I need to stop making excuses

Well after a miraid of bad luck (computer troubles, books being delayed, my not writing until I finish them all) i've been delayed again and again, and i've finally gotten all of that out of the way.....just in time for Mid terms. So, honestly, i need to study, so i'm not going to be writing at all until next week. Then i'll get back on track. Sorry for any delay.
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whoops

if you ever seen any comments by in/out that is either me using there account by mistake, or one of my relatives.  sorry for any confusion 

White Wolf Introduction, I finally get started

                                  

              Still thinks he is better than you

            White Wolf is an interesting company.  There position in the turbulent, unholy, and confusing oceans of the RPG market is somewhat unclear.  While they seem to exist as an alternate……um…..cruise ship……to the yacht of wizards…they seem to spend most of their time declaring they are simply better than any other gaming company, or um...painting there cruise ship funny colors and ….ok I’m going to stop with this metaphor.  Anyways, in a market dominated by Dungeons and Dragons and the D20 format, White Wolf thrives in being the lone alternative non 3E system of any real status (with the possible exception of Legend of the Five Rings). Yes I know I’m insulting so many companies out there, but lets be sort of honest, White Wolf is the most powerful in terms of recognition    In fact that’s their entire marketing scheme.  Their motto is “We aren’t Wizards” and their entire game system strives to have a different feel than D&D. This is because their target audience is people who for one reason or another are pissed off at Wizards and want something, anything that’s different.  But here is the catch, once you get past the advertising and snide remarks, White Wolf is not that different; they just feel the need to project an image of themselves as unique and pretend that they are drawing no inspiration from D&D, which like the cake, is a lie.

            While this self deception seems natural for a company that has long survived in the shadow of such a behemoth, it very annoying that they consider me and other D&D players the unwashed masses of the RPG world while the players of their games are the sophisticated elite.  The best example of this, and I feel almost guilty using this, but hey White Wolf you did it, is (http://secure1.white-wolf.com/graduateyourgame/). This is an advertisement literally dripping with conceit and arrogance. It’s also, ironically enough, not true on many levels, as I’ll explain when we get into the specifics of each game.  They really don’t actually do anything  very different, because almost all of there “elite” status comes from there tendency to focus on stories, but that mostly boils down to repeating things that most people take for granted (see also World of Darkness story tips.)

The funny thing is that White Wolf sells itself on being more sophisticated, but there really isn’t anything to back this claim other than their advertising department. In fact, in many ways they are  much like D&D, the only real difference boils down to the simple fact that their games have a storytelling system based upon drama as opposed to the more all encompassing system used by Wizards.  That doesn’t make them better, it makes them different, and their claims of greater complexity again boil down to just that, claims.  White Wolf also sells themselves as being more mature, but that just means that they see the need to insert a curse word, followed by a sex or drug reference in every other paragraph.  And it’s not like Wizards avoids touching upon issues like sex, drugs, and what not, they just tend to be more discreet.  What is most annoying about White Wolf is their self satisfied attitude that they are the bringers of RPG story telling enlightenment, and that all other games are shallow pastimes for immature wimps

Now, let’s be fair, to an extent White Wolf does have a valid viewpoint.  I admire them for not edging around certain topics, and actually being upfront about the existence of drugs and sex while Wizards has an annoying tendency to avoid certain subjects.  This might seem like a contradiction, but let me explain.  Wizards does still address more mature issues like sex, drugs, and demon worship (not promoting it) and when they do I think they do so in a more adult manner than White Wolf (see also subtly).  But they segregate mature materials to a few select books.  So I do admire White Wolf for at least addressing some of the more controversial issues, but they seem to do that more out a need to gain the “darker and more mature” label then out of any sense of actual maturity, especially in the World of Darkness game system.  So while I’m not going to say they are more mature than Wizards, I will acknowledge that they don’t tiptoe around issues like sex and drugs, though how they handle these taboo subjects is inconsistent and varies from game to game. 

