 July 14, 2012 - 8:46pm | I sustained a whiplash injury today falling out of a van. I'm fine just massively sore in the neck and back. That's not my point though- since I went home in pain I wasn't much in the mood to do any of the work I'm suppose to be doing so I jumped on a MMOLRPG and started grinding quests for a distraction. After awhile I started to notice that the quests are fairly repetative- names are changed for monsters, quest items and NPCs but largely they are pretty much the same. So then I started thinking about the difference between this style of game and your regular pen and paper RPG. a Pen and paper quest is pretty much the length of a module or a 3 module campaign. 5-15 game session MMOLRPG quests are about 5-15 minutes play time though that can run longer You have to locate the exact area in a MMOLRPG where the quest dingus is located and if you cant find it there is no helpful GM to help move things along, the quest can stagnate. In a pen and paper RPG the GM can and will help move things along. They both can involve lots of combat One has actual Role play and the other has simulated role play (the simulated role play can be dispensed with as you just rapidly click the responses to what the NPC is saying so that you get to the offered quest quickly without wasting time). they both have rewards, EXP, treasure and magic loot. Adventuring areas for MMOLRPGs seem to be more contained with artificial barriers like mountains and cliffs that prevent you from going beyond the prepared area. Pen and paper RPGs can have this but usually dont and a good GM will usually allow for parties to go off scripte or of the map some. In MMOLRPGs you cant talk to some NPCs at all until you are of a level high enough to do their quest but of course in a Pen and Paper RPG the GM can allow you to talk to any NPC regardless of level issues. What is important in this analysis is that the shorter style of quest and the MMOLRPG style of setting is perhaps more ideal to playing with younger children. A slimpler more straight forward sort of quest- go do A&B and come back for reward and now that that's happened, "Hey would you mind doing C as well the pay is good?" I suppose what I'm saying is that quests for children might maybe work best if they are able to be done in one game session. Add to that the Everquest Island syndrom where the play area is more or less bounded though this area can be broken into areans with "gates" between the various areas. these gates can be portals, tunnels, mountain passes etc. Spell jammer settings could also work best for this style of play or not- just give the kids a galleon and paint the world as lots of small to meduim islands for them to visit. Warriors of White Light module has this sort of set up 5 encounters that are pretty much playable in one session they each have their own opposition, Reward and sometimes NPCs to interact with. that module was very playable and short quests probably work better for kids anyway. Thinking in terms of a fantasy game for my kids, and knowing how much my youngest daughter loves fairies I would work up a fairy village in the forest with arena areas around it. In the village would be a whole host of NPCs each with a problem (or two or three) they need help resolving. Part of their rewards might be a knighthood from the fairy queen, a reward of pegasus mounts, etc. besides the usual rewards. Individual quest are less epic though linked quest may add up to an epic story. Its just that the epic story is broken down into small bites I guess is the best way to describe it. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
July 14, 2012 - 8:55pm | Styles of doling out quests for younger children- I'd set it up one at a time or perhaps two as they're getting older or perhaps as they get more sophisticated with RPGs then you could equally provide a list of 5 quests and they can plug away at it each session. For example there has been a disaster and the PCs are tasked with responding to one emergency at a time, as they complete each quest the NPC in charge of the rescue effort doles out a new task to the PCs. This would work for younger children and keep them on track. For older the PCs land at a disaster site- lets say its a ship in distress and they do a quick look over of the situation and get a list of problems with the ship. All five problems must be fixed but its up to them how they want to go about doing that. As they fix a few things other problems can turn up. Particularly with younger children there is great value to using a "father figure" NPC- kids love being on a parents team and having a NPC along can give them the feeling of being on their Dad's team. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 July 15, 2012 - 9:08am | Okay I want to hear more about falling out of the van. Seriously, I hope you're alright. Get checked out regardless of how you feel, neck & back injuries have a nasty tendency to lie dormant and then getting progressively worse over a few days. Thinking in terms of a fantasy game for my kids, and knowing how much my youngest daughter loves fairies I would work up a fairy village in the forest with arena areas around it. In the village would be a whole host of NPCs each with a problem (or two or three) they need help resolving. Part of their rewards might be a knighthood from the fairy queen, a reward of pegasus mounts, etc. besides the usual rewards. Individual quest are less epic though linked quest may add up to an epic story. Its just that the epic story is broken down into small bites I guess is the best way to describe it. The beauty of D&D is there are many great fairy tale type creatures available --- brownies, pixies, sprites, nixies, dryads, elves, satyrs, mermen/maids, giants, centaurs, hippogriffs, pegasi, unicorns, various giant insects/animals, livng statues, and my fave non-lethal critter (not necessarily fairy tale material but great for kids nonetheless): the rust monster. IIRC there was a faerie dragon in MM2 or one of the Dragon magazine articles as well. And the ultimae fairy tale module? B3 - Palace of the Silver Princess. |
