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[ZEITGEIST] The Continuing Adventures of Korrigan & Co.
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<blockquote data-quote="gideonpepys" data-source="post: 6175424" data-attributes="member: 79141"><p><strong>From further thoughts on Matunaaga to reflections on our approach to the campaign</strong></p><p></p><p>In case anyone is wondering what happened to the session reports, we've just had a three-week break, and I've been using the opportunity to ruminate on all things <em>Zeitgeist</em> because it helps me to bash these things out on a keyboard.</p><p></p><p>While on the subject of character themes, and the unique theme we developed for Matunaaga, I got to thinking about the way his entire character developed and what that says about how our game works.</p><p></p><p>First off, the crunch - we wanted a striker who worked equally well in range or in melee. (I know terms like 'striker' are an anathema to some, but at least we all know what I mean.) When I say 'we' I mean not only Matunaaga's player, but Korrigan and his unit: Matunaaga was coming in to replace El Perro, who had just been killed by the Gloomoil golem in the creepy warehouse near the end of <em>Dying Skyseer</em>.</p><p></p><p>A rogue wouldn't do: this player had just taken an artful rogue up to mid-epic tier in my previous campaign. So we settled on hunter ranger after lots of toing and froing. (The email thread runs to dozens of messages.) We then began to work out a look and a feel for the character, which saw even more discussion. For a while he was going to have a samurai feel to him; one iteration was based on the guy from <em>13 Assassins</em> (the ronin with the garden of katanas). But once we settled on the story and mechanics for the <em>maustin caji </em>(a name I now slightly regret stealing from another setting because it has too many connotations for me) we realised that, having abandoned his people and remained in Risur at the end of Yersaol IV (when the other caji returned to the Anthras Mts in disgust at the conduct of the war), Matunaaga was likely to have developed a means of fitting in with the indigenous people of the eastern Cloudwood - his adoptive home, whom in my campaign are analogous to Amerindians. So his final iteration saw him take on a similar look and feel to Hawkeye in the Last of the Mohicans (specifically, the Daniel Day Lewis incarnation), though with something a little distant, odd, alien or weird about him.</p><p></p><p>Then we decided that he would refuse to be recruited at first: Korrigan visits him out on the river, where he uses cormorants to fish, and Matunaaga gently rejects the request to join the unit. (He was one of a number of people Korrigan approached, all of whom were unsuitable in one way or another.)</p><p></p><p>Matunaaga was tired of war. He had fallen in love with a human woman (an older, maternal type, much to the surprise of the other players) with whom he has raised seven children (all orphans, as Matunaaga and his wife cannot have kids, what with him being, y'know, an alien and all – he ‘maustin’ are reskinned githzerai) and who he did not want to leave.</p><p></p><p>So Korrigan and crew were subjected to a cameo character - the appalling pixie Azure Lord Blackthorn - for several weeks before Matunaaga changed his mind, thanks to a skyseer vision from his wife, at which point they were joined by the graceful warrior.</p><p></p><p>All of the fluff worked out very nicely, but the crunch let us down: the hunter ranger doesn’t simply <em>allow</em> a character to switch effectively between melee and range, it actively <em>encourages</em> the character to constantly switch between the two, for no other reason than that it is mechanically beneficial. Which is actually pretty silly if you think about it. So Matunaaga would strike with his blade, switch to his rifle, shift away, fire, switch back to his blade, shift back in, strike with his blade, wash, rinse, repeat. It got a bit daft, and meant that Korrigan and the rest of the team couldn’t rely on him being in one spot from one round to the next.</p><p></p><p>So, with the discovery of the palimpsest, and the encounter with Gene, we set about ushering in a change to Matunaaga’s fighting style. In keeping with his ambition to make himself a ‘living weapon’ in the service of Korrigan (and Risur), he has embraced mankind’s oldest weapon – the fist – in conjunction with his latest – the gun. To that effect, we gradually altered Matunaaga over the course of a couple of levels from hunter ranger to a hybrid ranger/monk (quite heavily modified so as not to be utterly hopeless). The concept of a marksman who is able to strike out with his feet and fists, and treats both forms of combat with a ritualistic reverence is (for us at least) both a novel and an compelling one, and I wish we’d thought of it in the first place, during the dozens and dozens of development emails!</p><p></p><p>This brings me to the interesting part: the original method we used to design the unit. The idea was that it was handpicked by Korrigan, so the idea of having unique roles/functions for each of the PCs (which sometimes feels a bit ‘metagamey’) made absolute sense. Each player was given a role to fill – preferably one they hadn’t filled before – and asked to come up with a character concept centred on a keyword – a simple word or phrase that summed up their character and explained his place within the team. As Zeitgeist (and 4E) is very cinematic, I insisted that each player should view his character concept as a writer’s pitch to a TV producer: does your character fit in the campaign in the way a primary character fits in an ongoing TV show? What is the ‘shtick’ that differentiates him from the others and makes him popular with the audience?