2021: Death Bat's Top 5 in Movies

 This was also a weird year for movies. For some regions such as the state in which I live (New Mexico), we didn't even have an opportunity to start going to theaters again until around June, as I recall. For much of this year theater-going actually felt safe enough, as hardly anyone was actually going to the movies. If you wanted to watch new films at home, many streaming platforms did simultaneous releases; HBO Max has been a very good deal, for example.

So what movies earned a top five place on my list? This was a tough year, because you not only had to watch films that had often been delayed a lot, this year saw a slew of late arrivals in the theaters that were heavily immersed in pig-slop-wallowing levels of nostalgia that were at times almost embarrassing.  Not a good year (for the most part) for creative effort in blockbusters! Still, I can think of five movies I quite enjoyed:

#5 Free Guy

Ryan Reynolds has an affable comedic charm about him that translates really well into certain films. Free Guy was the surprise movie of this year, a film I figured would be a relatively benign, no-punches-pulled comedy with lots of sappy moments. I wasn't entirely wrong....but wrapped up in a story of a non-player-character trapped in a persistent online video game world who attains sentience is a pretty good movie about what it means to be an AI, what a prospective realistic future online world might look like (with some caveats for the story), and a film that is surprisingly relevant and entertaining. Taika Waititi as the tech mogul bad guy was hysterical, and Free Guy quickly made my list of one of the most enjoyable and generally feel-good movies I had seen this year....and this is from a guy who normally shuns "feel-good" films like the plague!

#4 Spider-Man No Way Home

Okay so this one is pretty egregious on not only the nostalgia factor but also the "let's mix up our universe of franchise IP content into a big pot and see what comes out" approaches to film. Unlike many other movies that fell into the category of appealing to nostalgia and IP-smelting pots of content this third Tom Holland entry did a decent job of leaning hard into the tropes so common in comic book lore, and ended up making not only a decent third movie for the Holland Spider-Man, but gave some closure to the two prior Sony Spider-Man film series as well. It would have been very easy for this to have gone bad, quickly, but an exceptional cast and approach made it fresh and interesting, which is impressive. Ultimately, this movie, along with The Suicide Squad earlier in the year, both boldly drew their plots and focus from the weirder spectrum of comic book stories and pulled it off big time. 

#3 Censor

I'll admit, I am a total sucker for indie horror, and Censor is an amazing movie. Starring Niamh Algar as Enid Banes, who works for the British film industry censorship dept. during the mid eighties, a time when this was actually a thing and the British government was concerned about the enormous number of exploitation flicks and horror movies with the substantial gore that rose in the late sixties and seventies. Enid's job is to clinically analyze the films and indicate what must be cut to allow a British release, when she sees a video which reminds her suspiciously of the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of her sister in her youth. Beyond that, I will say no more, but this was a great movie. 

#2 The Suicide Squad

I don't know how James Gunn's take on DC's Suicide Squad ever got greenlit the way it did, or how it avoided studio meddling, but it's like watching an actual Suicide Squad comic book brought to disturbing life. It manages to hold to the story beats of a blockbuster summer film while also completely violating the core conceits of blockbusters with a disturbingly entertaining yet unlikeable cast of vile misfits, deliberately sets up audience expectations for sympathetic characters only to kill them off the second they get a payoff to their story arcs, and then grabs one of the zaniest villains of DC's long history (Starro the Conqueror) and makes it a genuinely interesting existential threat. Amazing film, but I feel like it was made specifically for me and other fans of the comic, and somehow people thought it would also be well received by general audiences....which it sort of was? And of course Margo Robbie was amazing in this movie, which is essentially part 3 in a trilogy of Harley Quinn tales. 

#1 Dune Part I

This movie broke the spell on Hollywood that you cannot take Frank Herbert's novel and make a good movie out of it. Although the film takes a few liberties, it does a dramatically better job of setting the mood, ambiance, and smart story telling of "show, don't tell" to recreate the first halfish of the novel and is well worth experiencing, especially on the big screen if possible. It is sufficiently amazing that it retroactively generated interest in the Lynch version of the movie from the 80's and the later SciFi Channel editions, just so people could analyze what about prior attempts fell short where this one excelled. Thankfully Part II has been greenlit, although I am shocked that they didn't have the chutzpah to just film both parts at once. 

Honorable Mention: The second Venom movie was a short (1 1/2 hour) and entertaining film that could have overstayed its welcome but did not, and in many ways improved on the formula of the first movie, with Woody Harrelson and Naomie Harris getting an opportunity to really ham up their villain roles while Tom Hardy did his thing. Fun! I can't say I'd recommend it to anyone other than comic fans or Venom fans (or fans of these actors) but I didn't leave the theater feeling regret (unlike some other recent movies).

I might also mention Eternals, but while this was a good movie, I think if asked to watch it or Venom II again I'd have to stick to Venom II, just because it was shorter and more amusing.

The Movie Walk of Shame: Lots of films disappointed this year. I talked about a few of them, including Ghostbusters: Afterlife (shameless pillaging of a comedy franchise corpse to appeal to Stranger Things contemporary nostalgia feels); Resident Evil Welcome to Raccoon City (by-the-numbers pandering attempt to make a video game franchise by people who forgot that you need to also care about what you are making); Matrix Resurrections (I, and everyone I have talked to, agree the movie was "just fine" but really didn't need to exist; I think the first thirty minutes were great and wish the film had gone hard into a subversive deconstruction of the original trilogy rather than tease us with the concept then veer away to a confusing medley of traditional beats); and both Black Widow and Shang Chi were perfectly serviceable Marvel movies that show that the standard formula is getting stale. 

I can't say that any particular movie I saw this year was terrible, though, which doesn't mean there weren't any...I just got lucky at dodging them. Even Ghostbusters: Afterlife was a perfectly watchable movie with some good moments, it was just tonally off from its franchise origins and too busy emulating a brand of nostalgia I was entirely out of tune with. 

A lot of the good stuff that did come out this year was actually on TV....perhaps a future column on that later!

2021: Death Bat's Top 5 Role Playing Games (Tabletop)

 The top 5 for role playing games...those things you play in person or in VTT, you know....this is a harder list to assemble as a lot of good stuff came out this year. Still, I think I can narrow it down a bit to the following distinct books which have had the greatest impression on me in 2021, and which will continue in to 2022:

#5 Open Quest 3

This third edition of Open Quest is very much the best edition of the game to date, with great interior design, layout, artwork and smart improvements to the rules all around. Newt Newport and D100 Games has easily crafted the best non-Runequest BRP iteration on the market, next to Mythras (which at this point feels like the "advanced" edition to OQ3's basic edition style). The game is so well written and designed that it just begs to be played.

#2 Old School Essentials Advanced Edition

The OSE Advanced Player's and Referee's Manuals from Necrotic Gnome let you play classic B/X D&D or AD&D as you see fit, with an enormously inclusive ruleset that give you all the tools to make what you will of your own game, no fuss and no muss. Its support with a series of modules that provide copious content in an economy of style are equally impressive. 

#3 Mythic Babylon (Mythras)

This is the best sourcebook out there on gaming in ancient Mesopotamia during the rise of Babylon, and not only is worth looking at for Mythras fans but for fans of serious, well-researched historical gaming. The only way it could be better is if it were also statted for GURPS at this point.....but Mythras is itself ideally suited for this sort of historical gaming and the Design Mechanism has once again outdone themselves.

#2 Traveller Core Rules 2022 Update

I actually got my copy of the new Traveller Core Rules a couple of weeks ago, so I am including it in this list even though it is, technically, the "2022 update." This revamp of the current edition of Traveller is primarily focused on clearly restating the rules, fixing some errata, and reworking the layout, design and art to match the current reign of products, which are bar none top of the line. The old days of Mongoose being known for subpar design is long gone, and the newest iteration of Traveller amply demonstrates this. I am already planning a new Traveller campaign for 2022, and this new update of the core rules is one of my favorite "surprise releases" of this year.

#1 Mothership RPG v.0

Mothership just finished a massively successful Kickstarter for a version 1 boxed set of the game which I backed at the top level, as this game, which takes the genre of horror SF and blends all of its influences into one giant pot, is easily the most fun I've had with an RPG in years. From a design which compels the players to act out as if they were trapped on the Nostromo or the Event Horizon to a wealth of chapbook scenarios and trifolds which use the new-style "economy of information" to layout comprehensive scenarios that don't require a huge slog for the GM (warden) to prep, this is easily the best new game with a pickup-and-play aesthetic on the market. Even better, its smartly written and its design is easily understood by most, something not a lot of other chapbook/zine era RPGs are as good at. Game of the Year from Camazotz, hands down.

No honorable mentions, though there are many books that came out which were certainly worthy of consideration. My main problem this year was that a nontrivial portion of my gaming time was focused on older stuff....D&D 3rd edition (3.5) mainly, and lots of Call of Cthulhu, which always stands out as worthy books to buy, read and play. So....yeah! Overall just a good year all around for cool new RPG stuff. 

2021: The Top Five in Video Games

 I said I'd have a hard time doing a top 5 list last week, but now I am thinking....naw, that's not entirely true. Here, then, is my short and sweet Top 5 video games as preferred by Camazotz the Death Bat for 2021 (as usual you can see my gaming biases implicit in my choices):

#5 Returnal

Damned if I will probably never finish it, but this is the most atmospheric and enjoyable experience I have on the PS5 right now, and if you can tolerate the roguelite element which causes your character to "reset" at the beginning of the game with a new procedural map after every death, then its quite an experience. In defense of that notion you do have story elements which progress over time, the death-reset is core to the narrative experience, and there are some ways you learn over time to carry over some improvements/assistance but the real reason, ultimately, to play Returnal is because its got a damned fine creepy storyline intermixed with some frenetic run-and-gun gameplay and exploration. It's formula could only be improved by removing as many of the roguelite elements as possible to make this game more accessible to people who lack the vigor of youth. I do imagine if I wanted to polish off any of the game's bosses the smartest strategy I can take is to hand the controller to my son, who will probably do it in a manner I never even considered.

