Movie Trends: Aliens in Post-Bush Era

There have been some trends in movies this year, little things that I feel like analyzing- they may not give great insight into mankind, but they may forecast movies to come.

There's been a lot of aliens popping up in the movie landscape lately. Short list from the top of my head:

The Battle for Terra
District 9
Avatar
Aliens in the Attic
Monsters versus Aliens

Now, three of these five movies have some things in common- Aliens in the Attic and Monster vs. Aliens being the outliers.

In District 9 and Avatar, we have:
1. Humans being assholes
2. Aliens playing the part of oppressed minorities whose human rights are violated
3. Messages about War profiteering/environment
4. Evil corporate entities

Something is obviously skipping merrily through the cultural consciousness of America for all this to hit at the same time, and it's pretty obvious the anti-war, pro-environment, cultural tolerance messages (all things I generally support) are a direct product of the Bush era, manifesting roughly a year after his exit.

It's pretty interesting that "Aliens as Foreigners" angle has been hit so hard so quickly. In many ways, we can just skip the plot of these films to get more of the jist, the essential salts for the alchemical creation of these movies.

District 9- Blood Diamond + Bug Monsters
Avatar- Dances with Wolves + Blue Cat People
Battle for Terra... I have not seen, but I get the feeling it's more of the same.

Using this formula, we merely need to find the next film meant to highlight the oppression of a human culture, throw in some lasers and CGI aliens, and we may have a critically acclaimed piece of sci-fi on our hands...

Come to think of it, both Avatar and District 9 have a transformational element in them, of people becoming aliens as well... and Monsters vs. Aliens... huh. Maybe some vibe of how our only real differences are superficial in nature...

I suppose in some ways, this feeds right back into Star Wars characters being bad racial stereotypes, though so far the new wave of aliens have been far more tasteful in their depictions over all. The Navi of avatar seem to be a blend of various tribal peoples of earth in their culture, so they really don't come off as any other race per se, not to mention their image is largely positive. The Prawns of District 9 are so alien, being bug monster, they really don't come off as anything other than poor aliens.

Since I try to bring things back to gaming when I can, I figure there might be a few lessons somewhere in this mess as far as creating alien cultures. I think the best way to go is that if you can't make something new, rip off so many things nobody can tell where it came from anywhere (credited to this guy). While he may not be able to make a decent film himself, the technique is sound for gaming- the Navi of Avatar come off as tribal, but it's hard to pin down what tribe they come from.

The other lesson might be that aliens are great source material as representing something other than the obvious- they take up classic roles readily.

Aliens work well as Gods, Angels, Invaders, Devils, Natural Forces, or any other role you want to throw them in without having to give 1)Supernatural reasoning nor 2) Sensical reasoning. Aliens are different, their ways of approaching the world strange. If an alien wants to hunt you for fun, give you superpowers, or blow up the planet, don't question it- they're alien, and whatever they are doing must obviously be science and makes sense to them. This isn't an open invitation to hand waving aliens doing stupid crap, but it is reason enough to squeak by with some odd behavior and unknown motivations at times.

Superhero Squad or Why Marvel Getting Bought by Disney Matters Little

The Superhero Squad Show

So, here we have a goofied up, kiddified version of Marvel, with squidgy little versions of almost the entire Marvel Universe. It's the latest in the line of proof that whatever Disney might decide to do to the Marvel Universe to try an ruin it, Joe Quesada will likely beat them to the punch.

I suppose I'm being a little unfair- it's light hearted children's fair, and I'm all for letting kid's get into comics, right? Well... yes, I am, but I also don't think going quite this stupid is doing kids any favors.

In this show, a group that strongly resembles the Avengers fights Doctor Doom in an anime-esque quest to collect all of the MacGuffin fractals to give him awesome super powers to win. Doctor Doom has assembled a Lethal Legion (read: basically every bad guy in the Marvel Universe) to fight against the Squaddies. I'm all for big superhero battles of epic proportions, and oddly, this show sort of delivers- there are more Marvel characters in this show than any I've seen before it. That being said, there are a lot of simplifications made, essentially putting the rubber claws on Wolverine.

1. It takes place in Superhero City. The city is walled off to keep the Lethal Legion out (ignore the whole flight thing).
2. The characters are all basically school children-esque.
3. Four fingers.
4. Dumbing down in general.