</p><p></p><p>Bringing in Matunaaga was interesting because we had to replace more than just a ‘striker’ in El Perro. El Perro was the good-looking, womanising hero of the group. His keyword was simply <em>cool</em>. He was the only real human in the group, and it would have been a huge surprise if his character had been killed in a TV show! That’s what made it cool. It was only when thinking about this (and realising that asking my player to fill too many shoes at once was quite restricting) that I realised the <em>real</em> hero of the group was in fact Marshal Korrigan. He is the moral focus of the group. He has a romantic and tragic personal life. He could be played in the movie by Idris Elba. That freed us up to make Matunaaga less obvious. But this was a very different experience to bringing in a character to other campaigns, where it was much more freeform and pretty much up to the player to do what they liked.</p><p></p><p>To reiterate a house-rule we introduced to keep these elements alive, the players earn ‘bennies’ for doing/saying something that encapsulates their keyword. Bennies are cool, and the players want to earn them. To begin with we used hero points, but now we dish out <em>Plot Twist Cards</em>, which are great fun and open up all sorts of possibilities.</p><p></p><p>Korrigan earns bennies for being moral and honourable – for being a true leader and keeping his unit in check. A good example would be when he refused to stoop to blackmail to score political points during the latest skill challenge. He’s the chief, the leader and the hero.</p><p></p><p>Uru gets a benny each time he is sinister or creepy. This isn’t hard for him to do and he earns quite a lot. His relationship with the spirits of Cauldron Hill is a good example. But he is played for comic relief more often than not. He’s the fool, the sidekick, the mascot.</p><p></p><p>Rumdoom was (is) Rumdoom. A more accurate description would be ‘manic depressive’ but that felt a bit anachronistic. Within a few weeks of play everyone knew what to expect from him without an accurate keyword. Since his brush with death at the hands of a kraken, a better word would be ‘evangelical’ as he develops an interpretation of eschatology that is focused on himself as a kind of messianic figure. He’s the ‘breakout’ character – popular with all the other players; cheered on regardless of whatever mess he gets himself into or out of. He used to have a deathwish; now he believes he can’t be killed. Acting recklessly earns him bennies. Rumdoom provides a great deal of comic relief too.</p><p></p><p>Leon is a turncoat tiefling with a dark secret, and a past that saw him mercilessly persecute the fey. Now he is a fey pact warlock, vekeshi mystic, and perhaps the most loyal, certainly the most reliable member of the group. His keyword morphed during play until we settled on resourceful. When he comes up with solutions or pulls off some neat trick to get the group out of trouble he earns a benny. He’s one of two ‘master hunter’ characters who get things done.</p><p></p><p>Malthusius is avuncular and philosophical. He earns bennies for acts of humanity and kindness, such as taking a tray of food to the below-decks guards on the Coaltongue. He is very much the ‘wise man’ or ‘shaman’ of the group. He had outsider status for a while, as he wasn’t a full member of the unit, and only Korrigan would listen to his advice. But the others have gradually realised that he is, more often than not, worth heeding.</p><p></p><p>Matunaaga is graceful, both in word and deed. When he reacts to situations with great patience and self-control he earns a benny. When confronted by two caji and challenged for possession of the Palimpsest, instead of rolling for initiative, he sat down cross legged and refused to be provoked. He’s the other ‘master hunter’ in the unit.</p><p></p><p>The benny system has worked very well - far better than I had anticipated. It really helps players who are reluctant to roleplay because it gives them a clear focus and a incentive to overcome their natural reticance and shyness. And creating a differentiated unit has worked wonders too, as even outside of combat, each character has opportunities to 'do their thing' - be moral, creepy, crazy, resourceful, thoughful, or gracious.</p><p></p><p>Now we are nearing paragon tier, I feel more comfortable growing attached to and celebrating these characters: At the start of the campaign we imposed a rule that there would be no resurrection in heroic tier. If a character died, they were dead. From paragon onwards, it will be up to the player to decide if they want to return to the fray following a fatal incident, and I’m assuming that they will, for the most part. The only thing that might happen – now the first section of the campaign has gone on rather longer than I’d anticipated – is that the group might split up, or a player might leave. But, as we head towards our first session of <em>Cauldron Born</em> (which I don’t mean to start until the birth of my son, whenever that may be, as a good few weeks off will probably be in order) I am very much hoping that we will still be playing <em>Zeitgeist</em> right up to its climax in twenty levels’ time.