Defiance Q&A

My wife got to participate in the Defiance Q&A held on Wednesday at Raptr here. She's Malyki in the questions/comments part. I have to say, the devs at Trion Worlds are my favorites, nice guys and very engaged with their gaming communities. No wonder I enjoy both Rift and Defiance so much...and my wife of course 10 times that for Defiance!

Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day: The Rising Dark Campaign Setting

Well, it's April 17th, and that means that Erik Tenkar's masterful execution of Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day is underway! I've been mulling over what to do for this event, and settled on the following. Here, my S&W cohorts, is a complimentary copy of The Rising Dark Campaign Setting, a short exploratory campaign region I worked up for S&W a while back and published. This download shall be available from 12:01 AM April 17th until I get around to taking it down (EDIT took it down 4/18 but if you are still interested snag it over at rpgnow.com).

Meanwhile, here's a coupon you can use at the D20PFSRDshop.com, compliments of John reyst:

SWAD252013

Also, head on over to the Frog God for this coupon:

SWApprDay

Enjoy!

The OSR Resource Page

This page will serve as the permanent index for the OSR content that has appeared on the Realms of Chirak Blog. Throughout my blog there are more general discussions, rants and raves about these systems, but this link list is specifically aimed at gathering up crunchy resources for your ease of reference and use.



Basic/Expert Dungeons & Dragons and Labyrinth Lord Resources

The Basic/Expert project is a recent thing I decided to do, as I have grown a new appreciation for the books that got me into D&D in the first place:

Part VI: The Minotaur Racial Class

I love minotaurs as optional PCs, and here's how Id' do it in B/X.

Part V: Grave Knights

The Grave Knight makes the leap from Pathfinder to B/X D&D

Part IV: Valgos, Slayer of Elves

An orcish NPC villain for B/X D&D

Part III: Orc Racial Classes

Orcs get a PC/NPC treatment with actual racial classes

Part II: Multiclassing

Multiclassing ideas and rules for B/X D&D

Part I: The Start, Sample PCs, and more

A general discussion of what I'm up to and some characters I rolled up



Swords & WIzardry Complete Resources:

S&W Rules for the Ages of Lingusia

I published all of my custom house rules here, derived from my original 1e and 2E house rules and updated for S&W Complete.

Combat Maneuvers in S&W

Some new combat rules I employ with S&W COmplete

Lawful Kinded of Lingusia

First of three S&W Complete updates for races in my campaign

Neutral Kindred of Lingusia

The second such update.

Chaotic Kindred of Lingusia

The third such update.


Stats for the Legendary Rogue Wormi Vellsoth in Lingusia

A famous character turned NPC in my Lingusia campaign. Alas he's the only one I took time to stat out in S&W.




Castles & Crusades Resources:

The Lair of Gug and the Lost Shrine of Degalthor

A module built using Engineering Dungeons for C&C

The Hexblade

A sword-wielding mage for C&C

Malfeus Thorne

An NPC hexblade for C&C




Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and OSRIC Resources:

The Hexblade Class for AD&D

Hexblades revisited once more

The Fearsome Four

NPCS in Lingusia for AD&D

Dr. No

Was just watching Dr. No for the first time in decades. My son is old enough now to notice the television (for more than ten seconds at a time) and he's really fascinated at watching older movies. My suspicion is that modern film makers jump around too much, and older films tend to take advantage of "lingering moments," long pan-and-scan scenes and other film techniques which don't depend on a hyperactive audience. Or something. Anyway, it's fun watching these older movies with him while he's on his rocking horse (for some reason he has to watch TV on his rocking horse).

But anyway, while watching Dr. No I realized that this film explains one mystery about James Bond and lends credence to another fan theory.

First: after all that reactor exposure I'm pretty sure Bond was made sterile, thus why he can have so many relationships with various women without fear of dozens of Baby Bonds running around.

Second: the fan theory that "James Bond" is also a code name given to a series of successive agents, and not actually one single guy (thus allowing for continuity between all Bond movies as being correctly "in period") makes even more sense when you consider that the Sean Connery Bond probably died from cancer as a result of way too much radiation exposure, paving the way for his successors!

DDN Character Generation Observations

In continuing with my focus on DDN: I've worked out quite a few sample characters (mostly fighting classes) in the D&D Next playtest packet so far, and it's revealing some interesting bits.

