Accidental Educational Gaming

English is not my native tongue and it shows. I once might have thought that it didn't but with age comes experience and experience begets wisdom which, in turn, promotes humility. You reach a point in life when you realize there will always be more to learn and you'll never have enough time or will to know it all.

Still, my English is better than most around here and I've had more than one teacher asking me if I was sure that I had never lived in an English speaking country. In a way I had: the world of multimedia entertainment.

When I was a young girl, cartoons were rarely subbed, especially the interesting ones like Captain Planet (he'll bring pollution down to zero one day, I know it) or Thundercats. So, from a very young age, I started absorbing this strange language they used, trying to understand what they yelled as they vanquished evil or died trying. Which is only natural considering that most of the known world speaks at least two languages. Most of humanity is bilingual. Smaller comunities in remote places will speak the language dictated by their governments along with the language taught to them by their parents.

I spent a few years majoring in linguistics. If nothing else, it helped me understand that linguists aren't the old sticks in the mud people take them to be. They, more so than other breed, preach that (much like magic in Dragon Age) language exists to serve man, not rule over him. A language's first and, arguably, only purpose is to help convey information. Therefore, groups of people that need to communicate will use a language to do so and they will do it in the most economical and eficient way possible. What this means is that the linguist in me is more prone to showing the finger to so-called grammar nazis than at people who spell things incorrectly.

Getting back to the point; I remember a few epiphanies I've had while learning this bizarre non-romance language. One day, around the age of eight, I was opening the door to our building when I suddenly realized the difference between "he" and "she". That was some hurdle to overcome, let me tell you. One other time I assimilated the meaning of "on hold" while playing Command&Conquer, its subtle difference from "hold on" despite both using the exact same words. What this means is that, without any effort on my part, entertainment was teaching me. And not through any special tv show like Sesame Street or a game that said "Educational" on the cover. The simple fact they were there and that I was using them opened the door for knowledge to be imparted unto me. I guess that can happen with everything.

This process continues today. I am perfectly able to understand a game from start to finish but, through force of habit, I'll usually turn on all subtitle options. Not only are we accostumed to watching every tv show with subtitles (even if we usually don't read them) but having a written auxiliary helps with memorising the correct spelling of more unfamiliar words. This alone has cimented a few rules like the difference between "your" and "you're" or "then" and "than". They're also a good source of idioms and sometimes I'll even pause the game to digest a witty pun, ending up grinning and finger-wagging a "I see what you did there" at the screen.

This has very little to do with the point, doesn't it? Well, apart from language skills, videogames have taught me a few lessons. Mostly about the importance of friendship, the power of a selfless sacrifice and how to efficiently dispose of a zombie. Oh, and that ugly children can be dealt with by removing the doors from a small room with a fireplace and plenty of rugs. All valuable life lessons. 

I'd play that.

By the way, I hear World of Tanks is out. I wish I liked tanks and guns and stuff. I'm more of a hack and slash girl, myself. Although if I think about it, I loved Ring of Red, Front Mission 3 and Valkyria Chronicles. Hmm. I might like tanky things more than I realise.

Now excuse me while I go come up with a coherent reason as to why someone would make another kill their own parents.

Playing God, For a Change

I've spent the weekend completely preoccupied with coming up with a structured plot. From my perspective, being an ST (you can call it Storyteller, Game Master or Dungeon Master even; it all amounts to the same) is much like being a gamedev. Only, instead of having to code and build a somewhat static environment you're free to to just type a few things up and unleash your world on your target audience. It will be them that shape where the game heads or, at least, how it gets where I want it to. Plus you don't have to be at the office on time. But you also don't get paid. Maybe it's not like it at all. Hmm.

Oppositely from a dev though, an ST must constantly adapt and change the world as things progress. MMOs today might launch a new patch or an update or even an expansion somewhat regularly (or, if they're really short-sighted, they do nothing forgetting that to stagnate is to die).

My point being, maybe that void that needs to be filled in my gaming needs will never be filled by videogame entertainment. Unless, of course, they assign a different developer to each player, to shape the world as they make decisions and push against what has been established so far. So maybe I should stop hoping for revolutionary games and turn my attention elsewhere.

That said, I've been playing tabletop RPGs for some ten years but there are still things I haven't seen done or tried or explored. I've had a blast with every chronicle but I decided it was time to try and make one of my own to expose me and others to different views, approaches and even creatures. Let's just hope this endeavour doesn't die on the shore.

