I figured I'd start an exploration of some of my PCs and toons with my AD&D 1e character, Alarius. You know, stick to the classics at first.
I'd originally joked that I should name him "Joe the Cleric", hence the "Joe" there. And yes, when someone says something funny at the table, it goes on my character sheet somewhere.
Alarius is, in some ways, an unfunny me. He takes himself far too seriously, doesn't really like "the Hilarious" moniker he was given*, and doesn't talk much about his gods. There's an out of game reason for that last part, as one of our game group is a Methodist Minister, and therefore I'm not inclined to be obnoxious as far as in-game religion is concerned.
Alarius began the adventuring life following up on rumors of slavers operating in the area, and joined up with a group to pursue those rumors. Along the way, the slaver conspiracy kept growing in scope and size, and as the group gained in knowledge and strength they began to find themselves a target of the slavers themselves. When they finally reached the heart of the slaving operation, they were instead captured and thrown into the dungeon, presumably to await execution. Only a fortuitous volcanic eruption --"A gift from the gods!" Alarius said at the time-- allowed them to escape, find their gear, and overwhelm the guards at the docks.
(Yes, that was the content of the old AD&D Slave Lords modules, A0 through A4.)
While perusing the slavers' documents, Alarius discovered that a shipment of slaves had been sent out to a remote area, which stood out from other possible locales. The party reassembled and headed out to investigate, only to discover that the surrounding countryside was under assault from a clan of Hill Giants.
(Oh yes, it's THAT module.)
Alarius and Company defeated the Hill Giants and followed the trail to a stronghold of Frost Giants, and subsequently to a fortress of Fire Giants. It was only then that they discovered the long rumored but never seen "dark elves" or Drow not only existed but were directing the Fire Giants in their acquisition of slaves.
At the moment, Alarius is somewhere underground, following a path marked on an incomplete map to what appears to be a Drow city. The party already had to fight off some Drow slavers, who took off with some of their number, and followed them to an underground supply post. The abductees were subsequently rescued and everybody escaped an underground supply post by the skin of their teeth.
(Yes, we're finished with module D1 - Descent into the Depths of the Earth, and are about to start D2 - Shrine of the Kuo-Toa. For those who don't know who Kuo-Toa are, think giant murlocs. EVIL giant murlocs.)
***
Aranandor is up next, an Elven Champion in LOTRO:
There are stories about that already?
LOTRO is an ideal game if you want a story, because the original Shadows of Angmar story is absolutely fantastic. You can get bogged down a bit while you level and the UI is really bad for the Red/Green colorblind, but if you're a fan of Middle-earth, it's always worth a trip.
So... Aranandor.
I made a point of making a character with an "accurate" Quenya name, although after the royal "Aran" I think it means royal/noble of Andor. Or maybe not.
Aranandor spent some time earlier in the Third Age at Rivendell but eventually grew restless and made the trip to Ered Luin, where the Grey Havens lay. As the Shadow of the east grew larger, he considered following the call of the sea and going to the Undying Lands, but instead he chose to stay and fight the Shadow as best he could. The Witch King wove many intricate plots around Eriador, from Ered Luin to Bree and even as far east and south as Eregion, and no matter how hard Aranandor tried, he always felt that the minions of the Witch King were a step ahead of him.
As Angmar looked unstoppable, The Witch King's chief minion decided to dole out his own twisted form of justice on a minion he perceived to be insufficiently loyal. That turning on a loyal minion, causing the minion to in turn betray the Shadow, was the break Aranandor and the Free Peoples needed.
"Strange how such a thing as petty jealousy can cause the downfall of the great," Aranandor once mused while resting at Imladris.
After the Angmar affair, Aranandor spent time with the Dwarves in Khazad-Dum, a relentlessly grim place that he shudders to remember. The boughs of Lothlorien were more to his liking, his kin from afar dwelt there, after all, but even there the Shadow stretched its arms toward the Golden Lady. He would die for Galadriel and Celeborn, but rather than asking that sort of sacrifice they instead chose another: to draw the attention of Mordor away from the Fellowship, Aranandor was tasked with assisting an assault into Mirkwood. The darkness that dwelt there reminded the Elf far too much of the darkness in Moria, and as companions died his spirits flagged.
