No Game New Year part 5: GTA Online and a better Blood Bowl competition...

Hi there!

GTA Online

So, with GTA 5 being the huge game it is, I'm still going through the story - roughly 80% of the way through it now - and I find myself with very little to say about it that I haven't already covered in previous blogs.

I have, however, been enjoying GTA Online a lot more as I've been looking to break out of the story mode from time to time. I've played quite a few multiplayer modes on the various games that I own and I'm really finding a lot of fun in this one now that I've got a better idea of what I'm doing. I'm still not all the way there and I'm constantly learning but hopefully I'll get some more hours out of it while I finish the story. After that I probably won't bother too much about it. My copy of the game is physical, so it runs off the disk, which means if I've got anything else in there it's not like I can go on the Xbox Dashboard and boot it up for a few death matches. I'd have to put the game in again, and while I write this, I am astonished at how lazy I'm getting with it!

So, two main things I like about GTA Online:

I think my favourite thing about the game is the variety of activities on offer that you can do at pretty much any time. Most games that have multiplayer has various modes that offer a different take on the core mechanic of the game. Gears of War, for example, is all team-based, and most of the variation in the multiplayer mode depends on who and how you kill. Whereas with GTA Online, you can go from a Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Last Man Standing, Racing, Parachute Jumping, Air Combat, Bike Racing, Tennis - and all of those games work really really well. It's actually hard to get bored doing any of those things because even if you do, you can go ahead and play somewhere else. And you can even just drive around the city if you prefer.

I also like the Level Up system. This is something I've come across in a number of games and most of the time it only serves to show how long various people have played the game. There are ways to level up more quickly but if all I did for a week were to play Far Cry Two online I'd be level 30 pretty much by default and it would make no difference to how I play. I'd still be rubbish. In GTA Online, it really does make a difference because certain missions, or 'jobs,' weapons and I think cars as well only become available when you go level up. For example, I'm currently at Level 12, and the game has only just decided I'm ready to use a SMG (Sub-machine gun.) Up until now my best weapon was a Micro-SMG. So I'm looking forward to seeing where I go in the future and what weapons will become available to me.

You can also increase your character stats but the only way I've found to do it is to run around all over the gaff until your stamina increases. That being said, bearing in mind it's got to take you all the way up to Level 100, perhaps the stats weren't increasing as quickly as I was expecting. But I see players who aren't much higher than me with significantly higher stats, almost maxed out in some situations.

Some highlights:

• Interrupting a fierce gun battle in a 4-player Death Match and taking both guys out before they realised what was happening,
• A 'you're a dick' moment where a guy pretty much let me win a race for 5 out of the 6 laps then rammed me off the road,
• A well-matched game of tennis that really could have gone either way but I managed to win.

Blood Bowl

Hoping for a better competition than last time, I entered the No-Game Nihilists into the Orc Toof cup. I levelled Hector the Weeper up and gave him Block. I also levelled up Dur Head-Wrencher the Ogre and gave him Grab, which allows him to move his opponents to pretty much any square he likes after a tackle except the one directly behind him. It was not until I tried to use this that I realised just how useful this would be...

• Game 1 vs Dwarf Anvils (Dwarf) Detlef Doolist got us off to a good start with a score after a fight, but then got injured in the following turn. Dagonet Huppert got another one in during the early part of the 2nd half thanks to a sweeping passing play from the two throwers. A counter-attack from the backline resulted in another pass from Gawain Rosluver and another point from Dagonet. Nihilists Win 3-0, and Woras the Mad levelled up; I gave him Block as ever.
• Game 2 vs Warpstone Wanderers (Skaven) The Skaven team started with a LOT of mercenaries. After a massive fight across the whole pitch and most of the first half, Skaven got one in just before halftime. Dagonet got a goal in halfway through the second half after a handoff from a lineman, but the Skaven team got another try from a pass play. We tried a desperate play to pull it back and force a draw, but for some reason our ball carrier was struck by lightning. Nihilists Lose, 2-1. Griswold the Punisher levelled up and was given Block, but Serange the Storyteller suffered a broken neck.
• Game 3: The Witches Fury (Dark Elves) After a long and bitter fight, the Nihilists scored at the end of the first half. A handoff between the two Catchers resulted in another try for us in the second, giving the Nihilists a Win 2-0. More remarkable was the ferocity with which we managed it; we achieved 4 Knockouts and 4 Casualties! Ardtrai the Boss-Eyed levelled up and was given Block, and the Thrower Arne Rolf levelled up as well; I gave him Accurate, hoping to improve my passing game for future competitions.

