Tabletop Tips: Learn to Improvise

By Patrick Hawes-DeFrias

Today we're going back to basics with one of the cornerstones of being a Dungeon Master- making stuff up on the fly. As stated before, it's important to make sure every character is active in the story, a big part of which comes from characters getting to use their specific skills, equipment, spells, and so forth. So, it's important to have an idea of what each character can do (that goes for players as well- DON'T FORGET what your character has on them, you never know when it'll be helpful). Some DM's will even keep copies of everyone's character sheet. If you need that reference to be prepared, go for it, just make sure to update it when characters level up or get any significant items.

Now, an obvious issue with this is that you don't want the situations where characters get to strut their stuff to be too contrived, it's important to weave them into the story as naturally as possible. Perhaps every once in awhile, set up scenarios that are geared toward a specific character, such as when the party is heading toward a particular character's goal. But, even in these scenarios, keep the other players in mind as well, for one very specific reason. Most games are based on, at least to some degree, random chance. So, just because the party's monk has 15 points in balance, doesn't necessarily mean they'll succeed in crossing narrow passages every time. Thus, it's best to think outside the box. Construct situations where more than one character has the capacity to resolve the conflict. If the party needs to get into a building, it might make the most sense to construct the scene around the rogue sneaking around and picking the lock, but make sure there's alternative options in case something goes wrong or the party doesn't see your solution right away. Have someone around to talk to so the bard might be able to talk their way in. If someone has a grappling hook on them, perhaps note how high the building is to subtly suggest that they could potentially climb to the roof. Characters with spells have a huge amount of problem-solving tools, so if everyone's stumped, perhaps say something like "anyone have magic they could use?". With time and thought, a wizard can come up with some zany way to finagle their spells into something useful.

And speaking of which, if the party comes up with a different solution, be ready to roll with it. Remember- cooperative storytelling is the key. If the party comes up with some goofy way to get into the building, let them as long as it makes sense. Heck, even if it doesn't, let it work anyway if you think the game could use a good laugh. And, if all their attempts truly fail then you might need to just hand-wave the situation with a little "hand of God". Maybe a guard hears the commotion caused by the party's multiple failed attempts to get inside, opens the door to see what's up, and BAM we've got a fight. The world shouldn't be doomed to be under the evil king's tyrannical rule for all time just because the party's bad luck kept them from opening a door.

Tabletop Tips: The Importance of Cooperative Storytelling

By Patrick Hawes-DeFrias

As a Dungeon Master, Storyteller, or whatever your game of choice calls the person running the game, your role is to create a world and story for your players to adventure in. As such, your creative choices have a major impact on the proceedings of the game. However, it’s important to know that your players should also have some agency in the game. Now on one hand, you definitely don’t want your players to just do whatever on a whim, they’ll probably need some guidance (unless, of course, the point is to have a very open-world game, in which case that’s another matter entirely). For example, if your players need to talk to a king to take on a quest, you’ll want to make sure they’re dissuaded from killing him for no reason. That’s a pretty severe example, and if such an occurrence happens then chances are whoever did it is actively trying to be disruptive anyway. But, you get my point- you don’t want the world you’ve created to be easily ruined.

BUT.

It’s important not to do the opposite either- railroading players or just giving them the illusion of choice. This story, while created by you, is interactive, and you need to take the creative challenge of being able to handle and incorporate the curveball decisions your players make. Let me give you an example of such a challenge from a game I’ve been playing with a group of friends lately:

Our group had gone to see the leader of a Dwarven city, since the city was along the path to our next destination, and we’d just happened to receive reports of the town’s mine being in jeopardy. After talking with him, we learned that in the process of their digging, they’d accidentally uncovered a nest of monsters. Additionally, an unrelated monster known as a Delver had shown up as well, which is particularly bad as that’s a type of monster that feeds off of rare metals and ores (such as those found within the mine of a prosperous Dwarven city). Seeing as the Delver would probably be the trickier thing to deal with, we decided to save it for last. So we went through the mine, and the majority of monsters we ran into were simply evil beasts ready to devour any who went into the mine, and so we dispatched them. But, then we got to the Delver. For reference, this is what a Delver looks like:

