Pathways Philosophy

Updated: 2002/05/17; Version 0.1.0

Games are like movies. Everyone likes a different type. Some people like comedies, some people like action, some like drama. A few even like those stupid teen movies. If you don’t like comedies, you don’t watch them. We shouldn’t complain about a drama not being funny enough if we wanted to see a comedy, because it’s a drama – it’ not supposed to be funny. Most good movies have components of all of those, to varying degrees, but almost all movies can be labeled with a few basic categories. True Lies had a lot of funny stuff in it, but it wasn’t a comedy – it was definitely an action movie. Beverly Hills Cop has a lot of action in it, a little drama, but it’s mostly a comedy. Arnold Swarzenneger will probably never win an Oscar for Best Actor simply because he doesn’t act in movies that are “deep” enough, but he definitely kicks butt as an action star – Tom Hanks might have a bunch of Oscars but he’d probably suck as the Terminator.

Games are the same way. Everyone has a different style of game that they prefer, a different system, and a different level of involvement. I personally am a Palladium Junkie. The Palladium system is largely powergame-able, the average weapon can kill the average person in only a shot or two. Combat encounters are usually brief, because the PCs either kill everything in a few seconds or they get killed in a few seconds, but either way it’s over fast. Personally, I play it because the Siembieda’s write some really kick-ass plot stuff and they’ve got a groovy, well developed, cohesive world to play in. Literally months worth of gaming potential is in each sourcebook. A lot of my friends prefer White Wolf games. They get into Vampire the Masquerade, totally dig Mage and think Werewolf is totally cool. I personally think they’re dumb. Why? I’m not into that genre of game. I’m sure White Wolf has good writers and good material, from what I hear their system is very easy to learn and plays out well, but I’m just not into supernatural horror type games – it’s not my style. When I play a tabletop game I prefer something that’s fast paced, futuristic and shoot ’em up.

What I’m trying to get to is that Pathways is a LARP with it’s own philosophy on what the game should be. Here’s the philosophy. If this is the type of game you’d enjoy playing, come on in and play. If not, don’t – there’s TONS of LARPs out there, and there’s not so much competition that you can’t find something right for you. That’s not meant to sound mean, it’s just an encouragement for you to find something that you enjoy. Amtgard is a minimal roleplay, high combat system from most of what I’ve seen and read (only played once, so if someone from Amtgard wants to call and correct me on it feel free). I don’t like that system, so I probably won’t play there. Is it a bad game? From the sheer amount of people that play it, I’m guessing not (otherwise there’s a LOT of stupid people doing something they don’t enjoy...). If I had a weekend free and wanted to do a little mindless hack and slash, I’d probably check out their game. I’ll never be a frequent player, but I could go and have a good time once in a while.

I’ve been working with the Pathways development staff for quite a while now, and here’s my take on what we’re doing here... I’ve formed it into “rules”, but it’s more like a mission statement and philosophy we try to follow.

#1: We need to have fun.
The game should always be focused on what’s fun, not necessarily what’s technically accurate or “makes sense”. This doesn’t mean cater to every player’s every whim – if a player wants to become a demi-god they need to understand it’s just not going to happen, that’s not the style of game we play.

#2: Characters should be the deciding factor.
This is basically that we don’t want to become a “stuff quest” game. If we’re doing things the way we want to, you will never ever find the “Sword of Uber-ness” that makes you kick everyone’s ass in one swing. Stuff should never be the deciding factor between a cool character and a non-cool character. Characters should be memorable on roleplay and their skills, not how many magic trinkets they’ve worked up. Every character based goal is attainable, whether it be magic, learning 15 melee masteries, or being able to pick any lock in the game. If another character is able to pick every lock in the game by “magic gloves of lock-pickiness” there’s a problem – especially to the guy who just spent the last two years working on getting that skill level only to have it trivialized by some piece of loot.

#3: LARP means Live Action RolePlay.
Two of the letters are RolePlay. That’s half. There’s no letter for “Combat”. The game should be focused on roleplaying situations. Things like factions, governments and long story arcs make it feel like a real world people interact with, rather than some random crunchy Diablo-style violence. Sometimes RolePlay means combat – but in the real world you don’t go hacking things to bits just because you don’t like it.

#4: All items will enhance roleplay, not detract from it.
See #2. A magic item that enhances existing skills (to a reasonable extent) is pretty cool. A magic item that gives a caster the ability to swing for 50 all day long totally makes a fighter pointless. If everyone has magic items, they’re no longer valuable and cool. Magic items SHOULD be cool and nifty and all that stuff, but they shouldn’t overshadow the characters nor should they last forever (a year is a good max duration for MOST stuff). Items that grant benefits that can’t be done by a character (within reasonable limits) ARE cool stuff... I totally dig ancient blades. Ancient is a carrier that doesn’t really do much, except hurt some types of creatures that can’t normally be hurt. Bane style weapons (affect a certain type of creature more than another), things that give a weird carrier (like stun) and stuff are cool, AS LONG AS the character using it would be just as cool without the item. The only class that should be defined by their items is the Engineer, and that’s because their class is designed to BUILD items – an Engineer is as cool in combat as the stuff he can make. But even those effects don’t outweigh the character himself, he still has to get in a position to use the items effectively AND make sure he uses them sparingly so he doesn’t run out.