A change was needed.
When he returned to Imladris for healing and rest, Elrond summoned him to his side. "Word has reached us that Aragorn has need of his Kinsmen," he told the elf. "Assemble the Rangers of the North so that they may head south and rendezvous with him in Rohan."
Ever the dutiful Wood Elf, Aranandor rode throughout the north, bringing word to the Rangers and then riding south with them to the country of the Dunlendings. There he found loyalty and betrayal among the people so thoroughly dominated by Saruman, yet he also found courage and heart in those few Dunlendings who rejected the Shadow.
It is there that Aranandor's story ends, for much lies before him and is yet to be told.
As you can guess, Aranandor's primary motivation is his desire to see the Shadow defeated, but the long and often lonely paths he has trod has worn on him. He smiles less now, and he has seen far too many of those he calls friends fall in battle or to the plots of the Enemy. Yet he has not totally forsaken the Grey Havens, as he knows that when this age is over he may yet cross over the sea to the West.
I recently volunteered to do a one shot RPG with a friend of mine, and I was allowed to use any existing PC I've created and are currently using in an RPG.
"Do mouthy WoW toons count?" I asked.
Oh, shush. That was a term of endearment.
Although this wasn't exactly what my friend had in mind, it was a player character for an RPG (of a sort), and as I am currently playing an iteration of this particular PC, my friend decided to allow it.
I will be the first to admit that I have had my share of RPG campaigns over the years, and plenty of PCs to choose from, but as far as personalities go, that's a big conundrum. Until my MMOs came along, my experiences in creating PCs with a somewhat divergent series of personalities was pretty limited.
Hence the reason for this post.*
***
When I first began playing RPGs, I was in 7th Grade and the concept of 'roleplaying' itself was reduced to "you enter a room with 5 Kobolds and 4 Orcs." Not exactly stuff that will engage with my inner Master Thespian, I can assure you. That didn't mean that I didn't dream of being the Knight (or Paladin, in this case) fighting evil wherever I found it.** That dream of inhabiting a character was there, it's that my "characters" were, well, me. The were simply extensions of me and my personality, no more and no less.
It was only when I was forced to go "underground" on my RPG playing and in turn embraced reading a lot of SF&F that I began to understand a bit more about how roleplaying could work. The PCs didn't have to be me with just different names, but they could be created and/or voiced by me. They could have different personalities, just like that found in the various novels I read.
So... A lot of my characters began to act similarly to those that I read out of Lord of the Rings, The Belgariad, or The Elric Saga. (Among others.) Not that much of a reach in terms of personal motivation, but when the alternative was "acting like me", it was a decent enough stretch for someone taking their first steps into a fictional world of their own making.
The summer of my Senior year in high school, I had a discussion with a couple of my co-workers about how an RPG campaign works. While they were proponents of the "you meet at a tavern and then go out and kill monsters", I went in a different direction.
"Sure, you could initially meet in a tavern," I admitted, "but say you take a contract to do something small. You do it well, then that leads to another job, a bigger one. This continues until you begin to acquire a reputation, and you attract the attention of someone in power. They decide to take a chance on you, and whether you perform well or not means that they become either your enemy or your patron. Or, you could become the King's personal problem solver, a 'Mission: Impossible Team'***, ready for when he needs you to take on a big job."
Nothing much came out of that discussion, but looking back on it now it seems that was a sort of turning point. Between then and me heading off to college a short time later, I turned a corner in terms of what I wanted out of an RPG.
Well, kind of.
My first big RPG experience in college gave me an example of how a DM was restrictive because he wanted us to play things his way. He had designed this entire elaborate campaign and recruited about 14 people to play --at once-- but the campaign and his DM style left his players no room for role playing. It was "play the campaign the way I want you to or else". Well, without giving the players any real freedom to do much more than react to what he was telling your character was they were doing, it became all about him and his story. The fact that he had far far too many people playing in a single campaign at once became a recipe for disaster.
The campaign lasted a grand total of one night, and somewhere about an hour into the game he came to the realization that he couldn't control the situation and left in an offended huff.
There were 5 of us who kind of hung around after, critiquing what the DM tried (and failed) to do, and we all wanted to still play. One of us piped up that he'd DMed back in high school, and he had some campaigns he could run.
