Building the Perfect MMO, Part One: Characters

In case you didn’t know, Dungeons and Dragons Online has recently opened up its servers for subscription-free gameplay.  Now since I successfully kicked my MMO addiction a couple years ago, I’ve been (intentionally) out of the loop on the topic.  But with several of my online acquaintances trying out DDO, I figured I’d give it a shot.  Surely I wouldn’t get hooked all over again.

I know what you’re thinking.  You’re thinking, I’m about to say that I got hooked all over again.  And you’re wrong.  What I am about to say is that my experience with what is good about DDO (the combat) and what isn’t so good about DDO (everything else) got me to thinking about what I’ve liked and disliked about the various other MMOs I’ve played.  And how someone out there can code the MMO that would get me hooked all over again. 

Rather than a bulleted list of the pros and cons of each game, I’m going to take the aspects of gameplay that are important to me , and talk for a bit about which games have really done well in this regard, and why.  For me anyway.

Well, start with Characters.  When I think about this all-important first step in playing a game, two really stand out.  Everquest II provided the most options.  Many races, many available classes (and subclasses), and many many ways to customize the appearance of your toon.  If you’re going to go the standard “I want to create an elven druid” route with characters, you’d do well to give your players as many viable and meaningful options as you can.  Of course, you don’t have to go this route at all.  EVE-Online is by far the winner in my opinion with its classless character creation.  Choices you make at the beginning impact your starting skill-set but after that, any character can train to do anything, given time (more about that in a bit when we talk about advancement).

In the coming days I’ll also be talking about character advancement, crafting, economics, questing, combat, and some other parts of the MMO experience.  For now, though, what have I missed?  What other games do a great (or terrible) job during the character creation phase?

I’m Maligning Your Alignment

Probably no big surprise here, but a lot of my opinions about rpgs and gaming in general cut a bit across the grain. One of the topics on which I often have the most animated debates is on character alignment.

The biggest issue I have with such systems is that, even if the various alignment possibilities were well defined, I simply cannot accept that all of the various permutations and combinations of ethical and moral values can be pigeonholed into nine neat little slots. Jess and I might both be playing “lawful good” characters, but we’re not going to react the same way; if I had a guess I’d probably be “more lawful than good”, while my companion would be the converse. This isn’t the problem. The problem is that in that situation, it’d be very easy to accuse one of us an alignment infraction, if you don’t recognize the grey area.

Next biggest issue, and this is the one that actually gets me into the most knife fights, is that no one has the same conception of good and evil. You and I might consider cannibalism to be evil (and I certainly hope we can agree on that), but certain isolated cultures as recently as the middle of the previous century would beg to differ. I consider myself a good person overall (at least I try to be), but I have a neighbor who is sincerely convinced that my politics and choice of personal vehicle have earned me more "bad Karma" than Martin Bormann. So we in the industrialized nations of the 21st century each have a different idea what is good and what isn’t, and guess what? None of our ideas agree completely with any portrayal of a quasi-medieval fantasy setting. I mean let’s face it: a gang of unemployed thugs takes up a vocation involving invading people’s homes, slaughtering them when they defend said homes, and stealing their property. All because they look different and/or have a different religion. What our society’s values would see as serial hate-crimes, the game environment considers the brave feats of daring-do about which skalds sing. So we’re role-playing in a time and place of different values, you say. Absolutely, I reply. That’s exactly my point as well.

Here’s a further illustration. In your typical fantasy setting, no player-character is going to be put to trial for killing a goblin (unless it is by the goblins, but I’d suspect they may have divergent views of due process…). Whole battalions of adventures can wipe out entire tribes with impunity. Why? Well, it is obvious: goblins aren’t people! They’re monsters! Little more than talking vermin, you’re doing society a favor by getting rid of them. Got it. And yet, every time I’ve done the following trick, the GM has blown a gasket and threatened some form of bogus alignment punishment. Here’s the trick: everyone knows that the very first dungeon you go into when you’re first level will have some kind of wuss encounter either right outside the dungeon or just inside. It’ll be with something really weak, like low-hp kobolds or something. I generally try to take one or two alive, but not out of any sense of mercy. Instead I’ll truss them up and run them ahead of the party down the corridor to set off traps*. Whoa, there! That’s just evil! But why? I mean, they aren’t people. We’re here to kill them anyway. In fact, the same people who are now calling me a monster were a few minutes ago asking me what the hell I was thinking taking them prisoner in the first place. Society doesn’t recognize these creatures as having any rights. I consider it better for them to suffer the effects of their fiendish and cowardly traps than my hygienically-superior companions. Clearly we have a disconnect here.**