Sooo, yeah. When our DM showed us that, we were immediately struck back by the fact that the thing looks like a massive, hulking hell-beast of some variety. So, our resident caster decided to try a knowledge roll to figure out something about our foe before we just ran in there. He rolled pretty high, and learned quite a bit, including the fact that it’s an intelligent creature and is usually non-hostile unless provoked. Now, none of us could speak its language, but our resident caster was a psionic rather than a user of magic (basically he has a bunch of psychic powers rather than spells- think Jean Grey from the X-Men). That meant that he could just communicate with the Delver telepathically. So, rather than fighting the Delver (who at this point we started referring to jokingly as Delvin), we decided to try and convince him to move from the mine diplomatically. We eventually struck a bargain- Delvin had always wanted to try the taste of mythril, and if we could get him some, he’d agree to leave the area and move up to a mountain range known as The Spine. Thus, we decided to speak with the city’s leader to let him know of the situation (and possibly coerce some mythril out of him).

Now if our DM was bad at this, here’s how this could’ve gone down- the city’s ruler could’ve just laughed us off and refused us aid towards pacifying Delvin, and any shop we went to could’ve “just happened” to not carry mythril. Or, the mayor could’ve just flat-out stated that he’d refuse to pay us unless we killed Delvin. Basically, he could’ve left us with no option OTHER than killing Delvin, thereby removing our own agency in the game. However, he opted to roll with the ridiculous idea we had. We had to do some convincing, but in the end we did get the mayor to give us a scepter of mythril to feed to Delvin. We went back to the mine and fed it to Delvin, who happily fulfilled his side of the deal and started making his way to the mountains. The mine was saved, we got paid, everyone’s happy. Now, that could easily have been the end of it. Maybe we bump into Delvin again and see how he’s doing, maybe not. But, our DM understood the importance of having actual consequences and impact for player decisions. So for the next part of our tale, let’s skip ahead a few weeks. We had traveled to the opposite side of the mountains to speak with the Blackguard, a group of barbarians, to seek their aid in a coming battle, after which we went in the direction of a large druid settlement for the same reason, which was on the side of the mountains we were at before. On our way there, we ran into some miners, who to their dismay exclaimed that there was almost no mythril in the area. However, they also remarked at how a cleanly shaped tunnel had formed in the mountain, and that there was now a safe and efficient path through the mountain pass. You can probably guess how that got there.

And so here we see how a DM should handle player decisions- allow them to exist and cause actual change in the world. Our DM used our decision from a month prior to make a definitive change in the world (in this example making travel easier), set up a potential conflict earlier (what happens if the miners’ boss figures out we were the ones who messed up their mining location?) and on top of that, used it for a quick comedic moment to add a bit of levity in the game. Being able to do this with some random thing your players decide to do is challenging, but ultimately it adds to the experience, makes it more memorable and fun, and isn’t that the whole point?

Sources:

Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 Monster Manual

My Videogame Club: Tales of Vesperia

By Patrick Hawes-DeFrias

Each week, I meet up with a group of friends to play through a game that at least one of us hasn’t played before. This time we were in it for the long hall, as we took several weeks to play through the JRPG Tales of Vesperia, of the long-standing “Tales” games. Truth be told, I’ve never really had that much hands-on experience with the “Tales” games, though I’ve been interested in them for quite a while. The idea of a cooperative action-RPG is incredibly fun, and this one in particular was said to have a notably good story. Having just finished it, I’m prepared to share my thoughts on this gem.

First of all, I’d like to talk about the story and characters in order to get them out of the way. Now, that’s not because I think they’re the weakest part of the game- the very opposite in fact. But, because I want people to play this game, I don’t want to spoil anything. So, since I’ll probably have very little to say, There’s a very good style of storytelling going on here- there’s tiny hints throughout the game for the various twists and turns all throughout the game which seem like nothing at first, but then when major plot points occur you realize that you started finding out about them several hours ago. In addition to being intelligently told, the story itself is gripping and surprisingly deep. It starts off as a simple story about finding a stolen object to save your town, but quickly expands to tackle numerous issues, including but not limited to:

·         Government vs. the Common Man

·         Political corruption

·         Social reform

·         Climate change and resource overconsumption

·         The true nature of justice

·         Whether or not vigilantism in a broken justice system is right

·         Governmental independence, and self-reliance

There’s quite a bit more actually, but just look at that list. It’s a hell of a lot to unpack, that much is certain. I can’t remember the last time I played a game that both A. tackled this many topics in its story and B. actually managed to pull it off well. But, this game manages to do just that. If nothing else, this game is worth playing just to get you thinking about the world.