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="gideonpepys, post: 6175424, member: 79141"] [b]From further thoughts on Matunaaga to reflections on our approach to the campaign[/b] In case anyone is wondering what happened to the session reports, we've just had a three-week break, and I've been using the opportunity to ruminate on all things [I]Zeitgeist[/I] because it helps me to bash these things out on a keyboard. While on the subject of character themes, and the unique theme we developed for Matunaaga, I got to thinking about the way his entire character developed and what that says about how our game works. First off, the crunch - we wanted a striker who worked equally well in range or in melee. (I know terms like 'striker' are an anathema to some, but at least we all know what I mean.) When I say 'we' I mean not only Matunaaga's player, but Korrigan and his unit: Matunaaga was coming in to replace El Perro, who had just been killed by the Gloomoil golem in the creepy warehouse near the end of [I]Dying Skyseer[/I]. A rogue wouldn't do: this player had just taken an artful rogue up to mid-epic tier in my previous campaign. So we settled on hunter ranger after lots of toing and froing. (The email thread runs to dozens of messages.) We then began to work out a look and a feel for the character, which saw even more discussion. For a while he was going to have a samurai feel to him; one iteration was based on the guy from [I]13 Assassins[/I] (the ronin with the garden of katanas). But once we settled on the story and mechanics for the [I]maustin caji [/I](a name I now slightly regret stealing from another setting because it has too many connotations for me) we realised that, having abandoned his people and remained in Risur at the end of Yersaol IV (when the other caji returned to the Anthras Mts in disgust at the conduct of the war), Matunaaga was likely to have developed a means of fitting in with the indigenous people of the eastern Cloudwood - his adoptive home, whom in my campaign are analogous to Amerindians. So his final iteration saw him take on a similar look and feel to Hawkeye in the Last of the Mohicans (specifically, the Daniel Day Lewis incarnation), though with something a little distant, odd, alien or weird about him. Then we decided that he would refuse to be recruited at first: Korrigan visits him out on the river, where he uses cormorants to fish, and Matunaaga gently rejects the request to join the unit. (He was one of a number of people Korrigan approached, all of whom were unsuitable in one way or another.) Matunaaga was tired of war. He had fallen in love with a human woman (an older, maternal type, much to the surprise of the other players) with whom he has raised seven children (all orphans, as Matunaaga and his wife cannot have kids, what with him being, y'know, an alien and all – he ‘maustin’ are reskinned githzerai) and who he did not want to leave. So Korrigan and crew were subjected to a cameo character - the appalling pixie Azure Lord Blackthorn - for several weeks before Matunaaga changed his mind, thanks to a skyseer vision from his wife, at which point they were joined by the graceful warrior. All of the fluff worked out very nicely, but the crunch let us down: the hunter ranger doesn’t simply [I]allow[/I] a character to switch effectively between melee and range, it actively [I]encourages[/I] the character to constantly switch between the two, for no other reason than that it is mechanically beneficial. Which is actually pretty silly if you think about it. So Matunaaga would strike with his blade, switch to his rifle, shift away, fire, switch back to his blade, shift back in, strike with his blade, wash, rinse, repeat. It got a bit daft, and meant that Korrigan and the rest of the team couldn’t rely on him being in one spot from one round to the next. So, with the discovery of the palimpsest, and the encounter with Gene, we set about ushering in a change to Matunaaga’s fighting style. In keeping with his ambition to make himself a ‘living weapon’ in the service of Korrigan (and Risur), he has embraced mankind’s oldest weapon – the fist – in conjunction with his latest – the gun. To that effect, we gradually altered Matunaaga over the course of a couple of levels from hunter ranger to a hybrid ranger/monk (quite heavily modified so as not to be utterly hopeless). The concept of a marksman who is able to strike out with his feet and fists, and treats both forms of combat with a ritualistic reverence is (for us at least) both a novel and an compelling one, and I wish we’d thought of it in the first place, during the dozens and dozens of development emails! This brings me to the interesting part: the original method we used to design the unit. The idea was that it was handpicked by Korrigan, so the idea of having unique roles/functions for each of the PCs (which sometimes feels a bit ‘metagamey’) made absolute sense. Each player was given a role to fill – preferably one they hadn’t filled before – and asked to come up with a character concept centred on a keyword – a simple word or phrase that summed up their character and explained his place within the team. As Zeitgeist (and 4E) is very cinematic, I insisted that