“Aha!”, shouts the bald dwarf in the back of the room. “But good and evil are not subjective”, he begins trotting out a speech we’ve heard him give many, many times. Only this time it is actually relevant to the matter at hand. “We have spells that can ‘detect’ evil. Priest and paladins wield holy weapons that do additional harm to ‘evil’ creatures. Indeed”, he flusters. “Some of these fiends are so objectively evil that they can only be harmed by these blessed artifacts. So clearly, good and evil are tangible forces, and all of your wishy-washy relativism is a bunch of humbug! And…”, he concludes in an even louder voice, “This game sucks! Call of Cthulhu is the only game anyone should ever play!”

And he has a point. About the alignment question, that is. If good and evil have mechanical considerations in addition to social ones, then clearly someone has to decide what, for the purpose of the game, makes the grade. That person is the GM, as if he or she doesn’t already have enough to do. But I reiterate, the GM and I might not be on the same page, and while he has the final call, creating a complex and evolved system of social mores and communicating it to the players, in addition to everything else a GM does is just too much work to ask. And if we simply say, “Well, it is more or less a medieval society”, then we run into the issues of “are dragons people?” and “why isn’t anyone burning that sorcerer at the stake?”. Obviously we likewise can’t just say, “Well, it is medieval technology, but with modern values.” Because if we did, adventurers would lose their fear of dragons only to soil their chainmail at the approach of the jackbooted minions of the Greyhawk Civil Liberties Union.

Its a pretty problem (to me, anyway—I’m well aware that thousands of gamers don’t even think about any of this stuff and are scratching their heads—if you’re one of them feel free to call me a geek). What’s my solution, you ask? Well, depending on the game I’m running and the story my players and I want to tell, I do one of three things:

1. Ignore the issue and dungeon on! Yes, believe it or not, I can do exactly that. More often, however, I choose to…
2. Chuck the whole thing right out the window. There are no alignments. Or to put it more precisely, there are an infinite number of them, and each character has to decide for him/her/itself what moral compass to follow. Sure, you may follow one or more religions which provide you with guidance, but no mere mortal can live up to the ideals of a divine being, and besides, the teachings of the gods do not always provide a cut-and-dried answer for every single question you might encounter. And all those spells and abilities that detect or affect certain alignments? Useless. Figure it out for yourself.
3. Expand the alignment system. If it is necessary to the story to have objective good/evil and law/chaos, I use the expanded alignment system that, even though I came up with a very similar idea twenty years ago, Monte Cook published in The Book of Divine Might. In a nutshell, good/evil and law/chaos are rated on a scale of 0-9. Zero represents neutrality, and is not available to most people; everyone has some opinion even it is simply, “I don’t like to see people get hurt”. Ratings of one or two represent these latent tendencies and if detected for using a spell or class ability read as “neutral”. Three and four are more visible tendencies and are subject to effects that target that alignment axis, but only at half efficacy. Other ratings are normal up to nine, which is the unattainable ideal of that axis, reserved for deities and outsiders. This system makes for a more diverse array of grey areas, and likewise makes the next part a lot easier for the GM. Now when someone professes a certain alignment (say for example a paladin who has “Law7, Good5” written on her sheet), I’m watching. But I hate it when people say, “Your character would never do that!”, or “I’m changing your alignment for that!”. Instead I just calmly make a note to myself to “slide” those numbers in whichever direction is appropriate. I say nothing to the player, but if they cross a critical threshold, I’ll make sure to adjudicate the effects: say our above-mentioned pally slips below her minimum level in Law. She’s making her way through a dungeon with her buddies and, as pallies do, tries to detect evil frequently. I inform her that she detects no evil. They find themselves surrounded by demons. She asks, “Do I detect any evil now?” I answer, “Nope.” She says, “Shit! Must’ve been the orphanage we burned down! We’re screwed, guys.”

