Professor Beej

I was just standing there, minding my own business, when a messenger came up the stairs leading to the temple of Pelor.  I was just a Cleric looking for a library to rest in, see if there were any good books about Ioun I hadn’t read before.  I wasn’t looking for adventure, or really even to help anyone, but the Paladin who ran the temple was heading out to investigate something or other–some villagers had gone missing in a marsh and all that jazz.  So what’s a Dragonborn to do but help, you know?  

Thus began the first Dungeons and Dragons game I’ve played in about 7 years. And it was awesome.

I don’t get where all the hate for 4th edition comes from, either.  From a 4e newbie,  it’s significantly streamlined from 3.0, and about as far from THAC0 as you can get.  Our DM is pretty lenient in terms of rules, in that he follows the only one that matters: let nothing get in the way of telling the story.

We only got about halfway through the adventure Khyber’s Harvest; however, we still had enough time for our group to prove to me that D&D is full of what I love best: stories and silly moments to remember.

Memorable Moment #1: The Living Lawn Dart

One of our team’s 9-year-old stepson was playing for the first time.  He was a Shardmind Rune Priest with a bloodlust I haven’t seen outside of hungry jungle cats.  He wanted to kill his stepfather for stealing his house (literally–the house was just gone, he says!), so his introduction to the group was a sneak attack from a roof.  He leapt off the roof toward our party…and rolled a natural “1″ on his D20.

The DM chuckled and informed us that we saw a six-foot-tall man made out of crystal fall from the sky and embed himself (face-first) in the street beside us like a lawn dart.

Memorable Moment Number 2: Grandpa Eskimo

In Khyber’s Harvest, an elderly orc approaches your party and tells you to beware of the harvest and that everyone in the village has disappeared.  He’s crazy and fairly useless outside of that bit of information.

But he grabbed me!  Me!

So I pull him inside the cottage and my Paladin friend accidentally roughs him up a bit (by accident–another natural “1″) and knocks him out.  We find some blood and decide to follow it’s trail.  But loving Cleric that I am, I can’t leave the old orc alone in the village to disappear like everyone else.  So I pick him up and carry him Superman-style down the road and to our dungeon.

Eventually, he regains consciousness and screams all the time about not knowing who we are or what we’re doing to him because apparently, he was set-dressing for the adventure that was meant to be forgotten once his message had been delivered.  However, as we made our way deeper into the cultist’s cavern, I protected him and made sure my senile old orc was okay and with me for every step of the encounter.

I loved him and named him Grandpa Eskimo.  I can’t wait to get back to him next session.

Memorable Moment #3: You’ll Poke Your Eye Out

Apparently, the Khyber’s Harvest adventure has a mid-point boss.  You enter a room with a cultist priest (complete with tentacle shoulders!), a gigantic orc in armor, bunches of cultist minions, and a 25-foot-tall eyeball embedded into the wall.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: we have to blow up that eyeball!

I thought it, too.  So did my Warlock friend.  So we, being Dragonborn and very large of stature, convince the Shardmind that his earlier stunt could actually come in handy to us here.  So we tell the DM that we are picking him up and throwing him like a dart directly into the giant, pulsing eye in the wall.

Our DM then promptly has an aneurysm. I roll a 22 for the DC check, and my Warlock friend rolls a 19.   So we toss him. Perfectly.  The giant eyeball explodes into a gooey mess as our Shardmind friend flies through the air and right into the pupil.

Then the problem comes in: he falls 40 feet and takes fall damage to where he’s within 1 saving throw from death.

Whoops.

And you know what else? The giant eyeball wasn’t actually the boss.  It wasn’t even connected with the boss.  It was the doorknob–it just opened the gate to the next area.  All we managed to do was kill one of our teammates and really, really piss off the real bosses in the room–the big ole orc and tentacle priest.

Needless to say, the encounter was a bit tougher than it otherwise should have been.

Other Moments?

We quit soon after that encounter because it was getting late, but already, there are stories to tell.  Our first night together, and there are already memes–Grandpa Eskimo! Stay back!–and we had a lot of laughs.