 July 21, 2012 - 11:32am | For my kids, my oldest - 13 and my youngest -9 play with me. I have to keep the older one from getting too bossy, but I have a couple of NPCs I keep with them, since they want to be more of the soldier types. I keep a tech and a medic with them to give a little 'advice' when necessary. For my kids, I had them begin the campaign (their first ever) with a mystery. Their characters woke in a cave, no memory of who they were or how they got there. The entrance had caved in and they had to find their way out. Along the way they had to fight a few nasties, which got them into how the combat worked. Then after they escaped they found an outpost they had been attached to and 'slowly recovered their memory'. They had never even heard of a pen and paper RPG so I let them ease into it slowly and teach them the rules as they went along. Now they have fought Streel a couple of times, worked as Mercs for the CDC and are currently on Volturnus. It's been really cool to watch them trip out on how the scope of the game keeps expanding. They started by thinking it was some sort of medieval game with spears because they had to improvise their way out of the cave. Then they found a corpse with a computer chip. At the CDC base they saw their first jetcopter, and got into a big battle with Streel and got to use heavy machine guns mounted on Explorers. Then the first shuttle landed and they went into space... I'm now weighing out how I'm going to let them get a ship. I might let them have a small ship from the pirates at volturnus, but I'm also considering only letting them have a personal runabout, as we'll probably play Dramune Run before long and I don't want them to think that getting ships is commonplace when they get the Gullwind... |
July 21, 2012 - 3:05pm | I'm now weighing out how I'm going to let them get a ship. I might let them have a small ship from the pirates at volturnus,
I've done this a few times in the past, although it isn't a "just give them a ship" by any means. I allow them to find a crash-landed scout craft along the way. It's not wrecked per se ---severely damaged from the hard landing but still retaining a few hull points --- rather it's simply "less than space worthy". It needs some major repair work that the characters won't be capable of (since they lack the engineer skills) but following the aftermath of the sathar battles in S2 I allow them to interact with ship crews from the "friendly Turane's Star battle fleet" who agree to repair it sufficiently enough to lift off and transport it to a waiting freighter that can ferry it back to Pale...all for the mere price of the tomarillian & vibrillium ore found at Slave City One. The ship is somewhat stripped down as well...needing things like life support, subspace radio, and other vital components that the characters can acquire as they adventure sans ship skills. The challenge comes in keeping up with docking fees for the wreck (again, allow for some craftiness...fees on the planet are less than the orbital station but a crew will need to be hired to move it dirtside) and the registration of the pirate craft, thus giving them a bit of red tape to navigate. This makes for a great time killer to allow an adventure or two...if you've ever tried registering an untitled vehicle you'll know that it requires a lot of waiting time and hoop jumping.  As they (re)build the ship, they "earn" their ship skills..meaning rather than attend Gollwin etc once they have the pre-requisite skills they can simply "buy" the ship skills via XP as they have been through the experience of working on the thing all the while. |
 July 21, 2012 - 4:18pm | Ummm I don't want to sound dumb or ignorant, but if you don't know ask, and I have been away for most of the year in Afganistan without internet... I know that MMORPG means Massively multiplayer online role-playing game. But what is the L for? Serious question, I am not trying to be obtuse. I did a search for it and while a list of them comes up nobody seems to bother telling idiots like me what the L is. The bombing starts in five minutes. |
July 21, 2012 - 5:15pm | Ummm I don't want to sound dumb or ignorant, but if you don't know ask, and I have been away for most of the year in Afganistan without internet... I know that MMORPG means Massively multiplayer online role-playing game. But what is the L for? Serious question, I am not trying to be obtuse. I did a search for it and while a list of them comes up nobody seems to bother telling idiots like me what the L is.
