A Novel RPG Resolution Mechanic

I came across a homebrewed tabletop RPG based on Magic: the Gathering. In particular, it has a really neat resolution mechanic.

As background, there are five colours in Magic: White, Blue, Black, Red, Green. Each represents parts of the world. For example, among other elements, White is order, Blue is knowledge, Black is death, Red is raw emotion, and Green is nature. If you arrange the colours in a circle, adjacent colours are considered allies, and opposite colors are enemies. For example, White is allied with Blue and Green, and is enemies with Red and Black.

This RPG uses a Fate deck composed of 2 land cards of each colour, and 1 Wastes (colorless). If you attempt something difficult, the Game Master first chooses the color your challenge belongs to. You then draw a card from the Fate deck. If it matches the color of the challenge, it's a success. If it matches an allied color, it's a partial success. If the character you are playing belongs to the same color, you get an extra draw and you take the best result.

For example, if your character is attempting to research something, that's Blue. Drawing a Blue land is success. Drawing White or Black is a partial success. Red, Green, or the Wastes is a failure. If your character is Blue, you get two draws, making it likely you'll get a partial success at least.

This is a very clever mechanic. It matches Magic: the Gathering intuitively, especially the color wheel which all players know well. As well, it's an 18% change of full success, and 36% chance of partial success. I find the clean use of partial successes particularly interesting, because partial success often lead the players to solve additional problems and makes the story more memorable.

Of course, this mechanic isn't really suitable to a numbers-heavy type of game. It looks to be more appropriate for a lighter, story-telling game.

Heirloom Changes

Yesterday, it was announced that heirlooms in Shadowlands won't provide XP bonuses.

I think this is a great change. I am not a fan of heirlooms. One of the elements of leveling that I really enjoy is upgrading gear and watching your character's visuals change. But the XP bonus made heirlooms too advantageous.

This way, the people who don't want to upgrade gear can use heirlooms, while others can avoid them. Or maybe only use them for trinkets or weapons, if that's important enough.

I hope Blizzard does not add any other bonuses, and just makes them very optional.

Blizzard should also take the opportunity to simplify the heirloom system. Right now there's a complex series of upgrades with different prices and different sources in order to increase the maximum level of the heirloom item. It would be best if the concept of upgrading heirlooms was just removed entirely. All heirlooms simply scale to the max level before the expansion. When a new expansion is released, all heirlooms have their caps increased simultaneously.

Stealthed Enemies

In the last post I complained about a Classic quest where you have to kill some monsters who are in stealth.

The thing that makes these quests particularly annoying in Classic is that you can't even be sure that you are in the right area. If you can't find any mobs, it might be because:

• You are in the wrong area. Classic directions are often somewhat vague.
• You might not get close enough to the mob to detect it. This is especially true if you are under-leveled.
• Someone else may have come through just before you and killed the mobs, so you're waiting for them to respawn, but you don't know that.

In retail, the minimap displays the area where you can find the mobs. So at the very least, you know where to search.

In Classic, there's just too little information, and that makes the whole thing a frustrating exercise. These sort of quests really need something to offset that loss of information. For example, a tracker that told you if you were hot or cold.

Or possibly if the geography was constrained to make finding the mobs easier. For example, stealthed mobs in an underground mine or complex. Here you can traverse the corridors, and be reasonably certain that you've found or not found any mobs in the paths that you've already taken.

But stealthed mobs out in the Classic open world are just overly frustrating.

Gaming Log - July 7

World of Warcraft

I did the first part of Heroic Nya'lotha with my Paladin. Also did a couple of Emissaries. Nothing really new happened.

I would like to finish up BfA Archeology, though. Perhaps I'll dedicate some play time to that goal.

World of Warcraft Classic

I've been doing quests in Wetlands with my Priest. This Fen Creeper quest is terribly annoying. I've been wandering up and down the waterways trying to catch a glimpse of these stealthed mobs. Actually, stealth mobs in Vanilla are really terrible quests.

General

I've been writing these Gaming Logs for about a month. I'm not sure what to think about them. On the one hand, I actually wrote more posts last month than I have in a couple years. On the other hand, I'm not sure if these posts are actually interesting or worthwhile.

Gaming Log - July 5

World of Warcraft

Did Heroic Nya'lotha on my Paladin again. We did Mythic Jaina afterwards. One of mounts went to a hunter in our guild. Oddly, of the five Mythic Jaina mounts our guild has, four of them have been won by hunters. Now we do have a lot of hunters--3 of 12 in the raid were hunters--but we also have a lot of mages--3 of 12 were mages--and none of them have won it. Makes me want to roll a hunter.