#4 Crysis Trilogy Remastered

Okay this is cheating a bit, but only a bit. The Remastered editions of Crysis get the entire trilogy back onto consoles with 4K resolution supported, and Switch fans can take it on the go, too (not at 4K, of course, though the versions on the OLED look sharp and snappy). This series has stood the test of time and remains a solid experience in FPS shooters with story.

#3 Aliens Fireteam Elite

My son and I finished the Aliens Fireteam Elite campaign together, and while its post-game modes are a tad anemic (a horde mode and point defense mode), this is a solid and fun experience for fans of the Alien franchise, especially those who liked Aliens and Prometheus, as the game draws heavily on both for its core story and game mechanics. If your idea of fun is dealing with tense and overwhelming waves of aliens (or, later on, pathogen-infected mutants) then this game is worh it. Bonus kudos to the developers for a solid and substantively smart level of story integration, in a manner that feels tonally consistent with the movies and novels, and carefully avoids any mis-steps as some other less distinguished games in the franchise have taken in the past. This is a solid #2 behind Alien: Isolation in terms of capturing the feel and universe of Alien.

#2 Back 4 Blood

Anyone who plays this will immediately recognize its intent as a sequel to Left4Dead. The game has so many similarities that the differences stand out all the more. I admit, I don't fully grokk the card system it deploys and try to ignore it as much as feasible, but the overall play experience is solid, and the campaign mode is as fun as the old days of Left4Dead was. Very much enjoying this game.

#1 Halo Infinite

On the one hand this came out in mid December, so I hesitate to include it as I am far from done playing the campaign, but on the other hand it is clearly the best iteration of Halo to date, and the campaign mode is amazing. This game, and this alone, are probably the highlight of the year and well deserved in its top slot for gaming in 2021 (and onward to 2022 and beyond). The fun and engaging (and free) multiplayer is just icing on the Halo cake. 

Honorable Mention: Shin Megami Tensei V - more on this one later, as I am getting into it quite late, but can say its probably deserving of the Top 5 list if I had only started playing sooner! Its only on Switch right now, but my understanding is that SMTV will be appearing on other consoles and maybe PC soon. 

Bonus Special Mention: I can't believe I keep forgeting it, but Outriders came out this year. Outriders is a trip, a third-person perspective shoot'em up from Square Enix that is at time a bit janky but is actually a pretty compelling co-op game with perfectly serviceable solo elements and a broad campaign story that is fun to play through. It's downside is: overtly crapsack world issues (Hey, I love Fallout and wouldn't want to live in that game world but it makes me like visiting; Outriders' universe just suuuuucks); and its apparently easily forgotten, but that's not fair to the game because I have enjoyed playing it quite a bit this year, and feel its another example of a game that would have been better served as a campaign-story focused title that wasn't also trying to compete in the "endgame content" loop so many titles get stuck in these days. You know...it's okay for a game to have a definitive ending sometimes, yeah?

There are other games out there well worth playing, but for many they just aren't my style of game (I found it very hard to enjoy Vornheim, for example). So...take this as the top list from someone who is deeply in to shooters with an emphasis on science fiction, space marines and alien stuff!

The Year in Review 2021: Computer Gaming - A Wealth of Embarrassment and Retrogaming Joy

 Normally I do a top five list for each end-of-year subject, but this time around I'm going to do a "year in review" instead because I think it might be hard to generate a proper top 5 list, when so much of 2021 was janky and weird at best. 2020 had excuses.....but 2021 felt like 2020 threw everything off and this was the year the toll came due.

For gaming this year, the world of computer and video gaming is essentially dominated by bad ideas, scandals and a mess of games that somehow failed to hit the mark (even when they still landed on the target). Examples:

Ubisoft and Activision - how not to allow abusive corporate culture to ruin your businesses.

Ubisoft and NFTs - as Penny Arcade states, even shitty ideas must have their start. I am disappointed that this appears to be the trend now, and NFTs are a prime example of how federal regulation and oversight is failing us. 

Halo Infinite - amazing single-player game, excellent multiplayer, but a complete mess when it comes to the execution of a season pass with XP gain. The story has been how hard it is to earn the XP to gain the gear, but the real story of course should be why the industry now assumes every game must of necessity have a Skinner Box season pass to begin with. 

Battlefield 2042 - I bought a used physical copy on the PS5 since I suspected I'd probably end up wanting to trade it in. My experience thus far has been that this game clearly suffered from a sense of direction (it was initially supposed to be a battle royale, I have read) and ended up being retooled into a half-assed experience which seems to displease everyone. I've played about 10 hours and am already done with it. The problem isn't even bugs....it's just not very fun. 128 player events are simply too much, and organizing even within a 4 man squad means nothing if you're watching the raw chaos unfold. Things get twice as bad if you're on the side with nothing but inexperienced players and the other team is loaded with old Battlefield pros. At that point? You're not there to be entertained, you're just there for someone else's entertainment. I've only seen one other game as messy as BF2042, and that was CoD: Black Ops IIII, which also suffered from late game design changes leading to an identity crisis.

Call of Duty Vanguard - I won't say anything bad about this, it's actually pretty fun and the renovations on their zombie mode are cool. Vanguard works because it dials the formula back to the familiar, then innovates in small but meaningful ways (such as cover not being invulnerable and some being destructible, maps being built to encourage use of cover, and the controls feeling more natural....something Cold War somehow got wrong). But for many, Call of Duty Vanguard is too mundane this time around, and it is admittedly still not as impressive perhaps as the latest Modern Warfare was.

Rogue Company - I got in to this one when it released last year, hoping it would break the Fortnite spell. It's gameplay options, while fun, were too anemic to substitute, but the game has slowly built up and is still enjoyable to jump in to. Like the others it has a season pass, which is especially grindy, but playing it on double XP weekends helps. If you're wondering what it is: it's a short-match team-based PVP experience where you essentially hold territory, defuse/set bombs, and most recently some straight team deathmatching is also an option. Diverse characters with lots of distinct abilities and styles mixed with very smooth third person-view gameplay makes for a very nice game, its just a pity it doesn't offer more modes or even larger maps with some sort of battle royale. Like Apex Legends, its characters are designed to work in teams, however, so I don't think they wan to compete in the BR space even though it would be a good fit (with some adjustment to character abulities).

Fortnite - They got through their Chapter 2 seasons and started a third season. My son still plays, I still play, but I also desperately want to not play this game anymore. I know this is exactly where I sat with it last year, too. The only difference is....this time, with their new chapter, I feel less and less of the pull to experience the content, and no more desire to spend money on stupid virtual skins. Maybe I'll try quitting it again as a new year's resolution; this game has nothing new to offer at this point. But....it's a fun game to play with my son, so maybe that is unrealistic. 

Returnal and other Roguelites - This year was a year for roguelites. Hades was popular; I had trouble getting in to it, but my wife loved it. Dead Cells which came out....last year?...remains fun in short bursts but hard to get in to since it starts you over as is common for the genre. The one roguelite I most enjoyed (but still couldn't get far in was Returnal on PS5. Amazing game! I just wish it was not a roguelite, it would be so much better if it were a more conventional game that offered some hope of advancement for those who have actual lives and can't keep playing through entire levels to die 27 times to the first boss.  

Playstation 5 - speaking of losers, Playstation 5, despite being my favorite overall console so far in terms of what it can do feels like the loser of 2021. It only generated a smidgeon of console exclusives, such as Returnal, and all of its prospects lie in the future, yet to be realized. I did grab Deathloop on it, only to discover that was not really an exclusive after all. PS5 continues to be the hardest console to actually find, and the sheer frustration of securing a new console this year has been a very bad look. People aren't just being thwarted by scalpers, they are being thwarted by the online retailers who continue to maintain shoddy, exploitable storefronts or set up expensive membership exclusive programs. Its fucking embarrassing.

Xbox Series S - who knew the diminutive lesser cousin to Xbox Series X would be the winner of this year's console sales? A year ago everyone felt that the Series S might be a mistake, but it turns out Microsoft knew what they were doing, The distinctively cheaper console still runs the newer games, looks good, and provides the most important feature a console could ever want: accessibility, as in its something you can probably find somewhere on store shelves right now. I bought another one just for my back room, and find myself playing on it more than my Xbox Series X, if only because I think my Series X has some issues (wifi drops and controller connectivity which randomly cuts out, none of which the Series S has issues with). The Series X is awesome, sure, but I now realize I would have not noticed much if any difference had I only been able to find a Series S.

Bottom line, though: Xbox has a clear advantage over PS5 right now with its Game Pass, PC integration, streaming options, and the simple fact that the Series S is a $300 box you can actually find and buy on shelves. What a concept!

Switch OLED - this is another one I can't really say anything bad about. Should you trade up for one? Absolutely yes if you want the best handheld experience out there. The OLED screen is noticeably better as an experience in handheld mode. The minor improvements are all worth it. But if you're fine with your current Switch? You are okay, you don't need to upgrade right now. For me, I bought three, one for myself, my wife and my kid...we all benefitted from an upgrade and it was well worth it. Had I been less affluent (and impulsive) though I would have been just fine sticking with the old Switch. 

The only embarrassing part of the OLED was how obsessed the entire vlog and game news industry was with obsessing over a mythical Switch Pro, and their inevitable outrage and disappointment that imagining something based on flimsy rumors from unreliable sources and then deciding it must be gospel is, as usual, bad journalism. 

So! What games have I actually spent time with this year, though?

Ghost Recon: Breakpoint - I played this over the last 18 months and finally finished it earlier this year. I was briefly interested in the new campaign they announced, but that interest was shattered when I realized the timing was likely deliberate to lure suckers back in for their new NFT offerings. 

I liked Ghost Recon: Wildlands, and wish that Ubisoft's desire to shy away from all controversy didn't push them to create Breakpoint as a fictitious island populated by tech mogul bad guys. It was the easy way out. They released the game 18 months earlier than they should have, and populated the DLC with what amounted to quality of life patches. But it was still fun to play, to a point. The idea that they expect someone to play the game for 600 hours (60 is quite enough) to earn an NFT is insane.

