Monday, November 20, 2017

The Primary Colors: The Fighter

Hey all,

I thought now would be a good chance to take a look at the classes in tabletop gaming that I'd call the primary colors. The reasons should be obvious, there's three of them, and every other class can be described as one of these three "but" . . .

The three classes I'm talking about are, of course, Fighter, Rogue, and Mage. This is tabletop gaming, so these won't be the same as MMOs' "Holy Trinity" of Tank, DPS, and Heal. We'll start with the most straightforward of these classes: the fighter.

The fighter is what I'll call a blow for blow combatant. At the most basic level, these are martial experts who are intended to both deliver and receive the physical violence of the adventure. Their most important attributes in the OGL are Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution. In d20 systems, the fighter is what we'll call the "feat monkey". Fighters collect feats, and feats make fighters more and more specialized for a specific form of combat.

The fighter's twin strengths are his defensive and offensive might. The fighter is difficult to best in head-to-head single combat. However, the fighter can easily become so specialized that they lose any battlefield versatility, and their lack of need for mental and social stats places those traits lower in their priorities. Fighters are not necessarily dumb and brutish, they simply often lack intrinsic motivation to improve mentally or socially.

The stereotypical fighter fills the party role of the muscle, the intimidator, the enforcer, and more often than other classes: the leader. They are commonly associated with traits such as: stoic, harsh, blunt, uncharismatic, tough, brutal, and disciplined.

Within fantasy, many variants on the fighter exist: the knight, the ranger, the barbarian, and the monk are some of the classic modified versions of the vanilla fighter. In other genres, the fighter is simply the blow for blow combatant who puts his faith in strength of arms. Soldiers, mech pilots, gunslingers, sheriffs, dockworkers, bouncers, prize fighters, raiders, gladiatorial slaves, and even some career military officers would best be played as variants of the basic fighter.

Now, on to the fun part: in a gag campaign, there are a lot of fun ways to add humor to the stereotypes and archetypes of the fighter. "Lawful stupid" is the classic, and it turns the fighter into anything from a penal-code spouting deputy all the way up to a raging inquisitioner.

Their inaptitude for all things magical opens up some opportunities to make mischief through ignorance. Just say "Oooo, what does this rune do?" in your best Deedee impression, and let the shenanigans commence.

Their hero complex can also be played for laughs. Zap Brannigan gets laughs for a reason, and JourneyQuest had one of the best lines, as the dim-witted Glorion boasted "Mercy? Perf, I'm far too brave to show you mercy!"

Finally, you can pick your airplane. B.A. Baracus from The A Team is a fighter in every sense of the word, and yet, his fear of airplanes not only draws a laugh, but humanizes his character amazingly well. Think of Indiana Jones and snakes. Think of Son Goku and needles. The classic humor route for the larger-than-life bringer of the pain is a major fear of a minor thing.

So, with that, we close for now on our discussion of the fighter. Did you agree with my thoughts on the fighter class? Do you have anything to add on what makes this "primary color" class what it is? Let's talk about that in the comments below, and until next time: happy gaming, all.

Monday, November 13, 2017

The Sovereign Sponge

Hey all,

Thought I'd share a little bit of gamemasterly insight with y'all today. So . . . storytime!

Today I was thinking about how swords don't tend to work well against gelatinous enemies in fantasy settings. Typically, dungeons will include some variety of mold, slime, or ooze that blindly devours all in its path: rubble, player characters, what-have-you.

Now, I don't know why this became a thing. I'd probably attribute it to Gygax, but I'll admit, that's just a guess. I can't think of anything like this in Tolkien, so Gygax is a fairly safe bet.

Still, it's basically a fight against a giant jello mold. Real-life jello isn't best dealt with using blades, but it's also not something you'd normally take care of with blunt force. All that really leaves is a sponge.

Enter, the sovereign sponge (and yes, the name is an homage to sovereign glue). Simply toss the sponge into an ooze, and it draws in the entire enemy into itself. Naturally, such an item would be fairly valuable to the right brand of adventurer.

Of course, this leads to the next question, what if someone drops one into the ocean? This lead me back to a fantasy theory I'd seen before. Someone once pointed out that the magical spell "create water" is worded in such a way that, so long as the water gets consumed, it remains in the world permanently. Based on that, the theory went, it makes perfect sense that flooding would one day become an issue.