We also got a new tank who joined the guild/raid, but I don't think he's going to last. He's a good guy and a good tank, but he didn't realize the server/guild was PST. Unfortunately he's on the East Coast, so I think the raid times are just not going to match, and he's going to have to move on. 

My advice when looking for a guild is to determine what times you want to play, and make sure the prospective guild matches. It should be your first consideration, before anything else. There's not much point in being in a guild if you can't play with other guild members.

World of Warcraft Classic

In the constant rotation of Classic characters, I've been focusing on my Warlock lately. On this one, I made an effort to go to Loch Modan early. Bouncing between the Human and Dwarf zones has made questing a lot easier.

Warlock is an interesting class in Classic. Between Life Tap, DoTs, Demons, and Drains, it's a little more intricate than most of the others at low level. It's a real pity it devolves into Shadowbolt spam at max level.

Vikings: Wolves of Midgard

I did a second map fighting the Roman Imperium, this time killing a Bishop with a funny hat. The game made a big deal about the hat. Now my character is off to Utgard, to forge an Alliance with a rival Frost Giant. Or possibly to kill her and steal her treasure, the ring Draupnir. To be fair, the Frost Giant stole Draupnir from Odin first.

In any case, I loaded in the new zone at level 10, and the enemies were level 13 and higher. I'm reaching the point where gear and talents makes up for level, but I decided to do a side map to gain another level first.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

My installation is doing something weird, where the game believes that it is not installed and you can only play on the starter planets with a new character. I looked online, and the fix is to disable the Bitraider streaming client, and basically download and reinstall the game again. I'll probably end up doing that, but maybe Bioware will issue a fix this week.

Swoop Racing

The Old Republic's latest patch introduced Swoop Racing! There are courses set up on Dantooine, Onderon, and Tatooine. It's pretty neat.

There are three team, each focused on a different aspect. One likes explosions, one likes flair and jumps, and one is about speed. Though they all use the same course, it changes slightly for each team.

Basically you're on a vehicle that is always moving faster. You can slow down or speed up a bit, but it isn't very hard to maneuver. Bioware made good use of SWTOR's optional mission directives. The base mission just requires you to complete the course and do a few of the team's specials. A timed run is optional.

You also aren't racing against anyone, but everyone else is all on the same track and going in the same direction. So it feels active and a bit like an actual race.

Apparently Bioware has tied some story to the faction reputation, and it is supposed to advance as you gain reputation. I think this is the first time Bioware has done this, so we'll see how it works out. Reputation is shared between your characters, though there is a cap on how much can be earned each week. Bioware also puts the bulk of the reward into weekly quests, further reducing the grind.

All in all, I found it pretty fun. It's a nice change of pace.

Gaming Log - June 29

World of Warcraft

I did some Emissaries on my Paladin. I also did a few digsites for archaeology. I do want to max it out before Shadowlands.

I also did the Nazjatar introductory quests on my Mage. I really like the way the base Fire mage plays.

World of Warcraft Classic

I decided to play my Warlock for a bit. I trekked to Loch Modan and started doing quests there. Eventually I came back to Westfall. My Warlock got to level 17.

I think I'm going to give up on dungeons in Classic. Now everyone is selling boosts, and the whole scene is weird, in addition to being difficult to find groups. Maybe I'll see how far I get with just questing.

Vikings: Wolves of Midgard

The Roman Imperium showed up! These Romans appear to be from after the conversion to Christianity, though they also worship the Vanir as well. Or possibly the Vanir substitute for Christianity in this mythology. In any case, they have catapults and paladins in addition to legionnaires.

So far, the Romans appear to be side enemies, and not directly involved in the main quest with the Jotun. But I've only done one mission with them so far, and maybe they will play a greater role.

Gaming Log - June 26

This post contains minor spoilers for the early part of Vikings: Wolves of Midgard.

World of Warcraft

I finished the Broken Shore questline on my Priest, and got the class mount. The Priest mount, the Seeker, is a bit weird looking. It's like a gryphon, but with an owl's head instead.

[Edit: Not really sure what went wrong with the picture here. I've removed it for now.]

I think I'm going to shelve the Priest for now. I'm not really enjoying healing with it for some reason.

On my Paladin, we finished Heroic Nya'lotha like normal. We did Mythic Jaina again. This time it only took us two tries, and two guildies won the mount.

