Pathfinder society: Testing the waters
I played a game of Pathfinder society (which still used rules of D&D 3,5). Jukka Särkijärvi was the GM. Players were me, Gastogh, Veltzeh and one other person whom I had not met before.
I’ll start with observations on the scenario, local playing style and general anthropology. There’ll be some mild spoilers. For context: I’ve game mastered a fair deal of third edition and played it maybe thrice, but it’s been a while.
I created a first level character (halberdier with some talent in tripping people and making showy entrances). Other characters were a paladin of first level, and a druid and monk of higher level (2 or 3). I entered not knowing anything about the local play culture with regards to, say, optimisation; I just relied on the fact that if you create a third edition character and don’t try anything fancy it will usually work out okay, which it did.
First difference to my usual play was fiddling with all the equipment; not very interesting, IMO. Ready-made packages of standard equipment would be useful and make character generation significantly faster.
My character done and we were slowly starting to play, so I naturally asked what they were playing. Responses were roughly race (if not human), class, ad maybe somethig else. I have very fuzzy conceptions of what the character looked like, except for Veltzeh’s char of whom we had a picture. I did not talk much about my character, either, as it evidently was not the way things were done thereabouts.
The scenario itself worked as follows: The big Pathfinder organisation gives a job and some goals to achieve and then factions give a sidequest each for their members (each character being a member of one faction, I think). There’s also secrecy about the faction goals, which does deter the party hydra phenomenon a bit, but does not create compelling narrative as characters are not allowed to mess with each others’ subgoals, much less fight each other. (The party hydra phenomenon is when all characters act and work as though they were the the heads of a hydra, always having the same goals and wanting the same things.)
My sidequest was to talk to a specific person and do it out of hearing of other PCs (including the elven druid with quite keen hearing, which was conveniently forgotten or ignored in play). I had no idea if I had to actually drive gameplay towards achieving this goal or if I could just loiter along and the prestige award (which one gets for completing faction sidequests) would come for free. Proactivity would have been awfully risky, so I just went along and the prestige award was waiting along the rails. Had I been playing some other (the temptation to write “proper” is strong) roleplaying game, I would have actively reached for the goal and created all sorts of amusing situations, but it did not feel the right thing to do in a D&D game, where the mentality is very much that of players and characters trying to beat the scenario and players guarding their characters from permanent harm.
The scenario was very much a railroad; walk along this path, kill zombies and cultists and priest/priestesses, talk a bit every now and then. The fights were the most interesting part of it all. At the end we destroyed (probably had to destroy) an ages-old artifect, but it had no impact, because we did not see any alteratives. Genre-wise it was D&D fantasy, though the world could easily support sword and sorcery play, too. I don’t think Pathfinder society can, however, due to the inherent limitations of the format.
Jukka (the GM) made a point of describing attacks, hits and misses, for which I respect him. However, they don’t have any further effect on play; not mechanical, not anything else, at least most of the time. The descriptions hence are superfluous, sort of. As a design issue the indie designer Vincent Baker has been thik about something similar: If you can simply say what you are about to do (Attack the zombie) and the roll the dice, hence creating the effect (damaged / falls / miss), the actual details of how the effects come by is extra. It can be skipped. Hence it is very easy to skip. I’d go as far as to say that this is a design flaw in D&D.
All that said, I did enjoy the game and felt relaxed and in a friendly environment. The social dimension and jokes were more important than the game proper, though the game did inform said interaction and gave it structure, as well as killing random potentially awkward silences. There were tactically convenient boxes (one can climb on top of them and use them as cover), priestesses with minion masks that obscured their features and other such amusities (that should be a word if it is not). Jukka, BTW: If negative energy is inherently evil, why are spells using it not so?
I do recommend Pathfinder Society to people who like third edition. From talk at the table I got the impression that the quality and style of the scenarios varies greatly. Great variance between the assumptions of scenarios might make the play less pleasant, as one would have to adjust to fit the given scenario and hope one guesses right. I don’t know if such variance exists. I also don’t know if it bother most players. I just like knowing how I should play in a particular game so as to not be disruptive and to also enjoy the play.
Edition and playstyle wars
Mostly inspired by Donny the DM’s posts, namely this and this, the first of which was shared by Jonathan Jacobs of forthcoming Nevermet press on Google Reader.
Donny somewhat mischaracerises the extremes of sandbox play, also misuses GNS and makes a number of assumptions, but I thought it would be nice to engage his actual point, too.
I hope I am not misrepresenting Donny too severely. By my understanding Donny’s point is, to steal a term from another field, ecumenical. Donny wants to say that old school and 4e play are not that different after all. Donny’s argument is that since ridiculously extreme sandbox play and ridiculously extreme railroading don’t really work, everyone must actually play in the middle ground and hence in pretty similar way.
