1) Press on with the current plotline without the missing player. Write the character out of the plot somehow, or have the GM or a trusted player play the missing character.

This is the one I like to use most often. It keeps the game going, and everyone gets to see what will happen next rather than have to wait for next session, myself included. I prefer to write missing characters out of the current plotline, rather than have significant things possibly happen to a character who’s player is not there. This has the advantage of keeping the campaign moving right along even when people are missing. Also, it’s generally a simple matter to write a character out of plot or have someone else pick up and play the character for a session. The disadvantages are that it can’t be used when a plot is centered on the missing character, and, though it’s usually not a big deal, the missing player misses out on experiencing part of a plot when this method is used. Also, it can break the suspension of disbelief for some people when a superficial reason takes a character away from the group or someone else doesn’t get a character’s personality just right.

2) Pick up a sidequest.

Your players do give you advance notice when they aren’t attending, even if it is just half a day or so, right? I should hope so. With this information, you know to prepare a possible sidequest or two ahead of time, giving the group something else to do while the character of the missing player attends to other issues. This is a lot like number one when the character gets written out of the story for a bit, but this has the advantage that the main quest isn’t continuing, so a missing character is a lot easier to explain away. As a disadvantage though, everyone has to wait another session to advance the plot, which can be frustrating when you really want to know what happens next. In my experience though, as long as the sidequest is interesting enough, most players will be quite happy with this arrangement.

3) Do a flashback session.

Have everyone play through a session of something that happened before the story even started. Use this to expand on the backstory of the characters and allow everyone to become more familiar with it, or to expand on the history of the world.

If no one likes the idea of playing level 1 characters again, and having them be level 15 back in the past feels like breaking continuity too much, make it non-canon, or provide historical characters of equivalent power to their current characters for them to play through a historical flashback. What they do in the past might even show up in a future gaming session, which can be a cool feeling if incorporated well.

If everyone is cool with playing level 1 characters for a session, or is willing to handwave continuity issues, perhaps playing through a quest in which the group banded together once to aid a local village or help the army defend their country would make an interesting session. This doesn’t even have to be when they became an adventuring group, it could simply be the first time they met, and fate brought them together again later in life for the current adventure they’re on.

As an alternative, perhaps they could play through a historical event involving the paladin king, sorceress queen, and court jester (a bard) before they rose to power in order to see how they came to power, and what deeds they performed before their rise to power. This could even be a great chance for players to try out different characters in a long-running game, just for the experience of playing a character focused in a different area then the normal character.

There are many other options for flashbacks of course, these are just a couple ideas. Doing a canon session of the past might be difficult to integrate into the main campaign again, but if it’s done well, it can be immensely rewarding both for the GM and the players.

4) Do a session of a possible future.

Make sure everyone knows this may not be a canon session, since it could be quite difficult to direct the players to this point in the story once the campaign starts from its normal location again. Then let them level up a few times, or in a system like World of Darkness or Shadowrun give them a few sessions worth of XP to spend on new abilities for this single session only. Then put them in a situation that might come up sometime in the future.

This has two cool aspects. First, it allows the players to play around with higher level powers that it might take awhile for them to actually get. Next, if the players like the way events turn out in this future, they can work to make it happen, otherwise they can work to make a different future happen when they begin playing the normal campaign again. It also spreads more information about the plot around. Of course, in some games, this may not be desirable, but if it’s a useful device for the story, it could be a lot of fun. I’ve never tried this one, and don’t know anyone who has, but it sounds like a lot of fun. Perhaps I’ll get the chance next time I’m running a campaign.

So that’s it for ideas of how to deal with missing players for a session. Hopefully you’ll find some of them useful in planning for a session not everyone can attend. Be sure to share any other ideas, or how these methods have worked for you, in the comments so we can see how other groups handle running sessions without everyone present!

And yes, there are a number of faults, which I’m going to get out of the way first because I’ve been wanting to vent about some of them for awhile. First, the camera is awful. The worst I’ve seen in any 3d Sonic game I’ve played, though I haven’t played the 360/PS3 Sonic the Hedgehog.  Anytime I tried to backtrack, usually on ring collecting missions, the camera would get all wonky and not turn the way I wanted it to, even when I started going in the right direction again. This also impacted gameplay, since when using a boost Sonic would run in the direction of the camera, not the way he was facing. Luckily, this came up infrequently, and didn’t seriously impact play, but it came up often enough to be irritating.