How does that relate to the sovereign sponge? It not only explains how the world can survive a sovereign sponge dropped into the ocean (the sponges absorb water at a rate that offsets the average rate of water creation from the "create water" spell), it actually explains why the invention of the sovereign sponge was necessary. This was made as a magical countermeasure to the effects of a widespread, low-level magical ability.

With all of this, we've established a very tenuous balance in the natural world. This gives us plot hooks for a campaign built around the concept of the sovereign sponge:

-In drought conditions, a mage decides to calculate and carry out a ritual spell that will neutralize all existing sovereign sponges to raise water levels worldwide.

-As magic becomes more widespread, many coastal towns are putting out bounties for the reagents necessary to have more sovereign sponges crafted to deal with the rising ocean levels.

-The death of magic, in addition to everything else attendant on the trope, comes with a mad max style loss of the world's oceans, as the create water spell ceases, but the sovereign sponges carry on unabated.

-A golem constructed from sovereign sponges constitutes a world-ending threat, and sparks deep philosophical questions about a sentient being's right to exist.

- Guild secrets about the manufacture of sovereign sponges are both closely guarded, and pursued for the promise of lucrative rewards for anyone who can duplicate the technique.

These are just a few campaign hook ideas for the sovereign sponge. What would you do with the sovereign sponge in your own campaign worlds?

Monday, November 6, 2017

All Funnies and Games Update

Hey all,

Just to update the regular readers; thing have been branching out pretty far from the blog itself. My Youtube channel has been going well: with let's plays, game-related vlogs, unboxings, and more. I've been working on my twitter presence (slowly), and am looking at more content avenues in the future.

In the meantime, I do want to let everyone know that I'll be deleting the old Friday Funnies segments from the archive soon. I tried to link to the original content as often as possible, and, as a result, those posts are mostly collections of now-dead links. I'll probably be doing that in the next few days.

If you've been reading for a while, you probably have a good idea what this blog is all about, but I'd love to hear some feedback on the type of content you'd like to see moving forward. Leave comments below, or tweet them to me @JosephCoupal. I'd love to get my readers' feedback as I get ready to take this blog forward.

Thanks for reading, all.

Monday, October 30, 2017

"Show Your Work" the 3d4 vs 2d6 follow-up

Hey all,

This Saturday, I posted a video to the All Funnies and Games Youtube channel. If you haven't seen it already, you can watch the video here.

What's there is enough to answer our question, which was, "If you can select either 2d6 or 3d4 for a best two out of three roll-off, and leave your opponent with the other, which should you pick?" However, that's not all of the supporting number-crunching necessary to be sure of the result. (The result was 3d4, by the way). So, here, I'll be posting a chunk of dice mechanics-related content to, hopefully, give you some food for thought in looking deeper into these mechanics yourself.

Defining the Formula
- We will write our formula as xdy.
- x = the number of random number generators whose outcomes will be added together
- y = the highest possible outcome of each random number generator used, these random number generators can only produce a whole number between 1 and y
- each random number generator will produce one outcome, all outcomes will be added together, the sum of these will be called the "result" of xdy

Rules
Rule 1: The lowest possible result of xdy will always be x

Rule 2: The highest possible result of xdy will always be x times y

Rule 3: The number of possible die results will always be (x times y) - (x-1)
--For the purposes of rule 3, results does not differentiate a 7 made from a 2 and a 5, from a 7 made from a 1 and a 6, etc.

Rule 4: The number of possible die results made from different combinations of die faces will always be y^x
--For the purposes of rule 4, results DOES differentiate a 7 made from a 2 and a 5, from a 7 made from a 1 and a 6, etc.

Rule 5: The likelihood of getting either the most or least likely result is always 1:y^x

Rule 6: If (x times y) - (x-1) results in an even number, the most likely result will NOT be a whole number.

Rule 7: IF (x times y) - (x-1) results in an odd number, the most likely result will be a whole number.

Rule 8 [(y+1)/2] times x = average result of xdy.

Tables


Here's hoping this is some information that'll come in handy as you look into dice and statistics yourself. What resources have helped you plan probabilities in your own tabletop games? Let's talk about that in the comments. Happy Gaming, all.

Monday, October 23, 2017

My Hero Academia: Bottom 5 from 1-A

Hey all,

Today, we're talking My Hero Academia again. Last time was a lot of fun, so I thought I'd do the reverse of that. Today, we're doing the bottom five of class 1-A. These are the worst of the best, so they're still a cut above the rank and file, but by 1-A standards, there's something to be desired. We'll start with fifth from the bottom, and end with the worst student in class 1-A.

#5 Rikido Sato AKA Sugarman

It's a bad sign that we didn't even know this hero's power until the last arc of season 2. His power is . . . okay? Sugar makes him strong, and also dumb. More sugar = more strong and more dumb. To be fair, he barely made this list. There's nothing specifically terrible about him, he's just really, really, meh.

#4 Hanta Sero AKA Cellophane

This is literally the first image when you look up "cellophane" on google. "Cellophane mha" didn't yield any better results, and "cellophane" did not have one image of the My Hero character before reaching the load more results button. Every single time Cellophane is on screen, my first reaction is "Oh yeah, they have a tape guy." He is a silence from Doctor Who: I think his real quirk is that everyone, audience included, purges his existence from their memory whenever he is out of sight.

#3 Yuga Aoyama AKA Can't Stop Twinkling

This guy is everything done right in other characters, all done wrong in one character. Tenya is upright and knightly in a better way. Yaoyorozu is aristocratic in a better way. His ranged attack is not shown to be more powerful than Bakugo's or Todoroki's. On top of all of that, his weakness is that he gets stomachaches from using his quirk. In his own words: "Shooting my beautiful beam for more than a second hurts my tummy." A second? That's a seriously low threshold for a superpower. Also, sorry, dude. You can't be a superhero if you say "tummy".

#2 Katsuki Bakugo 

Bakugo might turn things around, and, honestly, I hope he does. His quirk is real cool to watch, and he's had enough backstory investment that, sure, I get why he's how he is. Still, how he is, is arrogant and violent. He attributes his strength to birthright. Thing is, we've seen people raised to not respond well to criticism. We've seen characters who believe that the strength of their birthright entitles them to be better than others. We've seen everything wrong with Bakugo. We saw it in Avatar: the Last Airbender, when we met Azula. Bakugo's an intersting character, but right now he makes more sense as a villain than as a hero, which is a problem in hero school. He would be a better fit for the League of Villains.

#1 Minoru Mineta AKA Grape Juice

Alright, here he is. Mineta is the worst member of class 1-A. His powers are odd, but they're actually not bad. He says that if he uses them too much, he'll bleed, but that's got to be a high threshold, because we've never seen it happen. He has a decently tactical mind, and has proven useful in several tests, made a respectable showing in the sports festival, and played a key role in defending the USJ. However, his behavior is absolutely reprehensible. We know the reputation lawyers have for unscrupulous behavior, and Mineta would have been drummed out of law school for sexual harassment at this point, let alone hero school. Frankly, the inappropriate touching could, in most cases, be attributed to unfortunate hand placement and claimed as an accident, but the comments he's made, and his attempt to peep through the wall between the locker rooms should have has him drummed out of any reputable institution. Barring that, I hope the creators clean up his act, or at least take him out of the spotlight, in the seasons to come.


So, there's class 1-A's bottom of the class, in my opinion. While Bakugo kind of needs a plot resolution at this point, the rest could disappear without much notice (and I think Aoyama might have already dropped off. I can't remember the last time I saw him in an episode). If you enjoyed the article, share it with a friend, or check out what I've got on youtube at All Funnies and Games. Thanks for reading, and have a great day.

Tuesday, October 17, 2017

The Royal Game of Ur

Hey all,

Not a full post today, but I had to share this video I saw. This is such a wonderful celebration of what games are and have been and could be: and I wanted my readers to get to see this too, and enjoy it like I have. Happy gaming, all.


Monday, October 16, 2017

My Hero Academia: Top Five from 1-A

Hey all,

With the recent conclusion of My Hero Academia season 2, I thought it'd be fun to revisit the series and go over some of my favorite characters. To be clear, I've only seen the anime, and know nothing of these character's actions in the manga.

