#dicecast

A lot of fantasy cartoons are trying to be the next avatar (including the extremely frustrating Dragon Prince) and it isn’t going to work until the next show actually does better than Avatar.  Avatar was so mind-blowing at the time because in the extremely shitty world of children’s television, Avatar was able to add a degree of complexity and...not make the mistakes of its peers.  Like having a villain faction without getting fantasy racist about it?  Having a complex villain with motives (and oh yeah, Ozai exists too).  Having a non European theme, with a totally non white cast?  Having any sort of stakes and making even the smallest amount of effort to address some real life issues (Colonialism, Imperial Japan), that was such a breath of fresh air compared to the shows at the time.  

So if you want to make the next big show, you shouldn’t look to avatar and think “What did it do right and how do I imitate it”  Think “What did it do wrong and how can I do better?”  What doesn’t work about avatar, in what ways did Avatar fail?  How can you do better?  What mistakes does the original series make?  How is it still indulging in bad story telling?  What could be done to elevate the medium further.

Song, Skill, Magic, and Muscle. Does our cast possess these talents? On paper, yes, and in great abundance. In real life? Well, they all at least have pleasing personalities! Welcome to the Dicecast Show! A D&D web series featuring a homebrew adventure set in the world of Faerun.

Welcome to Blast from the Past where i look at game design decisions from ye olden times and compare it to the games of today, and see what has changed.  And no, this isn’t a “old games are automatically better” or “Man it sure is great how much more civilized we are now” series, quit fanboying

Ok so lets talk about a major difference in the early day of Bioware vs. the latter days of BIoware, Baldur’s Gate vs. Dragon Age.  Specifically the Notion of Abstracted Levels vs. Non Abstracted Level. 

   Ok so a Level is something that we are familiar in most gaming, you’re character has an abstracted “Power Level” which is determined by you’re level.  So if Lin and Fu are both characters in the same game, but Fu is level 4 while Lin was level 7, Lin is objectively more powerful.  Leveling up is fun, you can slowly advance you’re self and bit by bit (The SOVIET MACHINE ADVANCES).  And that is all fun.  But there is sort of a question of how integrated into the world levels are, obviously its a gameplay convention but how seriously are we suppose to take them?  

  An Abstracted Level is basically a level a level that exists purely as a gameplay convention.   So as an example, lets use Dragon Age:Inquisition 

So when you start the game, you’re companion is Cassandra, one of the elite soldiers of the Church of the Maker, established early on to be one badass person, the impression given in the first game is that she is one of the toughest and legendary people in the world and now she is next to you kicking ass.  And when she joins...she is Level One.   And over the course you’re adventure, Cassandra the Dragonslayer goes from Level One to Level Twenty Seven through you’re adventures.   It gets a little stranger when you take into account the presence of Varric, a character from Dragon Age 2.  In that game you took Varric from Level 1 to at least level 20, and when he joins the party he is...Level 1

So we can presume that Level 1 in Inquisition is about equal to Level 20-25 in Dragon Age II, so the Level is just describing the epic level power level.  After all you’re first three companions are Varric Hero of the last Game, Cassandra the champion of the Church, and no one of importance.  

And then we meet Sera, and the whole thing kinda breaks down.  Because Sera is basically just a local skilled rogue, clearly talented, but no where near on par with Cassandra or Varric.  Except when she joins, the party, she is like level 4

So are we saying that Sera, a random street urchin is more powerful than all of the main characters of Dragon Age II and Cassandra at the start of the start of the game?  That doesn’t make any sense...Like what, are the Red Jennies killing fucking dragons?  

    Except of course, it isn’t suppose too.  Because these levels are thoroughly abstract.  Why are Cassandra and Varric the same level which is Level 1?  Because that is what is needed for game balance.  Why does Sera join the party at about you’re level of XP?  Because they want you’re companion to be roughly the same level as the rest of the party.  The type of gameplay they are going for is to keep everybody at roughly the same level at all times.  And this isn’t a bad thing, the suspension of disbelief is based upon the notion of everybody operating on the same power level.  Cassandra at Level 1 vs. Level 27 isn’t really different in universe, it is just a mechanical quirk for the gameplay, as far as the story goes, Cassandra might not have even improved in skill over the course of the adventure (Solas certainly hasn’t).  Varric at level 1 doesn’t really mean anything in relation to the world, he basically has a set power level that doesn’t alter over the course of the game.  