Crysis and other older FPS Shooters - I actually finished the "remastered" version on Switch, and it was somehow both as fun and less buggy than my experience playing and finishing it on PC many years ago. I've also divested more time in older shooters that I had finished ages ago, but enjoyed returning to: Singularity, Rage and Bulletstorm specifically, though all three on Steam. Rage is especially interesting, as this game apparently used a unique approach to its environments which actually looks better in meaningful ways on contemporary GPUs. 

Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne - still playing this old classic, re-released on Switch, and anjoying it despite the at times bizarre and insane approaches it takes to story. With SMT games you either see the bizarre elements as selling points or you bail. I feel that is one of their charms. 

Playstation 2 - Way back in 2019 I got this idea of jumping in to the retrogame collector's field (watching too much Metal Jesus I think!) and secured a used PS2 slim, a console I hadn't owned since around 2005. The PS2 is unique in many ways, one of the largest console bases out there, and many of the games that came out for it are still exclusive to the system. Back when PS2 was current I actually spent more time playing on the Xbox, but there were a lot of specific titles I enjoyed, and a few I missed. As I have slowly rebuilt the "core" collection of games I wished to replay or play for the first time on PS2 I've managed to secure gems like Silent Hill 2, Silent Hill Origin, Resident Evil Outbreak File 1 (working on getting #2), Armored Core 2, Armored Core 3 (other AC games are a bit pricey), Splinter Cell and so forth. Two real gems, being the SMT fan I am: Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 1 and 2 I somehow found on Ebay in new condition, still in packaging. These are great games, weird and atmospheric with interesting difficulty curves according to some. Getting to play them on the originally intended system is well worth it. 

Retro Arcade Gaming - Beyond the PS2.....it's been collecting arcade games, either on Xbox or Switch, as many classics can be found out there to let me recreate my own version of the arcade from Shady Grove Truckstop in 1986 that I used to spend way too many quarters on. Pac-Man 99 is literally Pac-Man with a battle royale element. Remakes of Asteroids and Centipede can be found. Evercade handheld (and the soon to come VS) let you replay many obscure console and arcade versions of these games. Oddly I can only find Defender and Joust in a Midway collection on the Xbox 360, luckily retro-compatible on the Series X/S. I am finding a quick bout of Pac-man or Asteroids is much more satisfying than a game that requires a minimum 2-4 hours time commitment to feel like you got somewhere, these days. 

I assume the retro gaming interest I have is a byproduct of age. The arcade titles stem back to the eighties when much of my gaming experience centered on a truck stop (Shady Grove) which had an amazing arcade room with about forty arcade machines. The PS2 stems back to the "golden age" of really interesting games that looked impressive for the time, but still relied heavily on story, atmosphere, and making the best of the processing power at hand to create an engaging experience, in an era before DLC, games as service that never end, and constant monetization was implicit in design.

So what has fallen to the wayside? Destiny 2, for one. I will probably get the upcoming Witch Queen expansion, but I haven't played it for a while now, finding that the game's unfocused approach to storytelling in which it mixed solid single player story moments that lead to hideous and mindless grinds to migrate to the next story bit are simply not worth it. Now that Halo Infinite is out, I feel even less compelled to subject myself to Destiny except on a whim. Their pricing scheme on the upcoming expansion doesn't help. My inability to get any value out of their insanely grindy season passes does not help, either. 

I also have a laundry list of games I keep wanting to play but can never find the proper time to do so. All of the Dark Pictures Anthology of games, for example. The Outer Worlds looks like an obvious choice for me, but I keep pushing it off, waiting for "the right time" which I am forgetting was 10-12 years ago, before I had so many more time responsibilities as a business owner and father. If I am to pay the Outer Worlds it must be in smaller chunks, now, or never.....and so it also is for games like Greedfall, Dying Light (which I am playing on Switch, and can't believe it looks and plays so well in the OLED at least), and even finishing Cyberpunk 2077, which I stalled out on midway through due to the fact that I figured it might be best to just give it time and see what lots of patches might end up doing for it. 

2021 was a bad year for new games, in many ways, but a great year for games in general, and exploring the "Steam back catalogue" phenomenon. I think a lot of people have this issue. When the digital market exploded, it was with the notion that publishers could at last deal a blow to the used game aftermarket. What they did not predict was that they had created a much greater nemesis: the back-catalogue, in which every contemporary game must now compete with its predecessors. The efforts spent on games-as-service is of course a new way to combat this, by making games which keep people playing and paying, and also making games which, when the time is right, can be shut down and ended and just go away, to no longer remain competitive. Even as they do this, the interest in retrogaming explodes, as people realize the value of tangible hardcopies that cannot be shut down. 

Well, 2022 will hopefully bear fruit for the new console generation. Here's to high hopes for the future, and a stocking full of 15-20 year old games! Ho ho ho!!!!

D'uh Moments in GMing

 D'uh or D'oh? Depends on how much you like Homer Simpson, I guess....anyway I had one of these when, while researching forums and re-reading manuals in depth on Pathfinder 2E to try and settle my questions on "why does this feel like I am not doing it right?" at times, I suddenly stumbled across the little section of the Bestiary that talks about elite and weakened monsters.

Sometimes the hang-up I have is with situations like Saturday, where the group stumbled into a den of nosferatu, but the group is only level 7. That is not an ideal situation, as the nosferatu thralls are level 8 and the weakest nosferatu stat out at level 10. One nosferatu could tank the group with a few good rolls, easily.

But: while my story/game setting call for Nosferatu there, I could have (had I remembered it) applied the weakened template to that particular nosferatu which would have made a nontrivial difference in the combat experience. Reducing the AC by 2 and hP by 20 for example would have meant a larger number of actual hits on the target with damage toward 0 HP happening faster, given the actual fight was already tough due to vampiric fast healing. The group's archer was the only guy with a useful wooden weapon since they did not at all come prepared for a vampire!

An entire reddit forum I ran in to basically boiled down to two camps: people who (like me) tend to think of the stat blocks on monsters as the "defining stats" and tend not to change them, and people who were, like, "just scale them up or down as needed." And all I could think was, "huh, yeah, why wasn't I thinking like this." I suspect its because in the process of simplifying the stat blocks it moved PF2E design further from the old 3rd edition approach which provided copious mechanical approaches to scaling (all of which were tedious). Also, because I am getting old.....yeesh.....

Anyway, just wanted to share that thought! Now to work out some good rule of thumb on judiciously applying the weakened template to desired high CL encounters, and also using the elite upscaling template on lower level foes I'd like to give more life to.

The VTT vs. Real TT Conundrum - How VTT changes the game experience

 After posting about Pathfinder 2E and the various issues I have with the system, further thought led me down some paths with regard to how the virtual gaming environment impacts the experience, vs. how a game may feel different in an online environment. 

One example of how the virtual environment removes some elements possible at the game table. This is based on my experiences with Roll20 and Astral, but in essence if you play a VTT environment in which you are defaulting to the rules of the medium, then it means your die rolls are all up front. I imagine it might be possible, for example, for a GM to hide their die rolls from players but I actually am not certain how to do that. 

The reason I mention this is that, quite simply, if the GM at a game table with a screen in front of him notices that the die rolls are leading the players toward a glorious TPK over what was supposed to be a minor encounter, he can start fudging the dice if necessary. You might say, "but that's part of the fun of by-the-book/by-the-dice gaming" and you might not be wrong, but just having the freedom to make that determination is useful at the game table. If the GM starts fudging in the VTT it is much more apparent to to the players, which damages the experience. 

At a VTT you can run a game without a map or minis and maybe at best sketch some details out on graph paper. In a VTT the compulsion, possibly even the necessity of detailed maps and tokens is strong, chiefly because the medium of transmission on the VTT favors such graphics, and because the slight disconnect of being a disembodied voice talking to other disembodied voices requires that you put something graphically up to ground people, keep them on track. This leads to a cumbersome level of additional duties for the GM, especially if you're not good at designing your own maps. I can draw all sorts of good mediocre to average maps, but they will never look as good as a map designed from an app or program. But if I only have an hour to prep for a 5+ hour session, I haven't got any time at all to make a custom map in a program, and my best bet is scouring google searches. This leads to limiting maps...you design scenarios to accommodate what graphics you can find rather than what you need or imagine in your design. 

This problem does sort of exist at tabletop level, too: running Pathfinder with lots of official Paizo products means you may pick and choose from dozens of maps. But! You can also throw out and draw a generic map with markers and the players are universally forgiving that it's not amazing. Attempting to draw the same map in a clear space in Roll20 is, I can certify, a real pain in the ass.

If you do love making maps and using minis then I can see the appeal of VTT, though. It's generally faster for setup and actual play; the backend of prep for a game is where the time crunch is off-loaded. Most of Roll20, while providing lots of tools for stuff such as dynamic lighting and so forth, are not easy to use (okay for me, YMMV) and it feels like the focus is really on encouraging gamers to buy preset modules with all the features already built in to the scenario. The first scenario I ran in Roll20 that was prebuilt was for Mothership (The Haunting of Ypsilon-14) and it was actually incredibly convenient. So convenient that when it comes to my Saturday game in Pathfinder I have been debating moving the homebrew plot to a point where I can just start using premade content for them instead.

I've posted before about the main problem with VTT vs. Real TT: physicality. You can get around this a bit by using actual video, but I have to say, as someone for whom work has turned into a living hell of endless Zoom, Goto and Webex meetings that cameras SUCK. Adding them in to my entertainment experience is not a great option, though it does probably help normalize the feeling I experience of "disembodied voices" from which I can't escape. I wonder at times if the unnerving quality of this experience is unique to me or others feel the same weird sense of disassociation when listening to too many people talking to them on headphones?

