The Iron Dagger

Lost trails of LoTRO: Vol III

Posted in Roleplay, Virtual Tourism on June 15, 2015 by The Iron Dagger

The lonely ride of Redwine Eardwrecca, exiled Rider of Rohan, continues. Retrace his hoofbeats from Vol I through Vol II!

While exploring for this fortnight’s volume (I realized I’ve been doing this every two weeks, so why not make it a routine?), I found myself drawn back to the Lone-lands, out of a desire to hear its incomparable music once more. And then it came on, like I knew it would.

That soul-swellingly beautiful (and apparently unreleased) track I’ve been trying to hunt down for years, without luck.

Do you, dear readers, know something even the LoTRO forumites don’t? Have a listen to the track playing in the first half-minute of this video, and give me a holler if you know its title – or if it’s available for purchase!

Court of the Braziers

North Downs (51.2W, 12.9S)

Opposite Minas Vrûn, on the other side of the road running east through the Kingsfell, lies this small but picturesque ruin I’ve given a most uninspired name to. You may have ridden through it on the way to Esteldín, if you didn’t go by stable master (but who doesn’t, right?).

It’s got the air of a forum, or a summer house of sorts, given that Minas Vrûn is described as a ‘city’ in deed text. The braziers seem to indicate more recent occupation, though. Perhaps goblins – one or two might be found here, along with wildlife.

As a scenic bonus, just behind where I was standing when I took this shot, the land slopes down to a creek that ends in a cute little horseshoe-shaped valley a ways west. Yup. Definitely a summer house, this.

Twin trees in the Weather Hills

Lone-lands (40.7W, 32.2S)

Serendipity strikes again! In the middle of nowhere north of the Forsaken Inn, just as I was thinking Redwine needed a rest, I came across a fine spot for doing just that.

Whatever ruin once stood here is long gone. All that’s left are a few scattered chunks of rubble, and these two big guys. Sure, they don’t look like they’d provide much in the way of shade, but you’re grateful for small comforts, aren’t you? As soon as you clear out the wolves and other nasties in the vicinity, that is…

The addition of that boulder at the back completes the scene, making this a nice place for some under-the-stars camping roleplay. Still can’t beat Candaith’s cozy little camp at Weathertop, though.

Midgewater Marshes lookout post

Lone-lands (41.5W, 31.7S)

This. This is perhaps my best discovery (or rediscovery? I can’t remember if I’ve been here before) since I started this series. It’s the only shot so far I’ve taken with Redwine in frame as opposed to the usual first-person view, in order to better show all the details.

Located on the very edge of the Weather Hills, atop an outcropping that offers a stunning vista of the Midgewater (you can even see the Marshwater Fort on a good day), this cozy little ruin seems a little too prettily laid out to be the work of time and the elements. You’ve got a ring of stone around a little stone marker, flanked by two trees. It’s fantastic for a spot of scenic camping.

But who would build anything here in the first place, and why the marker? Was this, as I suspect, an Arnorian lookout post? A relay station between the Marshwater Fort and Amon Sûl, perhaps? Something to explore if you’re roleplaying a Dúnedain, or an archaeologist type…

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What I liked (still like?) about LoTRO

Posted in Random Thoughts, Virtual Tourism on June 12, 2015 by The Iron Dagger

This is a response to Sean’s post over at Contains Moderate Peril.

We all have ‘mains’ in the MMOs we play. Likewise, though I no longer play it, The Lord of the Rings Online is, and will likely always remain, the ‘main’ of my MMO career.

I was a latecomer to Turbine’s Middle-earth, arriving on the F2P bandwagon in October 2010 with two other friends. We gave ourselves until ‘the first dungeon’ to evaluate the game – and it didn’t disappoint. Defeating Gaerdring and Gaerthel in the Great Barrow Maze on the very first try, with just the three of us – a Champion of Rohan, a Guardian of Rivendell, and a Minstrel of Mirkwood – ranks among the fondest of my gaming memories. Two other friends followed, and a hefty Turbine Points purchase, and we five became Middle-earthlings in earnest. At least until one got eaten by real life, another decided playing the auction house full-time was more fun than questing, and a third abandoned us for some hardcore raiding kinship. Those I don’t remember quite so fondly.

But there’s the first of the things I like about LoTRO. It was the first, and the only, MMO that I played with more than just one gaming buddy, and the few times we ran as a troupe felt like the damned Avengers Assemble.