That’s what gaming is about, and why I remember having so much fun with D&D back in college.  What makes D&D unique is how it puts the players in control of the narrative (it is their story, after all) and that’s what we remember about gaming.  None of us remember the 15th time we kill a boss in an MMO, but I sure as hell remember blowing a dog whistle near some sleeping demon mastiffs back in college, and my buddy asking the devil a riddle before we beat him to death.  I remember that because it was fun, because it was us, and because it was unscripted.

I can’t wait to see what the rest of Khyber’s Harvest holds.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to see where I left Grandpa Eskimo.  He needs me.

If there’s one thing I hate, it’s censorship.  Not the kind where parents tell their kids not to listen to explicit lyrics or that they can’t watch R-rated movies.  The kind where the government or another organization attempts to stop the free-flow of ideas and creativity under the banner of doing what’s right and protecting intellectual property.

I, and the rest of the Internet, call shenanigans.

In lieu of blacking out today or even writing a long-winded essay about the evils of censorship and the damage it can do, I thought I would post some links to other writers who’ve posted about it already.  These are some good reads, and if you’ve got the time, I suggest you work your way through them all.

• The ever-vulgar and insightful Chuck Wendig says it best: “Fuck SOPA.”
• John Scalzi changed his whole website (until 8pm tonight) to reflect his thoughts on SOPA.
• Wolfshead is as eloquent as ever when discussing how SOPA/PIPA affect free speech.
• Tesh sums it up: “Stupid SOPA.”
• And finally, something a little more lighthearted from Syp.  If SOPA passes, Geocities sites will make a comeback.  And none of us want that, now do we?

A long time ago, in a summer far, far away, I had this crazy idea that subscription MMOs were overwhelming. I toyed with the idea that if you’re being overwhelmed by online games, one of the ways to deal with the stress is to wean yourself off of the genre by using free-to-play games as a kind of MMO Methadone. If you’re not tied to a game by a subscription plan, it’s a lot easier to kick the habit, right?

Now, two years later, I’m running into that same situation once again. Despite my fervent belief that Star Wars: The Old Republic is chock-full of superfuntime storytelling goodness, I have a hard time making myself log on because of the standard MMO gameplay at the game’s core.

And every time I don’t log in, I feel the subscription fee nagging at me.  I’m paying for a game (many times over, if you consider the exorbitant price they suckered me into for the CE) that I don’t want to play, and therefore, I’m subject to what I like to call subscriber’s guilt.

Something’s Gotta Give

The MMO subscription model does nothing to engender loyalty from a gamer any more than a shock collar actually teaches your dog to stop peeing on your flowers.  There’s nothing actually keeping you there other than fear–fear you’ll lose money, just like your dog is afraid of getting zapped.

This is where F2P game companies have it figured out.  Unlike a subscription company, F2P developers have to make you actively want to give them money.  They give you the game, and if they are going to make money, you have to want to play.  Compare this to subscription games where it is in their best interest to keep you around as long as possible, whether their methods for doing so are technically fun or not.

You see, subscription services are tricky.  They’re passive, and they autorenew.  So if you’re not thinking about it, if you don’t take any initiative, you give that company money.  As long as the games are good enough, you’ll keep the subscription active–which is how much of my seven years of World of Warcraft subscription fee was spent, by the way.  And even if you don’t play past that first month, you’ve still dropped $20-6o on the box.

With a free-to-play game, however, you download the client and have to be sucked in if you’re going to spend any money.  You can set up a subscription, but let’s be honest with ourselves: you probably won’t.  Instead, you’ll able to shop the store and see if there are any quality-of-life purchases you want to make–XP bonuses, quest/adventure modules, and other shiny things that are in no way required to play the game.  Your money is then a direct line to the developers saying they did something right.

But the most positive thing about about F2P games is that they are free from subscriber’s guilt.

You want to read a book?  Well, I hope you like wasting $15 a month.  You want to play another game? Again, I hope it’s worth its cost and your MMO’s.  You only have a few hours of free time to play this month?  The value of your subscription just plummeted.

And you know what? I’m not cool with that anymore.

I don’t feel like being guilted into playing a video game just because I’m paying for it.  I want to log on and play when I want to without feeling that I’m wasting my time if I’m not pushing to the endgame, if I’m not having fun.  I want to just play and enjoy myself, and if that’s for 2 hours this month, then a F2P game is fine.  If it’s 50, then even better. Bang, meet Buck.

