Revisiting Evangelion

My most recent exposure, before today, to the Evangelion franchise was the third Rebuild film. I'd watched the first two movies the day before, but even still 3.0 struck me as almost certainly intended to frustrate or anger the show's fans.

I thought it was okay, but it felt kind of pointless and meandering, with what little plot it has dedicated to further obfuscating the already-vague mythology.

Last night I got the other to rewatch the TV show - my third viewing ever and the first in six or seven years - and with my wife out of town and no other plans I figured I'd try to blitz all 26 episodes in a day.

Turns out it's not that difficult.

The early episodes, basically everything pre-Asuka, always stuck in my head as being quite dull, but I really enjoyed them this time through - even the one with JetAlone in it. It's easy to forget, with the shows reputation as a trippy, psychotic self-analysis, that the beginning of the show is so normal.

The slide into darker themes is slower than I remembered, and there's also more foreshadowing than I've ever given the series credit for; it actually felt much more coherent than I expected.

I was in two mind on whether to finish with the original ending or switch out to End of Eva, but in the end I stuck with the TV show. I'm glad I did; I was surprised to find that I reinterpreted the finale in a substantially different way than I ever had before. I'd always felt like the "congratulations!" at the end of the series was an obviously different ending than EoE, but now I'm not so sure.

I still prefer the upbeat TV version - EoE is just too dark, especially coming on the back of over an hour of suffering.

It does make me wonder, though - what is the final Rebuild installment going to change?

- - - -

Personal circumstances for two of our regular(ish) RPG group members have changed, and they probably won't be playing with us for a while. The situation sucks for them, and I feel bad that this is my initial reaction: I'm never going to get to run this fucking Fate game.

I've got the rule book, I've got the dice, I bought stuff to use as Fate point counters, I'd got to the point where I felt like I had enough grasp of the mechanics and I had even accepted that I'd have to let go of the story reins enough to actually run a session, and now it looks like I don't have the people to play it with.

There are probably other people I could draft in to fill slots, but I was really looking forward to playing it with this group. I was looking forward to seeing what they'd do, how they'd approach their characters and the world, and how they'd screw up my plans in retaliation for all the times I was difficult or awkward or a pain in the ass when they were running games.

It all feels oddly pointless without them. It's been a few weeks since they were able to make it to our sessions at all, and now that they might not be able to come back (for another while, anyway) I realise that I've missed them quite a lot. I wasn't writing any of this stuff particularly for individuals, but I was writing it for that group.

It would feel oddly like a betrayal to play it with anybody else.

30 years of back story

Reading the first Captain Marvel trade this evening, I think I've finally figured out my problem with Marvel comics.

I've always described it rather flippantly as having to know decades of history about characters, most of which has been tweaked or ignored or retconned several times over that period.

But really the problem is not knowing what bits of the story I'm supposed to already have an understanding of, and which bits will get explained in this book eventually.

If there's an allusion to a character's past in Saga, I know that it'll be explained later if it's important. But in Captain Marvel, I don't know if I'm supposed to know Helen Cobb already. The stuff that happens with her in the book is pretty reliant on you believing the relationship she has with Carol Danvers; I'm not certain this volume self it enough, but maybe there have been other comics previously that build their friendship/rivalry into something bigger.

The back of the volume has a four-page character backstory, but it's given no timeline for context. There's decades of character development with the XMen, SHIELD and the Avengers, and although not much of that is essential to understand what's happening in this story, there's a constant gnawing reminder at the back of my brain that I'm missing something.

Overthinking

Not updated in a while because all I've had to talk about is Fate, and I'm pretty sure that was getting boring.

So, of course this'll be another Fate post.

I've been thinking about the campaign too long. I'm starting to second-guess every aspect of it. The "no magic" rule is close to being scrapped because I'm liking the idea of paranormal elements (specifically, the broader scope for encounters); I'm considering either expanding the playable races to include more options, or stripping it back to just humans; there's a possibility to update the technology more to allow airships, although I still want to avoid cars so that could be difficult.

And all of this is having the knock-on effect of making me question the entire backstory I've written, and the broader narrative I was thinking of telling within the campaign.

Of course, a large part of Fate is to do with collaboration between the GM and players, so maybe it makes more sense to bring a certain set of ideas to the table and let the others add or expand with their own ideas and characters.

Part of this self-doubt probably comes from the realization I had last week, that I shouldn't be trying to come up with endings for the scenes I was writing. Trying to predict outcomes in a tabletop game isn't just pointless, it's a waste of time and runs the risk of railroading your players. I've instead just come up with the setup and characters - who they are, what they want, and where they are - with the hope that my understanding of, and ability to explain, the rules will allow things to flow more naturally.