Being at a real gaming table of course solves the problem immediately. You can see people, which means all the non-auditory communications elements of live interaction return (even if you are wearing masks!) and therefore alleviates a huge amount of what I call the "communications gap" of VTT. You can tell when someone is joking, someone is mad, and someone is confused. Maybe Facebooks' Metaverse will solve some of this, but I doubt it. Maybe I'm just old now, and despite my love of tech I am too old fashioned when it comes to how human interaction should feel.

Part of this rambling post started with me thinking, "Maybe I should run Pathfinder 2E at the game table again, as it may feel like a better experience when run live and in person." This started because my FLGS let me know that some new Paizo items I ordered had arrived, including maps and the hero point cards, none of which have any utility at all in VTT (though VTT shops will no doubt sell virtual editions of each). A month or so back I completed my monster card collection for PF2E with the Bestiary 3 card box. I'd love to be using this stuff at the game table again. 

Playing Pathfinder 2E at the live table might not fix the rules issues I've talked about....but it may make the experience more organic and fun. As for PF2E, I am actually thinking about some house rules to fix those issues. More on that soon!

Hitting the Wall with Pathfinder 2E - what I think needs to be done to fix this game

After my latest Saturday night game of Pathfinder 2E I have decided I am probably done with the system for a while. It's not done with me, unfortunately....the players are enjoying the game and I need to get it to some sort of satisfactory close, but I have finally after two+ years run enough PF2E to realize what elements of its design are causing problems for me. It boils down like this:

1. The roll over/under 10 mechanic is one of those "sounds great on paper" concepts that just doesn't work so well in reality for PF2E It is a key reason people accuse the game of being swingy, but they would be wrong; it's actually quite predictable and the problem boils down to risk/reward factors. Players with three action points may push it against tougher opponents and fail miserably. Indeed, the math is balanced out so that fights get noticeably harder against tougher opponents much more quickly, which increases the odds that players may err in making too many iterative attacks and put themselves in a bad spot. Worse yet, they might err in making too few against easier opponents, too. If your players seem too savvy on calculating their attacks its probably because they have a Bestiary open somewhere. 

Back in the day I used to impose a variety of penalties on fumbles and a myriad bonuses on crits. The official Pathfinder 2E fumble and crit decks were a help. Today, its such a common occurance that we default to double damage on the crit and flat-footedness on the fumble because they are just so damn common....they are not special anymore. Since the +10/-10 mechanic is so deeply entrenched in PF2E design, this is unavoidable and not easy to back out. For me, the desire to return to a system where crits and fumbles are less common and more special when they happen is an aesthetic choice as well as a design preference.

2. The "add level" mechanic is a terrible idea. If I had any say, I'd advise Paizo to re-release the entire game around that section in the new Gamemastery Guide that talks about the option of stripping the level mechanic entirely (edit: by this I mean adding +1 to everything each time you level up, not the actual process of leveling up). The reasons are simple: first is that it is an illusion of improvement, and in reality all that's happening is as the players level up the GM quietly behind the emerald curtains is bumping the DCs to level appropriateness. The math in PF2E is so tight that this is ultimately necessary, with the rules as presented. Static DCs get wonky really fast in PF2E. But if you strip out the level mechanic all sorts of problems go away, including:

--monster CRs are suddenly less restrictive and both higher level and lower level foes can be more useful and pragmatic in encounters (PF2E in this "no level" model literally starts to feel like D&D 3.5 again);

--math remains simpler; not a big deal, the math in PF2E is for the most part not complex but I've lost a couple players over the math as it stands, so take that in to consideration;

--proficiency bonuses will suddenly be far more relevant and stand out.

The Gamemastery Guide actually has an optional rule section on backing levels out. It reads to some extent like this was actually something they thought about doing during the playtest design, but then for some reason decided not to. Maybe they thought it would make them harder to distinguish from D&D 5E, or the illusion of advancement offered by level-adds would be superior to just trusting players to be okay with more intermittent proficiency increases.

Now, I could take the optional rules from the Gamemastery Guide and apply them, and I may yet do this, but it is with the burden of having to then either pre-convert all the material to the level-less mechanic, or convert on the fly. It would be a lot of work to make this happen in something like Roll20, but the net result would be, I think, a dramatically better game experience.

3. The Skill System and Skill Feats Need to be Refined/Broadened and Cut Respectively. PF2E did not take this lesson from anywhere else, unfortunately, and the skill system still feels like a design directed by a specific style of play. I am very, very tired of Society being a catch-all for so many skills, and the high level of specificity in the skill mechanics and feats of PF2E create unintended mine traps for niche protection, and a lot of juggling of information on what does and does not work for what purpose that is often counter-intuitive to just making a call. When running PF2E in contrast with either D&D 5E or D&D 3.5 (or hell, PF1E too) it is painfully clear that the rigorous attempt to control skills in PF2E was both a failed effort and one directed by a design team which perceived a problem that was not really a problem at all for so many players to begin with. Bottom line: skill systems for any D&D iteration in today's game environment need to encourage creativity, allow for intuitive rule calls, and be flexible enough to meet story needs. PF2E on the surface acts like a game that wants this, too, but its actual system discourages intuitive utilization.

My fix would be to rewrite the skills to re-include some missing options that will allow for more customization (example: cultural knowledge and linguistics not all rolled up in Society, perception and insight/sense motive become their own skills again, and lore is better and more broadly defined; the rigorous limitations imposed by the current system on what one can do are done away with, as are all skill feats entirely). This would be a start. An optional simpler non-skill based mechanic should exist for those who want fewer skills, too.

4. Fix or clean up the process on identifying magic items and detecting magic. It's a mess, and could benefit from a high level of consolidation. A single section that walks a player and GM through the process coherently from start to finish is much needed. Better yet, provide a basic and advanced version of the process, one for groups that do not want to worry about this and one for those who do.

5. Clean up and organize the crafting rules, and make them more specialized. Clean up the various spots where magic item creation and rune rules are by consolidating it all into one location. No more hunting and pecking to get the whole picture. As with #4 above, include an optional simplified version of the process and an "official" more detailed version to suit different group styles.

6. Let players have more fun. As the game has expanded I think Paizo has gotten this message, and my players pick a lot of stuff from other books which provide more useful abilities than in the core, so I think they are well aware that this was a problem with the initial design. My group regularly describes PF2E as a "game designed by GMs to put uppity players in their place" and they are not wrong. Many class designs seem severely hampered, or have specific synergies hidden behind lots of trap choices which wouldn't be trap choices if the GM side of the equation (monsters, and level limited loot) weren't so highly balanced as to make any poor player playing sub-optimally easy fodder. My current campaign is the very definition of suboptimal....a witch, an alchemist, a swashbuckler and a rogue who collectively somehow manage to survive as long as I give them copious useful damage and protection based allies. Because of the level-based system and the high level of difficulty scaling in monster design it means that my only real safe bet is to throw CR-0 to CR-3 stuff at them as often as possible, and even the rare CR+2 or +3 encounter is probably just a terrible idea (this Saturday had one, which I regretted putting in the game immediately; The group is level 7 and fought a single CR+3 monster, and it was a nightmarish slog in which I added an equivalent CR monster on their side just to help them out). 

Anyway, when players have abilities that make them feel useful or impressive, they like it. But all too often it seems like PF2E fails to offer this olive branch to them. 

Anyway....debating how to approach my group on a change. I know they are having fun with the campaign, but its pretty clear to me this is despite the rules we chose and not because of it. I am likely to switch to D&D 5E again, with lots of gritty rules turned on, or suggest we try something simpler and more relaxing like OSE or OpenQuest3. We shall see.

 

A Slurry of Film Reviews: Resident Evil, Ghostbusters Afterlife, and Eternals

 After watching these three movies over the course of the holiday week, I feel burnt out and disillusioned - a bit - with the film industry. It's not that it hasn't had its problems, but watching these three movies in sequence really hammers home how corporate and calculating a big chunk of the film industry is these days. Call it the Disneyfication of films in general, or maybe its just the result of a craft which can't afford to misstep in today's post-pandemic box office, but none of these films were especially visionary (well, Eternals had its moments), and all three were very, very carefully calculated to pander to a certain kind of audience.

Rather than review each individually and at length, I thought I'd try to encapsulate my take on each in as succinct a manner as possible. I wish to note that of the three, only Eternals really stands out, chiefly because while it is a Marvel movie, it barely feels like one (until some line or reference is thrown in every few minutes to remind you that yes, this is taking place in the MCU). That alone makes it a better general fare than the other two films, neither of which are anything more than a desperate attempt to produce something which generate the most likes from over-dedicated fans in Reddit and Youtube (and all the rest of the social media ilk).

So...here goes...Note: Some Spoilers Ahead! 

Ghostbusters: Afterlife 

A film which reminds us that Ghostbusters 2016 was at least a movie that understood it was part of a comedy franchise, this new installment leans heavily into a Spielbergesque (or, I am told, Stranger Things-esque) revisionist take on the Ghostbusters as something to be deeply nostalgic and sentimental about. It populates the movie world with a persistent series of direct throwbacks to the original movie in the most pandering, fetishistic nostalgia-fueled manner possible, and gets people like Kevin Smith to have deeply emotional reactions to what is fundamentally a movie that feels like 1/2 "young adult novel" reinvention of the Ghostbusters concept mixed with quasi-religious reverence for all things of the original movie, aimed presumably at adults who were kids when they saw the first one and didn't get all the SNL-style humor. We probably all have movies a bit like that; for me it's Alien and The Empire Strikes Back, but it's definitely not this movie. I mildly enjoyed the artless ways in which the film reverentially, almost fetishistically, took no chances and filled its run time with artifacts, spooks and concepts all directly from the original movie, while providing a mostly neutral to unlikable cast of kids who, in the end, are entirely overshadowed by a brief series of unsurprising original cast cameos. Also, a CGI Egon, for whom I hope his family estates are properly compensated. 