Next, there are the training missions. Seriously Sonic Team or Dimps, whoever had the idea that each separate ability needed it’s own 10-30 second tutorial stage really needs to rethink that idea. While the tutorials were helpful since the game has some non-standard moves for a Sonic game, one training level to show how to do everything would have been a lot more efficient. This wouldn’t be as big a deal as I’m making it, except for the fact that in between each training stage there were long loading times that got to be irritating as they were coming up every 10-30 seconds of intro play. Luckily, this was only for a short time, but it doesn’t make a good first impression and could have been avoided by having one tutorial level.

Finally, my last two gripes. The werehog combat was lackluster, and the missions in some of the stages seemed designed solely to get more life out of some of the stages rather than actually to be fun. Ring collecting missions in beginning stages lasted no more than 30 seconds, and werehog combat could be done with one button for most of the game, with the combo options being superfluous. Towards the end of the game, combat got a little better, and the missions had some staying power and actually represented a decent and rewarding challenge though.

In fact, I would say that Sonic Team held back for too long, making the beginning bland and mediocre at best, and the end was exactly what a Sonic game should be in the hedgehog levels, while  in the werehog levels the end was what I would expect from another form of platformer with some decent combat thrown into the mix.

Which brings me to the good stuff. In the Sonic stages, using boosts and homing attacks at the right time could find some excellent shortcuts, there’s an excellent sense of speed, and crashing into fixtures redirects you rather than bringing you to a screeching halt unless you collide directly with the wall. Drifting around corners, once you get used to it, helps you maintain speed around turns while avoiding walls as well. This keeps the action fast and furious, and there are a lot of twitch moments where you need to be right on your game to avoid a less optimal path or death at the hands of a violent drop. The game is very forgiving of mistakes most of the time, allowing you to fall a level or two below to another part of the stage before a fall spells certain doom for our blue, spiny hero. The exception to this is the final zone, in which the slightest mistake will have you restarting the stage, but honestly, this was par for the course on the harder zones in the Genesis Sonic games, so bring your old school gaming reflexes and patience for the final zone and you’ll be fine.

In the werehog stages, the platforming is generally excellent, and is only marred by uninspired combat. Towards the end of the game though, even the combat picks  up and is quite fun, forcing you to think about how to approach it and divide the enemies in order to prevail. It won’t win any awards, but it’s a cut above mindless hack and slash once Sonic Team gets the kinks out. The platforming is what really shines though. Sonic Team gave the werehog stretchy limbs, and these can be used to grab airborne enemies, as well as specific ledges and poles marked as being grabbable. The stretchyness prevents unnescessary death if the animation doesn’t start when it should, since the limbs keep stretching until they grab the ledge you’re aiming for. As long as the cursor is on the screen when you press the grab button, you’ll safely get the ledge you want. I’m not sure about the rationale for having some ledges not be grabbable, as I think it would have added a little more of a second chance to the platforming, but it’s not a huge deal and the platforming still shines regardless.

In the end, I feel that if Sonic Team and Dimps had a chance to play around with the engine before making the game, we could have had a much better title than we do now. It feels as though they were learning how to make the game in the beginning, and towards the end they really hit their stride. If we see a game based on this engine in the future from this team, I’m willing to bet it will be truly excellent. As long as you can get past the irritating beginning levels, there’s a very good game buried in here.

Now, the reason I don’t like items in competitive play is a reason that is heard quite often: they introduce an unnecessary amount of randomness to the game, and this randomness tends to favor the person who is losing. While this isn’t a hard and fast rule, it usually seems to be the case. For a casual game, this makes perfect sense, as it keeps games close to the end even if players have a variety of skill levels, and that tends to make games more exciting. In competition though, you care about who’s the best first, exciting matches second.

However, there is still a case for keeping items in competition as well, and sometimes, I’ve found myself drifting towards this idea more often. First off, items can act as a balancing factor to bring the highly disparate tiers closer together. In a way, items provide a common moveset to all the characters, and learning to use items skillfully can complement a weaker set of abilities. In the cases of characters with no ranged options, items give them a few limited options at range. In the case of generally weak characters, explosive items give them some extra power. And in the case of slow characters, items like the fan and bunny ears give them a bit of speed. In short, items allow players to cover their chosen characters weaknesses, while still making use of their strengths. In general, I imagine this could make tiers matter less, and allow more characters to have interesting matchups against characters who would normally dominate the match against them.