One might get the idea that I’m opposed to the alignment system completely. And I’m really not. The alignments do serve useful purposes (though “They tell you how to play your character” shouldn’t be among them), including game balance. All I’m saying is that *I* prefer things to be a little more complex than the usual nine archetypes.

Feel free to weigh in.

* I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: If Gary Gygax hadn’t intended for us to do exactly that, “ten-foot pole” would not have been on the equipment list of every version of the game ever published.

** And no, I didn’t always do that, and I never did it with characters who were supposed to be saintly; I’m just making a point.

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Other Gaming Stereotypes

Apparently, folks want to hear what I have to say about archetypes apart from Munchkins and Power-Gamers, so once again let us head on over for a watch of The Gamers 2: Dorkness Rising, and I’ll go through each of the players in turn.

Cass: As already stated, here’s your “bad” power-gamer. He’s an overbearing, competitive rules-lawyer. It’d be tempting to say that he meets the Ieqological criteria for munchkinism as well, but we really don’t see him trying to steal any thunder from the other players: his douchebaggery is limited to the OOC realm, so it is a grey area. I myself wouldn’t label him a muncher, but others might (and Lodge does during the scene in the coffee shop).

Joanna: Three stereotypes shown here. First we have the benevolent power-gamer. Min-maxed to the nines, and ruthlessly pursuing the party’s goal, she meets every critical standard for power-gaming. She even took notes at the table! If she weren’t a northwesterner who would turn into a pillar of ash when exposed to the Tennessee sun, I’d marry her. Second, we see the “significant other brought to the gaming table”. This one actually gets turned on its head, since the stereotype usually involves the sig-other being disinterested, only showing up because her beau insists upon it. Finally, we have the popular conception of what girl-gamers are like: more interested in the roleplay aspect than metagaming, side interests in theater, and a loathing of in-game chauvinism. Had she had facial piercings and been playing a LARP instead of a real game, the stereotype would be complete. But then she wouldn’t be a power-gamer.

Gary: Where to start? Gender-bending for one: the nerd who plays female characters because he can’t get a real one. I’ll try not to mention his other stereotypical traits that might explain a penchant for roleplaying a woman, since some people might find it offensive. . . . Yeah, okay I couldn’t keep a straight face, either. But mostly he’s the munchkin, as I’ve already proven beyond a reasonable doubt in a previous essay.

Lodge: Oh, puhleeze! Have you ever known a GM who wasn’t a frustrated writer? That’s so obvious, it hardly bears mentioning. He’s also the focus of my envy because clearly he’s about to start tapping Joanna… More importantly, his journey--indeed the whole movie--is a great illustration of the bit of GMing advice I give more often than any other: Let your players do the adventure their way!

Leo: The portly fellow with a beard whose character runs around doinking everything in a skirt? If there’s a gaming stereotype there, it is well hidden…

Lets Agree on Vocabulary, Part Deux: The Munchkin

Wikipedia, which I profess to loathe and anyone who cites it as a source in a discussion with me is destined for a blastin', defines munchkin thusly: a player who plays what is intended to be a non-competitive game (usually a role-playing game) in an aggressively competitive manner. A munchkin seeks within the context of the game to amass the greatest power, score the most "kills," and grab the most loot, no matter how deleterious their actions are to role-playing, the storyline, fairness, logic, or the other players' fun.

That's a pretty good definition, though I would expand it to include "receive the most attention, be the central character in the story, and in general overshadow other players, NPCs, and the plot itself." Yes, brother and sister gamers, your pretentious "story games" attract munchkins as well, and sometimes the games most considered "munchkinproof" actually suffer the worst infestations.


