#because this ghost is utilizing all of Superman's senses

[nerdpoe]

Kon, in an effort to blow off steam after another argument with Superman, goes to bumfuck nowhere. He meets a small-time hero named Phantom.

Phantom is happy to lend a listening ear, nodding along sympathetically and giving Kon fantastic ideas to fuck with Superman.

Then he stops Kon with an increasingly concerned expression.

"Wait-and all of his friends are saying he isn't normally like this?"

"Yeah, according to Dinah he may be like, projecting or something-"

"On a scale of 1-10, how different is he?"

Kon stops and frowns, thinking.

"I dunno, apparently he's like, super kind and empathetic? Normally? Now he's just an asshole though."

"And this just...happened. Apparently."

"Yeah, he came back after being dead, took one look at me, and decided that being his 'nice and normal self' was too much work."

Phantom looks sick.

"So don't take this the wrong way, but I think I need to actually fight Superman."

OR: Superman was cruel to Kon when he came back because he was possessed, and the ghost possessing him was clever enough to bypass pinging on any of the JLD radar. It was behaving like itself towards Kon because it knew that Kon had no one to report it to that would take it really seriously, so long as it pretended to be kind to everyone else. So it was treating Kon like stress-relief. But Danny realizes it. And the only way Danny knows how to perform a successful exorcism is to punch the ghost out of somebody. Literally. (also the fenton peeler but that thing freaks him out)

[chronicbatfictioner]

Exchanges and Compromises - Chapter 11

Details, details, details. For someone looking like a pro-wrestler, complete with the dress-up gimmick, Jason Todd - the Red Ghost - turned out to be a very good listener and paid attention to details. He listened quietly as Oracle put out the proverbial lay of the land.

"So to make it clear and recorded redundantly, Talon was an enforcer with the Court of Owls; supposedly the entity that controlled all of Gotham, consisting of the 'builders' of Gotham as well as the 'money' that built Gotham. This guy Bane just out of the blue came to Gotham and killed the members of the Court and Talon's teammates. And now he claimed to be Dr Thomas Wayne's son, and therefore Bruce Wayne's half-brother." Jason recited. "Are the Waynes a member of the Court of Owls?"

"Not according to the database Talon gave us." Oracle replied. "Evidently, the Court had... harassed them to join, but they have repeatedly refused. And by 'repeatedly' I mean over like, three generations of Waynes."

"Yeah, I didn't think so, either. Talia wouldn't have... well, associated herself with Bruce Wayne, otherwise." Jason agreed. "Ra's didn't like to share control with a random group of people who have assassins as doormen. The public disruptions would have been too overwhelming."

"So the Waynes have made an actual tangible alliance with the Al Ghuls, I presume..." Tim commented. "Corporate-wise, the Al Ghuls owned almost half of Gotham, while the other half belonged to the Waynes. Yet they were in different lines of businesses that if the two families were to unite by means of - say, marriage - it would definitely fit the description of a monopoly."

"You're a corporate goon, aren't you?" Jason remarked. Tim preened a little.

"Kind of. I run a much-smaller family business." he admitted.

"I'm... not sure if I should consider it cool or horrific." Jason commented. "What's the business line?"

"Generic meds." Tim replied, and then stopped himself. There were a mere handful of generic medication companies in Gotham, and he might have given away his own identity.

"Ah, cool, then. Generic meds for poor people? Did you leech off the prices?" Still, Jason's disarming smirk and seemingly innocent questions were too inviting to not be answered.

"Of course not! I'm a hero, aren't I?" Tim replied coyly. Jason seemed satisfied with the answer.

"Cool, then. Anyway, to answer your question, yes, there were business deals between the Al Ghuls with the Waynes that are limited to the form of businesses either parties would do. And yes, you're right. If or when Bruce Wayne passed without any other heirs, Damian would own both conglomerations and would have been a form of monopoly. There were... contingency plans to avoid that." Jason elaborated. "But if Bane is a son of Thomas Wayne, he would have inherited half of the Wayne Enterprises, regardless."

"I sincerely hoped that Bane was not Ra's 'contingency plan'," Oracle intoned.

"I've never heard of his name until now." Jason clarified. "And I know all of Ra's associates and agents. Visible or otherwise. And Talia's. But for the issue with the Court... you people think that the Waynes bankrolled Bane to eliminate the Court of Owls."

"We suspect. We haven't found evidence to support or deny it." Oracle said. "You're quick."

"I'm not slow just because I came from Crime Alley, thanks." Jason retorted. "And I'm starting to realize... if I - on behalf of Damian - am staying at the Wayne Manor, I might be able to look for evidence thereof."

"Really quick, I wasn't even going to suggest that yet," Oracle replied glibly.

"And if they were innocent - because of course, we all believe in the 'Innocent 'til Proven Guilty' adage - then you can ally with the Waynes to indict and/or remove Bane out of the equation." Jason continued.

Well, Tim was impressed.

"That's it, in a nutshell."

"I hope you have a contingency plan in case your plan goes sideways..." Jason sighed.

"...you technically have nothing to lose," Tim assured him. "You'll have an escape, where you can bring Damian to a place that is both reinforced and semi-publicly visible; you'll have the Birds of Prey as your backup. And if - in a scenario where Bruce Wayne did not accept Damian, you'll still be welcomed here."

"Why? Just because I'm a Gothamite or what?" Jason challenged.

"Because..." Tim sighed. "Okay, look. I see it more as for Damian's sake, right? If he's accepted, and you don't want to help us, that's fine. We'll figure out something else. But if he's... denied his father..." he shook his head, pushing out the images of himself as a 12-year-old who'd just received the news of his parents' death. "...I know what it's like to lose a parent through violent means, alright. I don't... I'd rather Damian not take the path I took."

Jason's smile looked more like a snarl. "Now that's noble, Stray. You don't want Damian to be a thief like you, but you forgot who you're talking to. I grew up here, in Crime Alley, until my mom died. My dad was gone years before. I lived on the streets, had a box for a bed for weeks. That's the kind of life you won't want a ten-year-old to have to face."