Now, I have to say, I find the series very fun to play whether items are on or off. With items off, the game feels a lot closer to a traditional fighter, in that it’s just you versus an opponent, and you make the best use of your moveset to earn victory. Knowing what your character can do is more important without items than with items, as is knowing your opponent, since with items disabled you don’t have the common moveset provided by items to cover any glaring weaknesses your character may have.

Items add randomness, as stated before, but also add an extra element of controlling the stage. Since items can spawn anywhere, and they tend to spawn closer to the losing player (at least in Brawl), items require players to be able to control a large amount of space, instead of just specific parts of the stage. This forces players to think more holistically about the fight and stage. In addition, items could likely prevent most stalling techniques some players like to use.

In the end, I don’t think this will change how competitive play works, nor would I like to see it change, at least for now. The point is more to show that both sides have merits to them, and that we shouldn’t demonize one side or the other just because we like one playstyle over another. In any case, the tournament rules can change, and likely will change as the game evolves. Whether or not items are revisited will be another story, but reintroducing items might fix other issues that come up as the game evolves. Whether or not that would be the equavalent of putting out a fire with gasoline, I don’t know. Somehow, if it came down to doing so, I think it would work out better than that though.

Christmas Time in Dun Morogh was filmed in the lovely land of Azeroth by Pure Pwnage just last year. It’s very well sung, with lyrics and video designed to complement each other quite nicely. It looks like a lot of effort went into the creation of this movie, and it’s well worth your time. If you play WoW, you’ll probably even like it more than I did. Even if you don’t, it’s worth a watch and listen.

Next, we have the Munchkin’s Theme by Masterianna. To be fair, this isn’t actually a Christmas song, but it is done to the tune of Jingle Bells, so it’s close enough. For those of you who always want to win and get big numbers, this is the song for you. Mostly fantasy themed, but you’ll see technology slip in a few times. After all, a proper munchkin makes use of any advantages they can get, whether those come from magic or massive explosives.

For something that should be familiar to just about anyone who knows video games, we have Super Mario’s Sleigh Ride by The OneUps. This is a remix of various tunes from Super Mario World with Sleigh Ride, and it’s very well done. As it’s been arranged, all the pieces fit well together. The video I linked to uses fan some fan art as well as the Christmas episode of Super Mario World, which I think goes nicely with this remix.

Mario Paint - Christmas Songs by Floppie30000 is a valiant attempt to recreate parts of various Christmas songs using Mario Paint’s music editor. For the platform, I’d say that it’s a good job. While you won’t listen to it for the awesome sound effects, it’s definitely worth a look for the sheer novelty of how it’s done.

Final Fantasy VII Christmas by cloudlvr93 is the last item I have for you today. None of the video is at all Christmasy, and the song doesn’t at all come from a game. However, the video itself is made from clips of various Final Fantasy VII games along with the movie Advent Children, and it’s paired up with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s version of Carol of the Bells. So, put them together, and you have something from Christmas, and something from gaming, and it all works out, which is good, because this version of the song is awesome, and it fits well with the video, which is well put together to boot. Give it a watch, you’ll see what I mean. Also, if you look around at all, you’ll be sure to find plenty of other games put to this song as well.

So that’s all I have for today. Hopefully these will be a nice break from all the normal carols we’ve been hearing since Thanksgiving. If you have any other videos you’d like to share, feel free to do so in the comments. If you want to comment on any of the pieces, feel free to do so here, but you should definitely let the creators know what you think too, so be sure to post comments about the videos on the creator’s site or youtube page as well so they know what you think.

Feldspar got the call while he was out for his evening walk, looking for any shiny rocks he might like to add to his collection,  a very dwarven hobby if he might say so himself. On the other end was the physicist of a group he’d joined once before for a job, and he had a problem.

“Hey,” he said, “there’s an earth elemental carrying away a couple of our associates. Can you help us out?”

“Where are you?” Feldspar responded quickly.

“Traveling away from my home, towards the woods.” He gave Feldspar the coordinates through their communicators.

Feldspar began running toward the nearby woods, hoping to meet up with everyone there. He got another call soon after.

“I’ve lost it,”  the physicist told him. “He was way too fast, and I crashed the motorcycle I was on in the woods.”

“Stay where you are, and I’ll find you. I have an idea,” Feldspar responded.

Soon after, Feldspar arrived at the crash site.

“I need you to stand guard over my body,” he told the physicist. “If anything dangerous comes this way, just give me a good solid punch. That should wake me up.”

