World of Warcraft is at an interesting stage at the moment. The guild is growing steadily and we have moved house to a new website which has allowed a greater degree of control and coordination of matters. The main quandry in my mind at the moment is what to do with my characters - Gorthaal (Tauren Druid 60) and Gortessa (Tauren Shaman 60)
Now cynics would suggest that there is little between these two hybrid classes - but they could not be further from the truth! Playing them is a truly diverse experience - and it is that diversity that is causing me to ponder.
Gorth is a feral/resto spec'd Druid and finally has two 90% complete sets of kit for him to tank and heal. Thats great - except the guild has a multitude of L60 Warriors who can take that off-tank position. I never really bonded with the druidic cat form and never seem to be able to pull off the ground based quick moving attack business that it requires. Now in solo ventures, this is not a problem. Gorth is nigh-on indestructible one-on-one with most mobs - I simply outlast them. In a 5-man dungeon run, Gorth is the ultimate team-player, off-tanking or healing or both as required - even kicking into rogue mode sometimes. Tribute Runs in Dire Maul North are easily my favourite dungeon as I get to do everything in my playbook! However, when the numbers increase it appears that Gorth's usefulness decreases. In our Zul Gurub raids I am sometimes FIFTH place healer behind two priests and two full-resto druids. Thats fine - but surely I would be more use doing something else? Well the raid rarely needs another tank, my dps skills are shoddy (and my cat form is ... fragile) and my ranged dps is almost non-existant. So what to do? Stand around and sort of heal? Surely that place in the raid could have been taken up by a mage or a warlock or a shaman...
..which brings us onto Gortessa. TOTALLY DIFFERENT BEAST! Gortessa is like a little pocket nuke that can heal when needed. She has two formats - a max'd mana casting engine of doom armour set and a two-handed splatting machine set. Either way she is hurling massive shocks and lightning bolts left, right and centre which Windfury proc'ing her Fist of Omekk in people's faces for over 1000 damage each proc. It is a bit silly but SO MUCH FUN! I can see now why people get so carried away regarding the Shaman and their set of abilities. An immense amount of DPS packed into an armoured shell, that can heal. And yes, she does heal when needed. Indeed, last night in LBRS it was a really strange feeling to mid-combat (after a scrappy pull) literally sit back from DPS-mode and assume the almost zen-like state of a healer again, if only for a few minutes! The two operations produce a totally different body reaction.
I have been told that when I am healing, I sit back in my chair and for want of a better phrase 'enter a trance' of quick eye flicks and key/mouse strokes. You do 'get into the zone' as you watch the health bars of your charges and the mana bars of your fellow healers rise and fall. You are constantly planning your next heal and making mental triage lists and judgement calls - ie. whilst the rogue is on more health NOW than the warrior, the warrior takes damage slower, so I should heal the rogue next BUT can I afford to slap an instant HoT on the warrior 'just in case' and when should I heal the mage who isn't engaged but might draw aggro....' Mostly it becomes instinct but sometimes you have to make uncertain split second calls.
I was told last night that when I was playing I was a different beast. Heavy breathing, constant toe-tapping and shuffling, little gasps and puffs of breath (I'm assuming when a nice run of criticals came together) and generally far more animated. Playing Gortessa is a much wilder ride. I am there, on the tanks shoulder like a pitbull straining at the leash (and can I say from the bolt-shock-hammer combos I was throwing out yesterday, how good must our tanks be to hold that aggro!) ready to unleash my mana bar in a rain of almight hell on each and every mob that I can see. I did 250k damage in one 11-man LBRS raid and finished third. THIRD. I doubt Gorthaal has done that much damage in his entire raiding career! And I finished third in the healing table as well (although that was sort of by default). It just feels far more dynamic as a character.
So whats the point of this massive missive? Well, I'm coming to the conclusion that maybe Gorthaal is my small dungeon character and Gortessa is my raid character. Thats a bit of a change from what I initially thought about the characters and I'm not sure I like it because the Big G is definitely still my main man!
Hmmmm
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Pulsars and Privateers: Session Three
That was much better.
After the difficult second session, my ass was well and truly on the line for session three. I've already documented some of the pressures that are associated with this particular campaign and the reasons why I have a vested interest in making it work.
I decided beforehand to throw the doors open to fate a little. The crew of the Khanjar were in transit from the Fringe worlds to the Core and I knew that I wanted to somehow simulate that this wasn't a *blink* transition - so I wanted to do the first half of the session as 'character time'. To give the players ownership of this, I let them state their own scenes via the medium developed in Primetime Adventures (remember, one of the games that we 'couldn't handle'). Well, one player added some in mid-week and another added them on the day, so I had something to work with.