Overall rating: C- but I did enjoy seeing Gozer with modern special effects. This movie is technically watchable, but clearly I am not and have never been the target audience for a "serious take" on the Ghostbusters franchise. My son loved it though, and this movie was definitely for him. But make no mistake....this film offers no vision and ends with an after-credits that threatens more of the same. Ghostbusters is no longer a comedy, apparently. That was their take-away from the failed 2016 reboot (which I think could have been notably better if it had simply not tried to be a reboot). I suggest avoid, unless you have someone who is 10 who loves Ghostbusters in your life, or someone who is spiritually 10 when it comes to this franchise (or even yourself, if you are deeply committed to the series!).

If you've never seen or cared much about Ghostbusters before, while this film is technically competent, I am not at all sure the storyline will make a lot of sense to you, or the constant, never-ending callbacks to the original movie will make much sense, but hidden within this movie is the core nugget of something that could be much better if it weren't hampered by its IP.

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

The first 25 or so minutes of this movie felt promising, as it took some core conceits of the original games and then took its precious time to build up a bit of dread and atmosphere. Not strictly following the game plots, it still took the core conceit of the series (such as Leon being a rookie on his first day, and Claire returning home to find her brother Chris) and proceeded to make Raccoon City spooky and interesting in a promising way. Then, someone reminded the movie makers that they were supposed to make a Resident Evil movie that covers the first three games' worth of content with an hour and a half left to do it and the entire film suddenly spins into a weirdly paced yet atmospheric overdrive as it tries to jam into its remaining run time what took 30-40 hours of game play to experience. The result was....watchable, but I have to be honest, Sunday I was trying to even remember what movie we'd seen on my son's birthday a few days' prior! 

The good news is: whoever was in charge of the cinematography, the look and feel, got it down quite well. There's some stuff here which just drips with atmosphere, and there are lots of faithful replications of locations directly from the game. What was missing was any sense of pacing as related to the original games; the movie, rather than take the original Resident Evil and expand on the idea of a haunted mansion tied to a secret lab where a virus that makes zombies gets loose, instead conflates that event with the entirety of the second and third games' plotlines, almost as if the screenwriter was told to "make this movie follow the games, but do it in a short run time." The result is a mess of beats that come from certain highlighted moments in the games, but jumbled about as if someone had a puzzle but were missing most of the pieces. Or maybe they were handed a list of things that someone thought needed to be in the movie for it to be considered "authentic," possibly from a Reddit focus group.

Also, worth noting is that some of the actors really don't feel "right" here. Jill is not Jill. She doesn't even get her signature hokey lockpick line (which is on that aforementioned list), it is instead given to Claire. Leon's actor has the right face, but he is turned into an incompetent klutz and had a brief character arc which boils down to "I shot one zombie, and then I found a rocket launcher and lived" by the end. On the plus side, the actors for Chris, Claire and Wesker work fairly well. 

Overall Rating: C- but tempted to give it a C+ for at least getting the look and feel of creeping around the Spencer Mansion right (when they aren't exploding zombies). The first 20 minutes was a solid A-, however, and I wish they had run with their early instincts and made a movie that worked for its medium rather than another "by the numbers" attempt to appease Resident Evil fans with the basest clinical attempt at pandering, or even better, just made a different movie. "Look! We have that zombie who looks over his shoulder! Here's that zombie dog! Here's Wesker, being Wesker!" And the one thing that was new to the franchise (a creepy survivor of a Birkin experiment) felt out of place and utterly unaddressed in the film, only there because it felt like they needed one original idea in the film even if it was given no purpose than to hand off a bundle of keys which, of course, have unique markers that were themselves a call-back to the game even if they were not at all used for such a purpose in the movie. Yeesh.*

Side note! If you know nothing of Resident Evil and just want to see a good horror movie with zombies then I think you may enjoy this one. As a pure horror zombie film without worrying about RE lore stuff it's probably a C+ and worth a watch if you can see it on the cheap.

Eternals

What happens when you get an amazing director with a vision, an obscure comic property from a guy who always thought big in his story ideas, and then let that film maker create a story that they want with the only restriction being that it must fit within your existing Cinematic Universe? The Eternals is what happens. This movie should not have been part of the MCU, but if it wasn't part of the MCU no one would likely have gone to see it, so its kind of a catch-22. The movie has some noteworthy elements, key among them being that it largely breaks tradition and is the first Marvel movie in quite a while to not follow the by now very standard formula/script of the typical Marvel film. Among other things this movie had some sense of gravity, a weight to what was going on which would have been stronger had the film not been in the MCU. If the film were its own universe then the ending would have been utterly captivating, as we the audience would wonder "how will this end?" with utter uncertainty. But because it is an MCU film we know how it will end....as we know there will be more Marvel films after it, so the only question becomes "How does this lead in to future movies?" instead.

Despite the fact that the film reminds us every ten or fifteen minutes that its in the MCU, it resonates well as its own deal, and in so doing changes much of the landscape of the Marvel universe (sort of). It feels to me like its indirectly setting up for a future Fantastic Four film (for reasons that are not obvious unless you are familiar with the big world-ending beats that the FF regularly deal with), and its post credits appear to threaten us with a more conventional "Guardians of the Galaxy" styled sequel in the future, but all about Eternals, followed by a post-after-credits event that is so obscure your conventional Marvel fans will have to ask the real hardcore fringe fans what it is alluding to. Hint: another Disney+ TV series down the road about a character I vaguely recall being an Avenger from the 80's, and I have no idea if he's had any story development since then.

Overall Rating: B+ and this would have been a great movie to stand on its own, apart from the MCU it is locked in to, but I also suppose it would not have succeeded without that attachment. I can't decide if I am really looking forward to future Marvel movies about obscure comic characters who's books I would not have bought on the shelves, either now or back in the day, when they were actually being created and written about, but as Marvel movies go this one is surprisingly bold in its derring-do. I mean....it actually had multiple romantic interests, an actual scene suggesting some of these characters have sex at one point, and a mild gay romance which felt artfully part of the story and not a deliberate effort to pander. Most Marvel movies seem to stay far away from this, implying no one in the Marvel universe is ever allowed to have a meaningful relationship for various reasons (having to do with trying hard not to offend too many focus groups at once, I think). This one just....let the characters be human, which is ironic in a movie about Eternals. 

So I need to see some better movies to scrub my brain. Spider-Man's next movie, filled with three film franchise reboots' worth of call-backs, is coming soon, and I don't think I can take another round of this!

*Important to note that my problem here is, why make the keys look like actual keys from the game? Why do this at all? They could just have been a normal key for purposes of what the story needed. It's a needless detail that will go over the heads of people who don't know about RE lore, and an annoying detail for fans who will feel like these keys are there for recognition purposes at the expense of coherence. It's like in the earlier Ghostbusters: Afterlife film: why is the stack of books there? Why is the crunch bar there? So you can go "Hey, I remember that!" and the studio hopes that is enough to trigger your nostalgia love for the film. Please, Hollywood, stop.

The Temple of Set for Mythras

Okay, this is officially very cool: The Temple of Set, a new Mythras module for use with Classic Fantasy is out, and it's Egyptian themed! Love the cover, and the interior art is equally awesome, so far as I read through I really, really want to run this:

You can find it in PDF and POD on Drivethru here (link), or just go directly to The Design Mechanism and get it in PDF or through POD at Lulu (here). 

This is reinvigorating my interest in running Mythras. I had been working on campaign ideas earlier this year but my enormous workload prompted me to stick with easy to run stuff for a while, but time is freeing up again, so I think this module makes a great excuse to revisit what I can do with Mythras going into the Winter and 2022. 

Roll20 actually has a Mythras character sheet someone devised, which says it supports various setting books, including Classic Fantasy....I need to check this out. Although, ideally, I'd like to run it face-to-face my plan would be to start running this as soon as my Saturday group winds down on the ongoing Pathfinder 2E campaign, which has just hit level 7 and may be, depending on how much people want to do in terms of plot and exploration, about 5 sessions away from a suitable resolution (or 20 if they just want to keep going), so who knows. Maybe as a side-game on the Mothership night, to break up the grim space game with some old-world action and adventure for levity? Hmmmm.

Mulling over future game plans

 Brief post! Just a fun one as I muse on future plans.

Right now I am running D&D 3.5 live every other week, a campaign focused heavily on hexploration (without hexes, I only have grid paper), dungeon crawls, liberal adaptation of old Necromancer Games modules and a setting ripped right from 500 AD (but with, you know, more D&D in it). Then every other week I have an ongoing live Call of Cthulhu game, which I expect to last 2-4 sessions, but who knows, maybe it will go longer. Saturday I am running Pathfinder 2nd Edition on Roll20. I have been warming back up to it, albeit with the caveat that Pathfinder 2E will never quite feel as liberating to design for as D&D 3.5, but we all agree that we have fun playing it (it plays very well), and there is a lot of group investment in the campaign.

Meanwhile, semi weekly I am running Mothership RPG on Roll20, and it is quite fun....but also the kind of game where I can see how it may be best handled in periodic doses. It's extremely focused in its content, so every game feels like a dense dose of B-movie sci fi horror maxed out. This is good....but I could see overdoing it after 10 sessions or so. But hell yeah it is good! Just maybe best to broaden the focus to mix in a periodic palette cleanser.

For my new campaign ideas going in to winter and 2022, I have given some thought to what I most enjoy and wish to focus on. As one gets older, it becomes inevitable that you start to grow familiar with your preferences and find less and less trouble leaning hard into them. As such, I realize that I have some very specific interests, and those interests are remaining tighter and more consistent, which I really appreciate; I feel like maybe at last I am shedding my days as a "chasing the shiny" behind. Slowly.

So the first and biggest thought I have is: More D&D 3.5. It's a very robust system, and essentially complete since no one publishes for it anymore (if you exclude Pathfinder 1st edition stuff, which is technically compatible). I realize now I have enough D&D 3rd to last me to my dying days, easily. The stuff that annoys me about 3.5 is easy enough to ignore or modify, whereas the stuff that bugs me about D&D 5E requires a more fundamental rebuild, so I think its just easier to stick to 3.5 and be done with it. These are words I would never have thought I'd have typed 13 years ago. 