Tim chuckled uneasily. "Okay, that's fair. But considering he's the only heir of the Algol Enterprises, I doubt he'll end up on the streets, am I wrong? Not to be insensitive, but there's a reason why Talia chose you to take care of him, and that wouldn't be the muscles or the pretty face."

That was a logical explanation, so Tim thought, but he could swear that Jason was blushing - even under the tanned skin. He shook his head lightly, and said, "No, I'm also his legal guardian unless his biological father files for custody; and am in charge of the Algol Enterprises," He scowled lightly. "...in spite of the fact that I don't like the corporate world in general. Damian is actually more than smart enough to supervise the companies, but he is still a minor. His signatures should always be accompanied by mine."

"Good system," Oracle commented. "I don't see you as someone easily persuaded if you don't believe in the matter."

"I believe in fairness and assisting those in need, not feeding those in power," Jason muttered. Then sighed. "For now, though, I'll need your help to fend off the League of Shadows. There won't be any steps taken toward your goal if Damian is assassinated."

"That, I believe, I can help. It's not gonna be pretty, but..." Dick remarked, stepping out of the bedrooms. "Boy's sleeping like a log. I mean, literally like a log: on his back, straight-backed and all." He added when Jason's eyes found his.

"You know how to contact your... uh... friends?" Tim tried, cringing, knowing how Barbara felt for violence.

"You thinking about rising the other talons?" Barbara must be cringing, too.

"Unless you can think of utilizing Superman or something, I don't see any other way..." Dick argued.

"Wait," an epiphany suddenly hit Tim. "I... hold up, let me think..." he raised a hand, stopping the questions he knew would be coming out of both Jason and Dick's mouths. A half a minute later, it hit him in the full picture. "Wasn't Green Arrow trained by the League of Assassins, too?"

"Oliver Queen, you mean. Yes, he was." Jason confirmed. "Funny dude, all sass and pretending to be no-brain. Shiva trained him--" Jason suddenly stopped.

"Does he know you?" Tim asked.

"He should... he got in just about a while after I did. I'd trained with him before Talia sent me training elsewhere..." Jason replied, and then his face brightened. "You scary-scheming little shit..."

"Green Arrow opted to use his skills as a hero, protecting those who can't protect himself. I know he's good - a little unfocused in a hand-to-hand and more reliant on his bow and arrows, but he's good." Tim pointed out. "And he has his own group of 'family' - all fighters for good. I'm sure he'll be happy to help us." he hinted to Oracle, deliberately pointing to Oracle as the decision-maker of the 'group'. With the way Dick was glaring at him, Tim knew that he was following Tim's hints - and not mentioning that Tim could have asked aunt Dinah for Oliver Queen's help. Dinah has been dating him for a good long while, after all.

"I'll put out feelers," Barbara stated. "Jason, do you have inklings or list on who we might want to chase after? You mentioned they're covert, and about half of the identity of people rounded up by the GCPD earlier were locals."

Jason shrugged helplessly. "They don't usually trust digital stuff for this... membership thingy. Not especially for foot soldiers."

"I think I can figure out how to sift them out..." Tim commented, ideas after ideas churning through his mind. "Want me to come over and powwow, O?"

"Yes, sure. That'll be great." Oracle replied, even with the metallic voice modulator, Tim could sense the relief.

"Okay, you wanna come with?" he asked Dick.

Dick shook his head. "Not that I'm guarding you or anything, 'cause I'm sure you can figure out how to get out without me noticing, anyway. But I'm... I'd prefer if the boy wakes up, he'll still see me, you know? So he's convinced that he's not... being abandoned or anything."

"That's sweet, but I agree. Do you mind, Jason?"

"Having another body to stand guard? Not at all. I'll need to shut my eyes for a few, anyway." Jason replied with a small smirk. "Would've been nice to shut-eye with a warm body next to me, but hey, beggars can't be choosers," he added blithely just as Tim got up and walked away.

Tim paused, turned, and blew him a kiss. Because that's what mama Selina said you should do when someone openly flirted with you if you also want to flirt with said someone. Jason's smirk just got bigger but didn't give any more reaction.

Tim continued his exit, his mind partially mapping out his plan to clean out the League of Assassins from Gotham; the other part mapping out his plan on to figure out if Jason was as compatible as he suspected.

[rockyzbm39643-blog]

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[atopfourthwall]

State of the Wall: 6-2-17

You know the drill! A bunch of stuff coming up, some questions for you guys, and a few general announcements!

Schedule of Upcoming Episodes 6/5 – Babylon 5 #1 6/12 – The Star Wars #5 6/19 – PATREON: All-New Ghost Rider, volume 2 6/26 – Miller Time: Robocop vs. the Terminator #2 7/3 – Superman vs. the Terminator #2 7/10 – Tandy Computer Whiz Kids: News By Computer Foils Kidnappers 7/17 – Ultimate Power #4 7/24 – PATREON: Delicious in Dungeon, vol. 1 7/31 – Batman: Odyssey #1

As always, the schedule is subject to change for any reason I see fit, particularly if it is not funny, though the Patreon-sponsored episodes are a pretty safe bet (although Delicious in Dungeon may only be a chapter or two depending on length).

Storyline 90% of the remainder of the storyline is written, it just comes down to filming it. I’m trying my damndest to get this all together and barring real-life emergencies or unavailability of actors, I should be able to start pumping out more storyline stuff over the next several episodes, hopefully concluding ASAP. There are about 10-11 more storyline segments if I counted correctly (some of which will be both beginning and end of episodes) and getting them done is my highest priority aside from just making videos.

Player Changeover Progress As you may have noticed, there are currently A LOT of videos still down. The problem is really just that I have to collect the embed codes for those videos… and there are over 1,000. The good news is that most everything has youtube links, so there IS still a place to view them. The first 300 or so Atop the Fourth Wall episodes have been updated and while progress is slow, it IS happening. However, there’s a new snag there.