#5: EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER should have a background.
Some want a complex (usually angsty) background, some have fairly simple, clean backgrounds. I’ve written a lot of both. A good background includes a little personal history, the main reason you adventure, and some other stuff to make you stand out a little bit. My two characters are polar opposites background wise – Kieroth has a very short (I think it’s like 3 short paragraphs) background, where Felias’ is literally over a hundred pages at the moment, and still not finished just yet. Felias is a much more complicated character, but I think anyone who’s played around either one of them would remember them. Nothing amazes me more, IP or OOP, than a character who puts themselves into a life threatening position every weekend with no motivation or real reason. They don’t care about the cause, they’re not trying to save money for any particular reason, they just show up every weekend and put their life on the line. If you’re playing a fighter, you should have a reason why your character is skilled at combat, and why they want to lug swords and guns around everywhere. And when a battle breaks out, more often than not you should be the one out there FIGHTING instead of standing in the back waiting for someone else to do something. If your character is inherently a coward, “Warrior” is probably not the class you should be playing. Maybe think about “Soldier” (good defense) or “Spy” (sneak attacks).

#6: The rules should facilitate the game.
All rules should be designed for one of the following reasons:

• It maintains the game balance (keeping it fun for everyone)

• It keeps the game safe

• It adds to the game atmosphere

#7: Skills should be used, and every skill should be cool enough to be worth taking.
I’m constantly amazed that there are very few characters who take RP based skills. Pathways is a RolePlay based game, and there’s lots of cool skills that are a huge advantage in non-combat situations. Warriors who have all profs, casters who have all mystic skills – don’t these people have hobbies? Sure, it lowers your combat effectiveness, but you’d be surprised how much more fun the game gets when you have a few skills that can get you things combat can’t. Even if you’re not going to buy a “skill”, there should be something to distinguish your character from the “class stereotype” or at least make them memorable and interesting. My mystic reads tarot almost constantly, to the point that plot occasionally (when it suits their purposes) tells me what cards to read into a situation – giving me basically a free Limited Fortune-telling skill. No real in-play advantage, but it definitely makes the game more fun for me as a player, and it allows Plot to do things in ways that otherwise might be unavailable.

#8: No character should be able to “solo”.
Characters should always need the help of other characters (and sometimes NPCs) to do things. In real life, there aren’t any doctors who are also skilled computer programmers that can outfight Jet Li while baking a gourmet cake. Some characters can solo a little bit better than others (spies can actually get the most diverse skillsets out of anyone and do a LITTLE bit of everything) but nobody is going to master everything. My fighter has a limited amount of healing to be used in a pinch (both hyperheals and tuning) but if there’s going to be some serious fighting, I want a “real” healer backing me up. A psionic warrior might be pretty kick ass, but they’re subject to low body and need to be healed a bunch, and they don’t stand up against other mystics too well. An engineer with trap-making skills can take out any creature I’ve ever seen, but due to the long setup times and other work involved, that’s just not practical without a little assistance. Plus the fact that no one wants to play a game where one player gets to do everything and gets all the glory, that isn’t very fun.

#9: The game should focus on the players.
Should be common sense, but I’ve seen Plot people in a LARP forget before. One of my plotlines is pitting some seriously buff creatures against each other, but the important thing to remember is that the story should be about the PCs. Even though there’s two tough supernatural forces duking it out between each other, the plotlines that we run are ones where the PCs have an impact or involvement. PCs don’t want to watch from the sidelines, they want to be involved. Maybe the characters will never actually kill the top bad guy, but if there’s going to be a plot about it they should get to do SOMETHING important. An old plotline I ran pitted two armies against each other – no group of PCs is ever going to take out a fully equipped army on their own, but all they had to do was sneak into the building and release the main doors so the good guys could get in and kill the bad guys. The PCs didn’t directly kill everything, they really didn’t get to do a whole lot – they just opened up a door. BUT their actions manage to turn the tide of war back into the favor of the good guys. In the Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo isn’t charged with the hugely monumental task of defeating Sauron and his minions. He doesn’t have to kill Saruman. He just has to throw a little ring into a big lake of lava. Not a huge deal overall, not something anyone else COULDN’T do – but it makes a huge difference in the overall scheme of things. Granted, the Frodo ended up having to deal with a little more than a ring and a fiery lake, but his JOB was easy enough conceptually for a young hobbit from a small little shire. Frodo as a PC didn’t directly save the world. But his ROLE in it definitely helped decide an outcome that changed the scope of his world. Legolas also had a pretty simple, non-earth-shattering goal – protect this short dude for a few days while he tosses a ring in a fiery lake. If the PCs can’t DO anything about a situation, it shouldn’t be presented to them.