So, children of this generation will first see Marvel superheroes as daft, squishy, four fingered mutants who go around throwing temper tantrums, get sent back to school, and generally act like mild looney tunes. Bad guys are more Naughty guys that only really work in cartoons (the Ring Master dresses up like a lunch lady and waltzes into the X-Mansion. The Danger Room doubles as a cafeteria. Collossus is a dumb jock, Jean is a cheerleader. Only one character notices the yellow swirling eyes associated with hypnosis and Professor X has his mind controlled...).

Quelling my inner geek, this show does have a few things I like.

1. Dr. Doom is the main bad guy.
2. There are about as many marvel characters in this show as there are in JLU.
3. Each episode is inspired by a classic comic, apparently.

These few things don't really excuse the show, but they to me are signs they could have made a better show.

Youngerizing Heroes and the Slope They Slipped Off:
This trend is understandable, in some ways. X-Men was originally mutant teens at a school and X-Men: Evolution brought it back to those roots. Same thing for Ultimate Spiderman. But then we start to go further...

Iron Man armored adventures I think was the first step into hell. Here we have a young Tony Stark (okay), in a futuristic city (wait), and his father dies early (huh?) and the Mandarin is a teenage son of a crime lord with some rings (my mind!) and he fights against the evil designs of Hammer Industries trying to steal his fathers... no. Sorry, this is just TOO different in my mind. Pepper Potts is a perky teen, Rhodey is his teen buddy... this isn't Iron Man's roots, it's Iron Man skewed and re-imagined entirely.

Basically, in the Quesada era of Marvel, we know one fundamental truth: Nothing is Sacred. Not characters, origins, continuity, sense, NOTHING. If it makes a buck, it will happen. The line stops at Spiderman condoms... I'm pretty sure.

Disney, the big red M is in your court. Do your worst.

Bionic Commando vs. Dragon Age

Not my usual, but it feels like one of those things worth mentioning, if only because I don't know if I'll see much on it elsewhere.

The New Bionic Commando game is a classic mismatch of great gameplay and a lame, lame story. The gameplay is the proper mixture of challenge and intuitiveness- getting new moves does not add needless complication, or just make the game harder. The advanced techniques add to a growing repertoire of combat options that only serve to make an already solid combat system grow even more so. More enemy types are introduced, slowly, a good deal of the environment can be climbed or used as a weapon, and they manage to recapture much of the fun of the 2-D platforming experience in 3-D.

The plot in many ways follows the opposite course, having a hackneyed plot you can see coming from a mile away. The twists are assumed almost from the beginning of the game, from the first cinema. We see Nathan 'Rad' Spencer jailed- fair enough, public fear of bionics sends them underground, puts them in jail, etc. We see Super Joe, an obviously evil old military man, unlike his heroic former identity from Captain Commando, sending Nathan off to fight the baddies that have blown up the city and conveniently set up the radiation clouds that keep this game from being an open environment- which is fine, for the most part.

I'd call the following spoilers, but it's not like it's spoiling much of anything. Nathan finds out the baddies are not new baddies, but the same old baddies, led by Groder. Only late in we find out Super Joe is evil and, gasp! was using you to claim the MacGuffin for his own nefarious ends. The cliche Dead Wife is also, gasp, murdered by Super Joe, but for perhaps the stupidest reason ever- her... well... somehow she was turned into his bionic arm. Which would be really, really creepy, if it wasn't so stupid. I mean... how? Fleshy person to cyber arm. That makes no kind of sense at all. There is a girl with cybernetic legs and super speed... while the game progresses in a way where you think you'd fight her, or she'd do something important, she instead shows up a few times, then dies horribly- she made ZERO impact on the plot. None.

The game is such a stinker that GRIN, the parent company is dead. So, no chance of redemption. Which goes to show... plot matters.

Now Dragon Age: Origins is out, and I can't help but feel this game is truly the reversed situation. The game itself is, to be blunt, awful. It doesn't play in such a way that makes me feel that all classes or paths are truly viable- pick the mage's tower too early, with a week class, and it will be a long ugly trudge through it. The combat often feels random, many enemies having 'finisher' style moves that will kill a character, without fail, unless the AI messes up and forgets to do you in. Rogue's seem virtually worthless as their inferior combat skills make them a detriment to many parties. Mages show such flexibility as to be almost invaluable. Warriors play pretty much like better rogues, as they are basically a big sack of armor, hitpoints, and damage. The combats are HARD, but not in a way that I would call challenging- they're tedious affairs, victory more dependent upon enemy mistakes then player skill.