The second big thought is: more Cypher System. Monte Cook Games has the new Planebreaker Kickstarter out, and I decided to back it with the intent of getting the Cypher System version. I learned a lot earlier this year running my Realms of Chirak campaign in Cypher System, and one of those lessons I learned is to fit the setting with the system better....Chirak was born of an ancient and unholy mixture of Runequest and D&D back in the day, and is best if it stays in that wheelhouse, My next Chirak campaign will be in Pathfinder 2E or D&D 3.5, instead. Cypher, instead, deserves all the creativity and newness I can pour in to it, and I really want to explore my post-apocalyptic space opera campaign ideas for the next campaign.

If you follow this blog (and I know blogs are very out of style these days!) then you know I go back and forth on a few issues with Cypher System and Pathfinder 2E. In considering what I will do next with these systems, I think it boils down to this:

Cypher System: I want to look carefully at the way encounters/challenges are framed in Cypher, and how to make that work without defaulting to the more conventional RPG tropes set by D&D. Especially as Cypher character get to around Rank 4, when they become ominously powerful against conventional threats. 

Pathfinder 2E: On this one, the issue I have in mind is: can Pathfinder 2E run in a "loose hexcrawl" structure similar to the open-ended campaign I am running for D&D 3.5? Could I adapt 3rd edition style modules to Pathfinder 2E and not find balance issues that unnecessarily put PCs at risk of death? The Gamemastery Guide talks about hexcrawling as an option, but I am curious as to how it would really work and feel in play. I am not 100% sure my gaming group is good for this style of game, at least with Pathfinder, as I have some rules lawyers who can very quickly do the mental math to ascertain whether an encounter is disproportionately unbalanced either for or against the group, and that sort of balancing issue is core to encounter design in Pathfinder. I haven't reconciled this, but I do feel it is worth investigating....time will tell. D&D 3.5 is much looser and can handle this fluidity a lot better. I, for example, could have a mixed level group in D&D 3.5 without much difficulty at all, but in Pathfinder 2E it is very clear that PCs should never be more than 1 level apart, and ideally all the same level.

Anyway.....thoughts!

Mothership: Running Ghost Ship from Dissident Whispers

One of the books published by Tuesday Knight Games is Dissident Whispers, a great collection of dozens of short 2 page modules for various game systems, including system neutral, original B/X D&D (and therefore compatible with OSE), D&D, Mork Borg and more. Key among the selection is 11 modules for use with the Mothership RPG, which is one of this new wave of RPGs that I think spawned out of the Zine Quest movement to focus on tight but versatile RPG designs and modules which function with the utmost brevity while still delivering content.

Two page modules aren't new, and prior years have seen products focused on one-page dungeon crawls and other "brief' but useful designs for DMs with an excess of creativity/flexibility but a dearth of time. These modules work really well for me, once you figure out the intended structure of the designer's narrative (or lack of it), as they are very similar to how I used to write modules, especially back in the nineties and early 00's, using a round outline, notes and some charts to identify what I needed to know. I tend to write more robust modules for my own use these days, but module designs like this allow for a high degree of customization and improv....they are essentially skeletons on to which you can drape all the flesh and clothing you want, and can be very suitable to GMs who benefit from this style. If you're not sure if this style is for you, ask yourself this question: does a 2 page module with lots of brief ideas that can last 2-3 sessions easily sound appealing, or does a 64 page Adventure Path module from Paizo, in which you might get about as much actual content as the 2 page module, but with a massive additional word count and a lot of hand-holding and pathing provided by the author? Or, like that, but in a 300 page Wizards of the Coast tome? The appeal of that 2 page module is strong if you're not so worried about improving details as needed.

The first module from Dissident Whispers that I picked is Ghost Ship, a fun romp through a haunted ship with shades of inspiration from various haunting movies and a nod to Event Horizon, the grandmaster of B-Movie ghost ship stories. The premise of the module is incredibly simple: the lost ship Somnus reappears periodically out of nowhere in random locations, people investigate, and they get trapped when it disappears again. Meanwhile, on the actual ship are actual horrifying ghosts, an eerie alien artifact and a mad android to contend with. The module is only two pages, but I will go in to no further detail; we're on session two as of last night and the group ended on a cliffhanger that likely will solve the mysteries (or blow them up). 

If there's a negative to this module, it is that it is, after all, only two pages and while it provides quite enough content for you to run a good 1-3 session game, if you happen to be using Roll20 for a VTT game like I am, there's no real VTT support. I took a lazy route and copy/pasted the tiny ship map from the PDF into a Roll20 window, but it looks god-awful blown up; still, asking for a ton of VTT support from the module seems a bit much; I could have taken some time to draw or design a custom map easily enough, just call me lazy/low prep.

Because the core module is more of an outline on which you can choose (or not choose) to drape as much additional exposition, description and detail as you wish I have had a bit of fun with the ghost manifestations and some other elements, but honestly this module provided just about all anyone would need to run a haunted house in space. Good stuff, in other words!

I'm planning to run more of the two-pagers in Dissident Whispers soon.....some are a bit convoluted (the logical flow doesn't work for me) and some are very high concept (Escape from the Violet Deathworld feels like an outline of a grand campaign) but all offer enough stuff to make for many fun nights of gaming.

The Nitty Gritty of Game Collecting (and Balancing the collector with the gamer)

 I've been rebuilding my D&D 3.5 collection for almost a year now, and it's looking pretty robust. Almost 80% of the collection as I remembered it....the books I used with some regularity, or at least wanted to use...are back in the collection. My success at finding clean, nice copies has been pretty good, actually. Aside from a ratty first edition Creature Collection and a water-damaged original Tome of Horrors (oddly labeled "in mint condition" by the seller) I've had some major success.

Now, however, things are starting to get into the tricky gray area of books which I would like, but for which so would everyone else, and there aren't that many to go around. These books hold collector's values, and as a result are really difficult to secure copies for at prices I would consider reasonable for a copy that is destined to be read and used in play at the table. I'm not collecting for the heck of it....I want to use these puppies. 

Some of these books are particularly vexxing, too. Monster Manual IV and V are damned expensive, with the MM IV commanding $125 or more on average (though I found a mildly scratched copy for $79 after shipping, so I'll call that a win). The MM V, for reasons I assume are because of how late it was released in the D&D 3.5 lifecycle, is going for $200 or more easily. Yikes! Odds I will find a copy.....slim. 

One nice thing about Ebay is if you wait long enough, someone will pop up with a good quality copy of a book and either aren't too interested in gouging for it (want to make a quick sale) or they don't know what they have (didn't do the research). I secured a $55 like-new copy of the D&D 3.0 Book of Challenges this way, a price normally too low for a ratty copy, based on months of watching for it.

Still....this does mean that as I move forward, its going to be a harder (and slower) process to secure the books I want. MM V? Probably not anytime soon. Rappan Athuk Reloaded? Hah! Probably smarter to either spend less money on the very expensive D&D 5E edition of that module, or better yet, just go full 3E and buy the original trilogy in much cheaper format....maybe supplement it with the POD version or something. 

The print on demand market has helped, of course. Most Necromancer Games books don't cost too much these days, but I suspect that's because a bunch of them are available in POD at Drivethrurpg.com. Even Rappan Athuk Reloaded, which is a $60 reprint can be found in POD, and suffers only for not being able to provide the original maps properly. 

Another side effect of collecting for ownership vs. collecting as a gamer is that I can at least narrow down what I want to own to "the stuff I will use." I have so far found no need for Book of Nine Swords (the shadow precursor to D&D 4E) or Magic of Incarnum (a book no one wanted to mess with back in the day). I can preemptively never worry about buying a disastrous Mongoose of FFE splatbook in 2021, since I have the retrospective to look back and know which 3PP were destined to be good and which ones just plain sucked.

Meanwhile, I am enjoying my 3.5E game every other Tuesday almost as much as my Cthulhu 7E and Mothership games. It is beating out Pathfinder 2E as well, which much as I like my world and setting for that campaign, I find myself constantly comparing PF2E to D&D 3.5 and wondering how it is that the many iterations of D20 strayed in such weird yet predictable ways. Even 5E is shelved for me, for a while at least; maybe when D&D 5.5 arrives it will tempt me again, who knows. 

On Mothership and The Haunting of Ypsilon-14

Mothership RPG and its first two modules (Haunting of Ypsilon-14 and the mega module Dead Planet) are available on  Roll20 now, so it was easy to get a game going at long last. By using Roll20 I was even able to create a mixed A team of local players and friends I gamed with across the country in my prior incarnations (or who moved elsewhere), so it was a great group!

The Haunting of Ypsilon-14 module in print is a wee cardstock trifold brochure promising an entire module. The online version through Tuesday Knight games' website conveniently includes three MP3 recordings you can play as the group finds various discarded cassettes during the module. These are professional-sounding recordings illuminating the grim last days of certain characters (one has some music), and lend to the mood quite well...plus my group is not too used to such theatrics so finding them in play is a novel reward.

I think the Haunting module is intended to be a one-shot to last an evening of play, and arguably it can probably take about 4 hours to complete by a highly organized and risk-embracing gang of players. My group took three sessions to complete the module, and I will admit I buffed it up a bit both to provide some extra challenge but also to motivate them to explore areas that my often more risk-averse players were resistant toward exploring. 

Mothership is the kind of game where players work best when they approach the experience with a tiny bit of delight in the nihilistic nature of it all. If you go in to Mothership determined to make level 10 and steal boasting rights from Ellen Ripley over your alien moderation skills then you might be missing some of the point of Mothership. Can you get to level 10? Sure, absolutely. But should you do so through the safest course of action possible, without a backup character? Most decidedly not!  As with Call of Cthulhu, if your character lives long enough to be committed to an insane asylum then you should consider that the best case win; CoC and Mothership both are games where if you find you truly love your character to the point that you wish them no harm, then your best course of action is to send them home, safely, to let other more daring souls with shorter lifespans handle the mysteries and many deaths lurking throughout the universe.

