared to the US or Europe). In the Launch Day, the Yodobashi Camera shop at Akihabara had a giant line with more than 300 people in it. On the other hand, the Book-Off just a block away had the same game at a 20% discounted price, with NO ONE in the line. Take that, Efficient Market Hypothesis!

The game is really similar to New Super Mario Bros DS - a revival of the first Super Mario Bros (the Nes one), with a bunch of technological enhancements. They have 5 extra “powers” - a Helicopter suit, which makes Mario jump high and float with a flick of the Wiimote, a Mini Mario suit, identical to the DS one (high jumps and running over water), an “Ice Flower”, which makes mario throws ice balls, which freezes enemies, a penguin suit, which throws ice balls, slides on enemies, and swims better, and good old Yoshi (which now is able to float a bit in the air when jumping). Mario can “stomp” while jumping, and he can also “triple jump” - if you press the jump button just as you finish your previous jump, the next one will be a bit higher.

With all these different powers, the game is not very difficult. I managed to get to World 8 in one night. I used the secret “world gates” found in worlds 1 and 5, but even those were not very difficult to find. The last stage of world 8, in particular the boss fight actually took me quite a few tries. This leads to another “innovation” of this game - if you fail a single stage more than 8 times in a row, the game will offer to show you how to beat that stage. It can clear the stage for you, if you wish, but a stage cleared like this isn’t counted towards game completion purposes. While clearing the game is not that hard (and I got a bit disappointed when I got to the end because of that) - COMPLETING the game is another story. The secret items and passages in some of the stage are very cleverly hidden - even if that is not apparent from the first world - my second “complete out” run of the game is going quite slower.

In terms of graphics and eye candy, I found the game to be full of nice touches. The enemies and creatures on the screen react to the music, jumping and dancing in tempo with the notes. The in-game minigames are fun, even if limited. You got the “memory game” for getting items, and a “hit the baloons” games for getting lifes. You can also be asked to replay some scenarios to save Toady, and get a few more item/lives out of it (you have to carry him with you, and thus can’t use specials/run through small places). I wish they had extra mini games, like New Super Mario Bros DS, but alas, it is not to be. In fact, as far as I can see this game does not use the internet for anything at all, which was a bit of a let down.

On the other hand, the main novelty of SMB Wii - up to 4 players simultaneous cooperative play - is really worth it. You can play with 2 to 4 people at the same time on each stage, just like in the normal game. If anyone dies, their player will be returned to the stage in a few seconds (unless they run out of lives) - the stage is only over if everyone dies at the same time. The players can get in each other’s way, jump on each other’s head to reach higher, or carry each other over their heads. With two players at the same time, the game actually gets easier (in spite of what Penny Arcade said), mainly because if one player dies at a tricky point of the stage, the other can wait until the previous player returns. However, with the full four players, everything changes. 4 Players is just TOO MUCH, and the game becomes a fast paced race to get away from whatever can kill you before the other players can kill you first, racing first to the end of the stage else you get too far on the back and get killed by the other players who darted far ahead. You can kill your buddies with impunity - if you manage to remember who are you in the middle of the madness on screen. Really, it is that hectic, and we went through 3 or four continues by the earlier half of world 1. The coordination required makes SMB with 4 people far more difficult than with 1 or 2 - specially for things like small platforms and sequences of jumps, that it got me curious to see team competitions of the game.

All in all it was well worth the trip to Akiba last week Now to get a few more controllers to be able to play Super Mario Madhouse whenever a lot of people gather at my place.

While finishing the paper for the ECF conference (or to put it in a more honest way, while procrastinating playing DTD in Kongregate when I should have been finishing the paper for the ECF conference), I had this idea: What if I wrote a GA that evolved a labyrinth for DTD?

After that, the flood of ideas came through (and the paper was quickly forgotten for an hour or two). I drew a quick scheme for the genome representation and for the rough simplified game to be used as the fitness function, and then I realized that this would be no fun at all if I didn’t program a small graphical front end for the program.

While thinking about this, I dreaded trying to delve into Java’s swing to program what should be a very simple cartoonish interface for a non-interactive game. I thought for a second about finally taking the time to learn the curses library, then it hit me. If I’m to learn something new, I might just as well finally get that goal of learning python off the self!

So here I am, reading a bunch of python tutorials, and some pygame examples for the Gui. Luckly, I found a half-made DTD clone in pygame which is running, so I can probably use that when I finally get to the “getting things on screen” stage, but right now I’m still struggling to write a basic GA loop in the language. More specifically, how to use the fancy tuples to implement crossover functions. Gah, things are too different, but at least I’m off to a start already. Tomorrow and Monday are Japanese Holidays, so with some luck I get a large chuck of the project started by then and can write some more precise details… but for tonight - reading, reading reading.