That leads me, of course, into a position where the PC-level elements of the plot aren't predictable, which is where my lack of faith in the narrative I was originally thinking of.

Really, what this boils down to, is that I desperately need to sit down with the group and talk about this thing. A couple of our regulars have been unwell the last couple of sessions so there've been boardgames with stand-ins instead. But I don't want to start talking about this game when a. we're all in the middle of learning a new game and b. there are people there that I don't know and won't be playing Fate.

I really just need to get the game started before I lose all enthusiasm.

Testing Fate, Part 2: Combat and Socialising

I need better Aspects.

I need to be more active in compelling Aspects, and explaining why.

I need to remind players about Aspects, and about compelling them, and about using their own Aspects to improve (or replace) rolls.

I need to fill out the NPCs I've got, and I need to either write more encounters, or get better at making things up on the spot.

We played through the opening scene(s) of the game on Tuesday night, and the rest of what I'd written so far tonight. I think it went pretty well, overall - everyone seemed to get into the swing of things by the end, although my poor explanation of some of the less-obvious mechanics (which, for a group mostly used to 4e, is all of them) led to the list of necessary improvements above.

Combat flowed okay, but the bad guys were almost universally too easy (both in physical and mental combat); the players were surprised at how easily they dispatched the first set of enemies - with the exception of their leader, whose escape was laughably easy. I should have explained the concept of Conceding a conflict, and the other enemies should have been capable of absorbing more shifts before dropping. An all-minion mob makes for some epic hits, but rather a low-peril encounter.

Tonight's scenes ended up being a lot more socially-focused than I'd envisaged; after taking out one bad guy, a player managed to talk the other two down - a scenario I hadn't adequately planned for. I should have had a better idea of what they know and would be willing to say.

I ended up having to change a bunch of details on the fly, even to the point of retconning conversations and inserting player knowledge they didn't actually get to have the rest of the evening to flow smoothly, but everybody was aware of the beta nature of this playtest so it worked out okay.

I have even more notes tonight than I did previously, and a whole bunch of things to improve (as well as a massive gap in the story that's yet to be filled in), but I was a lot more comfortable and confident running the game tonight than I had been at the start of the week.

Testing Fate, Part 1: Character Creation

Last night was my first attempt playtesting the opening encounter from my Fate/Freeport game, as well as my first time running a session in the system with a party (I'd previously run through a single fight with Catherine just to see it in action).

It's been four years since I last ran a game of any sort, and I'd had the benefit of playing in a few 4e games before that to familiarise myself with the system. This was 90% an entirely new experience.

Character creation is a huge part of the Fate mechanics, more so than any other game I've played. The emphasis on narrative and your relationships with other (N)PCs is possibly even more important to the character you're building than the Race/Class decisions from 4e.

The liberty that Fate offers in its character building was one of the major attractions for me when I decided to start putting a game together, but it's also a paralysing blank slate for players (and DMs) familiar with more structured systems.

Boiling your character's backstory simple but flexible Aspects is a difficult thing to explain, but fortunately once we'd sat down and talked through the characters everyone seemed to catch on quickly.

(My primary issue with the Fate Core rulebook is its lack of general, informative examples; everything seems to be presented as more of a case study, sometimes too specific for widespread application.)

Skills were easy enough to fill in, although some of the players still haven't completed a full pyramid. I'm wondering if knocking the peak down to +3 instead of +4 would help - having to pick a full set of 10 skills is overwhelming, especially if you're new to the whole system and can't envisage how you're actually going to be interacting with the world and its inhabitants.

Stunts, even more than the other parts of the character sheet, are an overwhelming element for someone used to just picking Powers out of a list. Even the limitations given for defining Stunts - which can be reduced to "using a skill in a new way, which you can do sometimes, but not all the time, and not too powerful, but it should be worth taking" - are frustratingly vague, and it puts a lot of responsibility on the GM (and other players) to rein in power creep and improve on weak Stunts.

I'm still not an entirely confident Fate GM (after only one session that's hardly surprising) but I do feel a bit better about how to guide players in the right direction when building characters.

The main takeaway from last night's character creation and the opening encounter (which I'll be writing about more fully tomorrow) is that I need to do more to encourage players and offer better examples. If I'm running this game I need to be knowledgable enough to lead the party to effective Aspects and Stunts (and do a lot more to demonstrate their use in the game itself).

Going to jinx it

Finally feel like I'm over the worst of this cold, but the last vestiges are proving difficult to shake off completely.

Had a fairly productive day at work today; a marked improvement over the first couple of days this week, spent starting blankly at a screen while my sleep-deprived brain struggled to comprehend how the internet works.