Conveniently, the above screenshot also shows my favorite zone in LoTRO.

When I saw Sean name his, I felt a very familiar weariness. Nothing against hobbitland, of course: it’s a marvelous realization of Tolkien’s rustic paradise (and I adore the idea of little hobbits slipping out of bed at night to play at adventuring in the Rushock Bog).

But it’s far too popular. One of the issues I had during my time roleplaying on LoTRO was that the only roleplay I seemed to see regularly (apart from Prancing Pony roleplay) was garden-variety Shire roleplay: hobbity picnics, nature walks, happy hour in the Green Dragon, and so on. It was as if folks were basing their roleplay off the beginning and the end of the novels, and glossing over everything in between.

No love for the rugged, forlorn beauty of the land beyond the Last Bridge. Where, amid empty wilds under distant stars, with only the great looming shadow of Weathertop for company, a body can come to terms with one’s own place in the wider world.

That makes two things, and for a third, I shall simply say that I like LoTRO because of the first four letters – Tolkien nut that I am. These are part of a freebie series released by Burger King along with the Fellowship of the Ring film. (I didn’t think collecting the rest was worth the fast food intake!) They still sit alongside the Tolkien tomes on my shelf as mementos of the day I went to see Middle-earth at the movies.

Little suspecting that nearly a decade later, I would be living in it – if only in digital form.

#NBI2015Safari: Announcing the Winners!

Posted in Reblogged on June 10, 2015 by The Iron Dagger

Come, congratulate, and c… I give up. Again.

Let’s hear it for the big-game hunters of this year’s safari! Check out the prize shots, and while you’re at it, stop by Murf’s super blogroll and give ’em all some follow love!

The issue of combat as RPG filler

Posted in Random Thoughts on June 9, 2015 by The Iron Dagger

…fights will always be a part of the kind of narrative games based on adventure fiction, but hard-wiring combat into a game’s mechanics in ways that force it to be a regular necessity is something we’ll look back on as an inexplicable artifact of the time.

– Jody Macgregor, Why too much combat hurts great RPGs (PC Gamer)

Just a couple weeks ago, I mused about Pillars of Eternity and its nostalgia play. Now, I’m looking at a Pillars-centric article full of gems about how the game sours that nostalgia by peppering it with (in most cases unavoidable) combat.

It’s a great read. I didn’t even know there was an achievement for completing the game with a kill count of below 175, but then, I killed everything. I played a paladin, as I always do, making her one of the Shieldbearers of St. Elcga – that order renowned for diplomacy. I roleplayed. And still I killed everything. Everything that wanted to kill me, that is.

Perhaps my 40+ hours in Eora would have been more like 20 hours (or less) if I hadn’t. But how would that fly with modern gamers?

Many already knock the Call of Duty games for their length (talking single-player here), and that’s one of the most popcorny, zero-pretension franchises I know of. As Jody puts it, games like Pillars are a beast so different, that padding out their length with “the same actions for half that run-time because somewhere a number is going up” makes no sense at all.

I feel her. Because I suffered through Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader – one of the ultimate cases of an old-school, narrative-driven RPG gutted by a combat overdose that rivals Diablo’s.

That is, of course, a polar example. But it illustrates the point that combat is filler. In Lionheart, it was practically all you saw from town to town. So also in every classic JRPG ever; would those games have been improved with less fighting?

What about Wasteland 2? A game pervaded by strong narrative, avoidable random encounters, and peaceful solutions to confrontations. Would it have done better with even less emphasis on the combat?

(I don’t think so. The XCOM-like gameplay was one of the big draws, and a big reason why I played through more than once with different party makeups.)

Combat is filler, yes, but it’s also one of the most economical ways to add replayability. If devs cut down on mandatory combat, they have to fill the white space with something. What’s that in an RPG – more narrative? More scripted content? Ideal, but hardly cost-effective.

And so we come to what makes or breaks a game’s combat: battle systems. But that’s another story. Suffice it to say that going overboard with the system, like in certain Final Fantasy installments, can rot a game as much as any surfeit of unavoidable fighting.

So, no, “a hundred killing sprees don’t improve games where the appeal is in agonizing over the right conversation choice”. But perhaps fifty do. It’s about balancing moderation with what sells. Besides, modern gamers need visual stimulation, and gratuitous, visceral combat sells. We’ll just have to roll with it.