Vikings: Wolves of Midgard

This game is pretty fun. So far, my character, jarl of the Ulfung tribe, has subjugated two neighboring tribes, which pay tribute in gold and iron. She's discovered that her skald is really the daughter of a troll witch and a human runeseeker, and accidentally killed the skald's brother, a full troll. (To be fair, he attacked first.) And finally she led a raid on a Jotun fortress in retaliation for the Jotun's razing of her village. And she's only level 8.

The names the NPCs use for your character are also greatly amusing. Other games go with "hero", "champion", or "Outlander". This game uses "she-wolf". At least the friendly NPCs do. Enemies are more likely to call her "Ulfung bitch".

First Impressions of Vikings: Wolves of Midgard

On a whim I picked up Vikings: Wolves of Midgard from Steam. It's an ARPG like Diablo where you play a Viking. It's set in a Norse mythology setting with Frost Giants trying to bring about Ragnarok.

It's not a AAA game, but it's pretty decent. The developers put a lot of effort into the Norse setting and themed the mechanics of the game to match.

There are no classes, but weapon-styles are tied to the Norse gods. For example, 2H is Thor, 1H+Shield is Tyr, Dual-Wield is Loki, etc. As you kill things you gain Blood (basically XP). Once you have enough Blood, you can sacrifice at an altar, level up and gain Gift points. Each God has a skill tree where you spend your Gift points for abilities and bonuses. The important part here is that each tree is only active while you wield a weapon of the matching type. You have two weapon sets, and can switch sets with X. For now, I'm just putting all my points in Tyr's tree, 1H + Shield.

There are 3 resource types: Gold, Iron, and Wood. You collect resources to upgrade your village. One interesting thing is that each map has 3 secondary objects (kill X goblins, break 10 flags, etc) that reward a large amount of materials and encourage you to explore the map.

For gear, you can wear all armor types, but different type have different properties. Cloth gear has less armor, but faster cooldowns. For healing you have a totem (which is an item like the others), which acts like a potion. It has three charges, but can be refilled at cauldrons on the map. There's also a dedicated 'relic' item which has a special effect, but only a few charges and a minute cooldown. For example, my current relic freezes enemies and deals damage, and started with 9 charges.

Another mechanic is that in the wilderness maps, you are exposed to the cold and can only survive for so long before you freeze to death. This is shown as an icy-blue bar under your health. You can warm up at campfires across the map. The locations of the fires are shown. As you get colder, your character starts commenting on the cold and screen takes on a frosty tint. So the map plays in an interesting fashion where you move from campfire to campfire, and you have to judge if you will make it to the next fire in time, or if you should go back to the previous fire.

The best thing about the game is that it leans heavily into the Viking mythos. For example, in the first main quest you rescue a shipwright. He builds you a longship, and you promptly set out to raid a neighboring village. No reason other than the fact that it is there. Your character even yells out, "Time to bathe in the blood of fisherfolk!"

I was quite taken aback at that. It is certainly very Viking.

Mythic Jaina

Apparently there was a quasi-exploit Horde-side where you could skip to the end of Mythic Daz'alor and only fight Jaina Proudmoore. Surprisingly, instead of removing the skip, Blizzard added an NPC for both sides that takes you directly to Jaina. This is unlocked if one character in the raid has beaten Mythic Jaina previously. This has become the newest activity in organized raiding, farming Mythic Jaina for the Mythic-only mounts.

Jaina drops two mounts for the raid, distributed via Personal Loot to people who don't have the mount yet.

The factor that makes this really viable is that there is a "cheese" strategy where you only have to do Phase 1 on the boat. You then run to Jaina, and do not interrupt her cast. Instead you just dps as hard as you can and you kill her before the cast ends. Now, at the end of expansion, a geared raid can do enough damage to make this viable.

The hard part, though, is having everyone in the raid avoid interrupting. Somewhat ironic, given all the trouble it takes to get people to interrupt when necessary.

Our guild decided to try this out after our alt raid. We only had about 10 guild members online, so we had to PuG 10 others through Party Finder. Our first couple of attempts went somewhat badly, as we had to learn Phase 1.

Then we got through to the second phase. But halfway through a PuG hunter accidently fired Countershot, interrupting Jaina's cast and putting us into the next phase where she promptly wiped us. Everyone was very unhappy. Our raid lead started insisting that people remove their interrupts from their bars, to eliminate even the possibility of interrupts.