If you've never had the pleasure of trying this kind of game let me throw you a few notions. Forget about nerdy fat guys playing in their parents basement. Today's roleplayers have lifes, jobs and kids. Just like other gamers. They gather around a table with sheets representing their characters instead of a controller and a screen and make decisions based on what the Overlord (yeah, I like that term better) tells them. The Overlord plays God as in he/she controls the environment and NPCs. Players speak out their actions instead of pushing buttons. There are rules, of course, and they depend on what particular system you've chosen to play. We stick to White Wolf's old World of Darkness d10 system. It's more pickup&play than a d20 system, imho.

oWoD has a lot to explore. It's set in the modern world (take that with a grain of salt. Most of the books were written circa 1995) which makes the setting more familiar to most people than medieval dragon slaying. This does not by all means restringe gameplay to the modern era. No, they've provided settings and rules spanning from the Dark Ages to today. You can choose from playing a vampire, a werewolf, a mage, a scientific disbeliever, a demon, a ghost, a faerie, a hunter or just a mere mortal in the middle of all these interesting and cuddly creatures.

This has made for some interesting stories over the ages. Some I've experienced. Some I can't even remember but I'm told happened and I'm inclined to believe them. Like that one time when a couple of Victorian Age mages sat down with a boy who was the reencarnation of some poweful spirit or other to enjoy one of those new fangled "ice-cream" things. Commence a 30 minute debate about who's paying the bill. Exit scene with two mages and an ice-cream splattered child running for dear life. Sometimes players decide to abandon the plot completely and go "look for the Plague". And when that fails they decide to "invent the Plague". Others go meet important figures and "accidentaly kill them". Anything can and usually does happen when you present players with the ultimate sandbox.

Adorable. Just wanna get a kleenex and wipe the edges of his mouth
saying "there now, all better."

More than with any videogame character, players tend to get extremely involved with characters they get to create and incarnate. I've had a few, myself. From the crazy cab driver vampire to the finnish green-eyed black guy called Hill. Once I was a small vampire woman with delusions of grandeur who ended up becoming ruler of a city and demanded a throne made entirely of phonebooks. Another time I played a Nosferatu based on the Mouth of Sauron called Sirius Mann. He was actually quite friendly. During the Dark Ages I was a vampire bred from a line of soldiers who was aptly called Curtis E. Foot. Curtis went on to carry a big two-handed sword and repel guards as other party members went off with relics from roman catholic churches. In Rome.

I guess you had to be there.

Steps and Storytelling

There's something that tends to annoy me to varying degrees in videogames. Stairs and their steps. Sometimes I wish that climbing and going down stairs was more realistic. Usually they'll just continue the run animation straight up/down what is basically a ramp with the skin of steps. In some games the running will be a bit slower in an attempt to simulate real life. Others disregard this completely figuring that if your character has the stamina to run their way through the plot, they might as well be able to run up them stairs.

I've seen games trying to tackle this problem. They will make sensibly sized steps and have their characters actually climb those steps one by one or two by two like regular people. I think Metal Gear Solid 2 did this but, seeing as my stealth skills, as Bart once put it, both suck and blow, I never played it enough to be sure. Problem with this is the game starts looking more like an exercise video and less about whatever the game might concern.

I'm not sure I'll ever be happy with the way these developers nowadays deal with the issue of ascending and descending a series of steps. Then again, if I want realistic step-climbing I could get off my shapely ass and do some climbing myself.

---

For all my complaining about the restrictiveness of games, there's one opportunity that has presented itself plenty of times over and I've always dodged. Much like I always do. It's been a long time since any of us have played a pen&paper chronicle and we've been jonesing for it. If you're looking for a sandbox game (from the perception I have of this genre which I'm still not sure is accurate) what better game than one you make yourself?

Nothing restricts your actions apart from the Storyteller. You want to climb that wall, go ahead and try. You want to kill that cat, go ahead and try. You want to be that cat, go ahead and try. It is possible that my cringing when faced with restrictive gameplay stems from my days as a WoD player, particularly Mage, where if you want to do something you just have to invent a way to accomplish it.

So. I keep going on about how I like making shit up but never before have I taken the mantle of ST. As in real life, I've been pretty content to just be a participant rather than a shaper of events. But I think I'm finally ready to go under the scrutiny of uncooperative players. There's just some things I'd like to throw at them.

I think I might even have come up with a plot. A somewhat interesting one at that. Possibly. Only thing now is, without knowing what characters the players are going to make, they all seem kind of unimportant at this stage. Well. We'll see.

Christopher Shy was kind enough to illustratea lot of things
for World of Darkness and the world is a beter place for it