Let us begin. To continue from yesterday's discussion of power-gamers, we shall also keep using The Gamers2: Dorkness Rising as our demonstrative example. As I stated, Gary the gamevestite is our classic munchkin. As I list the telltales of munchkinism, think of his portrayal (before his redemption, anyway).

1. Attention is the pizza and munchkins want the biggest slice, be it the GM's attention, the attention of the other characters, the most "unique and interesting" role or whatever. If they had their way, they'd have the whole pie, both IC and at the table.
2. Munchkins hate being railroaded. I mean they really hate it. They're here to have fun, and how dare that dick of a GM try to impose a plot? This goes beyond normal free-wheeling plot-dodging; munchkins will actively attempt to destroy the plot. This is the guy who, when the GM says he's starting a game of intrigue that will take place in the kingdom's largest city says, "Cool! Can I play a druid?"
3. Munchkins can always justify their douchebaggery. If you find a group of gamers glaring at one of their number while he protests, "But it is what my character would do!", then you have treed yourself a munchkin. While he will attest that he's simply staying in character and being a good roleplayer (often with a derisive sniff to indicate that all you sheep who are trying to follow the plot are bad roleplayers), do not be fooled. A cursory examination of the character sheet will usually show that yes, indeed, burning down the orphanage is what that character would do...and that the character was created to be exactly the kind of character who would do that!
4. Munchkins get bored easily. As in they get bored any time they are not in the spotlight. Their customary solution to boredom is to cause chaos in the gameworld. "Just shaking things up a bit to keep it fresh."
5. For all their talent for mayhem, munchkins tend to have little imagination. One common manifestation is that their characters tend to all be very similar to the last character they played. Another is the one whose characters are all cookie-cutter images of characters from fiction or anime. How many dual-wielding, brooding dark elf clones have we seen in the past 20 years?* These guys are easy to spot and very easy to surprise at the table: if their character's "inspiration" never did something in the books or the cartoons, the player will never think of trying it. Of course, the bad part of this is if Drizz't or their anime hero ever did do something, these guys are guaranteed to try it--especially if it is ridiculous and/or would look 'kewl'.
6. Munchkins are often also power-gamers, but not always. Sometimes they can be the opposite. Remember, the power-gamer is motivated by success. Victory is everything. A power-gamer loves his character and might have every level of progression planned out, but if a situation arises where a heroic martyrdom will seal the group's success, a power-gamer will unhesitatingly charge in, the plan for his next character already forming in his mind. A munchkin, on the other hand is motivated by narcissism. Everyone else at the table, including the GM, is there to show how awesome the munchkin is, and the most annoying munchkins don't do power builds at all. Instead they make the most ridiculously crippled characters they can dream up. Becuase if their character has to be carried by the rest of the party, and is so useless as to guarantee the failure of the mission, then they are assured to have a whole lot of the attention; the activities of the group will by necessity revolve around them.
7. Munchkins are convinced, and will try to convince everyone else, that they are the elite of roleplayers. The Very Elder Gods of the Game, if you will. They will deride every other player ("Matt's a damn power-gamer"), the GM ("What a fucking railroader--why doesn't he just write a book?"), and the game itself ("This game sucks. Call of Cthulhu is way better!"). Should you make the mistake of calling them out, be prepared for tantrums, internet flame-wars, and of course, a renewed campaign of douchbaggery.
8. Munchkins are everywhere. Sadly it is true. Look around your gaming group. If you cannot identify the munchkin, then either you have the luckiest GM alive, or you yourself are the munchkin.
9. Munchkins never leave. They are the ones who will stick with even a bad campaign until the GM gets tired of it. Maybe it is due to the narcissism, or possibly that they know they have a negative reputation at every other game in town, but once you've got one, you have to either endure, convert, or murder him. The first two options require more patience than I generally have.

You see the common threads and are tempted to say, "Oh I get it: munchkins are selfish." You're not wrong. But you're also thinking so small that you're far from right. I mean, while it might be accurate to say that a bank-robber is selfish, you wouldn't say that about a terrorist.

