Magnificent Failures: Magic of Incarnum

One thing that I've been thinking on recently is on a lot of game supplements that were what I would call magnificent failures. These are games or supplements that while they never quite managed to catch or really get a big level of focus or were somehow flawed still had a really good concept, idea or system that was lurking under the problems. One of my favorite examples for this was a D&D game for 3rd edition called Magic of Incarnum, it was a supplement that offered a new kind of magic system to the game.

Thematically Incarnum was the calling and binding of souls, you called on the essence of all who lived and all yet to be born, you channeled this energy into objects that symbolized heroes, villains, warriors, thieves, etc. It was a very interesting system conceptually, you could mix and match powers and features to either gain new abilities or augment existing ones. There were also a few options for someone wanting to dabble in it a bit the real problem with the system however is that...well it was very poorly implemented.

Using the powers to their fullest extent meant giving up item slots, doable and there were options for sharing slots and the like but it was still kind of iffy. Also a lot of it involved juggling a second resource called 'essentia' that you got from being an incarnum using class or by taking incarnum feats that granted you essentia in 1 per feat. You had to track how much essentia you invested in the feats, the soulmelds, etc. and you couldn't change it during the day so you had to make sure you knew what you wanted to do and what was supposed to go where. It was clunky and it added a lot of extra book keeping.

The secondary issue was this, the classes themselves that were meant to be the central incarnum users were for lack of a better term questionably designed. The Totemist was probably the best designed of the three but the problem I have with it is that it depends heavily on the natural weapons that some of its soulmelds offer without bothering to explain how they interact and essentially 'locking' certain slots automatically during game progression, it's overall still pretty good but it was a pet peeve. The Soulborn was the second creation, this one was more a problem of there not really being enough of the actual class feature available. What I mean is this, the class itself didn't get much to actually use the soulmelds and abilities this was particularly bothersome because it made it feel like they, a class BUILT for using the new system, were little more than dabblers.

The third class needs a lot of explanation, the Incarnate was sort of the flagship for the Incarnum classes in my view. It had the most essentia, most access to soulmelds and gained them the fastest. It had full armor proficiency and full weapon proficiency, decent saves as well, in fact there was only one problem, it had the base attack bonus of a primary caster, IE the wizards. The first problem here is simply that looking at it was a little confusing, most of the stuff shown, and the description they gave said that this was a combatant that harnessed Incarnum to augment themselves and their allies, but the wizard BaB said that they were going to have trouble hitting and that their main focus would apparently be elsewhere.

I think that there were two reasons that this happened, and it probably also explains why the Soulborn actually got so few Incarnum soulmelds. The first is that because of how a lot of the soulmelds worked you could actually get a really good bonus to hit, probably edging out the fighter or at least getting close even on the poor base attack bonus. The second one is more that the soulmelds were really versatile, it wasn't just combat bonuses. They offered bonuses for just about every skill, if your group woke up locked in jail cells stripped of gear you could simply summon up the hands of the thief, the rogues vest and a few others and suddenly the jail cells might as well be made of paper.

I think the fear was that due to potential versatility they were afraid of the Incarnate becoming too powerful, the same with the Soulborn. This is one of the areas where the designers might have botched things a bit, it's kind of where theory and practice veer in different directions. The amount of versatility was hypothetically a major power for the Incarnate, but due to elements of design much of the vaunted versatility would sit unused. The reason was simply this, with everything but the base attack bonus proclaiming that it was meant to fight in melee or at least in ranged, most points and abilities were likely to veer in that direction, the other abilities were likely to sit unused unless say the person playing the rogue couldn't make it to that session or something similar.

It's not that the versatility idea was bad, just that given the nature of the class that had it it was unlikely to really be very often used. I view it in ways similar to high level wizard or sorcerer spells that were designed to turn them into melee powerhouses. While the spells themselves may have been impressive they weren't really all that likely to be used, or if they were something had likely gone wrong somewhere or things had changed rather radically.