I replaced the History of Power Rangers embeds… and they are now not viewable. About twenty of the videos have been taken down from Vid.me by DMCA takedown notices. These are a real thing and different from a youtube copyright strike. The good news is that, from all accounts, Vid.me is MUCH better about talking to content producers about resolving these things, so I will work on getting them back… but I promise nothing – they may be unwilling to restore the videos that were taken down and frankly I’m not exactly enthusiastic about utilizing MULTIPLE video hosts on the site JUST to accommodate History of Power Rangers… and any other platform that hosts them may just have the same issue. I haven’t had a chance to try contacting them yet – just been too busy with other projects, mainly finishing the DVD and Event Comics Month, but I will be doing so and I’ll try to update you all when new information becomes available.

I might need to simply go with the youtube versions for the videos simply because the old videos don’t hold up to scrutiny for players. I’d LIKE to keep the old versions up for posterity’s sake, but the simple fact is that if they’re just going to keep getting taken down off of other platforms, there’s no point it continuing to try to save them, especially when the youtube versions have (for the most part) worked fine.

Longbox of the Damned I regret to announce that there will be no Midsummer’s Nightmare this year for Longbox of the Damned. I considered all my options, but simply put the kind of work I WANT to do with it would occupy a great deal of my time and distract me from getting other work completed, most especially the storyline. October will indeed still have regular Longbox videos, but this year we have to cancel the additional summer theme ones. My apologies to anyone who was looking forward to it – I hope to be in a better place to do it again next year. I’m also planning on having another bumper contest for this year’s Longboxes, so feel free to start thinking up ideas for that early!

History of Power Rangers It’s probably going to be a while before I get to the In Space youtube videos, mostly because of other the other projects. And of course you won’t be seeing a Ninja Steel video until that’s all done and released on video. That being said, Dino Charge’s views are… pretty low right now, which I ascribe to the fact that it, much like the Samurai and Megaforce videos, are Unlisted on youtube. A lot of my audience has shifted to mostly youtube-based stuff and because the videos are unlisted, they don’t get viewed as often.

I’m going to ask for you guys’ opinions here. The reason they’re unlisted is because I want stuff to be released in order, just as much to avoid people constantly asking “why is THIS being released and not In Space/whatever other season is next?!” However, as I continue to build more of an audience and get more revenue, there is something to be said about just having the videos out there anyway. So here’s the question: should I just make them all public anyway, even though we’ve still got a dozen series to be revamped for youtube?

Let’s Play Pokémon Omicron The next Pokémon Omicron stream will be Monday, July 17th at 7 PM Central time! We’re nearing the end and while the sessions will probably start consisting more of grinding than anything else, we might have something special in store for when we get to the Elite 4 – which I’m considering the end of the Let’s Play simply because of how long it’s gone on. I’ll try to get back to work releasing more episodes ASAP, since I’ve certainly got plenty of footage now to work with.

DVD Volume 3 Released! In case you somehow missed the announcement, Atop the Fourth Wall vol. 3: Character Reboot is now available for sale! As a reminder, volumes 1 and 2 have now gone down in price!

You can buy the DVDs via credit card HERE!

You can buy the DVDs via Paypal HERE!

Release Date/Time Change? So Event Comics Month finally concluded… aaaand the videos were late. All but Secret Wars came out late… but only just, because Secret Wars finished up a minute before 10 AM Central time on Monday, which has been the official release time for new episodes for the last several years. To be perfectly honest, I’ve been slipping when it comes to getting stuff finished ahead of time. I don’t know if I’m being lazier, if it’s a matter of taking on too many projects and thus continually rushing to finish stuff later, or simply that Atop the Fourth Wall ITSELF is growing larger and larger, with more and more episodes getting longer and thus TAKING longer to finish.

While of course I know my fans are very patient with me in releasing episodes, I take great pride in getting episodes out on time and I want to see that happen again. As such, I’d like to open the floor to the possibility of changing the release day and time. Why would this affect thing? Well, sometimes stuff in my personal life is what prevents me from getting stuff out on time – I have to go somewhere, meet with people, etc. And the fact is that a lot of the time this happens on the weekend, when that’s also supposed to be crunch time trying to get the video done with. As such, shifting the release date to later in the week might help. On that same note, changing the time of release. Originally, the videos were released at 4 PM on Mondays. That changed a short time later because ThatGuyWithTheGlasses needed their videos scheduled by 10 AM to be up that day on their site. That’s still the case, but I could simply have it released there the next day instead of on the same day it’s uploaded.

The original logic of Monday at 4 PM was that Monday was the most stressful time of the week, since it’s the beginning of the work/school week, so releasing something around the time people generally got home from those made sense to give something to people to de-stress with. Do you guys prefer things the way they are, with occasionally lapsing release times, or would you prefer another day of the week and time for videos to be released?

Conventions Sadly, Wausaubicon has been cancelled, so I will not be making an appearance there.

Anime Midwest – I’ll of course be at Anime Midwest again at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare in Rosemont, Illinois on July 7-9!

Conbravo – I will of course be attending ConBravo again in Hamilton, Ontario on July 28-30! Doug Walker will also be there and a slew of other people!

Geek.Kon – I’ll be going to Geek.Kon in Madison, Wisconsin for the first time on August 25-27! Other guests include Brad Swaile, Jeff Nimoy, and Robert Axelrod!

That’s it for this time! Tell me what you think of all this in the comments and I hope you enjoy the next two months!

[cleretic]

The problem with ‘Riddler Plots’ in RP

Something I’ve seen plenty of times in roleplaying of all stripes are DMs including overt puzzles into a plot or scene they’re running. We’re talking about direct, unobfuscated tests of knowledge and problem-solving, sometimes absent of any in-story justification outside of ‘finding a puzzle that needs solving’. They’re usually puzzles that the DM themself either designed or adapted. I’ve taken to calling these ‘Riddler Plots’, because that’s what they’ve always reminded me of: the exact kind of challenges the Batman villain uses, that are only there for the sake of puzzles.