Feldspar’s body then went limp as he separated his astral body from his physical. After looking around quickly, he found the shining trail left by spirits in the astral plane. Following the elemental, he found himself soon at the professor’s home, where the chase had started according to what he’d been told by the professor. The elemental stopped here, and Feldspar took a minute to size this one up. He’d recently saved a friend of his by banishing a fairly powerful water elemental, and figured he could do the same with this one. However, this earth elemental, upon closer examination, was at least twice as powerful as the water elemental he’d banished before. That wasn’t going to work this time. So he looked around a bit more, and found the presence of a wizard on the property. Perhaps this wizard was controlling the elemental. It was his only shot, so he zipped across the yard to cut the wizard off from reaching the elemental.

The wizard, coming around the corner of the house, was quite shocked to see Feldspar, and it was a simple matter for the dwarf to get the jump on him and blast him with raw magical power. The wizard quickly shifted into the astral plane to better deal with this upstart, and called his elemental over to help out as well. The elemental dropped his prisoners and shambled over. He then proceeded to level slow but very solid blows on our intrepid dwarf hero, who, with aid from his magic, shrugged off the brunt of them, but still found himself quite injured. The wizard’s blasts were nothing to him though, however, his control of the elemental was a big problem.

Feldspar knew he couldn’t take on the elemental, and that left him with one chance. He must take out the wizard quickly. Calling upon all his reserves, he let loose with a blast of magical force on the wizard’s unresponsive body. Not only did this cripple the wizard, it also dragged the wizard’s astral body back into his physical body, forcing him back into the normal time stream where his actions would be slower compared to those of Feldspar and the elemental, still operating on the Astral Plane. The wizard still lay there, crippled but alive. The elemental, still under the power of the wizard, landed another solid blow on Feldspar, and the dwarf knew that one more hit could well spell his end.

He leaped aside as the elemental attacked with his powerful stone fists again, and extended his arms toward the wizard. Calling upon his reserves one last time, he blasted the wizard into oblivion just as the elemental landed his last strike upon him. Feldspar fell to the ground, bleeding, and died alongside the wizard he had just taken down.


Obviously, other things happened this session as well, but this was the part I was involved in, as the player of Feldspar, and I thought it went very well. For those who want to know how everything else turned out, the elemental stopped doing anything once the wizard was taken down, and then the physics professor went and picked up his injured and dying comrades that the elemental had captured and found someone to provide medical treatment so they could survive.

Also, I actually had the option to not die when I did. Our storyteller uses a house rule that lets you burn all of your edge (set your permanent edge score to zero until you buy it back up with karma) in order to barely survive once per character. I decided not to do this for a couple reasons. First, the end of the battle was simply awesome, and made for a very good heroic death scenario. The second is simply that I’ve only played a couple of sessions with that particular character, since I can’t make that game on a reliable basis, so it wasn’t a huge loss to lose the character, and coupled with the awesome heroic death, the decision was pretty easy to make.

Second Game:  World of Darkness Mortals

Eric was still getting used to his new identity as Roger Hertzweil. After exposing plans of a new military weapon, a giant railgun mounted on a satellite that could be used to level a city if deemed  necessary, he was forced into hiding by the company looking to produce the weapon. He abandoned his old web business of reporting political news, and using his new identity, set up a new business involving computer hardware in Seattle, a good couple of states away from California, his last known residence.

There was a small problem though. His computer had been infected by a very cleverly designed virus. It could change itself rapidly enough that standard removal procedures wouldn’t work, and even if the virus were removed, it would just slip right back in through any firewalls that were put up. Clearly, this would require a custom solution, so, after failing to remove the virus a couple times, he unplugged his computer from the internet, reformatted, and began coding a complex program that might be able to deal with the virus. His intent was to get this custom virus removal tool to local authorities first, so all emergency personnel could have their systems protected, then continue distributing it through the internet after.

After working on this program for the evening, he took a break for some dinner and headed to bed, figuring he could finish the program in the morning. He was wrong.

The next morning, he awoke to the sound of his apartment windows shattering. Looking out the shattered window, he saw a crater where Seattle used to be, and was suddenly very happy he was poor enough to need to live in the suburbs rather than in the city proper. Naturally, there was no electricity or any sort of communication infrastructure after the blast. At first, he snatched his laptop and ran to the basement with the other apartment tenants. Thinking about it for a minute, he decided he needed to figure out what was going on. So, he would get in contact with Jeff, his old news contact for technology related issues. He put on his snow chains to prepare for needing to drive off road as best he could, then hopped in his car and started driving. At first, the going was slow, but once he got to back roads, it picked up quite quickly.