(200 year old vampire elf and he starts the game at...level 2) 

So for point of contrast, lets go look at Baldur’s Gate.   In Baldur’s Gate, Level aren’t just “The rough power level of the party” it is far more interrelated into the world.  A level 1 character in Baldur’s Gate is objectively by the standards of the world, a novice, easily killed.  While a level 20 character is objectively extraordinarily powerful, this is reflected in the lore and the mechanics of the universe.  One major difference is that levels don’t exist as soley for you’re characters.  In Inquisition, you’re enemies are just sort of set creatures, a Red Templar just has a set of powers, health, and bonuses, they aren’t tied to a class necessarily.  In contrast, the third boss in the game Davaeron, literally is a wizard, he is a level 11 wizard and you could hypothetically build a character to perfectly reflect him

If you are totally psychotic you could just wait for him to eventually run out of spells and he will start to attack you in melee, just like you’re own wizards (he seems to have unlimited teleportation though).  The friendly mayor of the town of Nashkel, Berrun Ghastkill, is a level 6 elven Ranger, you could build a clone of him.  And if you randomly decide to murder him (you monster) he will display the skills of that class. he even has the racial enemy of ogres, though he will almost never encounter one in game. Levels mean something in the world of Baldur’s Gate, they are a tangible in universe equation, even if nobody actually references them by word.  If you encounter 2 different neutral NPCs of different level, they will react entirely differently.  

So why are these games different?  Well two major reasons.  Firstly, Baldur’s Gate isn’t its own system, it is an adaptation of Dungeons and Dragons, and so it is taking an existing system and integrating it into a video game, so because of that, the system is actually a lot larger than it actually needs to be, like for serious, Baldur’s Gate is much larger mechanical set than is purely necessary.  Most RPGs are built from the ground up with their own system, so they don’t need to represent this stuff in more detail.  

The second reason is that is Baldur’s Gate is going for a totally different experience, one where there was a lot more mechanical story telling.  Randomly killing people and taking their stuff was a totally valid play style that was quite rewarding, aimlessly wandering the land as a murder hobo was pat of the game itself.  Dragon Age:Inquisition by contrast has a very centered story, one that is reliant upon arcs, a central constant narrative and far more banter, conversation, and a much more conventional form of storytelling which is mostly separate from the mechanics.  

So, what approach is better?  Well it depends, the Balder's Gate style opens up a lot of alternative approaches to story telling and I am always a fan of gameplay/story integration, but I don’t think Dragon Age could have had that style of game it was going for with the Baldur’s Gate’s Approach, it is just too much work for not enough pay off in that game.  Remember, the Baldur’s Gate approach is a lot harder.  So it depends on what you are going for, as always, there are no simple answers.  

@evilelitest2, @dicecast, and @isanybodytheir are all the same person.

The evilelitest blog is for politics, history, and criticism.

The dicecast blog is for gaming.

isanybodytheir exists solely to avoid clogging up people’s feeds with reblog political arguments, so he will often switch to this if an argument goes on for a long time.

This is not some ruse to trick you, and you have not uncovered some vast conspiracy. It says so right on the blog descriptions. He’s just trying to separate different types of content and not annoy his followers, okay? Okay.

Why is he salty about obsidian? I'm out of loop

I’ll let the big man speak for himself:

SB: Hypothetically, if Obsidian were to make a hypothetical new Fallout spinoff, would you hypothetically want to go back to obsidian and have some involvement with it being that Fallout is so close to your heart?
 CA (Chris Avellone): No. While I like the developers and wish them all the very best, there's too many other problems at the higher managerial level to ever consider stepping back, especially when you could make a step in a direction that mattered for the franchise. Even leads at Obsidian have said as much (most after departing), and they told me they felt helpless in their roles to do what they felt was the right decision. (x)

Well, that’s a reasonable answer. No problem.