#10: The world will move on, and some outcomes are inevitable.
Some things WILL happen that the PCs can’t control. If a large army decides to take over the world, a lone PC will rarely be able to stop it from happening. But he can definitely have a role – and an interesting one – in what actually happens. Maybe he decides to join the invading army. Maybe he decides to form a resistance to stop the invaders. Maybe he just jumps on a spaceship to go warn someone a little bigger than him – anyone ever seen “Star Wars”? That movie is about a girl who is just trying to drop some plans off to a general who can actually do something about it. Princess Leia isn’t going to be able to stop the army, but she can at least warn the guys who can.

#11: No situation should ever be “No Win”.
Plot can kill characters. If you think I’m wrong let me know, I’ll set up a scenario, you will die and my point will be proven. I guarantee I can outstat a PC character. However, that’s irresponsible – no one plays a game just so their character can die. Which isn’t to say that characters shouldn’t be able to be killed or that death shouldn’t be a possibility all the time – it happens. If you let out the evil demons of uber-ness, expect them to wipe the floor with you and your team. Sometimes, a character might have to pull a “noble sacrifice” in order to save the day, but those characters should be given the opportunity to escape with their lives if they so choose. Less heroic, but more playable. If the Ork warlord in your path says “drop your money or die” – give the guy your money or hope your team is stronger than his. But for the most part, PCs should only die if they do something dumb or they get in over their heads (Do not provoke a dragon, for thou art crunchy and taste good with milk). If an NPC is 15 levels higher than you, chances are he wasn’t put there specifically to roll you. Although he might be there to keep you away from something or push you into something, and if you step up or start attacking him, he very well MIGHT roll you. This goes back to rule #1 – keep it fun. My best LARP story is one in the NERO rulebook where a powerful liche bumped into a TOTALLY unaware newbie player, the player was like “Be careful, there’s a liche running around” – the liche pulled back his hood, looked at the (now wetting himself) PC and said “Yes, I know.” The PC ran away screaming. Could the NPC have killed the PC? Yup. No real contest. Should he have? Reality says “yup”. Would that have been fun? Nope. The newbie now has a cool story (“So this one time, I bumped into this liche....”) and the liche got to go finish off his goals (He was on his way to go do some RP with some MUCH higher level PCs than the unfortunate newbie) so everyone got to win. The liche could have gunched the PC without any trouble, but that really wouldn’t have made anything more fun for anyone.

#11: Rules should be complex enough to handle any situation, but be simple enough so that anyone can be taught enough to play in less than ten minutes.
Perhaps ten minutes is a little better than what we accomplish, but I like to think we do a good job on this one. Our game tries to be simple enough to play, but complex enough so that the people who WANT to put in the extra time, do the extra reading, and try to do more CAN. Using mystic arts, for example, the basic apprentice powers for each school can all be laid out on a 3x5 notecard easily. Magic is very complicated, but very few PCs ever make it to the point where they can even USE it, and even then it’s an OPTION, not a requirement. At the present there are only 30 effects in the game that can be used on you, and 7 flavor types. Which means that to get full playability out of the game, you only need to memorize 37 things total. Over half the effects are either “common sense” effects or not used very often (To this day I don’t think I’ve ever seen “Banish”, “Drain”, “Discharge” or “Stopshot” ever used, and several of the other effects I never see used in combat, but I’ve seen them used between fights) and most of the flavors are just “basic” to your average newbie anyways because they don’t have the defenses or skills that the flavors would modify (Piercing, chemical, ancient, and basic are all basically the same thing to an unarmored newbie).

#12: Stick to the Vision.
This is a big one to me. We know what we want the game to feel like, look like, and act like. We have a pretty good idea for the most part on the interactions between the races, classes, factions and the universe as a whole. And we’re going to stick to it. Player satisfaction is our main priority, but that’s also under the caveat that what the players want out of the game is what we want them to get out of the game. As politically bad as it is to actually say it, sometimes the customer ISN’T always right – just because someone complains that there weren’t enough action scenes in “Gone with the Wind” doesn’t mean that they go and throw a bunch more in just to make people happy – that wasn’t the type of movie that they wanted to make. We have an “intended audience” with our game, and that is the audience we’re going to court. Which doesn’t mean that we’re not willing to compromise, or even modify the vision when we think it’s necessary, but if you’re looking to change a critical foundation of the game be forewarned – odds are it isn’t moving. People have said stuff like “I want to be a vampire”, our response is “Sorry, here’s the list of playable races, pick one.” Not that vampires aren’t cool, and we certainly don’t want to make you have less fun, but vampire PCs don’t fit into our vision of the game.

This probably isn’t a full list of everything, but it’s reasonably close. This isn’t our “official” policy, but it’s basically the “unspokens” that the development teams try to follow when we work on the game. I hope you have as much fun playing it as we have writing it.