The plot of Dragon Age is absolutely amazing though. Ferelden is a fully realized world, characters all seem to have a place in it, with deep backgrounds and sensible relations to events around them. Each of the race, gender, class combos have their own little twists and options, putting much of the story squarely in the players hands to determine, with so much detail, there's even lore scraps you can pick up.

Bionic Commando is considered an utter stinker of a game, while Dragon Age is considered 'amazing'. Which leads to a few thoughts:
1) Gameplay is starting to matter less than visuals and story
2) Bioware can ride its success hard, even glazing over their bad games with positivity carry over from old
3) If you're plot seems unconvincing to a 6th grader, you might want to rethink a few things.

Usually, I do tabletop stuff, but I think this points out some parallel: good rules alone cannot sell a game, and a beloved setting can sometimes glaze over awful rules.

Only you can prevent Wife arm.

LARP and the IC/OOC Barrier: The Religion

I've played in multiple LARPs, both boffer and non-boffer. I've gotten to soak up the stories of yesteryear, the events of the day, and seen where things later end up. They're certainly not what I would call 'young' entities, having existed for many years, but I think only now, with many of them running their course for long periods of time, can we see certain trends in them.

In this article, I'm going to deconstruct what I find perhaps one of the most abysmal institutions in LARPing, a strongly held belief that serves SOME of the gaming population SOME of the time, but perhaps at the cost of others.

I talk about the separation of in character and out of character actions. Primarily, this involves what I would call 'open PVP'.


Background Experience:
I'll leave names blank to protect the guilty and the innocent.

I first get into boffer LARP, and from the standpoint of immersion, it's a blast. I hear about someone who, over the course of a year or so, built a stockpile of bodies, used some janky necromancy rules, and damn near killed everyone in the game. Total pwnge. But rules we're changed to stop that. During this time, I'd also seen that the social structures of the game we're quite draconian, especially in the arcane magics- a rule had been established that to learn a skill, you had to roleplay out learning it from a teacher. A good rule for roleplay, that unfortunately formed into a stranglehold on the magic rules when the mages banded together and all but made one fourth of the game inaccessible to other players. This in a largely cooperative, adventure based fantasy in which players are most likely to fight orcs, and not each other.

I at first thought this an isolated case, until I reached the next boffer LARP. I then get hit with tales of the first LARP players were in, where a singular evil character played skillfully over many years basically nuked the player base. I got killed in my second game there due to a poorly planned open PVP event, in which I got to hear about my characters grizzly dismemberment, almost like verbal salt in the wounds- hey, you're not just dead, you're also mutilated! Granted, the oldbie important characters get rezzed despite all the difficulties later because people want them back that bad, and the usual unfortunate trend towards LARP elder status, but it leads me to questioning just WHY open PVP is good. And the basic answer I am given is that it CAN lead to good consequences, and that one should just have FAITH that one's fellow players will make tasteful choices, accept when things go wrong, and then hope things go better the next time.

I warned them once, about the syndrome of the super necromancer, of the psycho, of the slow building terrorist- they said it couldn't happen in their game. A few months later, one of the major PCs turned evil and kills half the players in the game- and escapes, and survives. Me one, the religion zero.

So now I'm playing Vampire. It's a cut throat game, with open PVP, so it's expected people will power play, politic, possibly assassinate one another. The chainsaw is gimped slightly by numbers being more powerful than stats, but that doesn't really change things here sociologically. No vampire terrorists yet, from what I can see, but rules created to enhance roleplay and prevent twinking may be quickly turned into weapons to screw people out of XP. Status strips, intimidation, and covenant rivalries allow for people to be much, much worse to one another in some ways then a fantasy based but of live action D&D- and they are. I got to hear a story of people getting forcibly converted to a new faction after being unmanned physically by their enemies- fun!

All of this behavior, these bad results, are direct results of the Religion of OOC/IC being completely separate. Unfortunately, they're not.