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On MMO ‘jobification’

Posted in Random Thoughts on June 6, 2015 by The Iron Dagger

Perhaps there’s something to be said for drone-like activity after a long day at work. Learning and repeating patterns, solving small problems. Simple games that require little thought on your part in order to feel that you’re gradually progressing towards some greater goal.

– Sean, Who Wants to Pay for a Second Job? (Contains Moderate Peril)

There was a time when my response to such a sentiment would have been a curl of the lip and a slow shake of the head.

Thank the gods for the perspectives of age.

No, I’m not saying age made me a Harvest Moon convert. My outlook on game design has never changed. But at the very least, I can now look at games of the ‘busywork’ variety with some degree of objectivity. And realize that, as long as ‘the goal’ is right, nobody cares.

Neverwinter is my favorite example of this. One has only to look at the Neverwinter Gateway to see how deep the ‘busywork’ factor can infect a conventional MMO. Its crafting system already reminded me of 90’s browser games (Utopia, anyone?), what with all the hours of waiting and random opportunities to encourage intermittent logins throughout the day. Making it an actual browser game was the gaming equivalent of a company rolling out an enterprise mobility initiative. (Work anytime, anywhere! Ahem, I meant all the time, everywhere.)

I have no experience with WoW’s Garrisons, but they probably go along such lines, don’t they? I’m aware I’m talking MMOs here, while Sean’s post was more about single-player grinds. But MMOs are where the jobification issue shines. Working for yourself, you always have the option to shift gears if the slogging gets to you. Working with others, you can’t do that without becoming deadweight.

I remember the flak thrown at my guild leader back in WoW for his martinetish approach to ‘raid discipline’. He was a lion among housecats: a competitive powergamer type in charge of a casual, social guild, who hated inefficiency with a passion and wasn’t afraid to show it. People who didn’t bring buff scrolls, didn’t stick to the rotations he directed, and stood a few inches out of their designated spots during boss fights were castigated.

Nobody wanted to hear it, despite the undeniable fact that it got results. He was ‘too serious’. It was ‘just a game’. They’d have rather foregone the loot than put up with such treatment. And so on. Heck, substitute job for game and pay for loot and it still makes sense to a lot of working professionals.

Naturally, one small guild does not a sample make. If raid discipline is a ‘second job’, and ‘the goal’ is phatlewt, common sense dictates dissenters would be far outnumbered by willing cooperators anyway.

Perhaps jobification is not something inherent in a game, but in our mindsets. Everybody wants something out of their playtime; attaining that something can take the unpleasant connotations out of the slog.

Which, incidentally, may just be a sizable contributor to the cultural decay in MMOs. I’m thinking of a comment I read a few days ago, somewhere, that (paraphrased, my memory isn’t what it was) “more and more people no longer log into games because they care about the setting or the community, they log into games to kill their boredom for a while”.

In other words, the goal is not so much finding a home anymore, but finding a hostel for the night. If earning that room means a spot of dishwashing or floor-scrubbing, why not, right?

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Storium founder Stephen Hood on roleplaying in video games

Posted in Roleplay on June 4, 2015 by The Iron Dagger

If you’re reading this blog, you have to be a gamer. But if you’re a writer as well, then Storium is something you have to be on. It’s good old-fashioned play-by-post, only taken to the next level – a simple, structured, wine-and-chocolate fusion of tabletop roleplaying and collaborative fiction. Give me a shout if you hop aboard!

It’s no surprise that fan initiatives would arise from a community as large, talented and dedicated as this – like the unofficial podcast Storium Arc. Most recently, the hosts snagged an interview with Storium’s founder and CEO Stephen Hood. When they invited the community to pose him questions, I saw the perfect chance to air one close to my MMO roleplayer’s heart.

This is how I put it. Took a while to articulate.

I have something to ask Stephen: he has said that one of his biggest hopes for Storium is to get more people to roleplay, and ‘grow the hobby’. Does he have any thoughts on how a system like this stands with a certain subset of said people – modern MMO roleplayers, who must act within the constraints of mechanically and sensorially pre-defined worlds?

After nearly four weeks of anticipation, I finally got my answer last week.

It starts at the 46:38 mark in Episode 6. But I prefer reading to listening, so I have transcribed the first few minutes of Mr. Hood’s response (as best I could – I struggle with foreign accents) here.

That’s a great question. Modern video games have trained us to, I would argue, react more than improvise. I played WoW for years – way too long, in fact – and, fantastic game – so much fun – but there’s nothing I did in that game that no one else had ever done.