You could also call them ‘Da Vinci Code Plots’, but I think the Riddler’s actually a step up.

I don’t want to take away from the work inherent in designing a good puzzle; it’s a skill I definitely don’t have. But designing a good puzzle is a world different from designing a good puzzle for roleplaying purposes, and one that’s suited for the former might well be god-awful for the latter. I want to explore that, expose the problems and potential solutions.

When talking about this, I think it’s best to start with an example that gets everything wrong, before exploring how to do it well. What I don’t want to do, though, is shame people who have actually done these things wrong in RP; we all make mistakes, and we can all learn from them. So rather than actual or mocked-up RP examples, what I instead want to do is use missions from The Secret World as examples: to explore why missions like these would or wouldn’t work as a scene or plot in roleplaying, because of reasons that tie into the problems with Riddler Plots, and what we might be able to do to improve them.

“Fly through my maze, Superman!”

Superman 64 is a famously bad game for many reasons: extremely poor controls, countless glitches, terrible graphics, the list goes on. But perhaps the most important single reason to me was always right there in the title: ‘Superman’. The game’s very title delivered a specific promise, that it then failed to deliver on, because it couldn’t possibly make you feel like Superman when you’re just flying through a ring maze. There’s a reason one of the biggest compliments given to the Arkham games is that they make you feel like Batman.

(I promise I’ll stop referring to DC Comics stuff now.)

This is the problem that the worst Riddler Plots bring: players are coming to the plot as roleplayers, for roleplaying. And an overt puzzle isn’t roleplaying. Characters aren’t the ones interacting with an overt puzzle: the players are.

Consider Digging Deeper from The Secret World; this would be awful in a strictly roleplaying context, despite being a good mission in the game, but let’s explore why.

In the context of the game, this is one of the earliest investigation missions, and acts to teach you the skills in looking up pertinent knowledge that you’ll need in future investigation missions. This works, because the game is directly challenging the player; it doesn’t care about the character. But if it were a roleplayed scene it would fall apart, as the characters themselves have no agency, and the players can’t possibly roleplay out a solution. They have to solve it themselves.

This problem only becomes more present when you enter spheres like freeform online roleplaying and in many MMOs, because at the very least tabletop roleplaying has tools to mitigate this. In a tabletop game, there are often skill rolls or feats built into the game that players can enforce, to bring an in-character element to an out-of-character puzzle. Those tricks aren’t in play in many other roleplaying mediums, and so the players are either left to solve the puzzle themselves, or try to use nebulous parts of their character to negotiate help from the DM. And in my experience, ‘I don’t know classical music, but my character definitely would’ is rarely accepted without something to enforce it.

Not only that, but the puzzle is directly present to an almost comical degree: you have to solve a puzzle, for no other reason than because the puzzle is there, there’s no logical, in-story reason the obstacles in place are puzzles. This is also true in the game, but in roleplaying it would be even more egregious because it takes away all potential alternate approaches that could be roleplayed out.

The DM has thrown away the central draw of roleplaying for the players, and is instead forcing them to fly through their maze.

So there’s two major problems here preventing this from being a good roleplaying experience. How do we fix them? Let’s take them one at a time, starting with the first mentioned, and what doing it right could look like.

Character Skills and Accepting Alternatives

So, the problem is that we have a puzzle--or series of puzzles--that exist to both the player and character on the exact same level. The player and character would be using the exact same approaches and skillsets, and there is effectively no difference between the two until the puzzle’s been solved. This is a problem if the goal is ‘providing a good roleplaying experience’, so how do we solve it?

Of course, this has already been solved by tabletop games, although implementing the solution is another matter: respecting and utilizing the skills or equipment the character has actually been written up to have.

Using another Secret World mission as basis, let’s use Death and Axes, which does well to demonstrate avenues that could be pursued to improve a puzzle in roleplaying. This is a mission all about following fragmented clues left by ghosts (both figurative and literal) to discover the identity of their killer. With all the clues put together, the player is expected to figure out themselves who the murderer is. In a roleplaying setup, this works pretty well, but it does have the problem that the player and character are on the exact same level.

But what if they weren’t?

This mission involves learning from literal ghosts; what if one of the characters being played actually was a medium, and so could communicate better, and glean more information? Or alternatively, what if somebody’s playing a police detective, somebody whose whole profession is figuring these things out?

In both of these cases, the planned elements of the plot should be bent or revised, to respect and aid the fact that somebody’s character is uniquely suited for solving this.

Alternatively: who’s saying that your solution is the only way forward?

Consider the mission The Orochi Group; you sneak into a research camp, to learn just what these guys are doing. I bring this up because of a specific point in the mission, where you force a tent to evacuate by contaminating their air conditioning. It gets everybody out, allowing you to get in, but then you’ve got the problem of dealing with the gas you put in there yourself. Interestingly, this isn’t a problem that the game outwardly gives you an answer to. You can muscle your way through the debuff it gives you--and in fact this is the only option in Secret World Legends--but there’s another way.

Near the place you start the mission is a side mission, Up In Flames, that gives you a hazmat suit. Wearing this suit means the debuff is never applied, allowing you to complete the mission without trouble. This was clearly the intended way…

But it’s not the only way. Other ways to filter gases also work: a mission introduced later gives you a respirator that also works. But even at launch, there was another one: Illuminati players are given, as part of their faction uniform, a gas mask that turns out to be functional. So, if Illuminati players are smart enough, this puzzle never even exists for them. That rewarding of lateral thinking, using resources available in-character, is fantastic, especially for roleplaying.