He made a couple of stops on the way. First, the first supermarket he saw that wasn’t completely swarmed with looters to grab whatever canned foods he could fit in two baskets, boxed foods that he could still cook over a fire, and some of the very little fresh fruit and vegetables that were left in the store. Next, a gas station, where he rigged a way to syphon gas from the pumps without electricity in order to fill up his gas tank, as well as an empty gas can he found at the station.

As he drove, he made plans to pick up some car batteries as a source of electricity he could rewire later, chemicals he could use to recharge the batteries for awhile, and computers he could use to set up a cluster that might be able to start a local internet with the help of Jeff when he made it back to Los Angeles. This last was his hope to get communications networks reestablished using the wireless networking capabilities of any laptops he picked up, first at a local level, and then as word spread, he hoped other people would take his idea and run with it so national communications could be picked up again.

While driving, he would occasionally feel strong vibrations that almost felt like minor earthquakes, and would pick up speed until the vibrations calmed down or went away completely. The fourth time he felt them, he found the cause: odd looking ships the size of commercial jetliners flying overhead. At that point, figuring they could have been the source of the attacks, he shut off anything he had, like his cell phone, that might put out a signal they could use to find him, with the exception of his car, since he needed it to get where he was going. He continued his drive with a renewed urgency, hoping he could make it to L.A. in time to find out why his world was suddenly going mad.


The session ended here, and we actually haven’t decided if this campaign will continue next year once everyone gets back from their college breaks or not. Hopefully it will at least long enough for a conclusion, though if it doesn’t you can bet I’ll be asking the storyteller what plot he had planned for the rest of the campaign.

And that covers my characters’ stories in my gaming sessions this past weekend.

But not if I win all the time. Paradoxically, while I love to win, winning all the time makes it not worth it anymore. Winning becomes too easy, and so I grow bored of playing at that point. With no challenge, there’s no sense of accomplishment.

So naturally, we should just ramp up the difficulty so it’s nearly impossible to win, right? Not so fast, chief. It’s not fun to lose all the time either. Of course, if the challenge is meaningful, and incremental progress toward victory is possible, then lots of challenge is good. This applies more to single player games than multiplayer games of course. In multiplayer games, challenge is found by finding appropriate opponents to play the game with, or a GM who runs a game of appropriate challenge in the case of tabletop rpgs.

In any case, the trick is to find the sweet spot where victory is out of reach, but possible to attain through some effort. In competitive games, this is finding someone you can win against at the ideal rate for you. For me, this is someone who almost always beats me in the game. If they can beat me most of the time, it makes victory that much sweeter when I attain it, and it teaches me a lot more about the game. Like life, in gaming we also learn more from our failures than our successes.

In a roleplaying game, the trick is finding a GM who knows how to balance encounters to remain tense, and isn’t afraid to kill off the PCs. Or at least defeat them, then use one of these handy tricks to continue the game, or another one he may have up his sleeve. By challenging the players, he gives them something to strive for, and success is never certain.

Now, the crux of all this is that a game will generally be most fun when it provides a difficult, meaningful challenge to those playing it. This means that victory won’t come easy, but with the enough effort, it will come. When victory is attained under these conditions, there’s a real sense of accomplishment, rather than the hollow feeling that comes with assured victory. And even if you lose, the thrill of the challenge should still provide you with a good time, as should the suspense of what happens next and the sense that victory could be right around the corner.

I’m not saying it isn’t dissapointing to lose, it usually is after all. However, if it’s a good game, losing can still be fun. It also provides a chance to learn more about the game you’re playing, and apply those lessons next time you play. Not only is this good for the entertainment value that comes with playing the game, it also prepares you for the successes and failures that come with life. Learning to deal with the emotions that come with winning and losing while playing a game lets you get used to the idea of success and failure when the stakes really aren’t that high. Unless you happened to be involved in a tournament anyway, but that’s beside the point for now. Once you learn to deal with the emotions of winning and losing in a game environment, you can apply them to the more serious successes and failures that come from living. It’s definitely a valuable skill to have.

In any case, if you always go for the easy games, try out some challenging games. When I say this, I mean relative to your skill level, not what other people say is easy or hard. Don’t get frustrated when you lose, just get back to it and try to do better next time. I think if you keep at it, you’ll find it far more rewarding to succeed at a challenging game than one that isn’t challenging. In addition, you’ll learn patience, as well as how to deal with success and failure, and how to learn from your mistakes. Finally, you get to do all this while playing a game and having fun. Sounds like a sweet deal to me.

Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition isn’t really D&D anymore. Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s a fine roleplaying game, and it fills the same niche that other editions of D&D filled. It even has the same kinds of monsters for the most part. It still uses character classes and has the four standard achetypes, even if they renamed and retooled them a bit.

The thing is, 4th Edition just doesn’t have the same feel as D&D 3.x or even 2nd Edition. Yes, it still has epic questing through dungeons for fame, treasure and xp, and rediculous levels of power as you advance. But it doesn’t have the diversity of classes that previous editions had. All classes follow a very cookie cutter approach, instead of the varied classes of earlier editions. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it most certainly isn’t traditional D&D.

Now, that’s not to say all the classes are all the same. They aren’t. However, Wizards, in going for game balance first and variability of powers second, overshot the mark and made the classes much more similar than they are different. Yes, fighter powers tend to be more single target, melee and defense focused, rogues tend to do lots of single target damage, and wizards do lots of AoE damage. But all in all, the differences between the classes have been played down in order to make sure no one steals the spotlight. While an admirable goal, the way they’ve gone about it really changes the game a lot.

In addition to this, previous editions of D&D were more focused on the RPG element, though 3.5 began transitioning a bit more towards tabletop wargaming. However, it was possible to make full use of the rules without having battlemats in 3.5. In 4th Edition, so many powers rely on precise spacing that it’s almost required to have a battlemat, which puts it ever closer to the tabletop wargaming genre than the roleplaying game genre. Of course, as I’ve said before, nothing stops you from modifying things as needed to make the game suit you, but the point is that the design has taken a radical shift away from previous editions in this regard.

Finally, a topic that gets special attention from me: magic. In previous editions, despite magic still being fairly rigid, there were lots of spells, and those spells could be used very creatively sometimes. In 4th Edition, magic doesn’t really cause physical changes the way it did in 3rd Edition. Rather, it now just does damage of a specific type, and causes a specific ailment to the targets sometimes. This leaves a lot less room for creative use of spells that was inherent in previous editions. Perhaps as I play more, I’ll realize this isn’t as much the case as I feel it is now though. I understand why this was done, and from a design standpoint, it was a good idea, though I would have preferred to see non-casters given something special to bring them up to snuff with casters rather than the heavy revamping to magic that happened with 4th Edition.

In the end, this isn’t an indictment of D&D 4th Edition though. Rather, it’s just an expression of the feeling that 4th Edition has lost the feel of D&D, and I would have prefered for it to be released under a different moniker so it would really be understood it’s a highly distinct system that veers sharply away from that which people who’ve played previous editions of D&D understand the game to be. Despite what sounds like a lot of complaining, I’ve had some fun with a couple of short games of 4th Edition, though I haven’t had the chance to really see the system in action over a long campaign yet. It’s a solid system. I just feel it’s different enough to have it’s own brand.

David Claymen, on an IGN Three Red Lights podcast, has this to say after talking with a developer for Sonic Unleashed: “I asked one of the developers at TGS, you know I was like, come on everybody just wants Sonic running, like whats up with the werehog? And he was like, well, here’s the deal… he runs at this miles per hour, kilometers per hour, and he laid out all of the statistics on how fast this hedgehog goes, and he was like In order to make a game where Sonic is running and everybody enjoys the whole thing we’d have to design this many miles of level, and it was some ungodly number. And he’s like and that would be like maybe a three hour game and I was like wow, well that kinda stinks and he’s like yeah, so we gotta do this other stuff.”

So basically, the developer said they’re putting in filler to make the game longer. This is not cool. Countless people, fans and critics alike, have said that all of this experimental stuff isn’t working. Ever since Sonic Heroes this has been happening, and Sonic Team isn’t listening.  Here it is one more time: Sonic the Hedgehog is about speed. If you aren’t willing to put in the effort to make a game like that, pass it on to someone else. Sonic Adventure was, on the whole, a very good game. Strip out Knuckles’ and Big’s levels and you’d have an even better game, and one that was still a good five hours long. While that is incredibly short for a game these days, people replay fun games a lot. As long as I can have fun playing through it a few times, there’s no reason it has to be twenty hours long.

In fact, I’d much rather have a short, awesome game that I can play through many times instead of a long, mediocre game with a few awesome parts to it. If it has awesome parts in it, I know the team could have done better, but didn’t for some reason. It also makes it harder to play through a game again when to get to the good parts you have to suffer through parts that just aren’t as much fun.