And our primary D&D campaign in college was born.
This second RPG experience lasted much longer --it eventually evolved into the 20+ year campaign a decade later with a subset of players from that group-- but I reverted to form and basically played, well, a version of me.
(Gotta go with the classics, I guess.)
Even its descendent campaign, the 20 year one, I ended up playing a version of me, personality-wise. Oh, he started out as an inquisitive type who was so wrapped up in their own studies that he only broke out of it when presented with a carrot on a stick in the form of a mystery to be solved, but ol' Lucius Raecius devolved into a version of me who would charge into battle, spear at the ready, because that was naturally what a Cleric of Zeus would do.****
I only began to break out of that when I was given a Wizard character to play in addition to Lucius: the original Nevelanthana.
Yes, Neve started life as a D&D PC of mine, an L4 Wizard in D&D 3.0. I'd advocated for a magic wielder of some sort, because we didn't have any in our game group, and I could see the need for magic in a future campaign.
The D&D version of Neve was snooty, somewhat arrogant, brilliant --and boy did she know it-- and really wanted to be the game world equivalent of an Elven Ranger like her father, but she wasn't good enough to join the corps. So, she became a Wizard instead, like her mother,, but she still kept practicing archery to prove that she was better than everybody thought. (Rejection can be a helluva motivating tool. Believe me, I know from personal experience.)
Oh, and one more thing: she spent several years of the campaign as a ghost.
Yes, she died not too long after she joined the campaign. It was a classic case of one of the party members being mind controlled by a harpy and turning and attacking the closest player: Neve. He rolled --in succession-- 20.... 20.... 20!!!
The DM decreed it resulted in an instant decapitation.*****
Rather than having Neve simply shuffle off the mortal coil, the DM kept Neve around as a ghost until we were able to figure out how to bring her back.
During that long period of "Ghost Neve", I learned how to work with a player with a distinctively different set of motivations than mine were. Ghost Neve couldn't fight, and she couldn't be heard by almost everyone, but she could still affect the game in some ways. Because of that, I couldn't fall back on playing Neve like an extension of myself. I was still me, and Lucius was still me, but Neve was definitely her own person. Her personality was such that I turned to my experiences writing fiction to try to keep her narrative fresh and interesting, and both my role playing and my fiction improved as a result.
The irony is that were it not for a dead PC I wouldn't have learned how to play living ones better.
***
And a further irony is that I needed to play single player story driven games to give my MMO players their own motivations and personality.
My original MMO, World of Warcraft, doesn't have a lot of story driven content from the standpoint that you get to choose how a player reacts. You roll on up, you get the quest, and you complete it. The original SWTOR had modifications to that formula as you could select various options, some of the Light Side and some of them Dark, but the net effect is that you don't affect the story nearly as much as you might think given some of the weight you may place on certain decisions. The Elder Scrolls Online is a similar MMO where the overall story moves in one direction, and while there are small decisions you can make the overall thrust of the story is predetermined.
I suppose that's also the case with single player RPGs, the effects of various decisions in them can be larger, much larger, than that of MMOs.
Take The Witcher, for example. I've only played about half of the first game in the series, but that first game showed me what the consequences of my actions are. "Because I chose X, X enabled me to get to Y, and then I could reach Z," were the obvious connections the in-game narration provides. It might be beating you on the head with a stick, but those actions and the follow-up from the same provide the basis for a character's decision making.
And from there, a personality can emerge that drives that decision making.
Of course, this can go awry, as "it's what my character would do" can be driven to extremes and ruin everybody's fun. Obviously being a Grade A asshole doesn't help anybody, and if you're going to have a character of yours do that, you'd better be
In a single player video game
Writing a story
because if you play a character that actively sabotage's the group, people won't want to play with you. As one of the replies in that Reddit thread I linked to pointed out, D&D is as close to a coop game as you can get. When you play as an asshole without regard for the group, then expect the group to rebel against you.
Okay, I digress.
Due to those single player games and the sometimes uncomfortable situations a player may find themselves in, I learned how to evolve a personality which simply isn't an extension of my own.