There is a number of weaknesses on the argument in addition to misrepresenting railroading. Donny is pretty focused on D&D and it shows. D&D assumes lots of combat. Donny’s argument also assumes lots of combat. Further, not all ways of playing map meaningfully to the railroading-sandbox axis. My normal style of game mastering is story-focused but I don’t plan ahead and hence can’t railroad; there is no point in mapping this to the railroad-sandbox axis. This is not a big problem as one can fabricate a ridiculously extreme version of my style, too, and use argument similar to what Donny used. I will assume that this applies to all possible ways of playing.
The key claim remains: Since all extremes are implausible, all styles of play must be pretty close to each other and fundamentally similar. My perspective is that the claim is too ecumenical, but still has a kernel of truth hidden in it.
First the true part: Certainly, all of roleplaying shares many similarities. Certainly different play traditions have much to learn from each other. I mix and match techniques from old school play and indie games. Philippe, a 4e afficiando if there ever was one, experiments with random encounters. 4e with the focus on encounters has something to teach if one is willing to look carefully, but they really ought to read and play some indie games so as to get a handle of skill challenges, which are a pretty blunt instrument. More importantly: It is possible to enjoy playing in styles that are not one’s favourite, as long as one is willing to approach them with open mind. (Also, having less edition wars would be nice.)
Nevertheless, people play in different ways. I hear some even like railroading and pre-plotted adventures! Hard to accept, but true. The differences are real. Some styles of play demand very much a different perspective for them to be enjoyed. Donny himself illustrates this by the following comments:
As to gathering information. <snip> You either railroad them (just have someone spill their guts as to where you want them to go), or you sandbox them (roll on the random rumor table and they go in the direction the dice tell them to – stomping off blindly indeed :)
No, you do neither of those. You give them the information that they could gather, maybe influenced by dice rolls. Maybe it guides to some interesting adventurous location that you have designed and placed somewhere, but not because you want the player characters to go there, but because you want to present going there as an option. When designing the sandbox, you place a bunch of interesting locations there and create a bunch of interesting random encounters, because you want to know what the players will do to them. In play you don’t guide them around; their characters are an adventurous bunch or so involved in the situation that they will certainly undertake some interesting project or stumble upon something interesting.
That is; instead of director who has a story to tell or encounters to guide the players through, the GM thinks of himself (or herself) as an arbitrator who can’t wait to see what the players do with his sandbox. A different frame of mind. Certainly one can mix and match, for example by creating a sandbox with very strong theme or by creating an adventure with many genuine choices that take it to different directions. Regardless, the extreme but playable cases are pretty far from each other.
As a conclusion I say that those weirdos over there do play in genuinely different way, but once you accept that the difference exists, you just might be able to enjoy their activity, too. Or maybe not. But at the very least you would be likely to learn a bit and get a new experience. Celebrate the difference.
Basics of dice probabilities
I’ll write a post or a few about probabilities that involve rolling dice. Those who know mathematics might be more interested in probability theory.
I will assume that all probability distributions are discrete and integer-valued. Trying to apply what I say here to continuous distributions will cause problems or require thinking.
Probability
Probability measures, or indicates, how certain it is that some event will happen (or has happened, in case of imperfect knowledge). Probability of 1 means that something is certain, while 0 means impossibility. Probability 1/2, or 
I very much prefer working with fractions as they are exact and, in my opinion, more intuitive, but many people like percents. To convert a fraction into percents simply multiply it by hundred and add the %-sign.
An important axiom of probability is that something always happens. The sum of probabilities of all the specific outcomes is 1. By this I mean that if, say, a die is rolled than it gives one and exactly one result. It doesn’t land sideways. It is not hit by a meteor or eaten by a dog.
Symmetry
Especially when playing around with dice symmetry plays an important role. Symmetric events have the same probability.
I will assume that all dice are fair; in practice they are not and it doesn’t matter. An n-sided die has n symmetric results. All of them hence have the same probability. Something must always happen, so the sum of the probabilities is 1. It follows that for an n-sided die the probability of getting any result from the set 
Notation
Since writing probability all the time gets boring, I’ll use a shorthand: 
or, and, not
Some rules for performing calculations with probabilities are in order. First, a definition: Events are independent when knowing something about one of them gives no knowledge about the others. Dice rolls are, as far as this post is concerned, independent: I roll a d12 and get a 1. This tells me nothing about what the next result will be when I roll that d12.
Take two independent events A and B. Now 
Multiplying fractions, in case it is not clear: Supposing a, b, c and d are real numbers, b and d are not zero, then 
Take any event. Now 
Take two events A and B. The probability of at least one of them happening, by which I mean P(A or B), equals the sum of their probabilities minus the probability of A and B both happening; otherwise the “and” would be counted twice. So, for any events A and B, 
More to come?