These two approaches do great to help players feel more like they’re actually roleplaying out a solution, but both of them (the latter more than the former) require the DM to do something extremely difficult: to accept their creation being broken. Either by providing more information than the players have personally ‘earned’ through the character doing the hard work, or by smashing past the puzzle entirely though alternative approaches. This is why many DMs will refuse to do this, out of a desire to protect their creation. And in freeform or MMO roleplaying, they’re the ones with all the keys to progress; the players only have the tools to interact that the DM has permitted, because the lack of an established system means they have none of their own.

This is an obstacle the DM needs to overcome, not the players. DMs in any medium need to understand that roleplaying is inherently collaborative and creative, that the other players are not subordinate. And if they want to break the DM’s toy, it’s not up to the DM to tell them ‘no’: it’s to help them figure out how.

Immersion in the RP’s world

Immersion is a tricky word in gaming, because it implies a quality that’s hard to attain, but not necessarily helpful. But when designing an in-RP puzzle, some of it is needed.

Remember the example of Digging Deeper. There is no effort made to make those puzzles fit in-universe, it is squarely intended for the player. And that’s fine for the game, it’s working in the lines it drew up for itself, but it won’t work for an RP puzzle. What’s needed is to link it to the world it’s taking place in, rather than the world the players are in.

The puzzle needs to make sense as something that exists within the game’s world. That can be hard sometimes, but ensuring you have answers to some simple ‘who, what, why’ questions will go a long way.

Who made this thing?

What is it supposed to do?

Why is it a puzzle? Why is it this specific puzzle?

Having some firm answers ingrained into the puzzle and its presence itself will help to entrench it in the game’s world rather than our own, thus helping it be more of an actual roleplaying experience rather than a diversion from such.

For an example on how to approach this, we’re turning to Obstructive Persons; a mission that tasks you with infiltrating the Morninglight cult’s underground crime and surveillance operations. This one’s brilliant, because every single step of it is grounded in the world of the game, and is presented in such a way that every part of the process makes reasonable sense. We can answer all of the questions above, comfortably:

Who made it? Obviously, the Morninglight.

What’s it supposed to do? The system you’re infiltrating is a secret operative network, designed to keep out uninitiated.

Why is it a puzzle? Because we’re trying to get through security used by that operative network. It’s not linear, because we ourselves are not initiated; there’s implied to be training and context we don’t have.

This puzzle works perfectly within the world of the game, because every question about it can be answered, and every step makes total sense based on the surroundings, and the one preceding it. In a roleplaying plot version of this, you can see a lot of this playing out because of actual character agency and behavior, rather than progress happening ‘because Greg figured it out’.

Both this flexibility and immersion need to be in place for a puzzle in roleplaying to work; to make it something that the characters are interacting with, rather than solely a challenge posed to the players.

There’s one more thing I need to raise, though. Something that’s much harder to figure out a solution to, and I would say it’s the reason that a plot can’t purely be puzzles like if the Riddler wrote it.

The Fighter Problem

So you’ve taken these things into account, and designed this elaborate puzzle (or puzzles) that’s designed to be able to work with character skills. One that fits perfectly within the world. And you’re willing to adapt it when somebody comes up with something you didn’t. You’re fine, right? You can go ahead, everyone’s gonna be happy!

Except that you’ve forgotten somebody. Somebody we’ve not mentioned in this whole discussion, but someone who undeniably exists within the group you’re pitching your roleplaying plot to, especially when the environment is a game:

The dedicated warrior.

This is a problem across every single medium someone could be roleplaying a puzzle-focused plot in: it inherently cannot permit somebody whose character is focused on combat. Whose character reasonably knows little else other than skills relating to combat. I’ve met plenty of people playing these characters, and they would all be ruined if a puzzle came up--several of them actually were. It doesn’t matter if the DM gives them a caesar cipher, references to Shakespeare, or even a literal jigsaw puzzle; the character is out of play, either totally unable to participate or working much slower than anybody else, even if the player wants to join in.

Picture this from the warrior’s player’s point of view, because this is a lose/lose/lose situation for them from a roleplaying perspective:

They sit it out completely, because their character can’t contribute.

They contribute only out-of-character as a player (depending on who else is involved, this option might not even be possible).

They break character, having them come to conclusions or propose solutions that their character would normally never do, just so they can participate.

I can’t show you an example that demonstrates how to fix this. Because I can’t give a simple fix for this problem at all: there is no easy way to give the warrior something to do during a dedicated puzzle. My only suggestion is that you design your plot so that those people can be important to it: that there is something for them to fight. But that wouldn’t make it a pure puzzle like I’ve been talking about, and it still means that your puzzle acts as a time-out for them.

Conclusion

Puzzles are hard. Roleplaying puzzles are harder.

That doesn’t mean they’re not worth pursuing, or can’t be fixed. It just requires more than the skills inherent in constructing the puzzle in the first place. It requires writing, it requires integration with the world, it requires improvisational thinking.

But perhaps most importantly it requires compromise, and humility. The DM’s willingness to to pull apart the puzzle machine they’ve built, and the humility to realize that not everybody is going to be happy with it in the first place.

[ciathyzareposts]

Crusaders of the Dark Savant: Gorror Show

So begins a mostly-optional but fun dungeon level.

              I spent 14 hours late this week trying to win Crusaders, and I made it to the threshold, but I can’t quite cross it. Unfortunately, I waited a bit too long to blog about this experience, and looking at my notes and screenshots, I find it impossible to discuss what I accomplished in any kind of linear order. The endgame requires so much backtracking that I came to memorize entire dungeon levels. It also required three separate violations of my “no cheats” rule, although they’re not technically “violations” if I’m completely stuck and can’t progress otherwise. They still feel like violations.

Getting into the dungeon on the Isle of Crypts required the “Majestik Wand” that I found last session.

