A Word On Group/Character Cohesion

I know I've already griped about how character creation went for the Dark Heresy game last night, but I have a few more things I want to hit on, that I feel will affect the overall tone and perhaps enjoyment of the game, itself.

The issue is character cohesion.

Last night, I kept saying I would like for everyone to take group cohesion into mind, and after some thought, I really meant character cohesion. The group, I feel, could be interpreted as us as the players, which I don't think we'll have problems with at all. The group as a whole has been gaming together for years, and though we might disagree on things time to time, we certainly don't try to derail each other'a playing of the games, so that's a non-issue.

No, I was more pushing for character cohesion...complimentary skills and talents that would help cover the weaknesses of the other members of the group. Instead, we have half-melee oriented party, with me almost neglecting combat completely, and Taylor's character being a grenade chukker. I didn't get to look over skills and talents, so it might not be as bad as I envision it, but I'm seeing huge gaps that need to be covered early on, and I'm not sure who is going to fill them.

I know it seems unreasonable to think that they would need to be filled, or that people would need to build X character. It's true, I don't want anyone to play something they don't want to play just to cover a specific weakness, and David, who is running the game, doesn't either, else he would have restricted our creation choices...so I guess it just boils down to me being miffed at everyone ignoring my call for cohesive building.

Part of it is that I'm trying to figure out why an Inquisitor would send out a team of Acolytes consisting of a melee Assassin, a grenade throwing Assassin, an Arbite mostly skilled in "Public Relations" (shouting more than shooting/beating,) and a Guardsman prone to shredding people with a chainsword. Sure, I think we'll all have fun, but someone's either going to be hurt when a grenade is thrown into a crowd where the guardman and meleeAss are, or Taylor's going to have to forgo actions, and if everyone is insanely martial, how often am I going to be able to employ my social skills?

Dark Heresy is just the kind of game where I feel things like that are more important than they are in games like D&D. My two cents. Not like I don't think it's not going to be a blast or anything. I truly enjoy the game.

Character Creation In The Grim, Dark Future

As mentioned before, Taylor has ended his 3.5 game, and the group settled on David's Dark Heresy game to come next, so we converged at Angela and Taylor's to create characters for our forays into the second book of The Haarlock Legacy - Damned Cities!

There were a few problems with character creation last night, not the least of which being that we only had one week between ending one game and jumping to the next. We certainly take gaming seriously, and have no problems in the transition itself, but...more than anything, this just caused a jam because the copy I had ordered of the Core Rulebook didn't arrive yesterday, like was my hope, leaving us with just one book to build four characters from.

We let Angela use the books the most last night, since she was the newest player to the system, but when it came down to it, David, Taylor, and I couldn't remember too much, and Steve could remember even less about the system, because it has been about two years since we touched the system at all.

Taking in all the hang-ups and time it takes to build a character, even with a familiarity to the system, I can honestly say that, unless some gamers are definitely into 40k as a whole, I just don't see Dark Heresy, and by extension, the other three games Fantasy Flight has in the 40k line, as a good beginner's game. The price, at one time, may have been an issue with me, but I feel that you get the quality you would expect, as well as a tome chock full of game, but at the same time, I'm an adult, with a steady job, who isn't really hurting at the moment. If I were me 15 years ago and glanced at the game, I wouldn't give it a second look after seeing the price, except maybe to tell others to buy it for me for Christmas or birthday.

Then, if I did get it, and I tried to get my friends to learn this game, and get everyone to make characters, I could see it taking multiple sessions just getting that done, even if I had brushed up on the character creation rules. There's just too much back and forth looking at skills and talents for advancement, especially if you want anything beyond rank one, and that's not to mention the pages upon pages of gear that can be selected, especially weapons! Which, sadly, aren't always in the same section of any given book.

So, if I had managed to slog through character creation without losing all my players, and it came time to select gear (assuming they had more than a few thrones,) then that would be more page turning to deal with. If anything hindered us more than the lack of multiple books and our own time-forced ignorance, then it was the poor layout of the supplements available. It's very frustrating glancing over an armor, say, as you're after something else, then when you try to find it again, you have to run through 7 or 8 different armor sections to find the right one!