So What’s The Plan?

For now, I’m going to be spending a lot of time with two titles: Dungeons and Dragons Online and DC Universe Online.

I’ve had an off-and-on relationship with DDO for years, and I have to say, I love the game, and and in 2 years, Turbine has snagged exactly $20 from me–I bought access to the Warforged Race and the Artificer class.  The core of DDO is different enough from standard WoW-style MMOs that I don’t feel that burnout I get with SWTOR, and DCUO is an action game where I get to team up with my favorite superheroes to do quests.  Yes, Nightwing, I will help you kick Bane’s ass after what he did to Bruce.

To be fair, though, DCUO has snagged my wife’s attention more than mine.  I bought her a PSN giftcard for her birthday, and she spent the $5 necessary to get Premium access.  That’s it.  She’s not one for MMO gaming, so she jumps on when she wants to, does a few quests (“Superman and I used teamwork to defeat Lex Luthor,” she told me one morning), and doesn’t let the game drag her down.  When it gets frustrating, she logs out and does something else–a novel idea if I’ve ever heard one–because she is not financially tethered to the game.  No subscriber’s guilt for her.

With the semester coming back into full-swing and the number of projects I have that I want to work on, I don’t have time to worry that I’m not getting my money’s worth out of an MMO.  I’d much rather spend $15 on a couple of quests, character options, and quality-of-life upgrades that I’ll be able to access for the life of the game instead of worrying if I played a game enough to warrant my sub fee.

Me: “I don’t think I’m going to be sticking with The Old Republic.”

My wife: “Wait, you paid $150 for the stupid collector’s edition and aren’t sticking with it? Are you serious?”

The discussion then proceeded into her asking me if the extra stuff was worth it, to which I answered a solid.”Actually, no. It’s not.”

Now, I’ll get my money’s worth eventually.  I intend on playing SWTOR for a while (around 4 months to justify the cost vs. purchasing other games), but I can’t see myself playing for the seven years I dedicated to World of Warcraft.  Instead, I intend on playing Star Wars: The Old Republic as though it were Knights of the Old Republic 3, experiencing the various stories and classes with the endgame gear-grind only a tingle of a thought in the back of my mind.

If you’re like me, you’ve been fiending for BioWare to release KOTOR 3 for the better part of a decade.  So when they announced the MMO entry of the franchise, the online addict in me rejoiced.

As an MMO, SWTOR is every bit as polished as any other triple-A MMO (and more than most). But what about as a single-player game? I mean, it wouldn’t be a BioWare title if the storyline didn’t take precedence over anything else, right?

Well, yeah.  And the storyline’s are good.

So it’s KOTOR 3, then?  Or just as good as?

Eh…well, maybe.  Kinda.  Let’s just say that I’m torn on that particular point.

Having made my way to level 50 on my Sith Inquisitor, I can honestly say that the game’s leveling content is phenomenal. The class quests are brilliant, and each planet has its own enthralling narrative.  The flashpoints (instances) are hit or miss, with some being story-driven and others being WoW-style dungeon crawls.  Depending on your preference, there have to be a couple you’ll really enjoy.

The thing is, though, SWTOR is still a themepark MMO with straight-outta-Azeroth combat (don’t let the no autoattack fool you; it’s WoW combat with a laggier UI) and The Burning Crusade‘s endgame.  Only with lightsabers and a fantastic story.  If that’s not your kind of game, let’s just say these aren’t the droids you’re looking for.

After having done a week’s worth of dailies and PvP, I’m tired of the game at 50.

I still have a lot of content to see (especially as my class quest bugged just a little into Chapter 3–I’ll have to finish it up once BioWare figures out how to fix me), but I’m having a hard time making myself log into my 50.  Instead, I’ve been playing a Jedi Guardian and Jedi Shadow, trying to decide which one will let me most enjoy the Republic’s storylines.

Given that I kind of dread logging into my main, I have to ask the question, is SWTOR worth it?  After splurging on the CE to my wife’s chagrin and setting up a subscription, is SWTOR worth the time and the money?

I think so, yes.