Does that mean my method of playing is superior to these others? No, it's just different. It's kind of hard to explain, but my understanding and satisfaction of roleplaying has changed over time, and each type of roleplaying from "extension of me" to " a fully fleshed out three dimensional character" give me a lot of satisfaction in their own way.
If you've got the time, Matt Colville has a great lecture about this actual topic:
So we have come full circle. As I began playing WoW Classic back in 2019 I began to have thoughts about why the toons I was playing were out adventuring. Vanilla Classic has some really good initial questlines for low level players, and the Defias -> Deadmines story is the best of the lot, but it was a new toon's initial arrival at the starting zone was what puzzled me. Those ponderings eventually lead to two offspring: this post about player motivation in general, and the creation of One Final Lesson.
In it's own bizarre way, were it not for Neve, I'd not have had Card to play with.
What sort of person is Cardwyn, anyway? Or the WoW version of Nevelanthana? Or Linnawyn? Or Quintalan? Well, that's where Part 2 comes into play.
#Blaugust2023
*And yes, my friend is going to see this post, because why not? It's not as if I want to hide any of this from her.
**Or a Jedi. Or a Cowboy, or a Naval Officer. Okay, that last one might seem like a stretch, but we had an old set of 1954-ish era World Book Encyclopedias at home, and I stumbled across what US military dress uniforms looked like. Lo and behold, the Naval blue dress uniform looked a lot like the sport coat in my closet, so... I'd dress up in my sport coat, attach paper "rank sleeve stripes" via scotch tape, and voila! Instant military uniform to play... uh.... Army with? Oh well, it wasn't perfect.
***Our boss was really into Mission: Impossible, so whenever we had team get-togethers, video recordings of M:I episodes found their way onto the television.
****Narrator: For a smart person, Lucius wasn't as wise as his Wisdom score would indicate.
*****I'm still pissed about that turn of events. Not the actual 20 - 20 - 20 combination, as that was just unlucky rolls distilled into their purest form, but that the player who did the rolling thought it was the coolest thing ever. The rest of us were horrified --or maybe said a few choice four letter words-- but he and the DM thought it was awesome stuff. And that sincere lack of sympathy even out of game pissed me off.
While I was buried under work today, a sudden thought struck me:
What if World of Warcraft's Arenas were decoupled from the rest of the game?
Now, I don't mean that it's a separate program from WoW itself --although that could be an intriguing possibility-- but what if in the interest of getting new players into Arenas Blizzard essentially removes some of the roadblocks from getting people into Arenas?
In this case, I'm envisioning the following:
A player must have a subscription to WoW to participate in Arenas.
When you enter into an Arena fight, every player is set to a standard set of gear and their max level. It doesn't matter what your current level or gear is, everybody gets the current Season's PvP gear and is set to max level. Once the match is over, you return to your regular level and gear.
Customization (transmog) of your appearance is allowed, but offers no bonuses. They're just skins for the standard gear underneath.
Your class buffs are allowed, and every player is given access to a standard number of potions/scrolls/etc. based on their class, plus the PvP Trinket that breaks incapacitation. That's it.
All of your class abilities are still present for a max level toon.
All addons are disabled for an Arena match.
Arena victories yield rewards as standard, but since Arenas are temporary events, you can use your rewards to buy gear used in other PvP activities (such as Battlegrounds and World PvP).
If you want to play Arenas as they are now, you can under a separate naming convention. Call it 'Old School Arenas', maybe? Some people would hate to give up their addons to play, but others won't mind if it means they can play as soon as they subscribe to the game.
What this standardization process does is that it eliminates the grind and the gearing process from getting a player into Arenas. A player can create a toon and go straight into Arenas if they wish, or they can level and run dungeons, raid, or play in Battlegrounds. If you want to customize your PvP experience in the standard fashion --complete with addons and the grinding for gear process-- there's Old School Arenas to go play with.
I'm taking over a new position (it's a lateral move, don't worry) and after a month to a month and a half of "not much" going on, suddenly everything is happening at once. And my co-worker has taken a leave of absence for an unknown period of time, so it's all gotten dumped on me.
Oh yay.
Throw in the usual hits and misses as to whether certain parts of the job were missed or not, and.... Yeah.
