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Jul. 4th, 2010 08:00 amOnly several entries ago, when I wrote about my chat with Melissa, I mentioned something about Dungeons & Dragons. Jake wondered what that was all about, and shared something with me two nights ago called Big Eyes, Small Mouth, which he said might interest me more than the typical medieval stuff that we're all familiar with. I'll get to that soon enough.
Well, this whole thing has mainly to do with building up the story for part I of Monster Collection Chronicles. From what I researched before, many unrelated adventures played by the same group of people become a campaign, where everyone retains their stat gains for the next adventure. Likewise, MCC part I is going to consist of a bunch of (likely unrelated) missions that our heroes are sent on, the purpose for each being to liberate certain areas, collect Monster Items or other artifacts, rescue someone, or whatever else might come to mind. Most (quite likely all) of these will involve fighting something or another, since that's kinda the point of this whole ficseries.
(Yeah, I did say part I. Even though parts III and IV are also gonna be like this, part I is what takes place mostly in Mon World, which shares the mostly ancient or medieval settings with D&D, albeit not entirely.)
Another thing that interested me about D&D was the concept of using dice to determine outcomes of what anyone does. From what I understand, each player controls one character in the game, and makes that character's decisions. Contrast this with video game RPGs (where one player makes decisions for all playable characters) and non-controlled media, such as anime or books (where all characters act on their own). In a tabletop game, a player can choose between attacking a monster, unlocking a door, etc., and the outcome is decided at the roll of a die. Similarly, when I get around to writing MCC, battles will be played out non-linearly, with each character choosing to attack an enemy physically, cast an attack spell, assist an ally, try to bypass or evade an enemy or attack, or whatever else would be possible. Anything is free to happen, provided it does not conflict with the overall plot.
Now, about Big Eyes, Small Mouth, I've just gotten started reading the instructions to that yesterday. From what Jake told me, though, it's up to the player to provide the settings and scenarios to happen. All BESM provides is some basic guidelines on how to play the game. In a way, this kinda defeats the purpose of why I was interested in a tabletop game, because I was looking specifically for ideas of stuff to make happen.
I understand there's also this whole concept of character creation and classes. Well, yeah, character creation is an essential part of any story. However, most RPGs that I'm familiar with don't have classes, because only a handful of characters even join the party along the way, and they have their own personality, abilities, strengths, and weaknesses anyway. In MCC, we have twelve members for the main party (all human with enhanced physical abilities and magical powers), plus any monsters they can optionally summon to aid them (whom range from humanoid to completely non-human); in a way, everyone already has a class of some kind.
So, in short, I was hoping to find ideas for storybuilding by showing some interest in D&D, or really, any tabletop game that has a similar concept. By having the Game Master come up with his or her own plots, BESM pretty much lacks what I'm specifically looking for.
Well, this whole thing has mainly to do with building up the story for part I of Monster Collection Chronicles. From what I researched before, many unrelated adventures played by the same group of people become a campaign, where everyone retains their stat gains for the next adventure. Likewise, MCC part I is going to consist of a bunch of (likely unrelated) missions that our heroes are sent on, the purpose for each being to liberate certain areas, collect Monster Items or other artifacts, rescue someone, or whatever else might come to mind. Most (quite likely all) of these will involve fighting something or another, since that's kinda the point of this whole ficseries.
(Yeah, I did say part I. Even though parts III and IV are also gonna be like this, part I is what takes place mostly in Mon World, which shares the mostly ancient or medieval settings with D&D, albeit not entirely.)
Another thing that interested me about D&D was the concept of using dice to determine outcomes of what anyone does. From what I understand, each player controls one character in the game, and makes that character's decisions. Contrast this with video game RPGs (where one player makes decisions for all playable characters) and non-controlled media, such as anime or books (where all characters act on their own). In a tabletop game, a player can choose between attacking a monster, unlocking a door, etc., and the outcome is decided at the roll of a die. Similarly, when I get around to writing MCC, battles will be played out non-linearly, with each character choosing to attack an enemy physically, cast an attack spell, assist an ally, try to bypass or evade an enemy or attack, or whatever else would be possible. Anything is free to happen, provided it does not conflict with the overall plot.
Now, about Big Eyes, Small Mouth, I've just gotten started reading the instructions to that yesterday. From what Jake told me, though, it's up to the player to provide the settings and scenarios to happen. All BESM provides is some basic guidelines on how to play the game. In a way, this kinda defeats the purpose of why I was interested in a tabletop game, because I was looking specifically for ideas of stuff to make happen.
I understand there's also this whole concept of character creation and classes. Well, yeah, character creation is an essential part of any story. However, most RPGs that I'm familiar with don't have classes, because only a handful of characters even join the party along the way, and they have their own personality, abilities, strengths, and weaknesses anyway. In MCC, we have twelve members for the main party (all human with enhanced physical abilities and magical powers), plus any monsters they can optionally summon to aid them (whom range from humanoid to completely non-human); in a way, everyone already has a class of some kind.
So, in short, I was hoping to find ideas for storybuilding by showing some interest in D&D, or really, any tabletop game that has a similar concept. By having the Game Master come up with his or her own plots, BESM pretty much lacks what I'm specifically looking for.