            This leads to the singular and  most annoying aspect of White Wolf; the fans.  Now I’m aware that I’m generalizing here, and that the majority (how much of a majority I’m not sure) of White Wolf fans are normal gamers who enjoy a different style of RPG.  But there is a disturbingly vocal minority of White Wolf fans who are arrogant snobs constantly going on about how their storytelling based games allow so much more maturity and freedom and that people who play any other game are just dimwitted lunkheads. White Wolf isn’t any more mature than D&D played by mature people.  All that White Wolf does is add a few chapters in each book telling people how to be a good role-player, how to use drama, and how to tell stories, but almost all of it is stuff I’ve taken for granted, like how to make sure that everybody in the group knows the type of game you’re your planning on running.  It just seems so, simplistic.  And personally I find the White Wolf story telling system more limiting in terms of freedom and opportunity but if you are somebody who prefers a focused plot over a more open ended sandbox style of gaming, then I can see how it is better for you.  I mean, White Wolf calls itself the more mature system, and while I suppose it can be fun, it seems kind of linear.  To be fair, its really just a different set of standards, though some of White Wolf’s fans really seems determined to paint it as the ultimate gaming system.  Now normally I don’t judge a system by its fans, but considering White Wolf’s marketing department, its understandable for me to blame the system.  Again, not all White Wolf fans are arrogant snobs, and I am certainly not advocating going up and attacking them with rusty lead pipes, but it is a really annoying factor.

            But you know what irks me most about White Wolf is that for eight years now I’ve been refuting claims of their superiority, and while I’ve respected them as a company, I’ve refused to admit they were better than D&D.  But with the release of 4^th Edition D&D, I’m going to have to actually agree with the claims that White Wolf makes better games. Wizards went and made White Wolf’s fantasy of superiority a reality by making an edition that seems to be based upon White Wolf’s negative portrayals of their game as simplistic and primitive.  So for all my grievances with White Wolf, I’m going to have to join the fans that hold it up as a superior system, and I’m going to have to admit that they make a better product.  So while my article may seem rather negative, in reality it’s just me getting the last of my anger out at White Wolf before I’m forced to join them in supporting them over Wizards.  Actually in reality I’m going to join the people supporting Paizo, but still. 

            Anyways, once your get past their arrogant marketing department, White Wolf actually produces some really good quality stuff.   The best example of this is, ironically enough, their D20 production line of 3^rd edition games, known as “Swords and Sorcery” and I highly recommend checking out their stuff.  When it comes to 3E games, I’d say that while Sword and Sorceries have never produced anything that I think beats D&D’s finest books/settings, they do tend to produce more above-average books on a more frequent basis, and aren’t trying to squeeze more money out of the consumer.  Unlike the “average” D&D book, which tends to be mostly slanted in favor of mechanics with fluff being, well fluff, fun extra content, Sword and Sorcery focuses on the story telling and world details more than mechanics (true that does lead to some clunky mechanics).  And I really like their world design and the amount of effort they put into their settings, as well as their focus on the details.  I mean Scarred Lands and the World of Warcraft RPG setting are really good.  

            And despite my dislike of their attitude, I have to say that White Wolf tends to produce some very good games.  I like how they put effort into the fluff/story works of their games and I like their general cynicism when it comes to how their worlds work. This helps makes their game worlds seem more realistic.  I’m mixed about their sense of humor however.  On one hand, they can be rather funny and its nice to read a book where you feel that writers area actual people, but on the other hand it can feel rather unprofessional to an extent.  There is something rather comfortable about the writing style of D&D (and by that yet again I referring to pre 4E D&D) in the way it seems really professional and rather even minded, and I like that.  But there is something to be said about the kind of  relaxed attitude of the White Wolf writers.  And I really do like their focus on storytelling and background over mechanics and things that involve math (ok I might be slightly biased there) and they do a great job.  While I’m not going to say they are more “mature” than Wizards, they do delve head long into some really interesting and complex subjects and themes, which I really appreciate.  I also like how White Wolf, unlike Wizards, actually makes more than one game, at least in theory (through in reality they are so similar it doesn’t make much of a difference, but shut up), with different flavors and themes, through I suppose one could make an argument that D&D is deigned, again in theory, to be able to accommodate all types of game styles, so they don’t need to design more than one game.  Through seriously, why won’t Wizards make a magic the Gathering RPC, with a separate rule basis.  I mean, its guaranteed to sell. 

            Now I’m not saying White Wolf is inferior to D&D, just that they are different.  What White Wolf does best of course is that they are a niche game, i.e. a game aimed at one particular style of gaming or one singular theme.  For example, if you like the idea of playing some sort of supernatural creature of legend in a dark modern day setting, well that is pretty much what World of Darkness is designed to do, whether you want to play as vampire trying to exist among the living, a demon struggling with the nature of fate, a werewolf trying to exist without notice, or a fairy from another realm.  If you’re into playing epic leveled Heroes, well that is what Exalted is made for.  White Wolf focuses upon designing games to appeal to a very specific bunch of players, while D&D is more of a game aimed at being adaptable to any type of style of play, at least in theory.  So that said, when I review White Wolf, I have to bear in mind that each game is aimed for one specific audience and try to accept that. 