each player should view his character concept as a writer’s pitch to a TV producer: does your character fit in the campaign in the way a primary character fits in an ongoing TV show? What is the ‘shtick’ that differentiates him from the others and makes him popular with the audience? Bringing in Matunaaga was interesting because we had to replace more than just a ‘striker’ in El Perro. El Perro was the good-looking, womanising hero of the group. His keyword was simply [I]cool[/I]. He was the only real human in the group, and it would have been a huge surprise if his character had been killed in a TV show! That’s what made it cool. It was only when thinking about this (and realising that asking my player to fill too many shoes at once was quite restricting) that I realised the [I]real[/I] hero of the group was in fact Marshal Korrigan. He is the moral focus of the group. He has a romantic and tragic personal life. He could be played in the movie by Idris Elba. That freed us up to make Matunaaga less obvious. But this was a very different experience to bringing in a character to other campaigns, where it was much more freeform and pretty much up to the player to do what they liked. To reiterate a house-rule we introduced to keep these elements alive, the players earn ‘bennies’ for doing/saying something that encapsulates their keyword. Bennies are cool, and the players want to earn them. To begin with we used hero points, but now we dish out [I]Plot Twist Cards[/I], which are great fun and open up all sorts of possibilities. Korrigan earns bennies for being moral and honourable – for being a true leader and keeping his unit in check. A good example would be when he refused to stoop to blackmail to score political points during the latest skill challenge. He’s the chief, the leader and the hero. Uru gets a benny each time he is sinister or creepy. This isn’t hard for him to do and he earns quite a lot. His relationship with the spirits of Cauldron Hill is a good example. But he is played for comic relief more often than not. He’s the fool, the sidekick, the mascot. Rumdoom was (is) Rumdoom. A more accurate description would be ‘manic depressive’ but that felt a bit anachronistic. Within a few weeks of play everyone knew what to expect from him without an accurate keyword. Since his brush with death at the hands of a kraken, a better word would be ‘evangelical’ as he develops an interpretation of eschatology that is focused on himself as a kind of messianic figure. He’s the ‘breakout’ character – popular with all the other players; cheered on regardless of whatever mess he gets himself into or out of. He used to have a deathwish; now he believes he can’t be killed. Acting recklessly earns him bennies. Rumdoom provides a great deal of comic relief too. Leon is a turncoat tiefling with a dark secret, and a past that saw him mercilessly persecute the fey. Now he is a fey pact warlock, vekeshi mystic, and perhaps the most loyal, certainly the most reliable member of the group. His keyword morphed during play until we settled on resourceful. When he comes up with solutions or pulls off some neat trick to get the group out of trouble he earns a benny. He’s one of two ‘master hunter’ characters who get things done. Malthusius is avuncular and philosophical. He earns bennies for acts of humanity and kindness, such as taking a tray of food to the below-decks guards on the Coaltongue. He is very much the ‘wise man’ or ‘shaman’ of the group. He had outsider status for a while, as he wasn’t a full member of the unit, and only Korrigan would listen to his advice. But the others have gradually realised that he is, more often than not, worth heeding. Matunaaga is graceful, both in word and deed. When he reacts to situations with great patience and self-control he earns a benny. When confronted by two caji and challenged for possession of the Palimpsest, instead of rolling for initiative, he sat down cross legged and refused to be provoked. He’s the other ‘master hunter’ in the unit. The benny system has worked very well - far better than I had anticipated. It really helps players who are reluctant to roleplay because it gives them a clear focus and a incentive to overcome their natural reticance and shyness. And creating a differentiated unit has worked wonders too, as even outside of combat, each character has opportunities to 'do their thing' - be moral, creepy, crazy, resourceful, thoughful, or gracious. Now we are nearing paragon tier, I feel more comfortable growing attached to and celebrating these characters: At the start of the campaign we imposed a rule that there would be no resurrection in heroic tier. If a character died, they were dead. From paragon onwards, it will be up to the player to decide if they want to return to the fray following a fatal incident, and I’m assuming that they will, for the most part. The only thing that might happen – now the first section of the campaign has gone on rather longer than I’d anticipated – is that the group might split up, or a player might leave. But, as we head towards our first session of [I]Cauldron Born[/I] (which I don’t mean to start until the birth of my son, whenever that may be, as a good few weeks off will probably be in order) I am very much hoping that we will still be playing [I]Zeitgeist[/I] right up to its climax in twenty levels’ time. [/QUOTE]
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