I also planned the rest of the session out using the same method of scene-conflict-actors etc. This allowed me to play around beforehand (and indeed, during) with the sequences of the game and alter the flow of the session when needed. It was good. I also took one of the players advice about pacing and pushing the game on - and not getting bogged down in the minutae of the setting or the technology.
The result?
The crew went through a number of scenes whilst in transit and arrived at Caliphate Prime where Amarr is greeted like a hero. Everyone settles in, Amarr is told to take his responsibilities more seriously, the ship is upgraded, Marcus reports to his spy masters, Amarr gains a Mamluk bodyguard and then at a banquet, said bodyguard, Marcus and Talia stop an assassin who is massacring the royalty. However the assassin is found with Imperial equipment and Marcus is arrested.
That sounds easy? It was - very very very easy. It flowed, it wasn't forced, the characters were all in situations where they could speak and interact and moreover I hit GMing GOLD
I got one of the players to physically double-take when the assassin struck.
To me, having a player so engrossed in what is happening that they physically react to a shock change of pace means that I really REALLY have their attention and their minds. Thats GMing GOLD in my book.
As a result, I think my new trimmed lifestyle will allow me to lavish prep time like this on every game and that will be a good thing. The old seat-of-the-pants style of GMing is all well and good, but eventually it all comes stuck and you do get those pregnant pauses when your mind is racing as you try to weave a plot and it all goes tits up. This way, that was never an issue. Even the odd bit that I was having to improvise was just setting flavour and verbalising the Vision Thing about the architecture of the palace etc. The actual plot was pretty much there in front of me, ready to be referenced. Colour me converted.
And this can only be a good thing for the players, as the model that I introduced from PTA has been shown to work - and that means that they have a structured way of introducing their own drama to the game and harking back to that combined ownership that was such a part of our earlier efforts.
My next decision of course, will be when to pull the trigger on one of the big 'story arc' plots over and above the current settling in stuff. Indeed - working out which of the plots to do first seems to be a bigger problem, especially as my initial idea (aliens in hyperspace) isn't exactly original (Babylon 5 and indeed the entire 'Hope' series of books). That said, at the minute it is quite ambiguous so I have space and time (no pun intended)
Oh, and the players are talking about the game to me as well - thats a really good sign!
After the difficult second session, my ass was well and truly on the line for session three. I've already documented some of the pressures that are associated with this particular campaign and the reasons why I have a vested interest in making it work.
I decided beforehand to throw the doors open to fate a little. The crew of the Khanjar were in transit from the Fringe worlds to the Core and I knew that I wanted to somehow simulate that this wasn't a *blink* transition - so I wanted to do the first half of the session as 'character time'. To give the players ownership of this, I let them state their own scenes via the medium developed in Primetime Adventures (remember, one of the games that we 'couldn't handle'). Well, one player added some in mid-week and another added them on the day, so I had something to work with.
I also planned the rest of the session out using the same method of scene-conflict-actors etc. This allowed me to play around beforehand (and indeed, during) with the sequences of the game and alter the flow of the session when needed. It was good. I also took one of the players advice about pacing and pushing the game on - and not getting bogged down in the minutae of the setting or the technology.
The result?
The crew went through a number of scenes whilst in transit and arrived at Caliphate Prime where Amarr is greeted like a hero. Everyone settles in, Amarr is told to take his responsibilities more seriously, the ship is upgraded, Marcus reports to his spy masters, Amarr gains a Mamluk bodyguard and then at a banquet, said bodyguard, Marcus and Talia stop an assassin who is massacring the royalty. However the assassin is found with Imperial equipment and Marcus is arrested.
That sounds easy? It was - very very very easy. It flowed, it wasn't forced, the characters were all in situations where they could speak and interact and moreover I hit GMing GOLD
I got one of the players to physically double-take when the assassin struck.
To me, having a player so engrossed in what is happening that they physically react to a shock change of pace means that I really REALLY have their attention and their minds. Thats GMing GOLD in my book.
As a result, I think my new trimmed lifestyle will allow me to lavish prep time like this on every game and that will be a good thing. The old seat-of-the-pants style of GMing is all well and good, but eventually it all comes stuck and you do get those pregnant pauses when your mind is racing as you try to weave a plot and it all goes tits up. This way, that was never an issue. Even the odd bit that I was having to improvise was just setting flavour and verbalising the Vision Thing about the architecture of the palace etc. The actual plot was pretty much there in front of me, ready to be referenced. Colour me converted.
And this can only be a good thing for the players, as the model that I introduced from PTA has been shown to work - and that means that they have a structured way of introducing their own drama to the game and harking back to that combined ownership that was such a part of our earlier efforts.