Skills

First off, I'm warming a bit to the skill system even if it's not as nuanced as I'd like (and honestly the skill die thing feels vaguely like Savage Worlds' dice mechanic to me, which I'm not too fond of). But you can create a pretty wide range of characters in this system if you so desire, and if you really, really want to be a skill monkey you can do so. For example, you could focus heavily on a wider range of skills or get specific boosts to certain skills through feats (albeit at the expense of other feats that might give combat perks, but such goes with the territory). Overall though this is creating a set of skill mechanics that manage to feel good while offering a reasonable number of options, even if its not as nuanced as it was in the past. Still an improvement over the 4E skill system, of which I was never a fan.

Finesse and dual wielding

It's interesting, but finesse has been absorbed into the weapons themselves and is now just a "thing you can do," rather than a feat. This is a neat implementation. Gaining dual weapon skill lets you graduate from fighting with, say, two daggers to a light and a heavy weapon of choice. There do not appear to be any penalties to attack, you just lose your attribute bonus to damage with the second weapon. This seems to me like an odd idea for some reason....my gut tells me that min/maxers will always, always figure out a scheme involving two weapon attacks no matter what the build, with the rules as presented.

Finesse, however, is just one of several ways they've codified weapon features and made them more interesting. Neat.

Fighters and the illusion of choice?

It looks like a lot of the fighter's defining abilities are front-loaded. You can pick from a set of damage-dealing traits and a set of defensive traits, but you get only one of each at 1st level and that's pretty much all she wrote in terms of how you can spend expertise dice. There's definitely more nuance in terms of backgrounds, specialties and martial feats, but I am slightly surprised to see that the system doesn't allow the fighter to get more expertise-dice based options later on (from among the core 1st level choices, that is). Maybe it does and I'm missing it. In any case, you can create some different looking fighters, sure.....but the expertise dice will have some very consistent uses for each fighter's lifetime.

Looking at the latest D&D Next Playtest Packet

I decided for various reasons to print out the latest playtest packet* and delve deep into it once more, perhaps even with an eye toward a new playtest run (maybe even as early as next week). Part of this is indirectly motivated by my recent dabbling in Basic/Expert D&D, ironically (an interest in contrasting the two); part of it is also motivated by stat-block fatigue from Pathfinder. 3rd edition stat blocks, even though I've gotten quite good at condensing them down to the relevant bits, still do that to me; I really liked 4E's methodology here.

Anyway, in reading through the latest playtest materials I was surprised to see that despite what everyone on rpg.net says there does appear to be a pretty solid game coagulating within DDN's many pages. Even more surprising was realizing that a massive chunk of DDN feels to me like someone is trying to wed 4th edition design principles (minus the always-on-minis and map experience) to the 1st edition design aesthetic. They haven't exactly got it right, but they are actually much closer than they have been in years. In mechanical terms the playtest in its current condition is about as far from the ideation of simplicity and economy of design to be found in, say, Basic D&D as you can get....but in terms of modern systems that feel like D&D? It's scoring a lot of points with me, at least.

There are still several things bugging the hell out of me, though. I feel like I need to get a new playtest running with this latest ruleset to see just how problematic these concerns really are, though. Anyway, some observations on the new packet that I would like to see more in-game playtesting on:

Experience gain looks way too fast

I've been crunching the numbers on level advancement vs. the level rating and XP values of the monsters in the packet, comparing them to the DM advice section on encounter building, and something doesn't add up. Furthermore, it seems like the experience advancement as presented could lead to insanely fast level advancement. Granted, I'm used to medium and slow track Pathfinder advancement these days....but that was one of the problems 3rd edition had, too. Characters could outstrip a DM's scenarios by leveling too fast (and Pathfinder's altered XP gain mechanics only make that worse when you try to play fast experience advancement). On the surface it seems to me this will be a problem for DDN as presented, but I need to play around with it and see it in action for a few sessions. Also, I wonder if the XP gain is intentionally quick to insure more playtesters reach and experiment with higher level play. Then again, if that were intentional I would also hope they'd mention it in the packet.

Is the laser cleric still a problem?

My first playtests with DDN suggested that the laser cleric phenomenon was a real issue, but a lot of development on the cleric class, along with a larger variety of deity choices (with associated abilities) means that the cleric may not exhibit this problem (as often) anymore.