            The only thing that White Wolf is really bad is organization.  I’ll go more into this  when I review the specifics of each game, but they have annoying problems with cross referencing between books, and generally are hindered by incoherent organization and kind of unprofessional activities.  A great example of this is the WoW source book referencing to out of print books that haven’t been reprinted yet.  There are more, but I’ll touch on those when I get down to the details in each book, but it is a problem that keeps coming up.  What is nice about Wizards is that they tend to be rather professional in there presentation, no matter how bad they get (again, not counting 4E). 

            In conclusion, while I dislike their arrogance and smugness, I still think White Wolf is one of the best RPG companies out there, and produce some really good stuff.  I just want to get my bias out of the way for my future reviews.  For the record, the reason for the delay was that I wanted to finish all the books before reviewing, and then I had to write this because my bias kept coming up in each article.  So that is what I have against White Wolf but in the end I still like them because they are actually a good company who (unlike Wizards) at least give a damn about their product.  So with that being said, let’s get to reviewing the specifics. Next, Exalted.  Oh and for the Record, Changing the Lost is Freaking AWSOME. 

(Note, I was also hindered as I got Silent Hill 2 and Portal for Christmas, and do you honestly expect me to write when I could be playing those?  I mean seriously now). 

lets try this format out. What Wargty goblin wants as a game (great idea)

I’m a fan of three things:[1] Video games, space ships and Horatio Hornblower. Now the world being a varied sort of place, I can find things to satisfy any one of these particular desires at a time[2], occasionally I can get two of the three. I have not however ever been able to find anything that satisfies all three, and I think this is a damned shame.

So I’m going to spend a bit of time describing my ideal space capital ship game. It would be a combination simulation, roleplaying and action game set in a more or less open world. It would feature Career, Quick Battle and (sigh) multiplayer.

The main mode of the game would be Career.  You’d graduate Officer Academy (read: tutorial sequence), run a few missions as a 2^nd Lieutenant for a bit more drill with maneuvering, repairs, weapons and so on, then be put in command of your own destroyer.

Now the game starts to open up. See your nation, the Space British[3] is embroiled in a desperate war with somebody or other, and it needs lots of eager young laser fodder, er, patriotic young officers to fuel this war. Thus you and your destroyer SBS[4] Tincan are to be dispatched to some front or other where you get to do your duty by colliding with missiles meant for more valuable ships. But which front?

This is where the RPG aspects come in. As anybody who has read Hornblower knows, political influence is key to a successful career, and thus your interaction with other officers will help you further your own goals. The more officers like you, the more of them will request your services and the more choices of assignment you will have. Be popular and you might get three or five offers with various rewards, be unpopular and you’ll be stuck guarding sewage transports from giant sentient spacegoing dung beetles[5].

You can gain favor with officers by doing what they want, being nice to them, and generally behaving like Lieutenant Patriot. This of course requires a rudimentary dialog system allowing you to either show a stiff upper lip or tell your superior to pull his lip over his head and swallow. Of course some officers don’t like other officers, so occasionally it may be to your long term benefit to piss one person off if you are currying favor with his rival.

So you get an assignment. Your commanding officer gives you a brief containing a description of your duties, which could be ‘kill all the smugglers around Vates 5” or for example. How you do this is of course up to you, you could sail in guns blazing, lurk around the asteroid field, tail freighters to wait for the raiders, or just park yourself in orbit over the strip joint and let yourself fail the mission. Succeed and you advance your carrier, moving closer to a promotion, succeed really well and your commanding officer likes you more. Fail and people will like you less, and quite possibly desire your head to be delivered to them on a silver platter carried by a pair of trained monkeys[6].

So let’s say you find the smugglers and, as everybody who has ever played a videogame knows, criminals always opt to fight until the death. Now that the all natural monkey projectile has hit the oscillating air movement device, it’s time to talk combat.