SB: You’ve said that you don’t think Fallout will leave Bethesda’s hands again, and likely not go back to Obsidian. Do you think this would have anything to do with the quarrels Bethesda and Obsidian had during and after development (specifically the metacritic thing) and like I said before, they’re worried about being showed up so to speak? Because with Bethesda’s patterns, the next Fallout game by them likely won’t come out for a long time, so they probably want to fill that gap with something, no? CA: I doubt Bethesda worries much about what Obsidian is doing (Bethesda's likely way too busy on multiple fronts), but only they could speak to that, I have no idea. From an outside perspective, however, it appears when Bethesda likes working with a studio or see their potential, they seem to buy them (Arkane). They didn't buy Obsidian, though, even though Obsidian is eager to be bought based on recent interviews. It might be for the best - I don't know what would happen to the devs if Obsidian was bought, but the upper management would likely come out okay with that exit strategy. (x)

Uh... is it... really necessary to frame it like Feargus Urquhart is TRYING to sell Obsidian? From what I read in the interviews he says “If we get bought up, I guess that would be okay”. (x) Which is understandable, considering how much Obsidian struggled financially and that they seriously had to consider to close down the company entirely. 

CA: I did a post about companion design based on this learning experience a while back on the Obsidian forums, but I don't know if it's still up there (Obsidian locked me out of my profile after my departure, and they've refused to delete my account). The companion system design principles are not being used in recent Obsidian titles, so it may have been removed. (x)

Dude? Someone just asked you about companion design, do you really have to complain about stuff like... oh dunno, your forum account? Especially considering how salty you sounds, do you even consider that maaaybe it was a rather sensible decision?

And then there is other stuff that is not entirely hostile, but also I am not sure if I take as well-humoured teasing, like retweeting the leaked early announcement of PoE 2 (x) or retweeting the article critical of bad writing with PoE as an example (x). All by itself I would find it okay, but considering how he had literally nothing good to say about Fallout: New Vegas or PoE itself, it just looks like he’s sulking.

So I am a firm believer in the notion that the PCs shouldn’t be the only people running around the world with power, and that logically there should be many people with PC class levels, and that some of them are going to eventually become epic level.  So the question is, with epic level being as big of a deal as it is, how can you deal with epic characters in your world?  Well let me explain it to.  Note that in my game the max non epic level is 30, with 30-40 being epic, and the technical max level being 50, there are maybe 2-4 people at most past level 40 in a an entire planet at one time, if you’re lucky (or unlucky I suppose).  As each level is harder to gain than the last, it is absurdly difficult to get to level 30, let alone level 40, so this article is only focusing on the level 25-35 type people, anything above that is another matter entirely.  

Now it is important to know this, becoming a PC class, even just level 1 is an investment, it requires a great deal of time, training, and often money, which limits who can do it.  Of those who can, mortality rate is obscene, any PCs who do anything beyond just protecting their homes are going to have a very high chance of dying. While your players might get through each adventure, the vast majority of adventurers will die and horribly on their first adventure.  Imagine every single mistake you could possibly make as an adventurer, now imagine those mistakes being made dozens of times over.  Most adventurers die, which means the amount of people who make it to higher levels is fairly slim.  The lethality rate is at its worse in the lowest levels (1-7), slow down a bit in the lower mid levels (8-12) stabilizes in the mid levels (9-16) starts to rise again in the high mid levels (17-20) increases noticeably in the lower high levels (21-25), reaches lower levels of mortality in the higher levels (25-29), increases dramatically very suddenly (30), and then declines steadily back to the mid level stability (31-35).  This is not taking into account the many people who retire at all levels rather than risk life or limb pathologically seeking out adventure.  Noticeably epic level characters mortality tends to drop down considerably after that beyond simply death by old age, because killing them is such a pain in the ass that most don’t bother (though being an adventurer is never safe).   It might seems strange that more powerful people die more often, but they often have gained the attention of more powerful creatures, and at that level they aren’t quite ready to defend themselves.  It’s sort of an uncanny valley effect, they are powerful enough (and often engaged in high level enough schemes) to earn the full and very serious attention of the big players, but aren’t quite powerful enough to make attacking them a too dangerous venture, hence the high death rate.  The greatest reward earned by epic level characters? The security of anybody attacking them must be obscenely powerful or very serious, rather than spontaneous attacks from people wanting to eliminate a potential rival.  Or in other words, they almost never have to worry about random encounters killing them….almost.  