This was enough to get us into the playoffs, where for some reason there was only a final match between us and the Warpstone Wanderers...

• As this was the only team we lost against in the first round, we approached this with some trepidation. However, after forcing their ball carrier into the sidelines, Viscount Lutolf picked the throw-in up to score. After a gruelling battle, Skaven got a try, but Arnulf Ottman ran the ball up the wing and scored in the last moments of the match. No-Game Nihilists win 2-1, and that also meant that we won the Orc Toof Trophy!

See you next week...

DnD Next: Is it any good? Part 4

This week's entry focuses on the rules that relate to what happens at 2nd level, as this is what came up the most often during our session.

Wizard Feat: Sculpt Spells

This one caused some confusion amongst our Wizards, but once we'd worked it out we thought it was a pretty good rule. How it works is this:

"When you cast a spell that affects other creatures, you can choose a number of creatures equal to the spell’s level + 1. The chosen creatures automatically succeed on their saving throws against the spell, and they take no damage if they would normally take half damage from the spell."

Nice function but we struggled to find its application, since the whole point of casting spells that affect creatures is to do damage. Then we figured out that it's actually so that you can cast an Area-Of-Effect spell into a combat and avoid damaging your allies. This is a tactic I have seen employed in some coverage of video RPGs, where the player puts the Fighter forward to take on a horde of low-level monsters, and the Wizard casts an area-of-effect spell on the Fighter - who can take it - and kills the monsters surrounding him. It's not one I've ever seen put to use in a pen-and-paper RPG, and I've never been tempted to do it myself. I'm used to Warhammer and 40K where you can't usually deliberately target an attack of any kind at your own units, so it's never even occurred to me to try. Suddenly I'm now aware that it's a legitimate tactic to deliberately damage one of your allies for the greater good of further damaging the monsters surrounding him, and with this new rule Sculpt Spells, we might avoid even that. It's looking pretty good for Wizards!

Fighter Feat: Action Surge

I think this might have been a 4th Edition Feat at some point, where a fighter would get a bonus for burning an action point. As Action Points no longer exist in this edition of DnD, I guess Wizards had to come up with some way of making Fighters both interesting to play and having a reasonably large effect on Combat. I don't know about you, but when I've played Fighters in the past, they've rarely been the powerhouse of the party, instead taking the rather spongey role of soaking up as much damage as possible and keeping the heat of the Wizards and Rogues.

This new version of the feat Action Surge allows the players to take an additional action in one turn. There are a number of potential applications for this, not the least of them the notion that fighters can now attack twice in one turn. They can also use Hustle to close the distance between the enemies and follow it up with an attack, plus they can disengage if need be. I'm looking forward to seeing some creative use of this rule in future sessions!

Levelling up and Customisation

One problem that I have run into is that the beta rules as published don't allow for much customisation when it comes to levelling up. The players are on a track of feats and class features that they automatically get when levelling up, and there's no room for things like multiclassing and copying spell books (both were suggested to me during the session.)

I think this is more to do with the way the Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle adventure and rules were designed, rather than a flaw with the game, as I'm hoping the full game will allow you to do both of those things and much more. The problem is that this adventure was designed to be run at GenCon over a weekend, not an 8-week rotation at a roleplaying club. In terms of character design, taking a linear track in any kind of mid-long term environment is not going to entertain people for long.

It seems to me that what a lot of people are looking forward to seeing are the rules for character generation and the level-up progression. As they almost always take up the better part of just about every RPG rulebook I've ever read, I wasn't the slightest bit surprised to find that the part of the PDF that relates to the actual rules is about 10 pages long. What comes out of this remains to be seen but I can't imagine there won't be at least some space for customisation, given that this is what most people find the most interesting about their games - creating their own characters...

See you next time!