Of course, if designing large levels is too much work, you could also spend more time on each Sonic game. A new Mario game comes out once a generation now, and while I’m not a huge fan of the 3d Mario games in general, they are still well designed and fun for a playthrough. Mario Galaxy even managed to buck the trend of the previous two games and bring the game back to platforming first, exploration second, which makes the game infinitely more fun. Now, if Sonic Team were to design one game a generation, or even one game every couple of years instead of every year, I bet they could find the time to put in lots more level to make sure there was a decent amount of game, even with Sonic running at high speeds. Say, five to ten hours. They did it for Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast, they can certainly do it now if they’ll put in the effort.

What this developer had to say just smacks of laziness and wanting to get the product out the door instead of making sure it’s a good product. Come on Sega, I know you guys can do better than that. You’ve shown us you can before now, so bring back the magic.

Now that I’ve had my rant, bear in mind I haven’t actually played Sonic Unleashed yet. I hope it will still be fun, but I hear that the werehog levels really drag. I guess I’ll find out soon enough though. I felt the need to write this now because what the developer had to say about the current design philosophy of new Sonic games struck me as very much trying to use gimmicks to replace quality gameplay and provide padding to game length. This is not the way to design a game. Hopefully Sega and Sonic Team will decide to fix this soon.

For more thoughts on how to make Sonic better, see The Revival of Sonic the Hedgehog.

The two games I most commonly hear that button mashing is a winning strategy in are the Soul Calibur series and the Super Smash Bros. series. In Soul Calibur, there’s always someone who thinks button mashing with Maxi will allow them to beat anyone except another button mashing Maxi. And in Smash, there’s always someone saying “I can button mash and beat anyone!” My response to any of these people in any game I’m familiar with: Bring it on! Otherwise, if they’re adamant, I’ll learn the game, then play against them in it.

I then proceed to win game after game against them, always most of our matches, usually all of them. At that point, some get irritated, and others begin to realize that the game is much deeper than they thought. After that, they learn to play a bit, and soon enough, I have some real competition from them. I’m actually not that good at fighting games after all, so it’s easy for people to catch up once they realize they just need to put in a little effort. Some people seem to think I’m really good at fighting games, because I can beat most people I play against, but that’s simply because they haven’t really learned the game or gotten past the button mashing works stage. Against people who know the game, I usually lose as much as I win, and in local tournaments, it’s common for me to lose in the first or second round.

Now, if I can win so much against anyone using this “strategy” of button mashing, it seems to me that it’s not a very good “strategy” after all. And, if you think about it for a minute, that only makes sense. Who’s more likely to win after all: someone who randomly presses buttons and hopes for cool attacks, or someone who knows which attacks he’s about to do, presses the buttons to do them, and knows how to bring out any attack in the game whenever he wishes to bring it out? My vote is for the second person. He can react intelligently to any situation that comes up, or can at least attempt to do so, while the button masher has to press buttons and hope that he gets the right option. Playing intelligently is going to trump wildly flailing and hoping.

Now, that doesn’t mean some games, or characters within certain games, aren’t more friendly to button mashers than others. Some characters do work moderately well when a player button mashes, and you can even make it through a lot of single player modes and a fairly high difficulty setting via button mashing using these characters or playing these games. I think this helps reinforce the illusion that button mashing works, since against computer opponents, it actually does work sometimes. Against a human player though, it won’t if the human player knows what he’s doing. Also, the button mashing player still might land a number of hits on the human opponent who knows how to play. The button masher just won’t end up with a victory against this opponent.

I think the reason newer games are designed in this fashion is likely for two reasons. First, if you can win single player by button mashing, then almost anybody can win single player. This means there will be lots of happy players because they got to beat the game, winning is fun to most people. The second reason is that button mashing being effective is a side effect of making the game more accessable and commands for various moves easy to execute. For instance, Super Smash Bros. has a very intutive system with two attack buttons, which are then modified simply by pressing in any direction on the analog stick. This makes it very easy to perform any move in the game, which makes button mashing easier than it would be in a game like Street Fighter, which has more complicated commands for special attacks.

This accessability is a good thing though. It makes it much easier for players to learn the basics and get into learning strategy and tactics for the game. Basically, the game becomes much more about thinking “which move is appropriate here” instead of “I don’t know if I can do the button presses for this move, but I know it’s the move I should be doing.”