The Three Types of Gamers

There is a theory labeled GNS Theory, a theory used in roleplaying games for the three types of fun they can provide. Not everyone adheres to this theory, as it's strictest interpretations are sort of unrealistic, but the basics of it are there. We may come up with a better theory one day, but for now, the GNS theory is perhaps the first step in deconstructing what makes a roleplaying game fun for people. If you don't think there are any theories or methods towards making a roleplaying game good, go bang your sticks together in a cave and hope for fire, because you might as well say there's no difference between good and bad movies. This may be opinion, but it is an informed opinion.

The quick of it is that Gamists play the game to compete, and in some sense, win. They may want to just be powerful, they may want to overcome challenges, they may want to PK. The worst of these are power gamers nobody wants, with the best being the tacticians you always want on your side.

The Simulationists play the game as a what if, wanting to just see what happens. This is, in some ways, the core strength of LARPing. It's deeply immersive, something simulationists love, meaning they can more easily get the What If aspect of gameplay- its almost real, cause you talk to real people in real time, with real bodies rather than images provided by a gamemaster.

Narrativists play games because they want cool stories. Whatever happens in a game, they want to see neat things happen, have moments of drama, tales that keep them interested and worth telling to others. Narrativists, in many ways, want to see that a game has something that resembles a plot when all is said in done.

Why the Religion Works:

The religion works because it serves both Simulationists and Gamists to keep OOC and IC completely separate, at least as a creed to say, and on paper. The Simulationists are often the improv actors of the game, people who play a character to a hilt- whether they are psycho or hero, a bit part or a mover and shaker, the Simulationist loves to just see where things go with whatever they play. Open PVP and IC/OOC separation, to them, is only logical as it adds to their immersion, at least theoretically. For them, separating the two is second nature.

The Gamists benefit from this because it means they can do whatever they want IC and reap no OOC repercussions for it. They can be 'as bad as they wanna be', callously kill others off, and basically go around kicking ass, taking names, bullying people, and 'winning' and there is no game master intervention to get in their way. In some cases, the system even supports it, allowing them further ways to strike at their imagined enemies with zero risk to themselves- this is the perfect gamist solution.

Narrativists are left on the outs by this, and the whims of Gamists and Simulationists do not always lead to good stories. While Simulationists are far less guilty of railroading and ruining the game, being that they often add a lot of immersion with their roleplay skill and interesting characters, more often we have to deal with the Gamists. A Gamist might kill your character for fun and then slyly give a blaise IC reason- he annoyed me, I have low humanity, he was another covenant, etc. They may kill you out of boredom. Their reasons are ultimately that it was a path to them winning, and it means they will use whatever means they wish to accomplish that.

Take a moment to realize that nobody is necessarily just one or the other of these things- people can derive fun from all the approaches, but there is probably one that is above all the others.

The Religion's main purpose is that it serves two kinds of mindsets- it forces everyone to OOC 'get along', but allows IC for people to be total assholes, even needlessly. This works into the hands of those who believe everyone could (and should) get along as well as those who wish to Win the game, because they can excuse even the most vile behavior IC as being 'just my character'.


Heresy: The Problems with the Religion

The First Heresy: My Character

It's just what my character would do is NOT an excuse. It's a reason, but it's surely not an excuse for ruining other people's fun because you MAKE your character. When you put the dots, the faction, and ultimately, when you dream up the persona of your character, you've decided just how they're going to act in the game. If you make a psycho killer who is going to PK at the drop of a hat and end people's stories then you DECIDED to make that. If you roleplay your humanity drop as a reason to PK, you DECIDED to roleplay that way.

Your character is not a ghost who possesses you and makes you do things.

The Second Heresy: Order

Some people think keeping IC and OOC seperate is the only way to keep people friendly, because when someone screws your character over, you should never hold it against the person who did it because it's just IC. There is some truth to this...

However, it contradicts human nature. When roleplay turns to PVP issues, it quickly goes sour. When playing against NPCs, nobody cares too much to look at your character sheet, but once it goes PVP people whip them out and double check and look at databases because the PLAYERS care about their CHARACTERS. It's a simple truth. No matter how good a dinner I am bought after getting assassinated, if the reasons were stupid or ill conceived, I'll probably be fuming the entire time. The hurt will likely remain. The people who are most equipped to get around this are the hardcore Simulationists, but both Gamists and Narrativists will hold the grudge both IC and OOC. Two thirds of everyone pays this rule lip service, ultimately.