Paladins have eaten cavaliers, wardens and blackguards

Paladins now have three subtypes from which to choose, with the cavalier being the default paladin, the warden being a sort of wilderness paladin who killed the 4E warden and took his stuff, and the blackguard being a timid non-chaotic version of the anti-paladin (borrowing from the 4E blackguard, but this is a good thing). I'm disappointed that this suggests the warden from 4E won't get to be its own "thing," but maybe this one will feel similar. I liked that class.

Fighters are looking fun to play again

Proof is in the pudding, but on the surface they appear to be full of interesting things to do. There's a smidgeon of 4E's slayer in the design (still) but hopefully the overall changes won't make it feel like a static "guy who hits things." Need to see a few in action to be sure. The fighter exhibits what I mentioned earlier, about how DDN is a 4E revision in OSR sheep's clothing. It's clearly got a lineage stemming from 3rd and 4th, and bears little to no resemblance to anything a player from prior editions would recognize.

I See 4E Everywhere

Maybe its just me, maybe its just because DDN is a post-4E edition that can't escape the core descriptive approach to mechanics (even though it does a fantastic job of integrating the fluff, far better than 4E ever could have), but every mechanical description I read is written in that elegant and extremely precise "application language," for lack of a better term. It's stepped away from 4E in that you're not looking at endlessly repetitive stat blocks...but that core conceit, that the "thing you are doing" should have an explicit mechanical application which is clearly understood, seems to be a big operating point behind class abilities and spells. The opposite seems to be happening with skills and ability checks, however....and I'm not sure how I feel about that until I can get some more playtesting in.

Advantage/Disadvantage is more integrated

It appears on the surface to be better implemented and pops up in logical places now. Will have to see. I disliked it a lot in my first playtests, especially due to the lack of good guidelines on use.

The Monster Stat Blocks are Great

Despite the level and XP listings seeming to be off to me, the core stat blocks look to have taken the best lessons from 4E and carried them on, but with a firm integration into the pre-4E world of mapless design principles at play.

Attribute Limits

It's a "bounded accuracy" system, and they are trying to make it work, so I understand the principle behind limiting attributes to a max of 20...but at the same time I can't help but feel like this is a step back. The real problem is that attributes in the 1E/2E era were explicitly capped and their relationship in terms of modeling creature values was explicit in the design. The DDN methodology to take the open-ended approach of 3rd and 4th edition and arbitrarily cap it. This seems like a cheap workaround to me.

Skills still concern me

I don't like how they are handling skills at all. This is a shame, because they do seem to be trying to include more skills (or at least the same essential skill set from 3E), but the weird lack of real progression, the limited control over how one could advance in skills, some skills tie to feats in weird ways, and the customization for flavor limited to backgrounds (which are admittedly cool) are all problems to me. The pluses right now are that the DM section has some great and explicit guidelines on using skills and setting DCs, the backgrounds are a great idea, and it all might just work in a way I'm comfortable with, but once again: gotta playtest it and see.

The heritage of D&D is more than 1974-1978

Despite some perceptions, D&D is much more than just what it was in the 1970's. I'm accustomed to editions of the game which offer more, not less. So we're still missing things that cater to the "more, not less" mindset: to date no rules on other than the basic races have been seen, nor have we even gotten a hint that there will be rules for designing such. Multiclassing is being discussed in their Q&As, but what details I've seen suggest it will have a closer heritage to the 4th edition methodology and will steer away from the 3rd edition and earlier approaches. The practicality of a campaign style which does not depend on a dungeon-focused encounter design seems to be met within this system (4E failed miserably here) but the recovery mechanics are still in a state of flux.

There will be some edition of this game which, WotC is saying, will be the core "basic" edition but even the thing I'm looking at right now appears far too complex for anything that should have "basic" appended to it. If they did manage a stripped down version that got closer to the original basic edition, but which still catered to the "more, not less" mindset of 2nd edition and onward, I will be pretty happy.


Anyway, I'm going to see if my on/off Tuesday group would like to dive in next week. We shall see!




*For extra fun I had it bound with the Basic D&D cover (for the char gen section) and the Expert set cover (for the DM's section and bestiary), giving the playtest packet a deceptively retro exterior appearance!