With all that said, my entire group did not lose a single character, though the NPC mortality rate was an astronomical 80% or more. The group, on average, took a fair amount of damage, and everyone's stress levels (Mothership's take on the sanity mechanic) are skyrocketing....therapy and recuperation alone do not readily reduce the Stress level of your PC, you have a chance to drop it a bit when leveling and maybe if the Warden (GM) is feeling especially kind and that's about it.

The Ypslon-14 module in print and with the MP3s is perfectly playable at the game table though some sort of general station map to track the action would help the warden. The Roll20 version was particularly nice, though, and the first time I ever bought and ran a preprogrammed module using Roll20. It was a nice experience, though I was hopelessly lost in figuring out how to handle map overlays and ended up defaulting to the old fashion fog of war option.

The Roll20 version includes NPC sheets and tokens, module pieces for all locations, the MP3 recordings and a nice retro SF map of the entire mining station your group will be trapped on while investigating the mystery surrounding Ypsilon-14.  It's a nice package, and as I mentioned it lasted 3 nights for us, a total of about 12 hours of gameplay.

Before I go any further in talking about the module: SPOILERS! I don't want anyone to stumble into secrets and information they did not want to know. Here goes....

SPOILER WARNING

Okay, so Ypsilon-14 is a mining station on which the party, while visiting on their freighter for routine company pickups, is asked by the station superintendent Sonya to check into the disappearance of a missing crewmember. As the group further investigates they discover more crew go missing, and something which is insidious, dangerous and invisible appears to be lurking....there is a secondary related mystery involving a dangerous yellow goo, and another visiting ship, locked in its own docking bay, with a mad doctor on board. Oh, and there's Prince the cat who has now been adopted by my players for reasons.

The trifold module provides an incredibly space-efficient layout for how to run the module. Too efficient, actually, because it provides no instructions on how to absorb the content it offers, and you sort of have to stare at it a bit and read through to realize what it is doing, but once you see it it will "click" and make total sense. It works like this:

1. There's a paragraph on why the crew is here, which if read verbatim can dispense with literally dozens of minutes of conventional preamble and warmup (my game started with them being mysteriously diverted to the mining station, building a little tension as to why the company sent them there). 

2. You then get a flow-chart layout of the station; a map can be nice, and is great in Roll20 to track who is where, but the trifold itself lets you see what is in each area descriptively, with arrows, connectors, lock icons and such to tell you how the place connects. It's direct, no-nonsense descriptions give the warden the outline and you can use it as directly or with as much additional riffing as you see fit.

3. You get a table of NPCs. You roll on this periodically to see which one goes missing.

4. You get a monster. Every few minutes you roll a D10 and that is the region of the ship the monster is lurking in next. It's tough, but if the group is tougher (has a marine or two) they can probably take it with some luck if you are not careful (they technically blew it to bits at the close of session 2, but more on that in a bit). The creature is meant to be a stealth striker, and does enough damage to hurt but not usually kill a PC in one round. How easily you make it for the PCs to get around on the station will impact how readily the beast is likely to corner and strike with success. 

5. You get three complications: the yellow goo, which is a substance that heals the monster but turns humans into a slushy over time, Dr. Gillespie who is on the locked down ship Heracles and is slowly dissolving to the goo while studying the monster, and the three tapes, of which the first is easy to find, the second requires the PCs to climb into vents (which a risk adverse group is unlikely to do), and the third requires boarding Dr. Gillespie's ship and confronting him. In the end, to insure they got to hear the tapes I places tape #2 near the vacant space suit in the mines and tape #3 was the mysterious final broadcast from the Heracles before the group left (they never investigated the Heracles, instead using laser cutters to weld the ship's bay doors shut).

....And that is it. The module is very simple and straight-forward, and you can modify it easily to season to taste. I, for example, made the following modifications:

Mixed Tapes; changed tape locations (as the players failed to follow up on certain angles of exploration). I also described them as "recordable media in EMP-hardened cases" rather than, essentially, space versions of 8-tracks because I am just not in to the idea of fetishizing the 70's style SF as often happens in Alien-inspired media (Alien: Isolation cough); the SF of the 70's had CRT monitors and green screen computers because it was the 70's and they had budgets and limited ability to predict near future changes. I have no such limits.

The Goo Origins: elaborated on the yellow goo, which is a macguffin designed to hint that water is a weakness of the substances and maybe the creature (not really); this worked in that when they found the wellspring of yellow good they obliterated it with a high pressure water pump cobbled from their ship. I used the yellow goo in more detail, since it was unclear to me how vacc-suited miners were getting it on themselves in the first place, suggesting instead sloppiness and the creature tracking the stuff around was the source of contamination.

Exploding and De-exploding the Alien: After the group blew up* the creature in session 2 I revealed its remains had gone missing; the yellow goo, it turns out, began regenerating the creature (as intended) but could do so even if it were chunked; the creature got one final hurrah that way, before they tricked it in to docking bay 2 and welded the doors shut. That means that as of the third session when they grabbed the human survivors (Sonya, Prince the cat, and Morgan who was covered in yellow goo and stuck in cryostasis) that they left the station with Dr. Gillespie and the creature still in the Heracles....

The Goo and Water: The yellow goo causes contaminated humans to react badly to water, but the module explains nothing further. I decided it's actually chemically converting water molecules in the human body, thus causing some of the breakdown. This lead to an avenue of exploration for the scientists and androids in the party. I riffed quite a bit on what the goo was, on analysis, because I love that sort of SF stuff, but someone running the module straight up could probably work with what info is at hand easily enough. 

Expanding on Mike: Mike was the first miner to disappear. I added another guy into the mix as well as a ruse: Jenkins, in case some of my players were secretly familiar with the module. I further decided that Mike didn't die; he became aware of the creature's use of its pod to heal, and then unsuited and entered the pod himself (deciding also that the properties of the yellow goo kept him alive in a vacuum). So when they investigated the pod, Mike appeared, which was a great scene as I described his yellow-goo covered body, the madness in his eyes as he lashes out, only to exploded in a cloud of vaporized goo when struck by the laser cutter, covering all of their vacc suits in yellow goo from his converted body. Good stuff!

In Space You Don't Have Gravity: the module identifies where in the mines you are in vacuum. It doesn't talk about gravity at all, so I assume when entering the mines everyone passed out of the artificial gravity well created by the station generator. How does it work? Dunno, but this led to a tense combat in the mines when everyone realized that projectiles can send you flying backward, and exploding stuff doesn't stop or slow down. 

The Mysteries of the Alien: The module suggests little about the alien and the pod it comes from, other than that the yellow goo heals it and does horrible things to things alien to it like humans. I toyed with the idea of how much to riff on this, and settled for a few sequences in play that built tension and mystery: the group discovered the yellow goo on analysis was biomechanical, a nanite slush, and that when they tried to see if it could be "communicated" with it did something horrible to the computers which crashed. They later discovered the alien in their own ship, attempting to override their mainframe to take control and broadcast a message. The implication: this is an alien stranded here, its pod either exiled to the asteroid or crashed. They never established what the deal was, and the module lets me figure that out. I can sense a Part 2: Return to Ypsilon-14 module in the future....

So all in all, a fun time was had by everyone. The module really does work best with a more relaxed crowd who is in to the genre; my friend playing the marine did a fantastic job of emulating the genre elements cemented so well in panicking marines from Aliens, and my other buddy played the unnerved scientist to a tee. My rules lawyer was a bit of a rough spot as Mothership is not as worried about nitty gritty details, such as a moment when I realized that there's really not a surprise mechanic in the system (just roll speed to see who goes before or after the monster). Both of my players who played androids really played it to the hilt....apparently Ash and David are exemplary of your average androids when it comes to top of the line models!

If you run the module, I have a couple of suggestions: advise the groups they can roll all teamsters, or maybe all teamsters and one scientist or android (or both). Marines with their basic loadout do make the creature less of a threat. As with the original movie Alien, a lot of the tension was due to the crew being average space truckers with no meaningful defensive gear.

My other suggestion is: as I did, change a few things a bit. I am reasonably sure at least one of the players had snagged the module ahead of time because their gear loadout looked suspiciously prescient, with items that the module assumes they won't start with access to. Throw that player off a bit in whatever way you think works best with some surprises.

We'll be doing Dead Planet next, and I have to say I can't wait. I have all the modules I can find so far between Tuesday Knight games, Exalted Funeral and DrivethruRPG and I plan on eventually running just about all of them!

FINALLY! The irony is not lost on me that this review is probably twice as long as the actual module.

*The marine in the group threw a grenade and rolled a spectacular critical on the hit as the creature rolled a fumble on its Combat armor check. The rules in Mothership seem to not provide guidance on what a crit success does to damage, if anything, but I ruled that you get maximum damage when criting on an attack. In Mothership parlance a frag grenade rolls 1D10 for damage, and in Mothership the line under the roll means "multiply by 10," so he did 100 damage on a crit! Frag grenades are deadly in space.

Modules and Their Many Sizes

 Short post today.....trying to remember to post more frequently (I got badly out of habit from the old days on 3 posts a week hell or high water). Yesterday several books arrived which I had been waiting for, and each was a lesson in varied design. In fact, it's rather insane how widely varied the approaches are in each of these books:

Aurora is the latest in a series of Mothership RPG adventures. It comes in a docket packet you must break to get in to, and the module itself is a handful of cardstock pages with the usual excellent minimalist design characteristic of Mothership adventures, in which you get a framework on which to drape your own interpretation of the horrors within.

Halls of the Blood King along with five other modules from Necrotic Gnome for Old School Essentials RPG is an example of how an economy of design (not unlike one sees with Mothership) gives you the framework of an adventure without bogging the GM down in details that are best handled by....the GM. Excellent maps, slick retro graphics that are modern but evocative of an older fantasy style without feeling pandering and a "to the point" design approach make this an incredibly approachable (and usable!) module.