There are big arbitration boards and rules in many LARP organizations as people take issue with one another, and I'm sure that PVP is due the lion's share of these conflicts.

The Third Heresy: Better Gaming

The final heresy on this rule is there is some belief that this divide leads to better gaming, despite evidence to the contrary. The best we can say is that open PVP and IC/OOC separation provide some element of 'surprise' to the game. Oh hoh, I never expected to be kill boxed tonight by people proxying their characters from half a world away! But this complexity doesn't necessarily lead to good story, immersion, or even a fun "I Win!" scenario for gamists. Gamists in open PVP are small sharks in a big shark pond and may find themselves on the receiving end of the same kind of action they deal out for reasons as simple as 'you were getting too powerful and I don't trust you'. Simulationists may have to deal with poorly reasoned PVP which they are then forced to rationalize away IC. And the Narrativist, as per usual, will probably watch as a chainsaw comes screaming through and killing a plot.

Oddly, most of the best gaming comes about from OOC/IC interaction- giving game masters character information to use in plots, establishing character ties with others. None of that is IC, but it effects IC for OOC reasons and its GOOD.

Losing the Religion or Where Do We Go?

It's a sad fact that to really predict LARPs, the easiest thing to model them on are MMOs. No, seriously. An MMO is a large social group of gamers, and while we stretch out our 'go time' and rules with talking IC and acting, MMOs function very similarly to LARP.

Add in long snippets of text in between each battle, and we're pretty close.

Now, in MMOs, we got to see the micro-evolution of PVP. Open PVP was featured in a lot of early MMOs, because people thought the What If machine and labeling something a roleplaying game would be enough to police the worst elements. Only it wasn't. People would still be cheesy assholes and kill newbs for fun, make the game a living hell if they were bored. Open PVP generally proves to be not very fun for anyone but the most hardcore elements.

A few years later and we get the flag system: we can challenge people to duels, which they can deny or accept. We can be Flagged, allowing ourselves to be attacked, inviting that misfortune and competition. And there are special areas where things like that can happen.

I give the Requiem Larp some credit for taking this last feature and introducing an inverse rule- Elysium's are places where it takes Willpower points to hurt and Willpower Dots to kill. This certainly cuts down on the direct violent PVP aspect of Vampire a good deal, adding an element of stability. However, we do not see any Flag elements- there is no 'duel' system, nor is there any 'flagging' for PVP. There is a 'parlay' type system to PVP, where one can negotiate consequences down, but it's rarely if ever employed.

So, to replace the religion, what would it take?

I think, a PVP flag of some type could be useful- there are people who want to engage in the extremely confrontational aspects of Vampire, fighting tooth and nail in the global game. I think a flag could include both benefits and disadvantages: unflagged characters certainly could not diablerize, but there may be other advantages available I am unaware of.

Meanwhile, those unflagged would be relatively 'safe', unless they initiated a 'duel'- duels being a PVP based situation both parties agree to engage in. Once someone duels, they are flagged for a certain period. I think a period of a year would be fair- this gives plenty of time to plot against and deal with said person if anybody wanted to. It also fosters reasons for new characters to get involved with the game without fear they will be killed, bloodbound, and diablerized a short time after joining- certainly not common events, but totally possible in the rules at this point.

I also think, dueling ought to have some Storyteller/GM intervention involved, for the simple following reason: I trust Storytellers, for the most part. Storytellers are there to make the game good, are voted in to do so, and they can look at the IC reasons for attack/declines/etc with a critical eye. Unlike a player, whose reasoning I have no input or effect on whatsoever, a Storyteller I can at least Vote on at a later date. If someone plays a horrible PK machine and runs rampant, I have no real recourse, no way of preventing him from coming back and killing my next character, or the next. BUT if the Storyteller decides to allow for PVP I thought was unfairly deserved, I can vote against him next term, even run against them if need be. There is a way to show my disapproval in this case without having to get a lengthy bureaucratic nightmare involved.

Summarized Conclusion:

The OOC/IC divide and Open PVP could be replaced by a flag and duel system with GM oversight and intervention. It let's new people play for a while without having the global game stomp them, it let's gamists make progress without getting utterly stomped, it assures most narrativists better story, and lets simulationists avoid the worst excesses of gamist attitudes.