The leveling content is good.  Real good.  Awesome good.

While the gameplay mechanics may be old-hat and the endgame a carbon copy of The Burning Crusade, the narrative is solid BioWare.  And if  the developers are even half as good as Trion in producing regular updates, then you’ll definitely see a lot of value for your subscription. (The first patch they’ve announced already includes a new 4-person flashpoint and additional raid bosses, so they seem to be on the right track.)

If you’re a sucker for a good story, The Old Republic is worth every penny.

In fact, the more you can immerse yourself in the narrative and get over the fact that you’re repeating planet quests on alts, the value of the game skyrockets.  At just $15 a month, getting 200+ hours of gameplay (which is what BW estimated each playthrough should have) isn’t a bad deal.

But if you’re an endgame junkie, if min-maxing is your thing, and you have to grind for gear, points, progression, whatever, I’m not sure that The Old Republic is the game for you.  It’s probably not even close to worth it because the content just isn’t there yet.  It will be eventually, but right now, there just isn’t much variety for that playstyle.

Personally, my plan is to experience the stories, work through the Republic side of the planets, and hook up with friends whenever we can.  I’m not worrying about gear or progression or even seeing the raids and level 50 content just yet.  I am going to be playing other MMOs at the same time (F2P offerings, actually–Dungeons and Dragons Online and DC Universe Online are my current mistresses) and doing what I can to enjoy myself and not burn out.

As a game, SWTOR is worth it.  As one’s sole hobby, it’s not quite there yet.  You’ll have to determine how and why you play MMOs to see if it’s worth it to you.

Every so often, I get the hankering to play a tabletop RPG.  Back in college, we had some rousing games of Dungeons and Dragons.  I have a lot of fond memories of those nights where my buddies and I would sit around a table and kill the devil or something silly like that. (I won’t mention the time I blew a whistle next to the sleeping demon mastiffs because my party member had his hand in my jewel sack.)

It’s also been around seven years since we’ve done any of that, and that seems like way too long.

With the new year comes, as with many people, an evaluation of ones priorities.  And one thing I’ve noticed about myself is that I don’t see my friends nearly often enough.  One of the reasons I gravitated toward MMOs for so long was the social aspect, and not just that, the real-life social aspect for me.

My RL friends and I played together on the same server, if not the same guild.  We raided together, PvP’d together, and generally had out visits via proxy.  It’s not nearly as pathetic as it sounds, as many of us scattered after college and our professional schedules as lawyers, teachers, professors, scientists and such did not allow for the hours-long drives for in-person visits.

But–and there’s always a but–I want to change that for both selfish and selfless reasons

Selfless

While there is no way to change that most of us live 2+ hours apart, there are handfuls of us nearby and others visit periodically.  One of my ideas is to get a Dungeons and Dragons campaign going, maybe once every couple of weeks, so that we could see each other, have a few laughs, and not be dominated by the every-present geargrind and frustrations that come so often with MMOs.

It may not work.  People may not be interested, but it sounds cool to me, so I’m going to give it a shot.

Selfish

I’m a writer, and tabletop RPGs are all about writing.  Not only will playing the games give me some opportunity to work on improvisational storytelling.  Even though I’m a panster-style writer, I need to have a plan.  I like to know where my stories are going.  With a group of people, my stories aren’t able to be planned.  I’ll learn some much-needed skills in terms of motivation and characterization, I think.

And also, I’ll be able to get a better grasp the rules of the games better, understand structure, and get myself prepped for a project I’ve had in mind for a while–turning my Birthright universe into a D20 RPG campaign setting.  I’ll make a longer post about that in the future, but the long and short of it all boils down to the promise I see in the Indie RPG industry.  Selling a setting and various modules would be both fun and potentially profitable.  It would also settle a lot of my desire for writing short fiction, if I could make my stories into adventure modules.

Where You Come In

So that’s where I need you!  Have any of you fine folks have ever had experience starting something up like this?  My friends and I are pretty often saying “hey, this would be a great idea” then never following through with it.  One thing leads to another, and we stick with the same routine we’re used to.

I don’t want this tabletop campaign/game night to be like that.  So if anyone has dealt with this kind of situation before, I’d love to hear your experiences.