No your not obtuse i just get a little dylexic and through in extra letters or type left when i mean right. I can even look at it after typing it and see what i intended to type though it plainly is not. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
July 21, 2012 - 6:27pm | Oh Ok, I thought I missed something. The bombing starts in five minutes. |
 August 17, 2012 - 11:15am | Shadow, I used an approach much like yours to provide my kids with a ship. They were members of a survey team and discovered a large crashed ship that had an AS-like ship in a cargo bay. It was extremely old and heavily damaged. My kids; high integrity girls that they are, decided not to mention the wreck and made note of its location and eventually came back to salvage it. The next several missions were taken in order to raise the funds to refurbish the craft. Even after the time and money invested, they ended up with a SF space faring equivalent of a Ford Pinto. Spice for their game is the many issues that they face during what should be a normal transit. |
August 17, 2012 - 1:19pm | they ended up with a SF space faring equivalent of a Ford Pinto.
Does that translate to "be EXTREMELY careful with those stern-first (re: lunar lander) landings"?  |
August 17, 2012 - 5:57pm | LOL: FORD PINTO!
I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
August 17, 2012 - 6:11pm | Been working on an article on crafting quests for player characters - relax is nothing like WOW or ervercrack- the quests there are pretty much unsuitable but part of my research for the article was to play evercrack with a free account. It got me thinking about the city of Quenos which has adventure areas within its municiple bounderies: the peat bog, forest ruins, the caves, the down below or sewers and below that more sewers known as vermin snye. At anyrate i think there is possibility to set up a table top rpg game with a city like Quenos- safe strategic areas to rest up and resupply and adventure areas where there is a story of a threat to the city. I think i'll need to explore this especially since the 6yr old will want to play a fairy princes and that make the Eldar Grove area of Quenos a perfect area to start with and rip off I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 August 18, 2012 - 10:46pm | Hey my first car was a Pinto. My dad payed $50 for it as a consolation after the VW Beetle we were rebuilding to be my first car threw a rod idling in the driveway (we were adjusting the timing) after it's umteenth rebuild. That old Pinto wouldn't go over 45 with out redlining and rattling like crazy. She drank oil every few days. And she had to have the brakes pumped up while stopped at a stop light if you didn't put her in park. Eventually her engine blew up on US-95 when my older brother burrowed her to get to work. I warned him to not take her on the freeway and not to go over 45, but would he listen to his little brother? -iggy |
August 19, 2012 - 7:26am | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dT0J0rcJTLo |
August 19, 2012 - 7:48am | I like that video. I never worried about the explosion factor. I always worried about not being able to get home if she broke down. I knew that if she wouldn't start or stopped running that I was pushing her back to Charleston and Torrey Pines by my lonesome. I think my dad was wise with starting me on a $50 car. I was free to go where ever I wanted but didn't dare to go anywhere I wasn't willing to push her home from. I never felt like my parents were constraining me, I felt it was the car that was constraining me and I was happy to have a car. -iggy |
August 19, 2012 - 8:53am | @ iggy that's an incredibly mature perspective. I was amazed when my brother had express before his high school graduation that he wanted to go into the army and be a medic and my mother was desperate to prevent that and offered to buy him a car and a computer and pay for him to go to school to be a doctor if he wouldn't join the army. He joined the army. I wonder what i would have done though with me i wasn't the baby of the family so the motivation wasnt there to make such an extravagant offer. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
August 19, 2012 - 12:07pm | I had a different approach to securing my first car. My dad & I had an agreement that as long as I could legitimately afford a car, along with tags & insurance (be it my own policy or as a secondary driver under my parents' policy) I could get anything I wanted. I had built up a decent bank account, having saved a lot from mowing lawns starting at age 11. I was working at a grocery store part time when this happened so I had a "steady" income to work with, as opposed to the seasonal lawn mowing (which easily lasted 9 months out here). So with a $5K bit of wiggle room I started looking at all the "cool cars". I was checking out Vettes, Camaros, even a Ferrari --- alll of which were listed under $5K, until I saw what they wanted for a 16 year old in the way of insurance. So I started looking at the less desirable things like Buick Regals, Cutlass Supremes, Novas (they weren't as desirable then as they are now...who knew), etc. Then I went to a motorcycle dealer. See, I had really been attracted to Honda's 250 Rebel back then, it debuted a year prior and I saw an article in Playboy magazine that gave it heavy praise (yes, even back then I really did read the articles). I eventually laid out a cache of paperwork on the table and began with "Okay, so I found something that looks like it'll work. I can afford the insurance and registration, and to top it off it's a brand new vehicle with a warranty. The vehicle itself will cost $1500 plus dealer fees and the liability/comprehensive/collision insurance comes to $100/month (yes, about what the vehicle itself cost, paid each year LOL), and the registration will be $49 for the first year (which was about the minimum at the time)." Naturally Dad's curiosity was piqued. When he saw the picture in the brochure I slid across the table, he made his best attempt at maintaining composure, paused, and finally said "You can drive the station wagon." He even left it with me when I went to college. I knew that if she wouldn't start or stopped running that I was pushing her back to Charleston and Torrey Pines by my lonesome.