This top five will include only the students of class 1-A, and Deku gets the honorable mention of being a Shonen protagonist, and so, the plot of the series is on his side too much to make it a fair contest if he's involved. We know more about him than anyone, and the universe he lives in goes out of its way to make him as awesome as possible.
Looking at you, Great Will of the Macrocosm
Yeah, she's not in My Hero, but come on, Deku's got plot armor.

So, with Deku excluded, let's look at the best of class 1-A. Spoilers ahead, obviously.

#5 Ochaco Uraraka AKA Uravity

Uravity has been a principal in the series since episode 3, but it wasn't until the tournament arc that we saw more than the cheerful exterior charm to this character. Not only did she come up with the same plan that Deku was going to suggest, but she improved on it. She turned making things float into a powerhouse attack that could go toe to toe with at-will explosions. Her performance rightfully shocked the audience, and she's only become more of a combat threat since her internship with Gunhead. 

#4 Mina Ashido AKA Alien Queen AKA Pinkie

Ashido is the least narratively fleshed-out character on this list, yet we do have some key details about her character, personality, and quirk. She consistently operates from a place of optimism. When things start to look dark her first thought might be mild panic, but she's one of the few characters to avoid outright defeatism and melancholy. Her quirk seems like it could be pretty powerful, and I hope the summer training arc ahead shows us some more of what she's capable of. Also, unlikely as it may be, I think an internship with Best Jeanist and a name change to Acid Wash would be a fun direction to take the character. 

#3 Tenya Iida AKA Ingenium
Tenya Iida is not only 1-A'a class rep, but he's the epitome of the "class rep" archetype. Straight-laced, rules oriented, and visually carrying the classic black hair and glasses look that absolutely screams "the responsible one in this show." Kyoya Ootori would be proud. Yet, there's an intensity of character to him that fits the other common archetype to adopt these looks and mannerisms. There is something of the cruel mastermind to his character. The glasses and hair are also reminiscent of the Gendo look. With Tenya, there is a mixture. His law-abiding nature quickly devolves into bitter vengeance at the injury of his brother. Though he regrets this lapse of morals, there's no guarantee that Tenya's darker side won't surface again as the battles intensify and the mathematics of war seek to corrupt the innocent heroism he once aspired to. 

#4 Tsuyu Asui AKA Su AKA Froppy

Froppy is just great in a way that few characters can attain to. She's got nearly Ashido's optimism combined with a hearty portion of sass and blunt truth. What's more, she showed a greater capacity for practical heroism in her internship than any other hero. Granted, some had far less opportunity to shine, and some heroes like Best Jeanist and Uwabami, did very little in comparison to the hands-on training provided by Selkie. Even without the drug bust, Selkie expected more of his intern; and Froppy rose to the occasion. Not only did she show herself a capable combatant, but well capable of taking orders and working on a team without letting ego cause problems. To date, almost no one else has shown the ability to follow into battle quite like Froppy. 

#1 Shoto Todoroki

Todoroki has, from the start, been one of the most consistently powerful characters on the show. He was admitted to UA on recommendation, which carries some distinction. He also spent season one and a bit of time in season two essentially operating at half power. His back story is dark, and to sum it up briefly, his mother was forced into a marriage intended to create children with powerful quirks, and Todoroki gets his white hair, brown eye, and ice powers from her. His father, Endeavor, is a pro hero who used his status to force the marriage and breed an heir powerful enough to challenge rivals Endeavor couldn't fight on his own. From his father, Todoroki inherited his red hair, blue eye, and fire powers. His arc has been one of accepting himself, and accepting his heritage as his own to do with as he wishes. He has learned to accept his fire powers without accepting the criminal actions of the father he inherited those powers from. Through all of this, he has emerged as a potent and heroic character with the potential to truly be one of the greats as the series goes on. 


So, there we have it, my top five favorite members of class 1-A in My Hero Academia. I'll probably do more of these types of articles to cope with the hiatus, however long that turns out to be. If you enjoyed the article, share it with a friend, or check out what I've got on youtube at All Funnies and Games. Thanks for reading, and have a great day.