Good News Everyone! Resident Evil: Revelations is officially announced

Actually it was announced a few days ago but I just now got around to blogging delightedly about it. This has been a good year or two for the fans (especially versatile, forgiving fans like myself) for all things RE. If your definition of RE ended with the last of the old style of games (circa Code Veronica) then perhaps the current wave of RE titles is not to your liking....but it sounds like Resident Evil: Revelations is worth checking out, as it manages to hold the modern look and feel of the series while getting back to its deeper, more exploratory/investigative and survival horror-filled roots.

The announcement site and trailer is here. Steam has a stretch goal event going on for preorders that includes a copy of Lost Planet Colonies Edition and an end goal of free season pass content. So, probably worth it? They haven't announced what the season pass will include yet, of course. Los Planet Colonies Edition is not on my list of "squee games" but its not horrible, either.

RE: Revelations look like its on schedule for a May 20 release.



Now to finish up the third RE 6 campaign (which is proving do far to be Not As Bad as reviewers implied...at least on the PC version), the Ada Wong campaign and the plethora of additional campaigns on RE: ORC that I still haven't found time to finish because of Rift, Defiance and all that time sink stuff.

The Basic/Expert D&D Project V: Grave Knights

I made Valgos last week for B/X D&D and then also statted him for Pathfinder, so after posting the vertiginous and vile grave knight (stats courtesy of Dingle's Games) I realized that there was no equivalent such monstrosity in B/X D&D. Death Knights, of course, appeared in the original Fiend Folio, but that's AD&D, man...not B/X. And B/X is sort of the retro thing I'm in to now. Also, Pathfinder. So here's an unholy union of the two in the form of a B/X edition Grave Knight:




Grave Knight

Armor Class                2
Hit Dice                       6-9
Move                           120' (40')
Attacks                       sword, bow + special or devastating blast
Damage                     1D8 (sword) or 1D6 (bow) plus channel destruction
No. Appearing          1-2 (1-6)
Save As:                     fighter 6-9
Morale                       11
Treasure                    F
Alignment                 Chaotic

Grave knights are the remains of vile warlords and evil fighters who are so immersed in chaos that not even death can shackle them. The grave knight rises as a powerful undead lord with destructive abilities and an army at his beck and call. Few grave knights tend to work together, unless it it toward a common cause.

Grave knights channel destructive energy into any weapon they wield. This deals and extra 1D6 damage for grave knights of 6 or 7 hit dice and an extra 2D6 damage for grave knights of 8 or 9 hit dice.

Grave knights can summon dark magic based on what form of energy it was suffused with when it returned to hideous unlife. The grave knight unleashes a devastating blast, of one type: acid, electricity, fire or cold (choose only one per grave knight). The blast radiates in a 30 foot cone away from the grave knight and deals 3D6 damage for 6 hit dice, 4D6 damage for 5 hit dice, 5D6 damage for 6 hit dice and 7D6 for 9 hit dice grave knights. Each grave knight can do this three times per day. Anyone caught in the radius of effect can make a save vs. breath weapon to take half damage.

Grave knights can summon a skeletal steed, which is in all manners a skeletal horse that obeys the grave knight. The mount has the stats of a horse but is undead, and can be resummoned once per hour, even if destroyed.

Grave knights are kept perpetually moving by their chaotic armor, which restores them to life 1D10 days after they are destroyed.

Grave knights constantly radiate an aura of chaos for a 30 foot radius. While in this radius healing spells and turning attempts do not work unless the cleric makes a Save vs. Death!

Lastly, grave knights are masters of the undead and can attempt to control undead as a cleric of their level, in which a turned or destroyed result instead enslaves the target undead to the grave knight's will permanently (intelligent undead may make a save vs. spells to break free of this effect). If an undead is not controlled in this manner or makes a save it is free for the next twenty four hours.

Grave knights typically travel with 5 hit dice of minion creatures (usually but not always undead) for every hit die of the grave knight. Thus a 9 hit die grave knight will have 45 hit dice of minions at his beck and call.



Notice how awesomely simple the stat block above is, and yet it encompasses all the relevant details that the equivalent stat block from yesterday's post does.

I love Pathfinder, but I sure do wish it were a leaner, meaner system with less mechanical clutter! 

Dingle's Games - A Pathfinder GM's Dream Site

While looking for blogs and resources on Pathfinder I stumbled (again) across Paul Singleton's website Dingle's Games. The last time I found the site was some time ago, and while it looked useful, it had  limited functionality for non subscribers and I ended up forgetting about it....until now! I paid out roughly $7 for a three month subscription to try it out.

Dingle's Games provides several resources, the coolest of which is a character and NPC generator that lets you create pretty much any monster/class combination you are looking for. It's got utilities for classic 3.5 edition D&D and Pathfinder. My experience with the Pathfinder side is pretty good so far; I've made a few rather astonishingly complex characters, and the printed sheets are loaded with everything you could possibly need, including summaries of feats, spell descriptions and more.

Here's a sample of what the text-based printout would look like (barring blogger's mashing the formatting from the original doc file):


WARNING! To my OSR readers, please be warned to avert your eyes at the following wall-o-text-blocks, they are evil and may take other forms....:

Anton Taro, The Sword Wraith of Corlione

Human Graveknight               CR 11              XP 12800
NE Medium Humanoid (Undead)
Fighter level 10 (skill points 50) –Fighter (Fighter )
Init +5; Senses Darkvision 60; Perception +12
Aura Sacrilegious Aura (Su) 30ft radius as desecrate spell, +1 to hit +1 damage +1 saves, Sacrilegious Aura (Su) any positive channeling needs Concentration check DC 10 + HD

DEFENSE

AC 24, Touch 12, flat footed 22 (+2 Breastplate, Shield, none) (+1 Dex, +4 Natural, +8 armour, +1 feats)
hp 85 (0d8+10d10+10+10+10); Fort +8, Ref +4, Will +5
Damage reduction 10/magic, Immunity to cold, electricity, and any additional type noted by its ruinous revivification, Resistance to positive channeling +4, Spell Resistance CR + 11 (22)

OFFENSE

Speed 20
Melee
Single Attack(+2/+2) Greatsword +21 (2d6+15/17-20) Flaming Burst or Pistol +11 (1d8 X4)
Full Attack
(+2/+2) Greatsword +21/16 (2d6+15/17-20) Flaming Burst or Pistol +11 (1d8 X4) range 20
Space 5ft.; Reach 5
Special Attacks
Channel Destruction (Su) energy type determined by the ruinous revivification special quality.,
Devastating Blast (Su) DC(16) 3/day 30ft cone 8d6 damage,
Undead Mastery (Su) DC(15) 50ft range Will DC to save. can control 5HD per 1HD
Weapon Training become proficient in a weapon group 2

STATISTICS

Str 23, Dex 13, Con 0, Int 15, Wis 15, Chr 12
Base Attack 10 CMB 16; CMD 27
Feats 
Combat Expertise: You can choose to take a -1 penalty on melee attack rolls and combat maneuver checks to gain a +1 dodge bonus to your AC. Every +4 base attack penalty increase by -1 and dodge by +1 ,
Exotic Weapon Prof,
Lunge: -2 to AC for 5ft extra reach,
Power Attack: You can choose to take a -1 penalty on all melee attacks and combat maneuver checks to gain a +2 bonus on all melee damage rolls. Every +4 base atack penalty increases by -1 and damage by +2,
Weapon Focus: +1 to attack rolls,
Weapon Specialization: +2 to damage rolls,
Armour Prof Heavy,
Armour Prof Light,
Armour Prof Medium,
Cleave: Get extra attack if hit monster to adjacent foe, -2 AC until your next turn ,
Combat Reflexes: DEX mod additional attacks of opportunity,
Critical Focus: +4 bonus on attacks to confirm critical hits,
Dodge: Add 1 to AC ,
Great Cleave: Can make extra attacks to adjacent foes if you hit opponents can continue until you miss or no more within reach, -2 AC until you next turn ,
Improved Critical: Doubles critical chance of weapon,
Improved Initiative: +4 Initiative checks,
Martial Weap Prof,
Mounted Combat: Negate hit on mount with ride check DC opponents attack roll,
Ride-by Attack: When charging can carry on after the attack,
Shield Proficiency: Can use shields,
Simple Weapon Proficiency,
Toughness: +3 Hit points or +1 per hit dice,
Tower Shield Proficiency: Can use the tower shield and suffer only normal shield skill penalties
Skills Climb 18, Disguise 19, Handle Animal 9, Intimidate 14, Know Arch & Eng 10, Know Dungeon 9, Perception 12, Ride 14, Survival 15, Swim 9
Languages Common