And when I play a BioWare game, when I sit down and play Mass Effect, it feels like my Shepard’s choices are mine: I care about what happened to the team, when people die it hurts. That’s a masterfully created story, in-game, that really involves you emotionally – in what happens to the character and characters you control.

But again, there’s nothing I did in that game that other people haven’t done. And there’s nothing I did in that game that the computer didn’t expect me to do. That’s fundamentally the challenge, I think, with most video games.

I actually gave a talk at GDC, about a month ago, on this very topic, and what I said was that, most video games put the computer into the role of the storyteller, and a tremendous amount of technology and art and skill goes into the construction of video games in a way so that that is a convincing storyteller. That you feel like you have control. When the reality is, you wouldn’t (unintelligible).

Because the computer is not able to respond to you. To the full breadth of human creative expression. The computer can only respond to the things it’s been programmed to expect, and when we sit down to play, whether it be WoW, or Mass Effect, or anything, we are translating the full breadth of what our brains can come up with in that moment, we’re translating it into a series of buttons, and clicks, that the computer can anticipate and know what to do with.

And so to me, that’s – it’s kind of the ultimate shell game, in a way. I mean, I don’t mean to be dismissive, right, these are fantastic games, but it doesn’t begin to compare to what happens in a tabletop role-playing game.

‘Cause the person on the other side of that screen, in that case, to kinda beat the metaphor to death, is not a computer. It’s another person. And they can interpret what you say. These completely unexpected, crazy things that come out of a human brain, right, they can do it.

The conversation even touches on open-world games, like Minecraft, where even though you “project your story onto the game”, the computer is “just reacting to you, not trying to tell stories” and so on. It’s an interesting discussion. But it’s not what I had in mind when I posed my question.

Note my phrasing – act within the constraints of mechanically and sensorially pre-defined worlds. Mr. Hood and the Storium Arc hosts tackled the question from the single-player perspective: an individual and his/her interactions with a scripted experience. Not, as I wanted to explore, the perspective of several or many players using a game engine as a platform to create their own experiences.

I wasn’t asking about how to build a stage. I was asking about what the actors do on it.

The point of collaborative fiction writing is that there are no constraints. Writers conjure landscapes, soundscapes, and runescapes out of thin air – limited only by agreed-upon themes and the skill of each conjurer. In an MMO, said scapes are pre-defined. Imagination has a ceiling.

Sure, you can ignore game mechanics like quest plots and character classes. But thanks to the visual nature of MMOs, it’s harder to suspend disbelief at the guy wearing cheap vendor-bought gear who paints himself as this. Or the group roleplaying as enterprising smallfolk and setting up shop in a locale that’s already claimed by hostile NPCs.

I’m aware this shakes a lot of worm-filled cans on what exactly constitutes ‘RP’ as MMO players define it. But those are musings for another time. All I was looking for, here, was a link between a game like Storium and the endangered practice of MMO roleplaying – and I didn’t get it.

Mr. Hood makes a lot of good points in his response to my question, and in his GDC presentation – as can be expected from one at the forefront of the new-age tabletop. But I wonder if he roleplayed during his time in WoW, and if so, what he has to say about the experience – about being handed not just a music sheet, but instruments as well.

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#NBI2015Safari: The Vote Begins

Posted in Reblogged on June 3, 2015 by The Iron Dagger

Visit, vote, and v… I give up. Come name your favorites!

#NBI2015 – the morning after the morning after

Posted in Random Thoughts on June 2, 2015 by The Iron Dagger

LATE ROUNDUP POST IS LATE BUT… better late than never with a thing like the NBI.

Call me weird, but it feels really strange to be able to count myself among the ‘NBI Class of 2015’. Like the man from Plato’s cave who steps out, cringing, into the blinding light of day… and finds himself right smack in a beach party with laughing folks handing him a pair of sunglasses.

And a soda. That would be from Murf, I think.

Randomness aside, I have only good things to say about my maiden run with the Newbie Blogger Initiative. My only regret is that I did not learn of it earlier! Despite going for broke with Murf’s Screenshot Safari, I was only in time to participate in one of the Talkbacks, and naught else. (“What Made You a Gamer?” is a rich one. I might just tackle that as a separate post.)

But that’s alright. Because this movement, as I now realize, is about something far more than posts. It is about the blogosphere. Not blogs, but the blogosphere. All of us: a network, a nation, an ecosystem of folks who care enough about games to write about them.