What made Incarnum such a magnificent failure in my view is that while there were a lot of things that went wrong with Incarnum there was actually a lot of really great stuff here. The concept of essentially harnessing the raw spiritual energy of all the universes souls, shaped my archetypes of heroism or villainy, is a pretty neat idea. The sheer number of options that you could mix and match from was pretty cool too. The other thing is simply that the idea was unique, it was very different and very dynamic, I applaud innovation in game design and while this experiment might have been problematic it was still quite an interesting one.

The Right Way to play pt. 3

In my last few posts I've tried to talk about the concept of a right way to play games and this last post is somewhat of a tricky one, in part because I want to finish it here and this question is the root of a lot of bigger arguments in gaming. The biggest issue with the idea of a right way to play, at least in my mind, is that it's sort of a mask for either a bigger question or idea that the person is trying to state.

It can be about gamestyle preferences, it can be a question of what a person brings to a game, really there are a lot of ways to look at it. One way is simply a matter of style and preference, the people talking about roleplay or optimization as if they were mutually exclusive for example. Another is a bit trickier and it's somewhat more prevalent in online gaming than it would be in tabletops.

In online games there can be said to be a more objective right and wrong way to play, part of why I say this is that those games are generally of a less 'sandbox' method in that classes or skillsets are designed for certain things and the game can't really alter itself based on learning curves on a case by case basis (barring server wide patches and the like). The games are also much more based around cooperation in that if a person doesn't build the warrior to tank as well as they can or the healer is built incorrectly...well that ends up making things hard for others and creating frustration for all those involved. Part of what makes a game work, and what makes a way to play 'right' or 'wrong' has to do with what makes all the people involved happy and lets them have fun.

Ignoring the systems, the arguments, etc. we all game to have fun, to relieve stress and do something interesting with out friends. Now the biggest thing in all of it is that you and those around you are having fun. Someone is playing the wrong way when they and those around them aren't having fun, sometimes it means that the person should redo their character, sometimes it means that the group needs to change in terms of some people leaving or something similar.

The right way to play pt. 2 (sorry this took so long)

Sorry to any readers out there, real life got in the way of things for a while, I guess I'm back and will hopefully be able to put out more posts and make something enjoyable.

When last I left my second issue in the idea of playing right or wrong had to do with the concept of a player focusing more on the mechanical aspect of the game, and when the others in the group complained he argued that he got into the game to fight monsters, slay dragons, and find treasure not sit in town conversing in 'thees and thous' with local yokels. For those who are familiar with such arguments part of this is from the whole 'roleplay vs rollplay' or 'optimization versus RP' and other things that crop up.

In some cases it's a false dichotomy started by people more enamored with RP than mechanics arguing that a person who has any interest in mechanics is clearly only interested in that and they don't know how to properly roleplay. While there can be cases where people obsess over raw numbers to the exclusion of any RP elements I think this is the exception rather than the rule. I also would argue that to an extent optimization IS roleplaying but that might be a discussion for another day. Now, some people might argue that the mechanically focused player in the example is playing wrong, or at least isn't playing the game to its full potential. Conversely people might also feel some sympathy for him, if he's in a game like Dungeons and Dragons, Hackmaster, or any other game that sells itself as a game full of action and exploration then it does seem a bit like the player in question might feel like they were the victim of a bait and switch. Depending on the game some might even argue that the roleplay centric players might be 'doing it wrong' if the game they're using is a much more heavily action oriented one.

This isn't to denigrate roleplayers either, roleplay can help bring a game more to life. It can help flesh out characters and work out backgrounds for them as well as make players feel like they're a part of the world and really care about the story and feel excited about that happens around them. Some games do a better job of stimulating roleplay than others and I won't say much more on that subject.

The real crux of the issue in this one is more a matter of player expectations and group style. I have had players who have told me of my own games that they are alternately too roleplay light or heavy, that we need more or less action, etc. Now a lot of it boils down to personal preference of the players and what the person running is comfortable with. This might be a case where the group would either need to seek a compromise, maybe doing more action sequences if reasonable along with trying to get the recalcitrant player to interact more with the story. It might also just be that the player is a bad fit for the group, he or she would be happier with a group that did more action, adventure and exploring in their games rather than emphasizing social interaction.

At least this is my view, if anyone has any comments, feel free to offer them in the comments section.