ECOLOGY

Environment Any
Organization Company 10-20, Band 30-100, Squad 4-8
Treasure Standard

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Phantom Mount (Su) 1/hour can summon skeletal horse as Phantom Steed spell
Rejuvenation (Su) One day after a graveknight is destroyed, its armor begins to rebuild the undead
Ruinous Revivification (Su) choose 1 energy type to use in special attacks
Armour Training Reduced armour check penalty and increases dex bonus by 2
Bravery Save vs fear + 3

MAGIC ITEMS (max value 16350)

+2 (+1 special ability) Breastplate (9000gp) 
Glamered : On Command changes shape and appearance to assume a normal set of clothing. (2700gp) 
Hat of disguise +10 Disguise (1800gp) 
Figurine of wondrous power (onyx dog) - (15500gp) 
+2 (+3 special ability) Greatsword (50000gp) 
Flaming Burst +1d6 fire damage,+1d10 on a critical hit (+2 bonus) 

The NPC generator also offers a "short text" stat block version of the same. Here's what that looks like (basic copy and paste):

Name HumanFighter level 10 (skill points 50) -Fighter
(Fighter ) 
hp 85 (0d8+10d10+10+10+10), Graveknight CR 11 XP Any Medium Humanoid (Undead)
Init +5 Speed 20 AC 24, Touch 12, flat footed 22 (+2 Breastplate, Shield, none)
(+1 Dex, +4 Natural, +8 armour, +1 feats) 
Melee Base Attack 10 CMB 16; CMD 27, Single Attack(+2/+2) Greatsword +21 (2d6+15/17-20) or Pistol +11 (1d8 X4)
Full Attack (+2/+2) Greatsword +21/16 (2d6+15/17-20) or Pistol +11 (1d8 X4) range 20; Space5ft.; Reach 5 
SA Channel Destruction (Su) energy type determined by the ruinous revivification special quality., Devastating Blast (Su) DC(16) 3/day 30ft cone 8d6 damage, Undead Mastery (Su) DC(15) 50ft range Will DC to save. can control 5HD per 1HD, SQ Damage reduction 10/magic, Darkvision 60, Immunity to cold, electricity, and any additional type noted by its ruinous revivification, Phantom Mount (Su) 1/hour can summon skeletal horse as Phantom Steed spell, Rejuvenation (Su) One day after a graveknight is destroyed, its armor begins to rebuild the undead, Resistance to positive channeling +4, Ruinous Revivification (Su) choose 1 energy type to use in special attacks, Sacrilegious Aura (Su) 30ft radius as desicrate spell, +1 tohit +1 damage +1 saves, Sacrilegious Aura (Su) any positive channeling needs Concentration check DC 10 + HD, Spell Resistance CR + 11, Armour Training 2, Bravery 3
Fort +8, Ref +4, Will +5, 
Str 23, Dex 13, Con 0, Int 15, Wis 15, Chr 12
Skills Climb 18, Disguise 19, Handle Animal 9, Intimidate 14, Know Arch & Eng 10, Know Dungeon 9, Perception 12, Ride 14, Survival 15, Swim 9 Feats: Combat Expertise, Exotic Weapon Prof, Lunge, Power Attack, Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, Armour Prof Heavy, Armour Prof Light, Armour Prof Medium, Cleave, Combat Reflexes, Critical Focus, Dodge, Great Cleave, Improved Critical, Improved Initiative, Martial Weap Prof, Mounted Combat, Ride-by Attack, Shield Proficiency, Simple Weapon Proficiency, Toughness, Tower Shield Proficiency; Languages Common
ITEMS: +2 (+1 special ability) Breastplate, Glamered : On Command changes shape and appearance to assume a normal set of clothing., Hat of disguise +10 Disguise, Figurine of wondrous power (onyx dog) -, +2 (+3 special ability) Greatsword, Flaming Burst +1d6 fire damage,+1d10 on a critical hit

Dingle's Games also includes a monster creator program, encounter generator (which will also auto-generate the NPCs it devises), and a treasure generator. It lets you save your creations on the site, and have a pretty reasonable price for annual subscriptions (roughly $22 US).