          In broad terms, there’s only one dungeon left after the experiences I related last time. It was on the Isle of Crypts, and it consisted of four major sections:

1. The introductory level full of undead, 22 x 22.

2. The “Hall of Gorrors,” 16 x 16.

3. Eight small 8 x 8 levels with a bunch of teleporters connecting them

4. The level with the Tomb of the Astral Dominae, 16 x 22.

I had to leave the entire dungeon–and once I got to the third section, that involved a lot of backtracking–at least half a dozen times to pick up some new item or clue or experience. I think even if you played more optimally than I did, you’d still have to backtrack out of the dungeon a minimum of twice, because there are things you can’t do on the surface until you find the right clues or items in the dungeon.

The first level was large and full of undead, fairly easy to map. It has some annoying squares where every time you enter, you set off a trap that damages, blinds, or “vegetates” your characters, and there doesn’t seem to be any way to avoid or disarm them. I don’t know; there’s a golden urn at one point, and it might be possible to disarm the traps by putting some powder in the urn the way it supposedly is in the Dane Tower, but I never found any of that powder.               

This message accompanied a lot of the unavoidable-damage squares. I never figured out what it was about.

          As I began to explore, some ghost kept appearing and shrieked things like, “IIII WWWWANT MMMY BMOCYENOBBB!!!” Having been programmed now–largely by the Wizardry series–to automatically check everything backwards, I immediately interpreted this as something like “bony comb.” I’d been carrying around a “bone comb and brushes” since Orkogre Castle, so when I finally found the corpse of an old Gorn queen and used the object on it, the specter went away. That might be the longest amount of gameplay between finding a quest object and using it that I’ve experienced.            

Most of the ruins in this game used to belong to the Gorn, it seems.

        There were some locked doors on the level that opened only with “Keys of the Tomb” or “Keys of the Crypt,” both of which appeared in random loot on the level. The rooms behind these doors had some treasure chests with decent objects. There were actually quite a few treasure chests throughout this session, and while I didn’t record in detail what I found and kept at each location, by the end of the session most of my characters were wielding different items. My Valkyrie got a Valkyrie-only weapon called “Maenad’s Lance.” I found a decent mace called “Diamond Eyes,” but the only character who could use it effectively was my lord, so I ended up transferring the “Sword of 4 Winds” to my ninja, who oddly never found a high-level ninja-specific weapon. I found an entire suit of Samurai-specific armor on one corpse, and I hated to discard it all, but at this point I didn’t want to do any more class changes.           

It would have made more sense if his name were * M I L D  I N C O N V E N I E N C E *.

               There were combats with demons and dragons among all the undead, and the level culminated with a battle with a black dragon called * D O O M *. Despite this being a spaces-and-asterisks boss, he wasn’t that difficult, or at least I didn’t take any detailed notes that suggested the combat was difficult. I think I might have gotten lucky with a critical hit (against which most boss-level enemies seem immune) in an early round.

The next level is the one worth talking about. It was small and easy to interpret, consisting of six 2 x 6 rooms, each behind a locked gate, each featuring a different unique enemy, each with a treasure chest behind him. Each gate opened with a “Key of Gorrors,” of which I only had two when I first entered the dungeon, but later discovered more after random combats. Some of the gates required swimming for up to 7 squares, so you arrive at those exhausted and have to spend some time sleeping before the battle.            

“And a thousand eyes, can’t help but see . . .”

          The enemies, all of which were optional, ranged from the trivially easy to the impossible. In rough order:

Ra-Sep-Re-Tep. This was the undead skeleton in the starter dungeon. I don’t know how he’s in two different places, but he doesn’t seem to have advanced very much in between. I killed him almost immediately. It was frankly embarrassing.

D’Arboleth. A ghost enemy. He died in maybe 8 rounds of physical attacks (meaning he had maybe 1,000-1,200 hit points), with none of his attempts at “Death” working.

         D’Arboleth’s demon ally was more difficult than he was.

        Horragoth. A demon who attacks with some lesser demons or sphinx-type enemies in tow. Both he and his comrades are fond of mass-damage spells, and Horragoth himself often casts “Death Wish” and “Word of Death.” When these spells work, they’re obviously devastating to the party, but I find–especially with “Magic Screen” active–that they hardly ever work. To beat him, I just had to keep up on healing while whittling down his hit points.

           “Do you know what you just interrupted?!,” Horragoth screamed.

         Thing from Hell. This is a bug beast with more than 5,000 hit points. It frequently casts “Mind Flay,” which can drive a character insane, and a physical attack that causes high-level poison. (Insane characters behave erratically, usually ignoring your assigned action and sometimes attacking other party members.) This was the first Gorror that I encountered as I mapped, and I gave up after a few tries. Much later, when more of my characters were capable of casting “Sane Mind” and had higher levels in “Mind Control” (see below), I tried again and was able to beat it.

           Bix goes insane.

        Beast of a Thousand Eyes. I haven’t been able to defeat either of the last two enemies, but at least I can survive a couple rounds with the Beast. By icon, the Beast is in the “flying jellyfish” family. He has these tentacles that don’t do much damage (although they can poison), and every time I tried to fight him, he’d use those tentacles for a few rounds while my melee characters pounded him for hundreds of hit points. But then, inevitably, he’d cast “Dazzling Lights” and it would be all over. “Dazzling Lights,” according to the manual, is a spell that does random effects to enemies, including insanity, nausea, blinding, stoning, and death. His, for whatever reason, seem to favor the “death” option. I tried to keep up with resurrections and other healing spells, but in about 15 tries, he always wiped out my party by the 12th round.

          Ironically, he doesn’t appear to have any eyes.

        Fiend of 9 Worlds. In contrast to the Beast, I couldn’t even last three rounds against this Rattkin enemy before all hope died. He has a Vorpal Blade that causes 99 hit points every time it strikes, almost never misses, and leaves a character poisoned even if he survives. He also shoots mystic arrows that seem to have a lot of luck with critical hits.

               It annoys me that an enemy this powerful is a Rattkin.