Got nothing done for Fate tonight, though. No feedback yet from my proof-readers, so nothing to tweak in the player's guide, and I think I'm as done with these first two chapters of gameplay as I'm going to be, without playtest experience.

Still have to figure out the third chapter and how to run the act finale, but letting those simmer for a couple of days is probably better than smacking my head off them much longer.

Getting real

I've been bugging my wife with campaign ideas for weeks now, but today I actually sent my campaign doc to people who haven't been directly involved in its development.

I'm kind of terrified; that I've left out a bunch of really obviously-important details that I've taken for granted; that it's riddled with spelling and grammatical errors; that the whole backstory is going to be horribly obvious (I know that at least one of them has seen the thing I'm ripping off wholesale for said backstory).

But at the same time, it's good to finally feel like it's in a place where it's ready to be seen.

I've also managed to get the first two "episodes" of the first story arc written up; the third one is still a blank so far, and the "season finale" is still just the bones of an outline, but I'm hesitant to get too deep into planning before I even know what characters my players want to be. Fate's heavy on the player story-hooks, so I don't want to leave those too late.

No Magic, No Gods

One of the limitations I've put on this Fate campaign - really the only D&D staple that I'm disallowing - is that there is no magic in the world, and the Gods (if they exist) do not make their presence felt in daily life.

By and large that's not a major mechanical issue - you still hit things with swords the same way, and a religious character's motivations won't even change that much. It's just that his chosen deity isn't going to directly smite targets as a result.

But where it's led me to something of a dead end is in dungeons.

In your typical fantasy setting, an ancient temple or crypt is a tempting target for a PC of any alignment - magical items and the chance to slay a lich are tough rewards to pass up, whether you want to rid the world of his evil or steal it for yourself.

Without that supernatural element, it's proving difficult to find realistic non-meta reasons for these crypts even existing in the first place, let alone motivating players to bother delving into a mineshaft for the promise of... money? Being nice people?

In the end, money's probably going to have to suffice as a carrot on the campaign stick, at least to begin with. I'm hoping this experiment lasts long enough for the stakes to get raised a bit, giving the characters less self-absorbed reasons to get into the spirit of things.

I should get a move on

In my head, I've telling myself it's been "a couple of years" since I started sketching out the bones of this Freeport-spinoff D&D (and now Fate) campaign. I never really gave it much thought, though - apart from the gnawing shame that I still hadn't started it, it didn't seem to matter.

But I just noticed that I have the Freeport book in my Google Drive, with a created date of June 2010. Which turns out to be nearly a month after I originally asked Andy Law if he had a reasonable-resolution digital copy of the map to hand (the physical thing, which I've bought since, was out of stock on Green Ronin's site); turns out I still have the PM on The Society.

Three and a half years is a long time to have been putting this thing off.

Lost for words

Two things stopped me from posting yesterday.

Firstly, the cold I've been struggling with decided to properly kick my ass and I've had maybe six hours sleep in total since I woke up on Friday morning. Not conducive to writing.

Secondly, Phillip Seymour Hoffman was found dead in his apartment. I'm not one to go in for celebrity mourning, but this one hit me like a kick in the chest. Even hours later, seeing each headline and obituary and tweet felt like another kick.

(The only other celebrity death that I can remember affecting me like this was Neil Armstrong.)

I haven't seen all of PSH's work; haven't even seen some of his top-drawer stuff. I know him mostly from The Big Lebowski and Magnolia and MI:3. I've never seen Boogie Nights or Synechdoche, New York, although I'll be attempting to rectify that soon.

It seems selfish to think of his death mostly in terms of the performances and characters and films we'll never see. But that's the closest most of us ever got to him, through the honesty and vulnerability he was willing to bare on-screen.

Nope

This cold has chosen today to well and truly kick my ass, ably assisted by a totally sleepless eight hours last night.

So, have a break from my Fate ramblings.

Testing the waters

Last night, my wife was gracious enough to let me use her as a test subject in my continuing obsession with Fate, and I had my first experience going through character creation and running a scene.

Conclusion: I am horribly unprepared to run a game yet.

Explaining the concept and purpose of character Aspects proved more difficult than I'd anticipated, but that's partly due to my own vague understanding, and occasional confusion of the invoke/compel terminology. Nailing down a High Concept proved especially tricky, though the rest of it went far quicker as we both got the hang of things - and I think I got a little better at explaining things.

Fortunately she's helped a lot with the overall game scenario, so she had a strong idea of the kind of character that would fit into the world; my real players won't have been as hands-on with the backstory, so that's something I'll have to keep in mind when they're making characters.