Needless to say, only a tiny fraction of people achieve that desired level 30 status, and those who do are often the subject of intense attacks as the big players want to eliminate them before they grow secure in their power.  This period, sometimes morbidly called “cosmic hazing” makes the number of epic level characters, in particular spell casters, rather miniscule, and while the mortality rate declines after reaching epic (cosmic forces don’t want to tangle with unknowable epic magic), among such a small population that mortality rate still stings.  Those that are left are often quite old, as leveling up becomes exponentially difficult and those who reach that honored position and aren’t the long lived races tend to retire quickly, as they don’t have much time left.  However those epic characters who want to stay in the game (elves) rarely return back to their homes to right ever wrong and shape the world to their image, the moment they start to get the attention of the cosmic forces they find themselves inundated with opportunities, offers, and recruitments from hundreds of interested parties.  Divine and Cosmic beings are always looking for powerful allies and agents who can give them an edge, the elite universities want their talents and skills, the greatest merchant and research guilds want their services, and fellow epic adventurers want their assistance.  The major factions of the blood war will pay tens of millions of gold for the services of an epic adventurer in their war, though very few survive the tour, those who do can expect to live out the rest of their lives rich and powerful.  Epic level characters are a valued commodity in the Outer Planes, and most find themselves swept up in a world of such possibilities.  Of course the world of Planar Politics is also a world of actual gods, and their vast power makes them still a small fish.  Even those who don’t want to get involved in Planar politics often leave the Material Plane to a world where they can access the most powerful and high quality equipment and magical items, generally this means Sigil which hosts a far higher than average epic level population.  You might think that more epic characters would go home and try to remake their material world, but the type of people who become epic level tend to have a strange personality, driven, paranoid, well-travelled, and obsessive, which tends to detach them from their everyday people, and often they leave their homelands without a second thought to live among the urban world of Sigil.  Others despair of bringing unity to the Prime, seeing how many of its problems are systemic in nature, and leave for Sigil.  Those who do remain often do so in isolation.  But some do stay and integrate with society at large, becoming major players in local politics and legends in their own time.  These people can shape nations with their power, but they have their own limitations.  Firstly they tend to earn a lot of enemies, including each other, and epic level material characters tend to spend a great deal of time dodging assassinations or engaged in ludicrously complicated spy plans.  They also can’t focus much energy on the smaller scale issues because being epic is normally a full time job.  Secondly, the major epic powers of the material plane, namely Gods, don’t normally directly involve themselves in the world because it normally causes more damage than it helps, gives other gods more power and forces them to divert forces from their own divine conflicts, …but if an Epic adventurer starts to make a nuisance of themselves, then they will send in their big guns, possibly interfere personally.  Other epic adventurers often make a habit out of fighting each other either because of personal differences or to loot their stuff.  And of course, old age prays upon epic adventurers as much as anybody else, and reaching epic level often leaves one quite elderly.  Strangely enough though, many epic adventurers are killed by small bands of lesser adventurers who against all odds strike them down through a mix of friendship, sexual tension, and unrestrained dumb luck.  

As a rule though, even those who stay on the Material Plane often can’t help but wander into Planar politics, the greatest threats to the material plane come from the planes, and many simply cannot resist the urge to be in a place less…rustic.  Sigil is one of the very few cities that actually caters to the powerful, and many want to be able to use the massive fortunes they acquire to their best use. After all, where else can you get the greatest components, weapons, magic items, real estate, food, or simply places to spend your money than on the planes, rather than the back water dump that is the Prime.  

But of course, some do resist the temptation and stay on the Material Plane, so how do yhou deal with them?  The following articles will deal with their activities.