Fast, Furious, Fuku

There are some anime type rules for Savage Worlds I'd kicked around a few months ago. The idea is to provide a plot point campaign as well as a rule set that allows for anime type fighting. That could mean a lot of things, but I'll try to get across a few.

Powerful: Anime characters have good fights when it's against a main character, but extras are REALLY extras. Savage Worlds is good for this since there are extra rules inherent, but a few more power moves and Edges to speed up minion clean up and create truly large scale battles seem appropriate. This part was easy, represented by a set of edges that are there to allow for characters to destroy multiple minions with one spell, as well as objects.

This also includes a sort of uber arcane background that, while using multiple skills much like super powers, provides more power points, as well as a penalty for rolling ones. It's more powerful than the average AB, but it 1) fits an anime setting style better and 2) is available for everyone to use during the game, for free at character creation.

One Upping: A lot of anime fights are a series one upping the other person- a new technique is broken out to overcome the last technique used, over and over again, until somebody ends up on top. These techniques may be secret or spur of the moment, or even just a sheer moment of Willpower overcoming the character and pushing them past their limits, but it's the way things tend to go.

A One Upping system has been discussed, an advantage that is passed around between characters as they bust out new powers, each time the advantage growing until it will almost certainly lead to characters being knocked out or killed from it's use with one side victorious.

The current system gives a lot of options for how this advantage is passed around and what it does for people, but I'm starting to realize that the list, while allowing a lot of flexibility, isn't necessarily fast, furious, or fun. So I think I'll change it from being a flexible list into something characters pick from, like a Limit Break from FF VII, maybe picking a single 'one up' advantage and one up taking technique per rank.

Vets and Youths: I kind of want a way to distinguish this in a way that feels 'fair'. I've been thinking about allowing Vet's to gain all the starting advantages but the special arcane background, instead getting a more focused, but less powerful arcane BG- they would be far more skilled and powerful starting off, but weaker in the long run. Probably, they'd have less power points, but a single controlling skill, and less powers over all. It would make them very GOOD with the power they had though. Just not having as much potential as the youth, which is the usual route of such things.

A Flexible Setting: Anime runs a gamut of genre's so no setting can be appropriate for everything. I think of things like Tenchi Muyo when I think broad- there's space, aliens, demons, magic, super powers, a little of everything. But it's not Savage at all, it's far too fluffy. Savage makes me think of Berserk, but that's just low fantasy. I'd love for a game to really fit things like Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, Gunsword X, and a few other types of shows with a nice ensemble cast.

My first try was the idea of a school that trained Earth's next generation of superhuman children after the Power Wars (a war fought with superpowers) destroyed most of Earth's infrastructure, leaving a large underground population of children, who are growing into teenagers, as the largest superhuman population in the world. Hijinks, calamity, and world saving ensue from the various Battle Schools.

The second idea I tried to throw around was one where a Colony Ship has flown away from a wrecked Earth to establish a new home on a colony world. Only the colony world seems to be on the rocks when they get there, small patches of lawless human civilization, lots of monsters, superhuman gangsters, etc. The young Colonial Troopers, using the disciplines of Martial Arts, Super Science, and Magic, must work to save this wrecked world and discover the hidden evil that plagues it. Kind of a Space Exalted feel.

No third idea at this point, but I really do want to figure out what would be better. The first seems more ready for some light hearted antics, while the second feels a little too close to the Phantasy Star series.

Really, my biggest obstacle is setting. I may post on this elsewhere to find some opinions.

How Can We Judge an RPG?

So, I've been running into a very interesting attitude of late due to all the game reviews we've been doing, best summarized as the following.

"The game is fun if you ignore the setting and change the rules."

I'll let that sink in a moment.

It's a true statement, in that if you make a game into another game that you like, you will like it. It's also an awfully idiotic statement in whether or not this evaluates a game as good.

What can we rate an RPG on and how can we justify it? Games run different ways- some are deadly, some are forgiving, some are detailed and slow, while others are lite and fast. To say which approach is right is sort of a cost benefit analysis combined with an identification if the System matches the Setting.

For a Quick List of Traits of a Good Game, I would Probably List:
-Balance
-System Supporting Setting
-Effort to Play

Balance:

Balance means fairness, generally an equal footing with the player standing next to me at character creation. If we're playing a squad of monsters in a game meant for it, my werewolf should be equally useful to his mummy. The paragon of game balance is the HERO system. Years of tinkering and toiling have been spent to try and create a system in which 'you get what you pay for'. Guidelines as to what makes something too powerful, warning stickers on potentially broken powers, and other safeguards and balances work to make HERO one of the most fair systems ever.