The next attempts went pretty badly, wiping on the boat, and half the PuGs left. We replaced the PuGs and tried again. This time everything went cleanly and we got to Jaina. Everything was going smoothly, until one of the new people accidentally interrupted the cast!

After more insisting on removing the abilities on the bars, we tried again. This time was a great attempt, everyone got to Jaina alive, and we just grouped up and cleaved down people who got frozen. We beat the timer, defeating Jaina on that attempt!

Two of the PuGs got the mount.

Gaming Log - June 21

World of Warcraft

Been playing my Paladin mostly. Not doing anything special, just invasions and emissaries.

World of Warcraft Classic

I took my Rogue to Stranglethorn Vale and started working on the quests there. Mostly the Kurzen and early Nessingwary quests.

Control

I booted up Control for the first time in a couple of weeks. I'm at the last boss of the Foundation DLC, but I'm a little stuck. The problem, of course, is that I'm out of practice now, so I die even quicker than normal. I lasted about four attempts before I gave up.

This boss is also a little different in that the boss fight is in an open room without a lot of hiding spots. Normally Control (or at least how I play) involves a lot of ducking behind walls to avoid attacks. This fight, I think is going be more about using Levitate and Shield to avoid damage.

Gaming Log - June 17

World of Warcraft Classic

I played a fair bit with the Shaman. I grouped with someone to do the troll quests on Echo Island, then finished a lot of the remaining Durotar quests.

I also did the Shaman Fire Totem quests. It took me forever to find the main NPC, because I was looking up and down the main road from Crossroads to Ashenvale. I really enjoy class quests, even simple ones like this one.

In the end the Shaman got to level 11.

World of Warcraft

I decided to play my Paladin today, doing the Pandaria invasion. I realised that I enjoy playing the Paladin much more than the Priest. Maybe it's long familiarity, but it just "flows" better than the priest. I think I don't really care for dropping in and out of Void Form. I'll probably leave the priest on the backburner for now.

As well, it turned out that the Holy Paladin Best-in-Slot Corruption, Ineffable Truth I, was up for sale. I picked up 2 of those. Unfortunately, I haven't been playing the Paladin very much since Echos were introduced, so I couldn't afford more.

Surprisingly, I'm still at negative corruption on the Paladin. I haven't had a lot of luck with corruption drops.

Gaming Log - June 16

World of Warcraft

I took the Priest to Heroic Nyalotha. We did the first 7 bosses like normal. For some reason, 4 healers showed up tonight when we normally 2-heal. So healing was fairly light and easy. I replaced both my blue trinkets and got to full epics. I think my averaged item level jumped a full 10 ilvls. I basically leeched loot from several regular cloth raiders.

I also did the Uldum invasion and World Boss on the Priest.

World of Warcraft Classic

Did a few more quests in Durotar on my Shaman, including the somewhat-hidden quest to get a bag. It's not really hidden, but it is out of the way on the tower above Razor Hill. The Shaman is now level 8.

Gaming Log - June 15

World of Warcraft Classic

I did the early quest to fight the Theramore marines in Durotar on my Shaman. I teamed up with a mage and hunter to do so. I find I'm using the Earthbind totem a lot. Of course, I'm only level 7.

World of Warcraft

I got a i445 off-hand with some corruption on my Priest. Unfortunately, it put me into the Thing from Beyond zone. I tried to do a Vision, going for the Dwarf District in Stormwind. It went well for a bit, then two Things From Beyond spawned in the middle of the fight and killed me.

I ended up going back to my previous off-hand (a blue i415 one), and this time I finished the district. Rank 6 cloak so far.

Gaming Log - June 14

World of Warcraft

Did some invasions with my Priest. Also did the Nazmir foothold. Otherwise I didn't really accomplish much. Our alt raid didn't fire, as only four people showed up.

I have a Horde Paladin which I boosted for the sole purpose of doing the rebel story in BFA. My main Horde character, a Warrior, is a Sylvanas loyalist. I never actually finished the story on my Horde paladin, so I finished up Voldun and continued on for a couple of chapters.

I think one of the biggest problems with the WoW writers is that they are just not consistent. For example, a major part of the early Horde BFA story is Thomas Zelling, a dying Kul Tiras Tidesage who becomes Forsaken in order to provide for his family. Only to be rejected by the family as a monster. Perfectly in-line with all the Forsaken themes thus far.

But then Derek Proudmoore becomes Forsaken, and he isn't rejected by his family. Maybe that's the difference between major and minor NPCs, but it feels like the different writers are just not on the same page.