The Wild Beyond the Witchlight is 1 part sourcebook on the Feywild to three parts adventure series, with some updated fey for 5E that I think many will be happy to see. The book is typical of Wizard of the Coast design, a large tome which aims at readability and shows more effort at structuring the overall plot into bite-size chunks, allowing DMs to manage it without too much fuss. 

This is actually two monstrous 400+ page tomes, the first one of which is split between a series of articles and interviews on the inception and impact of the oiginal module, followed by a faithful reprint of the original Village of Homlet and the 1st edition compilation of the Temple of Elemental Evil. It then dives into a massive retooling of the modules into 5th edition rules, which start in book 1 and spill in to book 2, ending with a massive bestiary and new items section. It is a gigantic tome, and lives up to this module's daunting reputation. I also think Goodman Games knows its audience leans older, as they use a big, readable font for the 5E section that is easy on older gamer eyes.

As I look at these books I realize that while I really would like to run The Temple of Elemental Evil, it's just...too much, man. It's also very traditional in design, in the sense that it communicates a lot of text-heavy exposition and depth. This is not something I'd notice or care about if not for modules like Aurora and Halls of the Blood King, which are actually more old school in design in the sense that they get to the point and leave much of the exposition to the GM. They are not genuinely old school, however, in the sense that actual old school modules were never this user friendly in design. Meanwhile, The Wild Beyond the Witchlight is interesting but I can tell it's one of those modules I will read and maybe borrow a bit from before moving on. There might be some cool plots there....we'll see, I need to find time to read it.

But The OSE and Mothership modules? Yeah, those simple economies of design and brevity I can actually handle, they fit into my wheelhouse of usefulness.

More thoughts on running D&D 3.5, D&D 5th and Pathfinder 2E at the same time

 So for several months now I've been running three different games: a more or less weekly Saturday Pathfinder 2E game, and a rotating weeknight session that jumps between D&D 3.5 and D&D 5E. In Pathfinder the group has hit 5th level, so still relatively low powered. D&D 3.5 deliberately started at level 1 and has crept up to level 4ish for most of the group now. D&D 5E rolled in at level 3 and is hitting level 5. 

In each case I worked out a fairly detailed scenario/plotline to keep things focused. In Pathfinder the group is a gang of young acolytes in a local assassin's guild with strong political, patriotic ties to protecting the city itself. They face a crisis as the heir to the throne is killed, then resurrected under extremely suspicious circumstances, even as their senior leadership are taken out of action, leaving them alone to figure things out.

In the D&D 3.5 game I started with a level 1-3 zone in which I worked out a main dungeon of interest and several minor side quests. I then built it around leading in to a specific Necromancer Games module from the good old 3.5 days of Necromancer, which shall remain nameless in case any of my players are reading. The key conceit of this campaign is it is extremely sandboxy and open-ended; I don't care where the PCs go, as long as they do something of interest....I have most angles covered unless they suddenly decided to journey two hundred miles away in a random direction.

In the D&D 5E game I an running it in a different section of the same world the D&D 3.5 game is taking place, and it starts with a group of ragtag mostly monstrous heroes who work for a local investigator of an orc-dominated city; they are essentially given tough jobs that require protecting the interests of the city against the neighboring human kingdom which often mistrusts the orc-run area. The group is currently wrapping the latest investigation, into the attack and kidnap of a priestess who channels the will of a popular goddess, and it is exposing a deeper mystery of other groups who seem interested in sowing conflict between the orcs and humans. I started this campaign as a 3.5 venture for the first scenario, but then moved to 5E for the next storyline as I wanted to do exactly what this article is about: contrasting 3.5 D&D against its successors, 5E and PF2E.

Here's what I've learned now after several months of gaming:

Pathfinder 2E Remains Fun but it's Balance is Too Much 

Pathfinder 2E's rigidly designed skill system is annoying. Seriously, I wish it was a broader set of skills, and not so tightly woven into the structured pathology of Pathfinder's overly balanced advancement, balanced to the point of eerie predictability. In fact, after running a level 1-20 and some smaller campaigns in PF2E, I have decided that, in contrast with the editions it is meant to replace or compete with, that it's highly structured style just isn't as flexible or fun as prior editions have been. PF2E, on occasion, has been compared to D&D 4E, and I can understand why: it's design was handled with too much emphasis on a specific play experience, and not enough feedback clearly entered during design and playtest to allow for Paizo's team to realize that there are other styles of play which their new game would not support so well (such as at my table, where I am sick and tired of calling on Society checks or generic crafting checks or Nature, Survival, etc. etc. for myriad other skills that the PCs should actually have as separate skills).

 Do I still enjoy running it? Yes, particularly in Roll20, which makes it easy. But it is painfully clear that in contrast with 3rd edition and 5th edition D&D that Pathfinder 2E feels a bit more like a "sandbox playground where everything has been padded to prevent the players from escaping its confines." Moreover, my players describe PF2E as "A GM's game, for GMs who don't like uppity players." They like elements of it....such as how ancestries work, but they also sense that a lot of PF2E's design went in to removing the potential for players to design truly interest characters and unexpected synergies. 

As a GM I have come to realize that combat encounters of even 1 CR more than the players can be a pain in the ass and risk unexpected deaths and TPK, it simply doesn't have the range that you can get out of D&D's editions for encounter design due to its hard focus on tight balance. I have ranted about this in prior blog posts, of course, but to give you an idea: I mostly design encounters around a CR 1-2 less than the PCs. Anything more than that is too trivial, and anything except a rare CR+1 will be too deadly with remarkable consistency. 

D&D 3.5 Is Funner Now That It's No Longer The Only Game Around

Put simply: D&D 3.5's key flaws evaporate once people are playing it for fun and enjoyment and you no longer have a large player base and online presence talking about min/max game design and turning everything into an arms race. My group is having fun in a way that very much reminds me of the early fun days from 2001 to 2006. Sometime after that I feel the game hit a level of notoriety and the obsession with optimal builds began to infect everyone who played it. Now? It's just a fund game and I am enjoying a sandbox campaign with a group that is barely optimized for fighting paper bags, let alone serious stuff. I run it as a DM aimed at providing for a good time, and I don't worry too much about balance at all, a welcome reprieve from PF2E on the other game night.

One thing I realize with 3.5: I prefer the old skill system. It was flexible, a little unpredictable, and had more stuff in it that feels natural to call out for in the course of play. I am sure a great many people much prefer "perception" as a skill (or not at all in the OSR crowd) but I love the fact that Spot, Listen and Search are three different things and can reflect that one PC might be a keen eyed observer but have a hearing problem, while another PC might have bad eagle vision but can search methodically with great efficiency. Good stuff.

I don't anticipate running D&D 3.5 past level 12 or so, but who knows. 

D&D 5E Feels Better to Run with 3.5 Fresh in Mind

D&D 5E is good, and running it back to back with 3.5 makes me appreciate it more. Most interestingly, sometimes I find myself using 5E as a reference point for adjudicating some moments in 3.5, to keep tings simple. Other times I find myself tempted to house rule in a few items from 3.5 to 5E, but I try to restrain myself as much as possible. Like with 3.5, I suspect that as D&D 5E goes on I may grow a bit tired of its core simplicity and lack of dynamic elements in stuff like saves and damage; but I did decide with this campaign to run it using gritty resting rules and that is going a surprisingly long way toward my feeling like the players are "tough guys in a tough world" rather than the standard 5E trope of fantasy superheroes. Still...they've only just hit their good levels, so we'll see how things go in the coming months.

Also, I don't hate the D&D 5E skill system, at all. In fact, while I still like 3.5's granularity on skills,  will take the 5E skill system over PF2E's skill system any day.

After the group completes their current storyline, I am considering integrating a module, possibly Rise of the Drow, which I just snagged. We shall see.

Some Conclusions (so far)

So....it's fun running three iterations of basically the same game, and seeing how my expectations and experience in one lend to observations and changes in the other two. The real takeaway I have gotten from this experience so far has been one about how I structure and focus on campaigns. Specifically: I am not as interested in the "big story" campaigns as I once was, and the D&D 3.5 game where I basically made a sandbox for them to do whatever (including regions of different levels they can wander in to regardless of their own level) has actually been the most fun. But my structured investigation stories in the 5E game have also been a lot of fun because I took some time to lay out interesting paths of discovery and skill challenges related to the investigations. It's "pseudo-rails" in that the PCs could, like, stop investigating and go elsewhere, thus ending the module, but they had motivation and interest to proceed so it worked. 

Meanwhile, the very structured big picture storyline which admittedly makes the PCs more integrated to the world and setting proved perhaps a bit too much in terms of scope and design. I realize now that I came up with a great idea, but then sort of left it as a "and so that happened," type event, without a lot to go after the main event. Luckily I proceeded to dive in to some of the smaller angles and pieces, fleshing out the game to feel more like a sandbox, but I concede it's hard to just do sandbox in PF2E because a good sandbox should allow for the PCs to get into more trouble than they can handle on occasion, and in PF2E that can quickly turn into a lethal TPK. So....we'll continue for a while on this one, but afterwards I need to think hard on whether I plan to continue with PF2E or not, because it almost....but not quite....manages to frame the sort of adventures I like to run, but just not as well as either D&D 5E or D&D 3.5, which both do it so much better.

Final conclusion.....turns out too much balance in design is not necessarily a good idea! Who knew?

Also, and this is extremely important to stress: the D&D 5E and 3.5 edition games both have a huge edge over Poor Pathfinder 2E, in that they are live games I am running in person. PF2E is online, and while the online tools make for an easier time of it, I know my lack of time to sink into enhancing the graphic elements of the experience factor against the game to some degree, as does the predilection for the overall experience to be a generally less satisfying experience than the sort where normal humans are able to see each other live and not share a single audio channel. So, I must concede that PF2E in a live environment might still be a better overall experience than I am giving it credit for. Poor Pathfinder though....I think I got about 10 levels in to the original campaign when it had to migrate to online due to the pandemic, and its more or less lingered there ever since. May need to change that soon.