MMOnday Blaaaagh! Defiance: the first 13 hours

I got a decent amount of game time in this weekend with Defiance, including several hours on my laptop while teaming up with a friend who recently upgraded his seven year old computer to something more state of the art. Overall a well rounded experience for first impressions.

Defiance is essentially a shooter-based MMO which aims to capture several crowds: the MMOers looking for something different, the Halo dudes looking for something different, the console crowd in general and anyone who'd like to experience a (so far) co-op experience online in a massive multi-player environment. Depending on your level of appreciation for this style of game, this level of story focus in a genre not always well-regarded for its stories, and your tolerance for twitch-based game play your mileage may vary in terms of enjoyment. For me? This was a no-brainer. It hits most of my "like" buttons in fast succession.

If you'd like a chance to explore Defiance's setting before approaching the game, a good place to start is with the Defiance 14 minute pilot preview. It's on Hulu and Xbox Live for free download right now, and offers an excellent glimpse into the look, feel and style of this new multimedia experience. The two lead characters in this preview also happen to show up in the game, which is not unexpected as my understanding is that Defiance will have a lot of crossover between the two, and of course the big gimmick here is that events in the game will influence the TV show.

So based on the thirteen-odd hours I've sunk into Defiance so far, here are my off-hand observations:

Plot and Cinematics

They go hand in hand here. The cinematics are great, and quite entertaining. There's only one starter zone, unfortunately, and everyone essentially drops in as "ark hunters," in the employ of one Van Bach, a  suspiciously shady mad scientist gun merchant type who has a bit of a reputation. The lead-in to the game approaches information dispersal in one of the following two ways, and I haven't decided which its going for: 1. it's being coy about info, expecting you to fill in the gaps throught the TV show and web site, or 2. it's using economy of information to dole out as little front-loaded background as possible, to let the player organically learn about the world as you go. Whichever was intended (my money's on #1) the effect for now is the same: hints of a very big world with very little hard information to go on, and lots of inferred possibilities. It works for me.

I won't go into the plot here because frankly I'm still piecing it together but the short version is: it's Earth, after an alien empire shows up with colony ships and starts terraforming. Earth had some sort of unifying government thanks to a thirteen year warning of the impending alien arrival, but that wasn't enough to do more than make humans a modest underclass presence in a vast galactic empire. Some sort of rebellion hit, and humanity, along with another minor (I'm guessing) race called the Irathient managed to strike a major blow at the Battle of Defiance. Now, thirty three years since the Votar empire arrive there's a steady stream of debris falling from space thanks to a vast graveyard of ancient colony ships and war time debris. This immense field of orbit-decaying junk forms the basis of the arkfalls that happen. A lot.



Quest Giving

The game gives you your own Cortana...called Ego, here....an interactive AI only you can see which also lets you resurrect and (best as I can tell) summons gear and vehicles for you. It's not entirely clear to me how the ego powers work, just that they do. This is a post-Halo, post-Mass Effect, post-Star Wars universe in which the ability to perform weird powers which once might have been labeled psionics is nothing unexpected now. Anyway, Ego is your guide and primary quest giver. When you aren't getting radioed in for a new mission or stumbling across one, Ego is manifesting in key spots to lure you over to talk to her, upon which she will spring another quest on you. It's actually a very effective way of repacking traditional quest delivery into something that feels fresh.

This is a Trion game, however, so the defined quests are the least interesting things to do (albeit much more interesting than any other more traditional MMO). Rather, the arkfall events (reminiscent of rift and invasion events in Rift) and the open-world active instances are the really interesting bits. There's a lot of crazy stuff going on and you can drive around randomly to stumble on all kinds of things. This is one of the reasons I liked Rift so much, and the same core formula serves Defiance equally well.

I don't know if there are traditional "closed" instances in Defiance yet; I haven't found them if there are, but I wouldn't be surprised if they exist somewhere. Time will tell. I guess I could google it? Google seems to suggest as much...and PVP areas too...but still haven't seen either in my playthroughs.

Chat

Defiance suffers in its chat options, which I suspect suffer from a build designed to accomodate consoles. You can't send whispers, you need to find players to group with through the friend mechanic and if you were hoping for casual Barrens chat while marauding through terraformed Earth then you'll be sorely disappointed. They need to work on this, badly, before the traditionally social end of the MMO crowd evaporates.