If someone finds this useful, please say so. I do not know how good I am at expository text like this and I really don’t know the skill level of my audience, if any. A topic I might handle in the future, if anyone is interested, is how to calculate the distribution of a sum of two arbitrary distributions.
I managed to land a quite demanding job, so frequent updates are somewhat unlikely, at least for some time. I’ll need to do some adjusting.
Roleplaying in society
In this post I’ll argue for three ways in which roleplaying can change society or elements of it. I don’t include crazy fundamentalist Christians or other similar attacks as one of these forces.
To start I need to define roleplaying in the context of this post. Actually, I won’t be doing that; rather, I’m going to say what qualities I require an activity or hobby to have so thay my argument works. Roleplaying fills these criteria, as do other activities. (This is the axiomatic approach used in modern mathematics: Take some phenomenon, gather relevant bits of it as axioms and work with the axioms, hence creating results that are more broadly applicable and often easier to work with.)
So, with that in mind, I say that the essential qualities of roleplaying are
- That it is social; there are at least two people involved.
- That it is creative (or artistic, to be more political); roleplaying involves creating and interpreting fictional content.
- That it is ephemeral; roleplaying happens in the moment and recording and retellings are insufficient at communicating that moment.
- That it is motivated by the activity itself; it is not presented to an audience distinct from the players; even if audience exists, the purpose of the play is not to entertain them, but rather to play and have good time doing it.
This is not a value statement: I am not trying to say that other things are not really roleplaying. Rather, I am saying that for the purpose of this post those other things are not interesting.
In the book Rules of play Salen and Zimmerman explain how games can be viewed from three different perspectives: As formal systems, as systems of interaction between players or as cultural systems. I am taking the third perspective, here.
On personal level
Society is composed of people. Roleplaying affects people. Personally, roleplaying has motivated me to research various subjects on some level and had other positive effects that are harder to quantify. I’ve also read stories of people focusing on roleplaying and ignoring their school-going. The lesson to learn is that roleplaying as a hobby can have a profound effect on people. I’m inclined to think the effect is mostly positive, but that there is an effect is hard to disagree with.
(Claims that roleplayers are particularly intelligent or creative or whatever I am deeply suspicious towards.)
Small groups
For some roleplaying is a family activity. I recall some old school blogger describing the game he (I think a he.) is running for his family. There are plenty of others playing with their kids. In this way roleplaying is as good an activity as any, I think.
Roleplaying games are typically played with friends, in a fairly constant group over long periods of time. If we accept the characterisation of roleplaying as an activity that creates memories of experiences we have not actually had, then by condition 1. (social) in the definition roleplaying creates shared fake experiences. Shared experiences are a significant factor in forming and strengthening friendships. Further, by condition 2. (creative) people express themselves when roleplaying. Hence, fellow players learn something of each other when playing.
It can be seen that roleplaying shares at least two qualities with friendship. A pertinent question is: Are these qualities equivalent to friendship, do they arise from friendship or does friendship arise from them? There are other possible models, like both friendship and these qualities being a consequence of something else, but let us not go there. (I feel this is a distinctly philosophical question. Maybe I’m finally learning how to think like a philosopher; to find questions without trivial answers.) The question regarding the nature of friendship is interesting, but a bit too much for this blog post. Also, I have no answer, expect to say that equivalence is not the case, if only because liking the other person is another quality of friendship and I don’t think shared experiences and knowing the other person necessarily imply liking the other person. So, roleplaying. I’d argue that roleplaying creates reciprocal knowledge about the participants (as opposed to, say, stalking or merely reading someone’s blog) and, well, shared experiences, fake or not, are reciprocal by definition. Reciprocality makes, I think, roleplaying a good supporting activity for friendship. This powerful context can also be misused.
In summary: Roleplaying fairly frequently brings together a group of people and gives them shared experiences, in-jokes (which may or may not involve grand pianos or squirrels) and generally ties them together. Strong small groups are, I think, relevant to the welfare of society as a whole.
Potential for large-scale change
This is the political part of this post. I have an ideology, though I haven’t found a name for it yet. Hence, take everything I say with a, say, spoonful of salt. That should be enough.
I am talking about roleplaying games as a way of creating and experiencing entertainment, maybe even art, on a group’s own terms. This is distinctly separate from merely consuming what someone else has produced, which characterises such forms of culture and art as movies and music, even books. Particularly, one can’t buy the roleplaying experience, only play and create it oneself.