My next decision of course, will be when to pull the trigger on one of the big 'story arc' plots over and above the current settling in stuff. Indeed - working out which of the plots to do first seems to be a bigger problem, especially as my initial idea (aliens in hyperspace) isn't exactly original (Babylon 5 and indeed the entire 'Hope' series of books). That said, at the minute it is quite ambiguous so I have space and time (no pun intended)
Oh, and the players are talking about the game to me as well - thats a really good sign!
Monday, February 06, 2006
Pulsars and Privateers: the 'difficult second game'
The rubicon has been crossed - the second game is finished and the cliffhanger has been set. The crew of the Khanjar were rescued from certain doom by a Calipahate Dreadnought come to take the Agha home, after a terrible accident within the Caliphate has killed a number of the Royal House. The ground work for the first part of the campaign has been set - but boy was it treacherous getting there.
It was one of those sessions where I knew I would be up against it. Some of us had been Warcrafting beforehand and there was animated conversation about that. My nose was still blocked, making speaking hard. The washing machine in the room we play in was spinning - making it impossible to concentrated. You just knew the gaming atmosphere was frayed slightly.
This was a different game from the last - an infiltration of a besieged world to rescue an Argent Empire agent, under cover of a House Tryan mining check-up. However, juxtapositioning the martial dominance of a newly inhabited prisoner planet (troops on the streets, behaviour inhibitors in the central water supply, social engineering via massive message boards) with the gung-ho, devil-may-care attitude of space opera was hard - no, almost impossible. Every time the heroes had a great idea, it seemed the logic of the setting would cut them off until such a point where they were literally sat silent, with nothing to do.
Thats bad GMing in my book.
In the end, an inspired moment lead to some heavy drama. The mechanics of the settings communications were used to inspire a wonderful bit of dealing which freed the spy and set up a dramatic countdown for one of the characters, Talia. We saw some expansion on the way that Zeb, the cybernetic pilot, can use his abilities. And talking on the way home it would appear that next session Marcus the Engineer will show his true colours as well. All good.
Indeed, the chat in the car on the way home is sometimes the most telling of the session. I was a little anxious that some of the set pieces - like the hoverbike chase - did not come off as dramatic as they could have been. I was assured that they did - but that even the inevitable safety of the 'suicide dive' off the cliff was fine. 'If we didn't do those things, it wouldn't be SF'
Hopefully, there will be a lot of questions now. Why are the Confed acquiring weapons grade material? Why have they hired House Decados to genetically engineer for them? Why were those monks going on about? What will be the reprecussions of the information brought from Haxxar V? Who are the pirates who tried to kill them? What's happened in the Caliphate? Whats the business with Zeb's cyber-girlfriend?
Hopefully, that will get us into the meat of the game and over the sticky second session.
Phew!
Neil
It was one of those sessions where I knew I would be up against it. Some of us had been Warcrafting beforehand and there was animated conversation about that. My nose was still blocked, making speaking hard. The washing machine in the room we play in was spinning - making it impossible to concentrated. You just knew the gaming atmosphere was frayed slightly.
This was a different game from the last - an infiltration of a besieged world to rescue an Argent Empire agent, under cover of a House Tryan mining check-up. However, juxtapositioning the martial dominance of a newly inhabited prisoner planet (troops on the streets, behaviour inhibitors in the central water supply, social engineering via massive message boards) with the gung-ho, devil-may-care attitude of space opera was hard - no, almost impossible. Every time the heroes had a great idea, it seemed the logic of the setting would cut them off until such a point where they were literally sat silent, with nothing to do.
Thats bad GMing in my book.
In the end, an inspired moment lead to some heavy drama. The mechanics of the settings communications were used to inspire a wonderful bit of dealing which freed the spy and set up a dramatic countdown for one of the characters, Talia. We saw some expansion on the way that Zeb, the cybernetic pilot, can use his abilities. And talking on the way home it would appear that next session Marcus the Engineer will show his true colours as well. All good.
Indeed, the chat in the car on the way home is sometimes the most telling of the session. I was a little anxious that some of the set pieces - like the hoverbike chase - did not come off as dramatic as they could have been. I was assured that they did - but that even the inevitable safety of the 'suicide dive' off the cliff was fine. 'If we didn't do those things, it wouldn't be SF'
Hopefully, there will be a lot of questions now. Why are the Confed acquiring weapons grade material? Why have they hired House Decados to genetically engineer for them? Why were those monks going on about? What will be the reprecussions of the information brought from Haxxar V? Who are the pirates who tried to kill them? What's happened in the Caliphate? Whats the business with Zeb's cyber-girlfriend?
Hopefully, that will get us into the meat of the game and over the sticky second session.
Phew!
Neil
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