Maybe I'm being too harsh. Once I found what I wanted, it wasn't terrible to stat up a Rank 4 character, and more than likely, if we had been making Rank 1 characters, then this would have been much easier and less time consuming. I'm just the type of person who loves building characters, and this time, it just wasn't enjoyable to me.

Next week, however, we delve into the corruption of Sinophia!

Player Wiles? Wilderland Woes.

It took me a few days to post the session recap for last Sunday, not because I wasn't getting around to it, no...I had come on and began to type more than a few times, but didn't. The real reason it took me so long to post was because I just didn't enjoy what I was about to post.

You see, I began my Pathfinder Wilderlands game with the stated premise that the PCs would have a base of operations and would venture outward from there, seeking fortune and adventure!

This model has collapsed the past three sessions, and with it, some of my excitement for the game.

It's disheartening to feel this way, and I'm not pulling a shroud over the game's corpse or anything just yet, but the game is just moving from the original direction that I intended, one of a Sandbox style game, to more of a story-driven direction, and it's ultimately not what I want. Not to the extent that it's going, anyway.

Of course, I want there to be a backdrop story. I want the world to be dynamic, but I also want the game to center on the things that should be important...adventuring and gathering wealth and power. Is there a compromise here? Should I just bite the bullet and play it through and see what happens? Are Sandbox play and Story-driven play mutually exclusive from each other?

I'm not sure. I'm simply a minor theorist. I leave the heavy lifting in that arena to the people who care much more than I do, but what I do want is to understand the game, and while doing so, understand my players and their wants, as well as to learn what I like and want, something I'm not sure I have a firm grasp of, despite my 15 years in the hobby.

I'm just typing out loud here, but I do have worries that if the game continues to go in this direction, that I'll lose interest in it, and on many levels I don't think that's fair to my players or myself, but I do like to hold the integrity of any game I run or play in to the original model.

Pathfinder... Do I Need One To Navigate Paizo Products?

As any of you who have read my posts may know, I'm running a sandbox set in the Wilderlands, using Paizo Publishing's Pathfinder RPG. While I have no problems with the game itself, or the rules Paizo provides, I've recently come across something that I feel I'm probably not alone in, and that's the navigation of the various Pathfinder product lines.

You see, I use the Pathfinder RPG rules, but my game isn't set in their Golarion world, and so I'm not using their Campaign Setting line. I'm running a sandbox campaign, so I'm not using their Adventure Path line, and since I'm not using those lines, and my game also incorporates 3.x books as resources, it kind of obviates the need for the Player Companion lines (though, I must admit I've not looked too deeply into that line.)

However, when Amazon dot com tipped me off that there's a book coming out about The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, I got excited and started looking, since my current game has some ties to those fellows who ride colorful ponies.

I couldn't recall the name of the book when I went to Paizo's website, however, and it wasn't presented on the home page of the Pathfinder game, so I had to look. I used the search bar and skimmed the entries and thought that perhaps I had been mistaken, since I didn't see the book at first glance...but on my second look at the list, I saw it was #2 in the results, but the title was prefaced by "Pathfinder Campaign Setting:"

That's why I overlooked it in the first place, honestly. I first gleaned Paizo's lore behind the Horsemen in the Bestiary 2, and thought that a book that would highlight a specific type of archfiend would be included in their core line, but that was not the case.

If I had been a lazier person, I would have skipped it altogether and probably just chalked it up to misremembering the Amazon email.

I do understand the marketing reason behind separating the Pathfinder lines. It simplifies the consumer's choices when dealing with specific products, gives them exactly what they're looking for in regards to the type of product they wish to see, and makes it easy to search for the products desired.

However, I feel that they fail in that last task more because some of those products seem to walk the line between categories. I hope I'm not alone in this, but I just felt like this book is something more akin to a specialized bestiary, like the Fiendish Codices were for 3.5, which should put them in the core line, instead of setting material.

It's a small complaint, I realize, but my enthusiasm was taken down a notch at just that minor snag. Combine that with the fact that it being a setting book almost makes me give it a pass, if it weren't for the reasonable price I feel Paizo offers for it (64 pages, $19.99.)

Anyway, am I being ridiculous with this? I certainly don't think so, but then...I like to be a little more frugal with my gaming dollar these days.