Or as Nixxiom would put it in his Fun/Not Fun series of YouTube videos: NOT FUN.
Enough of my pity party; here's some memes about stress related to gaming and other stuff...
Yeah, I've been there. From SammichesPsychMeds.
Such is the nature of addiction. From OverMemes, a Facebook group.
Or worse, a floppy disk. I mean, remember when a clueless computer user would think those were coasters? From imgflip.
I have actually been in this situation, but then I die. From Instagram.
Friday night my Questing Buddy and I and another friend were attempting to complete Mara with 3 people (L60 Frost Mage, L60 Hunter, and L49 Holy Paladin) when the whisper came in.
"Hey, are you running boosts? I'll pay to join your group."
I didn't hesitate.
"Sorry, but we're running to get some quests done out of our log."
"Oh."
When I mentioned it to the group, my Questing Buddy pointed out that:
I am a Mage
I'm L60
I am in Maraudon
So, it made sense for people to think I was running boosts.
Which does make sense, but it kind of sucks. As I pointed out tonight when we ran Zul'Farrak with another friend, they had no idea I was a fresh L60 with absolutely no gear for running Frost Mage style boosts.
Or is it?
"I wonder if there's a Tacotip for Era. brb"
Sure enough, the dreaded GearScore app was available for Classic Era, and I quickly installed and restarted WoW.
"Yep, it's there. So there is a GearScore for Era."
"Oh great," my Questing Buddy grumbled. I could see why she'd be annoyed, as she had to deal with that enough in Wrath Classic.
"Well," I replied, "Era is a different beast. People here don't seem to care nearly as much about GS."
Which is a good thing, because unless you have a regular group to hang with, Wrath Classic pugging can be not a lot of fun. Another friend was complaining last night about a pugger being a real asshole in their Wrath Classic raid; he was complaining about the lack of DPS from people, and my friend was pointing out that she was taking care of the adds like she was supposed to, and here this pugger was shooting his mouth off implying they were all shit.
I could feel the heat from her words all the way up here in Cincy.
***
All this got me to thinking.
In my YouTube Recommended section, this particular video popped up:
I'm not a big Taliesin and Evitel fan, so I think he's kind of dancing around the problem that WoW has: it's player model of quickly leveling and then dungeon + raid (or as players in the Comments section pointed out that it's "Mythic+ and Raid") appeals to a small segment of the potential player base. I said 'potential' because I believe more people would play Retail WoW if the current model weren't so restrictive.*
A common theme in the Comments section was that WoW's Mythic+ pug scene is a toxic cesspool, and that perception --fair or not-- is going to drive people away from WoW if the alternative is to grind renown. And I can see that, because that was what happened to me in Wrath Classic. What I liked doing best in original Wrath, running heroic dungeons, was "enhanced" by Wrath's version of Mythic+ with the Heroic Plus (and Heroic Plus Plus) dungeons, which were all what people wanted to do once they came out.
But Taliesin saying that the Shadowlands 9.1 patch may go down as being the patch that eventually broke WoW is likely correct. It was bad enough that it broke the hold that the game had on enough people for the subs to likely plummet.**
And that leads right into another video, this time from Venruki:
Now, Venruki is a PvP player who plays Arenas, so he's got a different vantage point than I do. But the overall thrust of the video is that it takes far too much time and effort to get into playing Arenas if you're a new player, and all of the external systems --addons and whatnot-- are a major problem that keeps people from playing the game.
To illustrate his belief, he also points out at roughly 9:28 that damage rotations are far too complicated in Retail WoW, and uses the Arcane Mage raid rotation as an example.
Having played a Mage from late Wrath up through early Mists (and back again in Classic), I was floored by the complexity, which starts upwards of 10 seconds before the boss pull. Which to my mind, which sits in "I have to manage my mana" mode, is kind of nuts. When on top of it you have to also have situational awareness to move around and handle various aspects and mechanics of a boss fight, you're just asking for trouble.
Before anybody gets on a comment here saying "oh, it's not that bad, you only have to do that if you want to raid at a high level," let me tell you that perception is indeed reality. These videos are out there, and potential WoW players will see them. So commenters telling me "it's not that bad" are warring against that, not me, because those videos will tell people otherwise.