Gameplay

The game is perfectly functional with a mouse and keyboard (and my wife is playing it this way just fine) but I am using my Xbox controller and finding it a more generally satisfying experience since I can kick back in my chair and not be hunched over the keyboard.

It's run and gun twitch-based shooter mechanics. So far all I've seen in PvE environments, so no idea how the PVP side of the game works (and I'm only assuming from stuff I've read so far that the game has implemented PVP yet), but the gameplay is very solid-feeling. It's a third-person perspective game, but not a cover-based shooter, so you don't worry about sticking to the environment by accident. This is good....it means the world is a bit more organic looking, and you don't see chest high walls to hide behind anywhere.

One huge plus (so far) is that the game's mechanics don't appear to be based on a level mechanic at all. You do raise your rank in EGO power, which gives you more perks to work with your Ego skills, but the vast majority of advancement in this game is the acquisition of guns, mods, gear, outfits and vehicles.

The vehicle mechanics are serviceable and perfectly good for the kind of game this is. You will get annoyed at the static environment...when I hit a flaming barrel I expect it to tip over, not to stop me with the resistance of a 50 ton concrete wall!....but the good news is you can run over bad guys. Players ignore each other in terms of the driving, which is good; if you had to watch out for your fellow man it would get ugly quick...not hitting players in this game right now would be downright impossible.

Vehicles come in all sizes and shapes, and larger ones can carry passengers. Cool.



Grouping

I played for several hours in a group and while it was quite fun, this is where a lot of bugs cropped up. My single player experience has been 99% bug-free, but in a group I found some weird issues, including:

1. My cohort, despite being a tough female machinist would appear on my screen as a big male survivalist
2. On more than one occasion we could see each other on the map but didn't exist in each other's frame of reality. There's a "go to friend" button which was not taking us to each other. We ultimately figured out that somehow my buddy had lost the quest line we were on, and had to eventually backtrack to get him back to it.
3. Quest lines, speaking of which, are a more traditional "grab this and complete it before moving on" style, similar to The Secret World's approach (or any old shooter's approach). So my friend, who is a WoW junkie, was having a hard time kicking the grab-every-quest-everywhere mentality.
4. Even when we got him back on track for a quest line I had now finished, when he ran into the instance area he disappeared and I was experiencing something entirely different from him. Is it phasing, or a glitch? I had no idea, and the game offered no clues to illuminate the situation for us.

The fact that I was playing on my laptop at his house while he played on his big screen made these glitches all the more obvious and amusing. If we'd been playing remotely, it would have been even more frustrating.

Performance

On my decent home rig this game runs great. On my laptop which has a decent icore 5 processor but no dedicated GPU it ran surprisingly well on low and medium performance, but the experience was still lacking. If someone trashes this game on the grounds its got consolitis or poor graphics, be suspect that they are running a suboptimal rig, because I can gaurantee that the difference between a low-performance setting and a max-performance setting in Defiance is huge. That said, if you were stuck with a low-performance PC and understood your computer's limitations but really wanted to experience Defiance anyway, I don't think you'd be too disappointed....it was still fun to play on the laptop, even if it looks noticeably less pretty.

What's it Cost?

This is a one-time purchase to be supported by a "season pass" for the next five expansions and a cash shop. I haven't even bothered to look into the cash shop outside of claiming my special edition items, but most of the shop content seems to be outfits and gear; I've found myself enjoying the game with what it offers and the cash shop experience is extremely non-invasive, highy ignorable (so far).

Verdict

I'm going to keep playing and enjoying it. The game has fun gameplay, controls that feel "right," and a compelling storyline as well as enough variety in the MMO-questing elements to make it click better than prior efforts. This is not another Tabula Rasa, although I really need to see how much content overall the game has. For me it's probably going to last a long, long time. For the insanely dedicated hardcore MMO and shooter crowd? No idea.....time will tell. The game does have a metric ton of repeatable content, though...and the fact that there's no leveling mechanic means you can (best as I can tell so far) wander back to older areas and enjoy the region all over again and still feel a challenge.

I'm still in Mount Tam right now (the area after the tutorial zone) and still slogging my way through on four different characters (you get four character slots). According to the wiki there are five total areas all set in the San Francisco Bay area. Mount Tam is a huge zone, so if the other four are as big, this game should last me a long, long time.