World of Warcraft Classic

For some reason, I made a Orc Shaman on a different server. I got to level 5 and logged out in Razor Hill.

Gaming Log - June 11

World of Warcraft

Raid day again. We killed the last 5 bosses of Nyalotha. A pretty smooth raid, though both tanks brought alts. So we had a Demon Hunter and Warrior combo. I'm never sure which tank to Beacon when we have this combo. You want to avoid healing the Beacon tank, so it's always a guessing game about which tank will need less direct heals.

I also did Emissary Quests and N'Zoth invasions with my Priest. Ended up filling out Azerite Essences for both Holy and Shadow. Now I just need to replace my blue trinkets.

World of Warcraft Classic

Just ran around turning in quests from that Stockades run. It's a little amusing how just cleaning up can take a lot of time in Classic. I had to turn in quests in Stormwind, Lakeshire and Darkshire. I do like how quests can cross zones. In retail WoW, it often feels like zones are overly self-contained, except for the breadcrumb quest which takes you to the next zone.

Healing in WoW Classic and FFXIV

I healed a Stockades with my Priest. Another paladin tank, it looks like there are many people creating paladin tank alts. You can tell that they're alts, because they all go up the Holy tree for Consecration first.

I really like healing in Classic. It's pretty basic. The damage is moderate, but it's all about managing mana. In fact, you don't necessarily have to cast a lot of healing spells. I get by with Renew for a lot of it. The 5-second rule for mana regeneration means that you try to "batch" your healing together and then wand for a while.

It's interesting to compare to FFXIV, because you probably spend the same amount of GCDs on heals. But FFXIV doesn't really tax your mana, and their DPS spells are cheap. So you end up spending most of your GCDs on damage rather than healing.

Holy Priest Healing

I took my Priest to an "alt run" of Nyalotha Normal. We had to PuG a couple of people, but it was mostly a guild group. Thankfully the other healer was pretty geared to cover for me.

Holy Priest is a lot different from Holy Paladin. The first major change is that there are a lot more buttons. As well, most of the heals are targeted. Unlike my paladin, I found it was easier to heal by just targeting friendlies.

I find the "Word" mechanic hard to get used to. I need to get better at using those spells on cooldown. Instead of treating them as part of the rotation, I treated them as cooldowns, and didn't cast them nearly as much as I should have. WoWAnalyzer scolded me for this.

I think I've mentioned this before, but I find spells with cooldowns in the 30 to 90 second range harder to keep in mind. It's short enough that you should use them on cooldown, but long enough that they fall out of memory and are easy to forget about.

One thing, though. I thought Holy Priest was a mana-thirsty spec, but it didn't seem like it to me. I even cast a lot of Flash Heal, which is more than I should have. Maybe I'm not casting enough, or perhaps I'm supposed to be spamming the AoE heal. I did check WoWHead's Holy Priest guide beforehand, and I was trying to follow that.

Maybe I'll see if I can take the Priest to the first three bosses of Nyalotha Heroic this week, and see how healing is in the harder environment.

A Failed Gnomeregan

I joined a Gnomeregan group on my Rogue in WoW Classic. The group was pretty good, but ultimately unsuccessful. Warrior tank, Priest healer, Rogue (me), Mage, and Warlock. We did quite well up until the final hallway before Mekkatorque. The one with the Dark Irons.

We accidentally pulled too many and wiped. We rushed back in and got past the respawns to the hallway. This time, in the middle of the fight, the mage accidentally blinked into a group of enemies and pulled them. Another wipe, but this time the priest had Soulstone on him. He ressed us, but he was low level and got too close to enemies and they came and wiped us for a third time. At this point we gave up because of all the respawns.

I did get a couple of quests done, but I still have five or so left. This is the point where finding a group becomes a lot harder, especially as the main wave of leveling characters finished so long ago. Part of me feels like it would be faster or better to just ignore dungeons and focus on solo quests.

Gaming Log - June 5

The Old Republic

I finished Onslaught with my Inquisitor. I did the Meridian Complex instance, and then the final conversations. I rejoined the Empire, killed Darth Anathiel and retook the Dark Council seat.

I really enjoyed how they referenced the original story here. Made a lot of sense for a Sith lord. It was really nice being called Darth Occulus again.

So that's Imperial Agent, Jedi Knight, and Sith Inquisitor all caught up. I'm not sure which class I will level next, though it will probably be a Republic class. However, maybe I'll take a break from The Old Republic for a bit.