There are lots of examples of poor balance out there, but I think one of the easiest is early model RPGs where rolled stats reward people more for rolling well. As if winning wasn't enough, you can win more, so you can win more, before the game even starts.

System Supporting Setting:

Take Seventh Sea, for example. It's a game of swashbuckling adventure, more or less. There are fights, epic virtues and vices, plots based around character, larger than life characters, rules to have awesome duels as well as cut a swath through lesser foes. These are all useful features for a game about this kind of adventure. The rules reinforce the tone and action of the setting and this is what makes it a good game. It has it's rough points, but thats why a lot of games get new editions to sand those out.

Effort to Play:

There is work in playing games- making characters, reading setting, learning rules, rolling dice to get results, etc. The more effort this takes, the more pay off you should get for it. Savage worlds is probably a paragon of bang for your buck gaming: you can make characters quickly, use the book and grab NPCs to run them, and it has a low handling time for rolls made. It's quick to get the basics down and just start playing if you have a GM willing to create a game on the fly.

Hackmaster may be the height of effort to play problems. Big book full of rules, long character gen, complicated charts- we've heard the game is fun, but we've never had the gumption to make it through all the effort required to actually play it.

While more opinion and less quantifiable, I would also List:
-Setting Appeal
-Style
-Engagement

Setting Appeal:

Some people like apples, some like oranges- there is no way to please everyone. However, there are some steps you can take to make a game fun for more people, which means making it accessible to everyone. This means making the setting something that doesn't exclude people based on race, religion, orientation, or gender. Thankfully this is not an issue in most games, even the alternate history ones, which make allowances for those characters who would otherwise be discriminated against in less enlightened times.

Style:

There are little widgets to a system that make it fun. Sometimes it's a single feature, like Cthulhu's sanity system or the Spiritual traits of Riddle of Steel. Sometimes, it's the ability to build each power with the same care you would build a small character, like in HERO. Some games come out so bland you can't really latch on to it or do more than shrug and say 'It works'. I like games that have a bit of quirk that fits the system and does something cool.

Engagement:

A good system should keep you caring about whats going on, keep you engaged. This can vary a great deal between game styles- rule's lite RP intensive systems may accomplish this with a low handling time and fast results, while a more tactically intensive mini's based game may have very heavily engaging combat rules. This goes right along with System Supporting Setting. To summarize, a good combat keeps me on my seat, paying attention and planning what I will do next- a bad combat makes me read a book and wait to roll for my swing at the baddie.

And Then Life Happened: And Then There Were Superheroes

So, been getting back to doing some Twenty Weeks of Hell. Been doing Vampire LARPing. Moved out of my house. Moved in with friends. Did some fiction writing with hopes of publishing. Etc. And then Champions Online came out.

The first couple days it was like I'd discovered crack and didn't realize how bad it was. The Beta was a blitz of gaming and I find myself diving head first into playing it way more than was healthy. It was the usual high I get when I feel life in my veins- I sleep a few scant hours and awake jazzed and ready for more.

We actually created a contract to control our behavior upon buying the game and so far it's worked- I make sure to do an hour of useful work every day before playing.

So, the game itself is like a really long Beta in many ways. Some powers are unfairly advantageous, some are completely useless, and a few are just right. The basic gameplay is fun, fast paced, and way more interesting than that other superhero MMO. At a quick glance, the game is wonderful, but there are many ugly little pimples to find.

Big Pimples Include:

A content gap
Power Balance
Few Reasons to Team
Not Enough End Game Content

Despite all those, I love this game. This game is heroically geared. A lot of the missions involve saving people, few of the missions are just about beating guys up, you fight a lot of supervillains instead of just thugs, and the personal nemesis stuff, while campy, is still pretty awesome.

The make or break for this game will really be the Blood Moon event in my opinion. They continue to work on problems, and one of the biggest is the content- little end game, and a content gap. If this next expansion can either occlude that or patch it up, then it should all be gravy. But without end game and 40 achievable well within a month... it needs end game content really, really badly. Otherwise, people are just going to lose interest and do something else after getting all 8 character slots to 40. Hard, but not impossible by any stretch.