          Once I understood the “shtick” of the level, and perceived that the combats were optional, I didn’t mind the difficulty so much. It actually improved my approach to the game’s combats in general, which is a funny thing to say this late in the game. There are so many spells that even with the number of combats you face in the game, I’ve tended to rely on the same handful for most of them. (It should go without saying that with any difficult combat in this game, I started, or at least re-started, with “Enchanted Blade,” “Magic Screen,” and “Armorplate” blazing.) Trying to defeat the Gorrors, I experimented a bit more with different spells and combat options and found a few combinations that could have served me better.           ��

Having just woken up from a nap, the party regrets not having its protection spells turned on right now.

           Among my discoveries are the utility of “Create Life,” which creates an (invisible) ally to fight along side you. Not only is this ally capable of doing some significant damage, but he must stand off to the side somewhere because the enemy is capable of either attacking the party or the ally. If he casts a spell at the ally, even a mass-damage spell, it never affects the party. Those rounds where the summoned ally absorbs the enemy’s attention are very rewarding.

The spell “Armormelt” seems to do a good job of softening enemies for melee combat, and I’ve found that “Anti-Magic” causes their spells to “fizzle” a satisfying number of times. “Superman” does a good job bolstering allies. However, the problem that I have with these spells–and perhaps the reason that I avoided using them for so long–is that the manual is coy about how long they last. There’s no indicator on screen to show that you have any of the buffing spells activated, so you just have to trust that when you cast the spell, it’s doing something. I’m not big on that kind of trust.

A lot of commenters have extolled the virtues of building up the “Ninjutsu” skill and hiding in the first combat round. My characters do all have this skill–a side effect of my cycling them through ninja or samurai classes, if only for one level, to give them “Kirijutsu,” which governs critical hits. When it works, all the characters drop into shadows and then come out screaming the next round with backstabs and such, doubling or tripling the melee damage they can cause. You can also elect to stay hidden for multiple rounds and let your summoned allies do the work. There are even some mass damage spells that don’t break your cover, although I haven’t experimented long enough to get these.

Anyway, my problem with the strategy is that it really only works if all of the characters manage to hide. I didn’t spend enough points on “Ninjutsu” for some of the characters and they usually don’t make it. When that happens, the un-hidden characters draw all of the enemy’s attention and don’t prevent the enemy from casting mass-damage spells that hit everyone. Also, even characters with 50+ points in “Ninjutsu” don’t seem capable of hiding from high-level enemies like the Beast with the Thousand Eyes.

What strikes me is how, this late in the game, it’s generally physical attacks that save the day. This separates Crusaders from a lot of games in its genre where fighters become useless around mid-game, and spellcasters end up doing all the heavy lifting (Phantasie and The Bard’s Tale series are two where this is is particularly true). Here, it’s the spellcasters who become somewhat weak, with high-level enemies (infuriatingly) shrugging off even the highest-level spells cast with the highest number of dice. I find that at this stage, the best my spellcasters can do is keep the melee characters alive and healthy long enough to do their jobs. In a lot of rounds, I have my mage, bishop, and alchemist join the front three characters in physical attacks.

The only thing I had to accomplish on the Hall of Gorrors level, it turns out, was to find something called the Jewel of the Sun behind a hidden door and corridor. After that, it was on to the next section. But to get there, I had to get the first of my three hints.              

This pillar is going to be important later, too.

            To get out of the Hall of Gorrors, you have to open a gate with something called the Key of Skulls. The Key of Skulls, in turn, is hidden within a pillar called the “Gaelin Stone.” The pillar has four faces, and at each face, the party can read a message that talks about two of the game’s maps. It turns out that to get the key, you have to physically “use” the LEGEND map and hold it up against the western-facing edge of the pillar, which discusses the DRAGON and STAR maps. This is what it says:           

*DRAGON* A Dragon, a Chest, and a Key…

*STAR* A Stone Tablet, Three Statues, and a Five-Pointed Star…

              This is what the LEGEND map says:

Whatever was written upon the map has long ago faded. Now it is but a blank piece of parchment, dotted with several scattered holes. Around the edge of one hole near the center, you can just barely discern the faint remnants of a ring of reddish dye.

                When you use the LEGEND map at the pillar, it says this:       

You hold the Gaelin Legend over the face of the Runed Tablet, and see that the holes in the parchment conform perfectly with the knobs of stone protruding from the pillar. The hole near the center of the Legend is positioned directly over the eye of the Dragon, and by inserting your finger, you discover that it is actually a well-concealed button. Pushing the button, a secret compartment opens up in the tablet, revealing a black key in the shape of a skull.

      Even knowing the solution, I don’t understand how I was supposed to figure it out from the available evidence. The word “Gaelin” is only attached to the LEGEND map, as far as I can tell, in this one paragraph. Nowhere else in the game do you “use” the maps like this. What am I missing?

In any event, the gate led to the next section of the dungeon, where I spent most of this session’s time but have the least to say. It was eight levels of 8 x 8 squares with no stairs between them, only teleporters. There are 54 teleportation destinations within the area, but some of the destinations have more than one teleporter, with the result being that about 25% of the squares are either teleportation or destination squares. Some of the levels have dark areas that you have to “feel” your way through, and one has a water area. There were a few locked gates where I had to find treasure chests with keys before I could open them.          

Dark squares, a staple of other tile-based blobbers, really haven’t been a part of Crusaders so far. This was briefly disorienting.

        Naturally, it took a long time to map the entire thing, but this is the kind of challenge that I enjoy. I don’t know why I enjoy it. There isn’t much creativity involved in mapping an area like this, just a lot of trial and error. I enjoy it anyway. I stayed up all night one night finishing the map.           

The eight dungeon levels with all of the teleporter origins and destinations.

         There were multiple battles with undead, demons, dragons, and other high-level enemies, and while I had a fair number of reloads during the process, the battles weren’t overly hard. Each one delivered an average of maybe 20,000 experience points. My characters require 600,000 experience points between levels these days, so about 30 battles per level, but I have six characters, so roughly every five battles or so, someone leveled up.