Of course, much of rpg culture is focused around playing a particular game and buying everything that comes out for that game. Collecting, one might call it. Further, there is the drooling over fancy toys like miniatures, character generation software, 3-d maps constructed from whatever. PDFs with embedded flash videos. (For perspective on these, Michael Brewer’s post is a good one.) To take even more radical stance, even character sheets are unnecessary for roleplaying. Dice, too, as much as it hurts to say so. My point is not that all of these extra toys are somehow bad or evil; they are not and I enjoy rolling dice as much as the next roleplayer. What they do is to hide the fundamentally creative and self-sufficient nature of roleplaying.
Another way in which roleplaying games are potentially powerful is that they give permission to play. In modern world the sheer joy of playing is restricted and seen as childish. Being drunk seems to be the necessary condition for having the permission to play. I am talking about playing with or near other people, here. Computer games are another subject entirely; there you are in a way always isolated from other people, even if playing multiplayer games. Sports is serious business, though spectators can play a bit. Roleplaying games create a fairly secure environment (a group of friends, say) where one can and is expected to play. Larping even more so. Pervasive games are strange, as they typically involve playing in the open but hiding it.
I’m not saying that there will be a roleplaying revolution after which everyone plays these games and sun shines and all is well. Rather, roleplaying might be one element of a more fundamental change. Whatever changes, barring an apocalypse of some sort, internet will play a so much larger role that comparing the two is not even relevant.
As a final word and something of a conclusion, I don’t know where this line of thinking will lead to, but it feels important. Following it seems important.
Why WordPress?
17 May, 2009 at 2:15 pm (meta) (blogger, blogging, blogspot, commenting, comments, feed, feeds, livejournal, RSS, RSS feeds)
Before starting this blog I investigated the different options there are. Particularly the big three: Blogspot, Livejournal and WordPress. Which one I came to prefer should be obvious. Here’s some reasons, as I know that a few rpg bloggers read my site every now and then. Actually, here are the reasons why I do not use LJ or blogger/blogspot, and consequently the option I ended with was WordPress.
Livejournal
Livejournal is a huge mess. It lacks an RSS feed for comments. Hence, it is very difficult to follow discussions. Further, the comment threads tend to collapse due to nested comments and hence become difficult to read; always necessary to expand that or this comment and hope you expanded the right one.
I would not want any readers I might get to experience that nightmare. Hence, no LJ.
Blogspot and blogger
Google does offer comment feeds (though they tend to be well hidden), which is good. On some themes the comments are separated to a separate comment page, which is frankly idiotic as it separates the discussion. Likewise the necessity of opening a new page to write a comment; not smart. There is also the annoyance of not being able to use blockquotes when commenting, but I don’t think I was aware of that when starting blogging.
In addition there’s the CAPTCHA, which means the distorted texts that one is supposed to understand when posting. They have the problem of being terribly annoying. The problem is further aggravated by the fact that when using OpenID I must suffer through the trouble twice, as the first time I enter the CAPTCHA it is not accepted. Very annoying. This, again, was not a problem when I first started blogging.
Why not simply use Google account when commenting? The primarily problem is that those comments are difficult to trace back to my blog. I’d have to write some signature, which looks and feels spammy, or hope people check out my Google profile and deduce my blog from it. More importantly, I want to know the blogs or website of any who comment on my website.
In summary: Commenting on Blogspot/Blogger is very inconvenient and finding out where the comments come from is also slow, as opposed to automatic on WordPress blogs, where you just click the link that is the commenter’s handle. It can be to a blog or static website or whatever else.
Truncated feeds
Now that I’m ranting…
I’m not certain of the correct term here, but I mean those feeds that don’t show entire posts, only the first sentence or two or a hand-crafted summary. They are a pain. They force me to open a new tab and read that. Further, I must either wait for the page to load or read other stuff while waiting (which I prefer). Problem: I must keep the article unread in the case of it being of good quality so that I would want to share or star it (in Google reader). Or sometimes I won’t bother, but will rather just read on and forget sharing the truncated stuff. So: Truncated feed is not user-friendly and further might cost you a reader or two. When it is time to prune feeds, those that truncate their content are high on the list of candidates.
By the way: If my blog has truncated feeds, now is exactly the right moment to share the information. I’ll fix it. The feed is supposed to contain entire posts.
I am not exactly sure why people do use truncated feeds. A perversive desire to annoy people? Not likely. Maybe they want people to enter their website? That seems more likely. Maybe there are ads there? Personally, Adblock takes care of those. If I like you and your site, I might turn Adblock off there, but there’s little hope of that as long as I must open pointless tabs to read the posts of yours. Sorry. Want me to read more posts of yours? You might sometimes succeed, but links to former posts are at least as effective a tool and they don’t cause frustration.
If you want me to read your website and whatever goodies are there, here’s an excellent way of accomplishing it: Write a post that I will want to respond to. Also write a post that I will want to link to; that way, the three readers I have are likely to check out what you have there. More importantly, I or my readers will arrive to your website with curiosity or interest, not annoyance.
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