I can see why people aged 20-25 make up 37% of WoW players, and apparently people age 50+ make up only 0.5% of the WoW playerbase.*** It can feel that due to the complexity and requirements and whatnot that the game has passed me by.
NOTE: After this post, Shintar was able to determine that the data listed above came from a survey dating from 2013. (See the comments.) Whether or not the data is accurate is irrelevant, as the date of the survey is 10 years old. Therefore I'm striking the data and leaving the strikethrough visible. Still, I do feel that WoW is far to complex for its own good: it's difficult to get started, the systems you learn while leveling don't apply once you reach the current expansion, and the sheer grind and complexity once you reach max level becomes an albatross when newer gamers want to load up a game and just, well, play. And if you step away for a period of time, the game makes it paradoxically easy and hard to return: easy to level up, but hard to freaking pick up on all of the details you need if you want to truly embrace Endgame content again. And the community does itself no favors.
#Blaugust2023
*I get that my main complaint, that the story and focus has gone off the rails compared to Vanilla (and to a lesser extent TBC) days, is something that only a small portion of the potential player base is concerned with. To the majority of people playing Retail WoW, story only becomes a concern when it is gated behind a certain amount of activity (or in-game timers); whether the story makes sense or whether it appears to be created by conspiracy theorists in the midst of an LSD-induced fever dream isn't high on people's agenda. I'd probably be less harsh about the story if I felt like I had a stake in it, but really, I don't. Blizzard's story team made that plain when it is obvious that we're basically the meat shields for whatever the faction leads (or whoever else is in charge) decide.
**No, I have no idea if it is the case, just all I've heard. Even if it wasn't as bad as people say, the perception was bad enough that it takes on a life of its own.
***That chart that Nixxiom has on the video also shows people aged 30-40 make up 9% and 40-50 make up 1% of the player base, respectively. So... All us old farts who blog a lot are definitely in the minority.
EtA: Corrected some word flow.
EtA: Corrected some grammar.
EtA: It was Zul'Farrak, not Zul'Aman. Wrong Troll instance, and wrong expac.
This past week has been unseasonably cool for mid-August in the Ohio Valley, so my first inclination after work is to actually go outside for a bit and enjoy the outdoors. But me being me, I can't simply enjoy the outside without looking at the yard and thinking that "I need to work on that".
Like, oh, the deck.
Or my daughter's car.*
Or that garden plot we keep talking about putting in the backyard.
I tend to drive my kids bananas with plotting out how I'm going to get stuff done and when, because efficiency is a big deal when you've limited time to get something done.
And right now, you're probably snickering because I rail about the min/maxing that goes on in MMOs, when I do it myself in real life.
That's the difference, really: when I'm in an MMO I'm there to not do what I do irl; I want to relax. It takes some doing, but I do force myself to not min/max my way in MMOs. Sometimes it just leaks out, like knowing what crafted gear gets me good boosts while leveling, but in general I keep it under control.
While I rail against min/maxing in general, I'm fine with individuals doing it if that's what they want to do in game. Just don't expect me to do it. And the quickest way to make me dig in my heels and become as stubborn as a mule is to try to force me into doing it. After all, that's not the way to change someone's mind.
#Blaugust2023
*My youngest drove up to visit for the weekend, and when I happened to lean against her car it felt... chalky. "When did you last wash the car?" I asked.
"December."
"Uh oh." Her car needed a good polish or she was in danger of losing her paint job. Maybe if the car was only 5 years old she could have gotten away with it, but it's 14 years old (she bought it from my sister-in-law). "Let me work on that."
So I spent several hours over the weekend washing and then polishing her car to remove all the built up residue on the paint job. I hadn't used the car polish in ages, but I finished the bottle on Saturday and had to run to the auto store early on Sunday morning.
Well, I wasn't expecting this to happen that quickly, but...
Kind of fitting that it happens on the Onyxia quest line, which no longer exists in a post TBC world.
I honestly thought it'd happen after September 1st, but stuff happened and I got through the last couple of levels pretty quickly. (I remember it taking Azshandra, my first WoW Classic toon, upwards of 5 months to make it to max level in 2019-2020.)
I suppose I ought to work on another toon as well, but the Plaguelands are calling.
