Roll for Initiative

During the past several months, I've been thinking a lot about the mechanics of rpg's.

A long time ago, I read an article written by Justin Achilli, in which he talked about the art of designing character sheets. He said that every skill you put on it, communicates with the players about what kind of characters the game is meant to have.

As an example, he mentioned the computer skill that snuk it's way onto all the OWoD sheets. This in turn led to hacker werewolves. That was never really in the game designers heads. But since it was on the character sheet, it was obviously ment to be used. So you get ferocious, nerdy, H4xx0r werewolves... Yeah. I have a hard time picturing it too.

But it made me think more about the things we take for granted when we home-brew our systems. In this particular case, Initiative, and whether or not we should get rid of it.

Not in all systems of course, but in some. If you're running a very combat-heavy game, you will need Initiative like you need Oxygen, but I'm starting to think it has no place in horror games. Now before you start screaming obscenities at your screen, or phoning the asylum to have me committed, let me explain.

Initiative is great for keeping track of combat, it's true, but it also creates a probability curve of success that is bad for suspense. If you want your character to be good at fighting, step one is always a high initiative, followed by a good combat skill, and finally you round off with lots of damage. Presto, an almost unbeatable war machine.

But take away Inititative, and suddenly things get scarier. It doesn't matter if you hit like a truck, or have the unerring accuracy of a laser if you're dead before you can swing. Suddenly every fight becomes edgy and uncertain. As a fight should be in a horror game.

Let's take a Jasonesque slasher villain as an example. How scary is he if;

1. you know you how likely you are to hit first?
2. you know the amount of damage you can pull off in a single round?

You now know if you should take him on or not. The best tactic has crystallized itself in your mind, and a good portion of the suspense is now dead.

If Initiative is a part of the rules, the usual way to resolve this dilemma is to make Jason very hard to kill, but in my experience, a ridiculously tough enemy is more annoying than frightening.

Getting rid of Initiative has the added benefit of making minor monsters nastier. You can't just yawn and mow down the gremlings, if you can't be certain to hit first.

This is the key, right here. The death of certainty and apathy.

Picture all the good horror movies you've seen. Or most good movies over all. Most have a scene where an unlikely person gets in a telling hit that changes the direction things are going. Translated to the table-top, this means that the Psychotic Granny actually becomes dangerous, without you having to explain why she had 6d10 Initiative!

The flip side is that characters who are not Masters of the Seven Secrets of Doom, can now make more of a difference in a desperate fight, than when they know for a fact that the villain will mulch them in the first round. Sure it's likely, but you can't be certain!

The problem really, is that I have no idea how to mechanically make combat work without the damn thing. But I'm working on it, and when I know, you'll know!

Sniper Elite V2 (PC)

The other day I finished the final mission of Sniper Elite V2, the shooter/stealth game from Rebellion Developments, released last year, and figured a review would be in order.

Sniper Elite V2 takes place in Berlin, 1945. You play Karl Fairburne, an OSS officer and elite sniper. Karl is assigned to Operation Paperclip, and tasked with recruiting German scientists for the US, though you mostly spend your time killing said scientists in order to deny them to the Soviets. If this is because Rebellion Developments wanted to minimize the impact of Operation Paperclip or because most gamers hate escort missions, I'll let you decide, but as I'm writing this, I can only remember one escort mission, and the only thing you had to do was give a guy cover fire, so not all that many escort jobs in total.

This game is extremely atmospheric. It oozes mood in every mission. Between the music, the sound effects and the graphics, the game does everything it can to draw you in. And it does it well. No complaints there whatsoever.

But pretty sights and sounds only go so far. The devil is in the details, and in all games, those details are in the gameplay.

Not to worry though. The gameplay in Sniper Elite V2 is quite good. They haven't re-invented the wheel, which is fine, since it allows you to dive right in.

You have a cover system that works well most of the time, but it handles corners somewhat poorly. The rest of the ”day to day” gameplay is pretty standard. You sneak through the ruins of Berlin, carefully scanning the buildings for enemy snipers, dodging (or eliminating) patrols, and when you have the target in your sights, you eliminate him. If you choose to play on higher difficulties, you will have to contend with accurate bullet physics, which will of course make things harder.