So lets wrap up with an example that shows the difference between a power-gamer (who isn't a munchkin) and a munchkin (who may or may not be a power-gamer). After all, that was the whole purpose of these two entries anyway. I'll even use an example from the World of Tropis, to make Danny smile:

Our characters are investigating a murder. The victim was a noble from a rival nation in our nation's capital city, and tensions are so high right now that were the killing to become known, a bitter and bloody war would surely erupt. So we basically have to find the Serb who killed Archduke Ferdinand while at the same time staging a coverup of the assassination, lest the whole of Europe erupt into World War I. Easy right? Well, the noble family is stonewalling us, we can't bring any official weight to bear because we need to keep the coverup in place, and besides our superiors are a bunch of corrupt tossers anyway. What do we do? We break into the noble house's villa to look for clues, naturally. The rogue is the obvious choice, but the power-gamer in the group insists on going with. Not so much because my character is all that particularly stealthy (we already had a rogue so I built him to fill a different role), but because as a power-gamer I know that having another set of eyes and ears (ie. a second perception roll) could spell the difference between success and failure. A munchkin would have gone along because he hates anyone else in the spotlight. Once inside, we make a surprising discovery: the god-ninjas of the campaign world are already here and they are slaughtering the entire family. They ignore us because we aren't a threat to them (really, they could kill us thirty different ways before we could say "shit"). So we stay out of their way. A munchkin would engage the assassins out of course, because no NPC can possibly be allowed to be more powerful than he. Now we have a problem. Where we were trying to keep a single killing quiet out of fear of the consequences, now the entire noble family is being killed. We can't stop the assassins, and come sunrise the whole world will know that they have been murdered. War is inevitable, and the streets will run red with blood. Or is it? The powergamer says "wait until the assassins clear out then we set the house on fire and leg it." The reasoning being that an "accidental" fire would muddy the waters enough to buy us some time to try to figure all this mess out, whereas just leaving would ignite the war (and possibly bring us, the heroes, under suspicion). So the power-gamer is advocating a course of action that sounds a whole lot like munchkinery. The difference is in motivation. A little mayhem here increases our chances of success in the long term. A munchkin would burn the house down simply because the nobles snubbed him. Or because he was bored. Or because they are NPCs.

So hopefully I've a clear and convincing argument that Munchkins and power-gamers are not the same beast, and also hopefully explained why it is important to me that people draw the distinction.

Tell me your thoughts on the topic or just tell me your munchkin stories.






*Yes it is true that I played a drow for close to six years, but he doesn't count: he was admittedly evil, not broody at all, and was a henchman to the campaign's quintessential villian. A munchkin wouldn't play second-fiddle to anyone. Besides, he was also a pirate, and therefore by definition he was cool.

Let's Agree on Vocabulary At Least...

If my blog were about the way my older brother barbecues, I'd call it Cooking Without Heat Because I'm Scared Shitless of Burning Stuff. But here I am digressing already, so back on topic!

Past couple days I've been rewatching The Gamers and The Gamers 2: Dorkness Rising. That makes about the eleventy-zillionth time, for those of you keeping score at home. This time I even put the YouTube link up on my PSM for Skype, and sure enough I got a slew of "lol" messages. Those guys (and ladies, of course) are very talented, and I'm happy to evangelize for them.[subliminal] Buy the DVD... Buy the DVD[/subliminal] You haven't seen it? Shame, shame. Go HERE right after you're done reading this. I mean it.

Here's where I start getting to the point. While I was waiting for one of the parts to buffer* I happened to scroll down to the comments. There I found a month-old exchange that can accurately be paraphrased thusly:

Muppet4016: This is inaccurate. Roleplaying games aren't competitive,
so why are they portraying this as a contest between the GM and the players?

Dumbass6739: They are making fun of his group of immature
power-gamers! Wow, I hate power-gamers. So immature.

Xxn00b-pwner69xX: Yeh. Power-gamers are teh
suXxorz!