Aside from a few weapon and armor upgrades, the key item to find among the eight levels was the STAR map. The STAR map turns out to be the solution to one of the “statue” puzzles back in the City of Sky, and you need something from that area to get through the Tomb of the Astral Dominae, so this represents one of the mandatory backtrackings from this dungeon. At the time that I found it, however, I didn’t even begin to guess that was it’s purpose. It wasn’t until I was looking up a later hint that I saw an unwanted (although it turns out, equally necessary) hint about the STAR map.             

If someone else had gotten to this first, I might have rage-quit.

          The hint I needed came from one of the dungeon levels, where to progress I needed to press eight buttons–Egg, Moon, Cross, Tower, Dragon, Skull, Sun, and Star–in a particular order. Looking through my existing maps gave me no ideas. Looking for a hint, I discovered that the answer was to be found on the CRYSTAL map, the only map that I hadn’t retrieved so far. The last clue I’d received about it said that the Rattkin had it.            

This area had four rooms of two buttons each.

          It was clear that both to find the CRYSTAL map and make use of the STAR map, I’d need to leave the dungeon, so I backtracked my way out the doors and back to my boat. I returned to New City to use its fountain and sell some excess equipment and ponder my next move. I briefly considered looking at a more explicit hint about the CRYSTAL map, but ultimately sighed, sucked it up, and took the long forest path back to Rattkin territory.

No one ended up having the damned map–I killed every NPC to check and reloaded when they didn’t have it–but it was an interesting side trip regardless. You may recall that the last time I visited the Rattkin, I had given some information to Barlone’ of the Rakuza that would allow him to intercept a T’Rang starship and perhaps use it to expand his influence off-world. Well, it must have worked, because on my return he told me that the Rattkin would be clearing out of the area. He offered to let me ransack his treasure room for 40,000 gold pieces, which I gratefully paid because I have plenty of excess gold. The treasure room turned out not to contain much of anything I needed.

           I’m glad you’re moving up in the universe.

         I suspect the map is in the hands of Ratsputin, who I haven’t seen for a couple dozen hours. Meanwhile, any “lore” about the map has completely disappeared. Every time I talk to a wandering NPC, the tell me about every other map, including all the ones I have, but CRYSTAL has never come up again. Of course, the NPCs themselves have been few and far between now that I actually need them.

After several hours of aimless wandering, I did what I’d been trying to avoid and looked up the text of the Crystal Map, which told me how to get through the area and up to the final section of the dungeon, holding the Tomb of the Astral Dominae. I was utterly unprepared for the difficulty of the enemies on that level, least of all (what I assume is) the final battle, and I ended up leaving the dungeon again for some grinding and other character development time. But this post is already pretty long, so I’ll save my further adventures for next time. As I write this, I’m preparing to take on the final battle again.

Some random notes:

The City of Skies, which I talked about last time, has this museum where there are several powerful-sounding artifacts including a “Mercurian Light Sword” and a “Cobaltine Power Glove.” Each item is behind a force field and can only be unlocked with a “Key of Light,” of which it appears only one exists. When I first visited the city, I found the key after visiting the museum, and owing to the difficulty navigating the area and its invisible walls, figured I’d decide on the artifact later. Then I forgot to go back. I also forgot to go back when I visited the city the second time to use the STAR map. Those items probably would have made a difference. Maybe I’ll go back if I still can’t beat the final battle.

Many of the chests in the Isle of Crypts dungeon were impossible to disarm even with a character with a “Skullduggery” skill at 100. That seems a bit unfair.

In my opinion, the graphics and animations for the various demon creatures are the best in the game.

            These guys are reasonably intimidating.

              It seems like almost every weapon and piece of armor I found was useable only by a fighter, Valkyrie, lord, or samurai. I never found any really good stuff for my bishop, alchemist, or mage.

At one point, I thought I had discovered some good stuff. One chest gave me a number of items “of Doom,” including a staff, and both upper and lower pieces to a robe. The items were cursed, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing in this game; it just means you can’t unequip them without casting “Remove Curse.” The armor class on the robes was insanely low, and they also had a high magic protection rating. I was so enamored of them that I didn’t realize until much later that they sap hit points from whoever is holding them. It’s slow, but fast enough that the character will die during 8 hours of resting. I reluctantly gave them up.

My characters all have at least 18 in everything now. Some of them are up to 19 or 20 because of ankhs that you can “invoke” for a one-point attribute gain. The nice thing is that even with the toughest enemies, my characters almost always act first. 

It’s been a long time since I cast something at anything but the highest level. I wish the game would just default to the highest level.

And I wish there was a higher-level healing spell. Most of my characters have enough spell points for 8 to 10 castings of “Heal Wounds,” and it takes that many to fully restore a character’s health. That’s like trying to heal a Dungeons and Dragons character with nothing but “Cure Light Wounds” when he’s Level 20. It would be nice if the game had offered a “Heal Wounds a Lot” spell to cut down on some of the time.

Here’s a process I’m getting sick of: Entering the temple in New City. Acknowledging a message about the statue of Phoonzang. Acknowledging the screen with the name of the temple. Acknowledging a descriptive message about the temple. Acknowledging the introductory screen of Father Rulae. Telling Father Rulae that we want GUIDANCE. Talking to Father Rulae. Reminding Father Rulae that we know the SACRAMENT. Acknowledging his reaction. Saying BYE to Father Rulae. Acknowledging his farewell message. Telling father Rulae to LEAVE. Acknowledging his farewell message again. Then finally being able to walk down the corridor behind him to the healing fountain. It would be nice if the corridor had just stayed open permanently after the first time I told Rulae about the SACRAMENT.

            The characters have gotten creative during this process.

         Sorry for all the posts in a row on Crusaders, but this isn’t a game that rewards taking time off, and my two other active games are too difficult to offer any kind of reprieve from this one. Let’s keep pushing on through.

Time so far: 104 hours

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