The characters are where the game truly shines, however. This is another game where you can probably name off every named character off the top of your head, which is always the mark of good characterization. Every major character is unique, from the villains, to the NPC’s you meet, to every member of your party. And speaking of your party, I haven’t seen such a colorful cast since Shadow Hearts: From the New World (check out our Characters We Love: Frank Goldfinger article to learn more about that cast). Again, I don’t want to spoil it, so I’ll just talk about one of the first characters you get in the game: Repede. Repede Is the dog of the main character, and rather than just biting or scratching to attack, he actually uses knives and swords (which he wields with his mouth). He’s surprisingly intelligent, and during the course of the game interactions with the other characters inform you of his personality (because, of course, he can’t talk). He doesn’t seem to fully view himself as a dog, though he doesn’t consider himself to be a human either. He has a strong sense of justice, and he fights to protect the dogs and cats of the capital city. He knows who he likes and who he doesn’t, and he certainly has his favorites in the group. Despite the fact that he can’t talk, you get a good feel for who Repede is and where he stands with everyone else. His personality even reflects his fighting style- he’s the thief of the party, but not only can he steal things and move quickly, he’s also the best at using items because he gains a few skills that make any item he uses more effective, thereby showing that he’s most comfortable using human tools to support his friends.

The last thing I wanted to discuss about characters before moving on is the Skits in the game. Skits are apparently a common trend among the Tales games, where after performing various actions in the game, you’ll be prompted wo press a button to see an optional conversation between the party members. These can happen after certain conditions in battle, after using a character’s most powerful attack for the first time, and there’s even a few that happen after going for a long period of time without using the cooking mechanic to have your characters eat. Most of these are comedic in nature and help give some levity later on in the game, and they all showcase the characters interacting in a more casual environment, which makes them seem more like real people. A similar thing occurs whenever you finish a fight- whoever gets the last hit either says some kind of final taunt, or ends up having a brief few lines to say with other people in the party. And, sometimes there’ll be special dialogue after certain boss battles. There’s not a ton of them, but again it makes them seem more like people, interacting in situations other than just cutscenes. It’s very refreshing, and I hope other games do something similar.

The gameplay of this game is simultaneously incredibly deep, but at the same time fairly shallow. Let me explain: There’s a TON of customization in this game. Your various attack and support abilities, called artes, come in a vast number and variety, and are acquired from countless different sources, including using other artes often. To make them easier to use and prevent having to go into a menu to use them, there’s 8 hotkeys you can use for them, which allows you to set up a perfect loadout for how you want to play. And if you decide a different arte would be better, you can equip them to your hotkeys on-the-fly. In fact this is true of everything you have, including weapons and armor. Find out that your water-element bow is healing the fish monster that’s attacking you? Just swap it out. In addition to artes, you also have passive abilities called skills, which you get either from leveling up, doing specific sidequests, or by learning them from weapons that have them equipped. This encourages you to experiment with your loadout all the time, find as many quests to do as possible, and collect everything you can in order to give each of your characters the perfect build. However, beyond that, the combat of the game is very simple. Not to say that it’s easy, just not terribly deep. Now, if customized properly, you can have certain characters (mostly the melee based characters like Repede) do crazy multi-layered attack chains that involve hitting a guy into the air, using an uppercut to send him even higher, then using a spin attack to keep the combo going, and then finish with a rapid-hit attack. In certain situations, the game starts to look less like a JRPG and more like Devil May Cry. But, there’s several limiters to that. First of all, the skills and artes you need to pull off crazy combos like that don’t come up until the last third of the game, so until then, you’ll be focused on hitting enemies with powerful artes, using any support artes you have such as buffs or healing, and then just mashing your basic 3-or-4-hit combos until you have a good opening to use artes again. This is helped significantly by the inclusion of the Limit Guage, which puts you in a powered-up state that keeps you from being staggered and lets you fire off artes incredibly fast, as well as giving you access to incredibly powerful super-attacks called Burst Artes and Mystic Artes. But again, that doesn’t open up immediately. You have to get about halfway through the game before that system opens up all the way. And besides, some characters aren’t built to do crazy combos at all anyway. There’s three in particular- first is the game’s healer, who actually does have access to quite a few attack artes and could probably do some good attack chains… but, since they do all the healing, buffing, status curing, etc., it’s just more effective to keep them on the back line using support skills and maybe hitting enemies with spells now and then. Second is the game’s black mage. They just aren’t all that great at attacking, and even the handful of physical/short-range artes they have tend to have a casting time, thereby making 99% of their attacks useless for combo chains, other than for aiding another character’s combo from far away. This means that they’ll be spending their time hanging in the back row casting whichever spells are the most effective. Lastly is the games ranger/archer (the character I used the most), who mostly uses mid-range arrow shots to attack. You can combo out of these into artes, but once you get a good combo you can chain their 3-hit arrow combo into, the strategy mostly becomes about figuring out which situational arte will work for the current situation until you can fire off that combo. Now, as game balance goes, this makes sense and it’s good to make sure all the characters don’t play the same. But, this method of gameplay is a bit repetitive for an action RPG. Thankfully, the constant unlocking of new skills and artes will distract you from this for a long time, but sooner or later you’ll start to notice it.