The fight (that most basic of RPG interactions) started off badly, from a GM perspective. I should have done more to encourage or enable interesting actions, but I'd neglected to write out any environment Aspects for the characters to Create Advantages with.

I also had Catherine go first, and without my lead to go on her only real course of action was to hit things, which quickly got... well, kind of boring. It turned into attack/defend rolls so fast that I'm stunned I didn't see it coming.

Things improved when we adopted the mantra of "explain what you want to do, then worry about how you do it" - initially we were both approaching the fight in terms of mechanics rather than narrative.

Once we were thinking of cool ways to hit our opponents and use the environment everything started to flow better, we had a wider variety of skills to roll and got more interesting outcomes when we did. (One of my thugs tried to move over a bed rather than around it; his Athletics Overcome roll failed badly and he knocked himself out.)

The biggest takeaway from the evening is that "explain your goal" idea. It's something I'd already been trying to work into the missions and sidequests I've written - give the party a clear objective, then let them figure out how best to achieve it - but it never occurred to me that it would be so important for every exchange in a scene.

Tangentially related to that is making sure I have plenty of Aspects for them to Create Advantages with, which will also hopefully distinguish one fight from another, and making sure plenty of different kinds of actions make sense - so there are obstacles to Overcome rather than just Attacking all the time.

It took basically until the last thug was defeated for me to get a proper sense of how an exchange is supposed to flow. There are still plenty of thing's I'm unsure of - boosts are a big question mark for me, I'm not sure how to apply "costs" to failed and tied rolls, my sense of passive opposition difficulty needs tweaking, and I have a feeling that encounter would have been laughably easy for a four-member party - but now I feel much better about trying it again.

Making distractions

If there's one conclusion I've reached while trying to write a compelling tabletop RPG plot, it's that videogames have it easy.

One idea I've had, to try and make the city feel more alive and make travel more interesting, was having a stack of "random encounters" to pull from every so often - short, incidental missions and exchanges to pull the party off-course temporarily (if they feel like being charitable - I imagine the magnitude of their current primary objective will affect their willingness to assist strangers in the street).

But how do I make short, incidental missions that are interesting, that the party will want to (or have no choice but to) get involved with, and which aren't just combat?

I'm having real difficulty coming up with interesting sidequests and mission types. Sure, they can be interesting from a story or character angle, or help build up the world for the players, but there are gameplay tropes that videogames can take for granted which I just can't see being anything but boring at the table.

Take, for example, that humblest videogame staple: the Escort Mission. Travel with a computer-controlled character, defend them from attackers, reach your destination safely.

There's a lot of variety to be had in a videogame with that - whether they have to stop temporarily to perform a side-task, whether you're in close-quarters or open spaces. To me, trying to convert that into a tabletop encounter, that just sounds like combat interspersed with "and now you're in this alleyway!" - boring.

In videogames, particularly the sort with escort missions, it's widely accepted that your primary method of interacting with the world should be violence. Need to open a door? Shoot it. Need to get through a barrier? Run it down with your car. That NPC look at you funny? Kick his teeth in. I want my players to do more than roll to hit and roll for damage.

Even traversing the environment can be mechanically engaging in a videogame - you've got moment-to-moment decisions to make, essentially hundreds of skill checks a minute to avoid traffic. In D&D? "I walk to the tavern". I can't make them roll for every footstep.

Cold

I have some kind of illness setting up residence at the back of my throat. It started over the weekend, but it's really settled in over the course of today and I have a horrible feeling it's going to have kicked my ass when I wake up tomorrow.

We finished Battlestar Galactica last night, and just like the first time through I quite liked the ending. Apart from the ill-advised, overly-preachy epilogue, obviously; that's a lecture too far. And it commits the Return of the King sin of having several "fake" endings as each character's story is tied off. It seemed a much more coherent work the second time through, too - I remember feeling, while the show aired, that parts of it felt out of place or rushed in, but knowing the shape of the overall story helped.

The new PlayStation Plus games dropped today - the PS3 gets Metro: Last Light, which I'm quite looking forward to trying out, and Bioshock Infinite which just goes down in my estimations as time wears on. I've still not got properly stuck into Dishonored, which I bought in the PSN January Sale, yet though. I'd like to write a more complete review than "meh", but I've barely scratched the surface yet and that's all I can muster.

The Vita remains primarily an OlliOlli machine - I managed to scrape into 7th place on the Daily Grind today, miraculously breaking 100,000 on a surprisingly short course. I'm still inching my way through the challenges; only one star missing from the Junkyard levels, but it gets much patchier after that. I'll probably give Dynasty Warriors a shot at some point, but despite installing ModNation Racers I can't see myself summoning the enthusiasm to give it much attention.