A couple of things really stand out from other games though.

The first is the X-ray damage camera. When this effect occurs, you get a graphic view of your bullet tearing it's way through the enemy. You get to see bone exploding, blood spurting, and organs being ruptured. Quite a graphic reminder of what getting shot means. You can set the frequency of how often this occurs, and it can get annoying if it happens too often. I have to say though, that it can be very satisfying to see your target go down so vividly.

The second thing that really sticks out is not so good. It is in fact, pretty silly. You see, from time to time, you will encounter tanks, and you destroy these tanks, not with anti tank weapons like bazookas, but by sniping their bright red fuel tank covers. That's right, you can kill tanks with one well placed bullet. It's very silly, but in the grand scheme of this game, it's a very small thing. It is in fact the only bad thing I can say about it.

In conclusion, if you like assassination games, and you are a fan of WWII, you'd do well to pick up this game. It's a lot of fun to find that right spot to shoot from, while large groups of bombers sail overhead. Then you wait for a bomb to explode in order to cover the noise of your gun, and bang! Mission successful.

I leave you with this trailer:

Here we go again...

So, it's Monday again. Monday, the most hated day of the week. Sometimes I think the biggest reason Garfield was so loved, was because he hated Mondays, and not for being a fat, lazy, lasagna-scarfing bastard.

So why do we hate Mondays? It's because we have to rejoin society again. Work, school or whatever occupies your time, it's on once more. On weekends we can meet friends, indulge in our hobbies or just put our feet up and say ”Fuck it, I'm not washing the dishes today!”. But come Monday, it's time to wash those plates, to smile politely at your bosses inane jokes and put up with the loud mouth on the bus, who's taking up too much space and reeks of bad perfume. In short, it's time to make civilization work again.

If by some miracle we could all do whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted with no worries as to the quality of our lives, I think we'd last two weeks. Then the human race would implode in a storm of fire and blood. We are at the pinnacle of altruistic egotism, we are happy to help others, but we are happier to help ourselves. Without society and civilization to keep us even slightly in check, nothing would ever get done. Why grow food, when you can steal someone elses dinner? Because he will call the police, of course.

In other words, without Monday to drag us screaming and kicking into another week, we would degenerate back into cavemen, clubbing our neighbours with rocks and seeking shelter in muddy holes. The world we live in is far from perfect, but it could be so much worse, and that's thanks to Mondays.

So instead of hating on it, let's all just tip our metaphorical hats to this unappreciated day, and say Thank You.

That's what I think, but then again I'm in an odd mood, perhaps because it's Monday.

Ripper Street

I hadn't seen five minutes of episode one when I knew I had to review this show.
However I decided to wait until I had seen episode two in order to make a more informed decision. And I have. It's a magnificent show!

So, what's it all about? Well, the name says alot, but it's also a bit misleading. The scene is set in Whitechapel in the spring of 1889, but six months after Jack the Ripper cast his bloody shadow over London. The show follows H-Division, who's job it was to catch the Ripper, and since they failed, the people have little respect for the police, and are apt to mob violence.

The main characters are Detective Inspector Edmund Reid (Matthew Macfadyen, MI-5, Pillars of the earth), a good man who believes in the law, but knows that in order to get things done, sometimes you must compromise your morals. He is assisted by the rough and grim Detective Sergeant Bennet Drake (Jerome Flynn, Game of Thrones) and the American army doctor and ex Pinkerton, Captain Homer Jackson (Adam Rothenberg, The Ex list) a clever and observant man, with a serious weakness for vice and a fugitive from a dark past.

The visuals in Ripper Street are glorious in all their grimy misery. After all, Whitechapel, though not the worst part of Victorias London, was more than bad enough. The show does well in capturing this in everything from the filthy walls, to the ragged clothes which makes every clean shirt collar seem so much more sophisticated.

If you like the Victorian era, you should definately watch the show, but if you like me, are obsessed with Victoriana, you simply must watch it. Bit of a warning though, it's not for the squeamish. It can be very violent and bloody. 

Enjoy the trailer!