You’ve encouraged me with all of your visits, welcomes, comments and retweets.

And you’ve inspired me with all of your chin-palmingly good writing – by various degrees clear, thoughtful, entertaining, and moving.

As you have so many others, I’m sure, in the years before this one when I yet sat and watched the shadows on the wall.

I’ve left the cave. And the light is glorious.

Veterans, sponsors, and the members of the NBI Committee – I salute you.

My fellow graduates – moar words plz.

Aspect of the Hare

Chaotic Pixels

Gamer Girl Confessions (shout-out for sharing my childhood nickname as your handle!)

Gaming Adventures

Imperial Intelligence

In Character

Knife’s Edge Adventures

Lair of the Wolf Dragon

Light The Beacons

Memoirs of a Lady

Pleasant Gamer

Ramblings of an MMO Gamer

Randark’s Review

Soultamer

The Balance Force

The Legacies in SWTOR

Looking forward to #NBI2016. Hopefully, I’ll be a little more experienced, and have more to say – and be able to camp outside a few caves with a box of sunglasses.

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Lost trails of LoTRO: Vol II

Posted in Roleplay, Virtual Tourism on June 1, 2015 by The Iron Dagger

The lonely ride of Redwine Eardwrecca, exiled Rider of Rohan, continues. Retrace his hoofbeats from Vol I onward!

Dredging up scenic spots from the fog of memory is proving quite the experience. But it pales before the emotion of seeing those far-flung places for the first time in years, wondering when was the last time any other player set foot there.

Would that LoTRO was a MUD, and I one of its Imms, so I could answer that with a single command-line entry!

Delossad

Trollshaws (38.3S, 12.8W)

What are these strange ruins? They seem to be of ancient Cardolan origins, but the Elves of Rivendell seem hesitant to speak of them at all. Some strange mystery surrounds them, and it may be that the only answers can be found within…

– Deed: The Wilds of Tâl Bruinen

Every player who has completed the Shadows of Angmar main quest has passed through this place. But how many have returned since?

Words fail me in describing the eerie loveliness of this place. The tree-shaded glade at its center, lit only by daylight through a hole high above, sits like a flower in blossom beneath the earth. Dungeon cells, dug out of the cheerless rock all around, brood in the shadows.

As far as ruins go in Turbine’s Middle-earth, Delossad ranks pretty high on my list for aesthetics, atmosphere, and roleplay potential.

Waterfall near Nen Harn

Bree-land (45.1S, 20.8W)

Sure, the game world has its share of waterfalls, and I’m sure this one is far from the tallest. But it’s so isolated, and so close by the picturesque shores of ~~budget Evendim~~ Nen Harn (does anyone even quest that far north of Bree anymore?), that I’m giving it a spot in my album.

It’s rather nicely set up, with a slope running down alongside to the water’s edge. Worth a look-see if you’re ever visiting Nen Harn for a picnic or a swim.

Tower in Pend Eregion

Eregion (43.2S, 11.1W)

This is less of a ‘lost trail’ and more of a ‘how the heck do I get up there’.

I’m no surveyor, but that there has to be one of the highest views across Eregion’s plains, outside of Caradhras. And it’s got all the look of a lonely watch-post – perfect for a makeshift camp, like the Fellowship pitched on the Burnt Tor.

The only problem was, I couldn’t find a way up. It’s nothing but steep slopes all around. If anyone knows a path up that I missed, give a poor horseman a hand!

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#NBI2015Safari – Shield at Sunset

Posted in Virtual Tourism on May 31, 2015 by The Iron Dagger

Well, it looks like LoTRO and DCUO will be the only two games dominating my entries for this year’s NBI Screenshot Safari, after all.

Thanks to Murf’s bonus round, here’s my sixth #NBI2015Safari submission, for the Landscape category!

Taken in June 2011 during the early days of my main Annúnion, Guardian of Gondor, this screenshot holds the distinction of being the only one in my LoTRO folder to ever be featured in the Free People’s Press (back before Turbine’s mass layoffs the following year killed that lovely little newsletter).

I think I was on the main quest in Nan Dhelu at the time, and was riding back to Ost Guruth for turn-ins when I was struck by the sunset, as I usually am in real life. There was only one thing to do: switch to roleplaying gear and a matching colored horse, and click the shutter. I only regret not zooming in to first-person view before I took it!

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