Wait a minute...all this time and you live right here in my home town?!? I'm up near the foot hills of Sunrise Mountain. |
August 19, 2012 - 1:27pm | I knew that if she wouldn't start or stopped running that I was pushing her back to Charleston and Torrey Pines by my lonesome.
Wait a minute...all this time and you live right here in my home town?!? I'm up near the foot hills of Sunrise Mountain. ...  ...  I've dropped several hints over the years that I was "from" Vegas. I'm living in West Jordan, Utah now. As a kid I got to live all over the US and in South Africa. But the launch pad and eventual landing pad was/is Las Vegas. My father is from Logandale (Moapa Valley). I'd be working and living in Vegas but the jobs have never been the right ones. I graduated from Bonanza in 87 and went to Utah State University for the engineering program. UNLV didn't have anything for me back in the day and UNR was not to my liking, so I went to USU. Well, one tends to find work near the alma mater so I am here. My mother and brothers are still in Vegas. Also an old car is great to teach maintenance and repair. -iggy |
August 19, 2012 - 4:54pm | UNLV had an engineering program when I enrolled in 86...it was my declared major at first. Alas they didn't actually have a full fledged building until 92 or so, after I'd left. I changed majors half a dozen times, I simply didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up. 20 years later and I still haven't grown up. I aged, but I didn't grow up. Our job market is in the toilet now. Actually if it was in the toilet that would be an improvement, it got flushed long ago and is currently festering in a sewage pond awaiting treatment, at which point it will get moved to Lake Mead. Alas I never learned repair on my first car. It was a 75 Toyota Corona that dad had purchased new and it went 255K miles before a drunk driver took it off the road for me (re: insurance repairs cost more than the car was worth). I saw it a couple years later, some hispanic fellow acquired it and fixed it back up again, and he had rolled the odo over again. It wasn't until much later in life when I acquired a dirt cheap beater motorcycle did I begin to learn the repair end. It's so much easier to tear into something when you can't possbily botch it up any more than it already is.  |
August 19, 2012 - 8:49pm | UNLV had an engineering program when I enrolled in 86...it was my declared major at first. Alas they didn't actually have a full fledged building until 92 or so, after I'd left. One building shared with chemistry and physics and I think biology versus three separate buildings all dedicated to engineering at USU. USU had a lot more to offer. It's so much easier to tear into something when you can't possbily botch it up any more than it already is. Yup! There was nothing worse I could do to that old Pinto. -iggy |
August 20, 2012 - 12:20am | Yep, I remember that...it was shared with several other sciences. It was still a growing university then, but a bargain at $35/credit ($60 when I left). Tom (TerlObar) has some family out here as well. Bummer none of us met when we were younger... |
 August 20, 2012 - 3:05pm | My family (my parents) didn't move there until about 5 years ago. I never lived there. And Shadow Shack is still the only member of the SF community I've met in person as I stopped by his house a couple of years back. iggy and I keep trying to meet up but have schedule conflicts (one of these days I'm going to have to just drive up there, it's only 30 minutes), I didn't have time to dash across Florida (Canaveral to Tampa) to meet up with Art (he offered to take us boating) when I was down for the Fermi launch, and I missed a meetup with jedion357 when I was in Boston just because I couldn't get a hold of him (he was off-line that week and I didn't have his phone number). Ad Astra Per Ardua! My blog - Expanding Frontier Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine |
