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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Shaman" data-source="post: 2027400" data-attributes="member: 26473">Hello, I'm The Shaman and I'll be your Dissenting Voice today. May I tell you about our specials?Actually, I think I'm more in agreement with hong than less, but there are a few points....The first is aesthetic: Underworld sucked worse than a five-dollar whore. Terrible movie. I was apalled to see Kate Beckinsale and Bill Nighy appear in this dreck. I think Kate Beckinsale is a brilliant actress - Much Ado about Nothing, The Last Days of Disco, and Laurel Canyon are amazing films - and she tries mightily to rise above the awful script, but it's an unwinnable battle.With a few exceptions - The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon the most prominent - wire-fu stunts are over-rated. Underworld is a Goth Charlie's Angels, or Van Helsing with Glocks instead of chakrams. For brilliant action sequences give me Burt Lancaster in The Crimson Pirate or Matt Damon in The Bourne Identity any day.Notice that I said nothing about originality. A movie can be scintillating without being original - Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World isn't original, it's simply the best of the "wooden ships and iron men" genre of filmmaking. For that matter so can a roleplaying game adventure, which leads me to my second point...The second is gaming-oriented: Tight adventure plots and complex NPCs are A Good Thing.Does this mean I think RPG's should be bad amateur theater night at a friend's house? Should the GM be a rail-baron? No on both counts.Good plots ratchet up tension. They give the players and their characters the sense that the imaginary world is alive, that events transpire around regardless of their actions until or unless they involve themselves in them. The key is to make the plot something in which the players may (or may not) choose to involve themselves, that it should respond to, not dictate, character actions.I like intrigue and good intrigue requires intriguing personalities - puzzles without personalities are usually preceded by the phrase, "cross-word." That means complex, detailed NPCs, NPCs with a past and a future as well as a present. It's having motivations and goals, and acting on both of them. If this makes the NPC more interesting than a PC, then it's probably because the player didn't invest the effort to be so.Should NPCs dominate the action? Generally speaking, no, of course not, but there are those few times when the PCs may find themselves taking a backseat - this isn't to take away from what the PCs are doing, but to give the illusion to the players that the world is a place that spins on its own axis. Sometimes the PCs shouldn't be the ones selected for the mission, or be the one's who get the girl - if played right frustrations should act as a source of motivation: rivalries develop (both friendly and un- ), characters seek to avenge a loss or humiliation, and so on. PCs, especially low-level PCs, should expect to get ordered around a bit if they put themselves in the service of another, and there should be consequences for failing to follow directions or orders.I don't believe the player characters start out at the top of the heap - I think the game is about them working their way up to "king of the mountain." That means interacting with NPCs who may hold more cards than the PCs at that particular moment in time, which makes their eventual success that much sweeter.Finally, I like action too, but it should be interesting action, not action for its own sake. Combat is way over-rated, particularly in a game with such a broad skill system. Fording a raging river, parachuting out of a plane, sneaking past a guardpost - these things are "action" as well. So is hacking a computer, scrying a dragon, or treating a half-dozen wounded soldiers. It's not all about the guy with the +5 glaive-guisarme of awesome bloodiness, the dual-wielded mastercraft D'Eagles, or the empowered quickened extended frosted vitamin-fortified meteor swarm. In a living/breathing campaign there are lots of ways to "kick butt."Time for me to put on the Nomex (R) and await the inevitable flames...</blockquote>

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