The last thing I wanted to talk about in terms of gameplay is the AI of your party members and the difficulty of bosses. Now, in this particular scenario, all of us had at least briefly touched the game in the past, and only one of us had actually beaten the game before. There were 3 of us total, with the 4^th character left to the AI to control. Now, my friend who already beat the game warned us that the game’s difficulty spikes during boss fights and we’d have to set it to easy during them. He played it with one other person before. It turns out, that one extra person made all the difference as while it was difficult, we were able to beat the bosses without switching to easy, though the final boss proved to be a real meat grinder. It seems to me that the game REALLY expects you to be playing the game fully cooperatively, especially during boss battles (most normal encounters are pretty easy even without human-controlled party members). Why do I think this? Well… the AI for friendly characters is pretty bad. One thing my friend who beat the game before didn’t even realize was that you can actually set parameters for your AI characters, effectively programing them to fight how you want, similarly to the gambit system from Final Fantasy XII. We used this system to manage the game’s healer (since all of us agreed that we didn’t want to play as a white mage), and even with this, we still ran into problems. Despite the fact that they’d learned a resurrection spell, the healer insisted on using our resurrection items, ensuring that when an enemy finally ended up killing them, we had no way of reviving them, usually costing us the fight. We ended up just turning off that particular character’s ability to use items at all and just manually ordered them to use them whenever necessary. There’d also be times when they’d cast the resurrection spell twice in a row for no reason. The game allows you to switch your currently controlled character between automatic and manual control on the fly, which we used for taking breaks, and whenever I did this I noticed my character doing odd things as well, such as waiting about a half-second between doing anything (such as moving, attacking, blocking, etc.). Point is, unless you’re playing on easy, I wouldn’t recommend playing this game without at least one other person. I’m fully convinced that my friend had the trouble he did due entirely to the AI characters not playing efficiently. Lastly, there are many times during the game where the game removes several members of the party, forcing player 1 to either go solo or fight with just 1 other party member. These particular encounters are very difficult. But, that’s not the big issue- it’s that players 2 through 4 have nothing to do, and that’s problematic in a cooperative game.

Despite these glaring issues, though, I’d still whole-heartedly recommend this game, because of two things: one, an action JRPG that’s fully cooperative is a truly rare experience (in fact, it’s mostly “Tales” games that have this experience). The story and characters are fantastic and memorable, and I’d argue that’s the most important part of a successful RPG. If you want to give Tales of Vesperia a shot, you can probably pick it up dirt cheap for Xbox 360. There’s a PS3 version as well, but sadly it was never localized. It’s a shame really, because from what I understand it adds more playable characters, more dungeons, more story, and several hours of new content. PS3 games aren’t region-coded, so if you understand Japanese you could play it, but that version will cost you a pretty penny. But hey, the new year’s upon us, and with so many remastered games coming out recently, Vesperia’s lucky stars might shine once again!

Sources:

http://aselia.wikia.com/