Combat is handled in real time, with you commanding your spaceship in general, and occasionally taking over the use of some system or other. Your ship is generally divided into the following sections:

·       Weapons. Well you should have remembered these, otherwise this is going to be a short fight and I hope you like the taste of vacuum.  Your weapons are grouped by type (missile, energy, projectile, phlebontinum) and mount. Thus you might have a pair of fixed lasers facing forwards, and a spinal missile turret, which would of course have the appropriate restrictions placed upon their firing arcs. As captain of the ship, you can set a general target for the ship, or for the anal-retentive out there[7], you can target each weapon system individually. The latter sort of order would override the former, so if you wanted most of your weapons to fire at one target, but needed those lasers to handle that one frigate busy shoving missiles up your ship’s exhaust ports, you could tell your ship to fire at the first target, then manually switch the lasers to the frigate.

·       Defenses. Defenses consist of Point Defense and Armor, but no shields. This encourages aggression, not hiding behind asteroids[8]. Point defense would be able to shoot down incoming projectiles, depending on their type. Thus lasers would be impossible to intercept, railgun slugs would be hard, and missiles would be easy.  All you do to manage your point defense is to tell it what enemy to concentrate on defending you from the most. Armor simply reduces the damage dealt in the unhappy event that a shot gets through your point defense and hits your ship. Each component of the ship has its own armor score, and if the component takes enough damage it will no longer function. This brings me to:

·       Repairs. Get the crew to make the various pieces work again. You want to do this because there can be some nasty side effects of component failure. To many hull breaks and you might need to set them to filling up holes so there will be some air left to breathe after the fight. Or maybe a hit shorted out the capacitors to the railguns in Turret B, and now half your ship is spitting sparks.  You of course have a rather small damage detail, and now need to decide how best to use them.

·       Helm. This lets you plot a course. The computer does this automatically in order to optimize weapon facing against your assigned target, but you can do this manually as well for best results.

 

For those who have played it, I’m essentially describing a more complicated version of Battlestations: Midway. For those of you who have not, shame on you. Get thee to Steam and proffer thy credit card to the tune of $20 and all will be forgiven. As in Bs:M[9] you can take direct command of any of the weapons systems at any time, because damnit there are far too few games that let you shoot things with ginormous death rays.

 

So you complete your assignment, and then get to pick your next mission from the list of offered positions. After a while you earn a promotion and get a better ship. When your new ship is commissioned, you get to customize it a bit. The engines, reactor and some of the weapons are standard to the class of ship you’ve been offered, but if you really like those plasma Gatling guns, and think that the forward section has too little armor, now’s your chance to do something about it[10]. So up the shipyard ladder you go, destroyer, heavy destroyer, light cruiser, heavy cruiser, battlecruiser, battleship, dreadnaught, heavy dreadnaught. About the time you hit heavy cruiser you earn an escort destroyer, which you can give general orders to, such as attack target, movement and formation. When you hit dreadnaught, you are in command of your own small flotilla, and every third mission allows you to pick your own target as a senior member of the Space British Star Navy.

 

This of course gives you a much larger role in shaping the overall progress of the war and lets you direct the offensive towards the enemy homeworld. Take this and you win the game, let them take yours and you lose.

 

Now how awesome would that be?

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[1] Well, more than three actually, recent estimates give a figure as high as five.

[2] For example Horatio Hornblower books are a proven source of Horatio Hornblower, and video game stores often sell video games.

[3] Or possibly Space French. Maintaining Horatio Hornblowerness requires that the setting bear as much resemblance to the Napoleonic Wars as humanly possible.

[4] For Space British Ship of course.

[5] Because what is the point of a game if it doesn’t have giant sentient spacegoing dung beetles?

[6] It’s a space navy. Everybody worth their electrons has a pair of trained monkeys. Honestly some of the things I need to explain to you…

[7] Also known as people who don’t think Starcraft takes enough micromanagement.

[8] Otherwise it would play like Halo with spaceships, and admit it, you spent half of Halo staring at a rock waiting for your armor to stop beeping at you.

[9] There will be no jokes about this abbreviation. Now excuse me, I need to go clean my whips.

[10] Alternatively you could use your upgrade points to buy more trained monkeys. After your tenth monkey, you can even start to customize their outfits.

Hey, i'm not dead yet

As per normal, i am here to whine and make excuses.  In hindsight, i really shouldn't have determined to read all 4 books before writing the articles, especially since one of them arrived late.  However, now that the this is over, you can expect some articles in the next few days.  First off I'm going to try to explain/justify my bias towards White Wolf in general, before I finally release the articles.  

However, I've also been hindered because for Christmas, i got Silent Hill 2, the Orange Box, the Witcher, some Boggart films, and I Cladius, so do you really expect me to focus too much on writing when i could play portal?

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