This, friends, bothers me. Not only because I am a power-gamer, but also because I'm a big fan language and it is really really difficult to have intelligent discourse on any subject when we disagree on the meaning of a word. So, in the interests of civil conversation, let us agree on the following:

A Power-gamer is defined (by Wikipedia, no less--who'd have thought I'd be citing them) as: a player of role-playing games who focuses on making their characters as powerful as possible. Check. I support that definition, and would submit as I have many many times in the past, that this is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. As a power-gamer I seek ways to make my character efficient in his chosen vocation, be that ranged combatant, backstabber, wizard, whatever. Am I doing this to be a prick? Actually just the opposite: I'm filling a role within my party, so I owe it to them to not do it half-assed. If I'm the party's battle-turtle, they are depending on me to have (to quote the movie) good strength, a high armor-class, and hit points out the ass. By Gygax's Bushy Beard, I'm fucking going to have the best strength, the highest armor class, and the most hit points I can squeeze out of the rules, because the people around me at the table deserve the best I can do. Metagaming? Hell, no! How is it metagaming to say that Hugh Badaxe is going to play to his strengths and train his hardest to be the best damn big, dumb door-kicker he can be?

Some characteristics of power-gamers:

1. They seek, find, and exploit mechanical and/or tactical and/or social advantages to increase the efficiency of their character within its designated role in the party.
2. They have an intimate knowledge of the rules. They may or may not be argumentative, depending on the specific player. This familiarity will extend to other classes and party roles, so they may best support the overall party. They may or may not advise other players in tactical situations depending upon the specific player and group dynamic. They do not, however, cheat; that is the bailiwick of the munchkin.
3. They have an intense and personal interest in the survival and advancement of the character. This usually extends to that of the other party members as well, but may not depending on the specific player and group dynamic.
4. They fucking pay attention. They take notes. They gather information. They make plans, purchase specific gear, and load up on specific spells to efficiently take the party's objective.

In the movie, everyone represented a gamer stereotype. No, I won't get into all of them because this ain't a cinema-analysis blog. But if we agree upon the above definition, the only power-gamers in the movie are Cass and Joanna. They make good representations of the "may or may not" clauses in my definition.

So what are the others? Well, the gender-bending magic-user guy is a munchkin, pure and simple.**

But isn't power-gamer just another word for munchkin? You know: you say 'tomato' and all that?

Nope. A munchkin is a different type of critter. We get confused because very often a real douchebag will exhibit qualities of both the power-gamer and the munchkin. But they ain't the same thing.

So what is a munchkin, you ask?

Tell you tomorrow.

*No, that's not a euphemism for anything, regardless of what it might mean in the UK--we won a couple wars so we wouldn't have to listen to you guys so fu... Sorry. Digressing again.

**AND his character is hawt!

Why I Game Over the Internet

Some highlights from today’s trip to the FLGS:

You play Rolemaster?  That’s a game for munchkins!

“I beg to differ: Few munchkins have enough attention span to  get through a character creation.” 

Well, yeah, but all those rules…

Another conversation with a different person (who would have been easier to understand if she’d had fewer than six facial piercings, but I digress):

Why don’t you like 4e?  Is it because young people play it?

“No.  I don’t like it because the characters all have the same abilities."

No they don’t… (pause)  Well, maybe some of them do but take the… (pause)  Well, I don’t care, it rocks!

The guy at the register points to my headphones while he’s ringing up my dice (the TGG’s Conan game is audible through the one that isn’t in my ear):  You listening to the Penny Arcade podcast?  Man that is so awesome!

“No, actually it is one of the groups hosted on rpgmp3.com.  If you like the PA podcast you should check them out.”

Yeah, I hear a lot of people are jumping on the bandwagon since the PA guys proved to be so popular.

“Actually rpgmp3.com has been doing that sort of thing since since 2004 and they began podcasting a 4ed game the same day the game was released and…  You know, never mind.  I’ll buy some dice online.  Have a nice day.”

Some days its easy being a card-carrying RPG Podcast Professional and Worldwide Ambassador for AP Producers Everywhere.  Other days it ain’t