Button mashing isn’t bad as a stage of learning. It’s one of the easiest ways to experiment and find out how to do things. After that point, you need to keep learning though. Pay attention to what you’re mashing, and eventually you’ll remember how to do particular moves. Eventually, you’ll learn the system behind the moves, and which ones are effective to use in which situations. Then you can apply this knowledge to surpass the stage of button mashing, and begin playing the mind games that fighting games involve. It’s much more fun that way, and winning against people who know what they’re doing is far more rewarding than button mashing to victory against other button mashers.

Create Water + Ice or Lightning spells.

First off, we have create water to make a puddle of water on the floor behind a door, followed by a ray of frost to create a layer of ice on a single five foot square. Best used as a trap behind a door when you have a few rounds of prep time and nothing else to prep. I’d rule this works just like grease, just on a smaller area.

Taking this idea further, if you were to say, use a cone of cold over a large area effected by create water, perhaps any square effected by the cone of cold would freeze over instead. This would create a much larger area of ice, and would be great to use on a group of enemies if the cleric isn’t sure what to do with his turn on a given round.

Of course, you might also have the problem that you need to get at an enemy you don’t have line of effect to, but you don’t want to use an AOE effect because of the collateral damage. Drop a create water… it will spread around the corner of the building. Then zap it with a lightning bolt or other appropriately electric spell, and watch everything in the pool of water take electrical damage. I’d rule half of the damage roll, unless there’s a rule that says otherwise.

Mage Armor + Shield + Alter Self + Cat’s Grace

Who says mages can’t tank? Mage armor and shield will get you up to an AC of 18 assuming a dex of ten. Alter self into a lizardfolk for a +5 natural armor bonus and some (likely unhelpful) natural attacks, and toss on a cat’s grace for a +2 dex bonus to AC. Now, you have AC 25… probably more than the fighter or cleric at lower levels. And you can still cast spells effectively too. Cast shield and cat’s grace last, as they have the shortest durations, though they should still last through a battle as long as you prepare soon enough before going in. Then go stand up front with the fighter.

Reverse Gravity + Control Winds

You know the fun thing about high speed winds? They always work better on creatures that are flying. And they work way better on creatures helplessly floating above the ground. Once you have your enemies suspended helplessly in the air, blow them away. They’ll take both falling damage as well as whatever damage they take for being caught in a windstorm, and be quite far away from you to boot. Makes for a great chance to rebuff.

Prismatic Wall + Control Winds

You’ve probably figured out I like control winds by now. Be that as it may, the idea this time is to set up a prismatic wall, then have everyone blown into the wall by the winds from control winds. After that, everyone blown into the wall has to save vs all seven effects. Good luck. And make sure your allies don’t get caught in this trap.

Simulacrum + Permanent Telepathic Bond

This one is fairly costly, and is generally more fun in the hands of the GM than as a player. It’s also fairly high level stuff. However, the simulacrum provides a clone of you, though only half as powerful. A clone that unquestioningly obeys all commands. The telepathic bond made permanent via permanency is so you can issue those commands from anywhere. As well, the simulacrum can let you know what’s happening in the area in order to let you make more informed decisions about the orders you want to provide it.

Of course, the fun is in the fact that you get to basically go anywhere you want without leaving the comfort of your home or risking your life, though it’s a considerably weaker version of you. Alternatively, you can fight side by side with yourself, and give your simulacrum orders telepathically so your enemies don’t know what you’re planning to do, yet you can still coordinate attacks.

Wall of Fire + Forcecage

Trap a creature or creatures in a barred forcecage. Then cast the circular wall of fire inside. Concentrate as long as necessary. At 2d6+caster level damage a turn, those creatures won’t last long. If you have two casters, prepare to cast the spells together, and do the wall of fire first, followed by the windowless cell version of the forcecage. Harder to escape, and impossible to attack through.

Illusory Script + Explosive Runes

What’s worse than finding an awesome new spellbook, only to have it explode upon trying to read it? Having it explode upon trying to read and being compelled to do the bidding of who ever created this hateful trap for the next half hour via the suggestion implanted in the illusory script. I recommend a nature walk through the local marsh, just so they get to be uncomfortable for a bit after being exploded. Asking the queen to marry them while they’re in their singed clothing might be fun too. Of course, there are all sorts of possibilities, so have some fun with it… and keep your real spellbook in a your bag of holding or handy haversack on your person at all times.

So there are some fun combinations to use. Some are practical, and some are there just because it’s fun to pull them off in a game once in awhile, even though you’d likely be better off just doing something else. Besides which, you never know when something seemingly not useful becomes exactly what you’re looking for in the game.