Drupal 7 uses it’s own database API, so using simple PHP functions like mysql_num_rows() does not work. Drupal API isn’t very up to date with this, but the earlier db_num_rows() function does not exist anymore, and db_affected_rows() is not good either, because you can’t use it with SELECT queries.

Answer is to use method called rowCount(). As Drupal 7 is turning all database results into objects, there is no function to find out the amount of results. Also it is not possible to go through the results just to count them, as the result object will empty itself after first iteration.

To use rowCount(), do the query and call the method like this:

$result->rowCount()

Enclosed screenshot has an if statement with rowCount(), shot from Vim text editor. Method rowCount() in Drupal 7 API.

Webaston neljä vuotta käytössä ollut palopesä näyttää tältä.

Webastossa hehkutulppa ja palopesä ovat sama osa. Kun Webasto avattiin, uunissa oli niin paljon karstaa että palopesän vaihtaminen huomattiin erittäin hyväksi ideaksi. Huono puoli asiassa on, että osa tulppa-palopesä maksaa 250-260 euroa, vaikka joskus varmaan selviäisi pelkällä tulpan vaihdolla. Tähän autoon Webasto oli asennettu merkkihuoltamolla vuonna 2007 eikä sitä luullakseni oltu avattu neljään vuoteen. Auto on vuosimallia 2000 ja käyttövoima diesel. Webasto on virallinen BWM:n lisävaruste, sen saa tehdasasennettuna ja tässäkin, vaikka asennettu jälkeenpäin, on BWM:n logoon ja formaattiin mukautettu ohjekirja. Volvoon vastaava työraportti löytyy täältä. Linkin takaa löytyy myös ohjeet vikaraportin nollaamiseen.

Palopesän vaihto huoltamolla (ei merkki-) olisi maksanut 600 EUR. Itse tehtynä aikaa meni sellainen 5 tuntia, mutta kannattaa ottaa huomioon että en ole kokenut autonasentaja. Nyt kun näki miten Webasto on asennettu, ymmärtää miksi Webaston asentaminen autoon maksaa niin älyttömästi: laite liitetään voitelujärjestelmää lukuunottamatta melkein kaikkiin moottorin liikkuviin osiin.

Webasto paikassa takaa

Webasto Thermotop Z/C diesel

Pakoputken kanssa tarkkana

Webasto löytyi kuskin penkiltä katsottuna oikean eturenkaan etupuolelta, aivan helman alapinnan tasolta. Siis siitä kohtaa, joka herkästi osuu vinoparkissa katukivetykseen. Webaston oikealta puolelta lähtee noin 2 cm paksu pakoputki, joka tulee ulos oikealta alhaalta, heti puskurin takaa, osoittaen suoraan alaspäin. Pakoputki on alumiinista haitariputkea ja se menee lyttyyn, jos auton ajaa rotvalliin. Varmasti on joskus jollekin käynyt niin että kuraa tai jäätä on joutunut putkeen ja Webasto tukkiutuu, rikkoen laitteen tai ainakin kerryttäen karstaa uuniin. Pakoputken pää näkyy kun menee rötväämään oikean kulman alle ja sen voi sörkkiä auki ja suoristaa meisselillä.

Tulpan vaihtamiseksi Webasto pitää purkaa. Periaatteessa ainoa välttämättä irroitettava liitäntä on polttoaineletku, mutta koska laitteeseen on kiinnitetty myös jäähdytysnesteen tulo ja meno sekä sähköt, Webaston purkaminen paikallaan olisi ollut mahdotonta.

Lyhdyn irroittaminen oli hiukan hankalaa mutta kiinnittäminen vielä hankalampaa.

Auton purku

Oikea kylki tunkilla ylös ja pölkyn varaan ja oikea eturengas irti. Pohjalevystä lähti sopivan kokoinen pala, joka suojaa oikeaa nurkkaa Webaston pakoputken ympäriltä sekä noin puolta lokasuojan sisäpinnasta. Webaston pakoputken ympärillä on suojan läpiviennin kohdalla kuminen tulppa.

Oikea etulyhty piti irroittaa. Lampun alla oleva lista lähtee ruuvimeisselillä auttamalla alkuun munuaisten vierestä keskeltä, sitten varovasti taittamalla sitä ulospäin. Vilkkuvalon kotelo irtoaa tämän jälkeen vetämällä ja lyhtykotelo irroitetaan neljällä ruuvilla. Kotelon kaksi alempaa ruuvia on kovin hankalassa paikassa kotelon alla, johon pääsee jatkovartisella räikällä juuri ja juuri käsiksi lampun alla olevan listan irroittamisen jälkeen. Lyhtykotelon voi kääntää nurinpäin sen verran kuin johdot antavat periksi.

Vesiletkut oli vedetty puskuria myöden munuaisten etupuolelta. Puristimilla sitten lyttyyn vaan!

Jäähdytinnesteletkut kaivettiin esiin ja puristettiin umpeen puristimilla. Letkuissa oli alumiininen suojus pitkällä matkalla, mutta munuaisten kohdalta kaivelemalla saatiin esiin suojaamatonta kohtaa johon puristimet sai kiinni. Nestettä tulee kuitenkin jonkun verran, joten joku astia pitää laittaa alle kun letkut avataan. 4-5 dl tuli tavaraa, joka oli sen verran kirkasta että se päätettiin palauttaa systeemiin kun homma oli valmis.

Webasto on kiinni kahdella metallisella tukivarrella. Sähköjohdot ja polttoaineletku olivat niin hankalassa paikassa, että Webasto piti irroittaa ensin ja vetää alas sen verran, että lokasuojan kautta sai polttoaineletkun irti. Tässä kohtaa tarvitaan melkein avustajaa, koska letkussa oleva tavara voi tulla ulos vauhdikkaasti ja jos samalla joutuu kannattelemaan uunia, ei kädet riitä. Webastoa ei oltu käytetty neljään viikkoon (onneksi talvi on ollut leuto), eikä putkesta valunut mitään. Polttiaineputki tukittiin kuitenkin teräväksi veistetyllä puutikulla, lyijykynä ja jessariteippi toimisivat myös. Sähköjohdot irtoavat vetämällä, liittimen vieressä olevasta klipsusta auttamalla.

Sumuvalon polttimon pääsee muuten nyt vaihtamaan. Kannattaa vaihtaa tässä vaiheessa, sillä tässä kokoonpanossa sitä ei pysty Webastoa irroittamatta vaihtamaan!

Webasto irti edestä kuvattuna.

Webasto irti takaa

Webasto kansi irti. Paikassa vielä vanha pesä.

Sähköjohdoista kaksi vielä paikassaan.

Uuni pöytään

Webaston takaosassa on viisi sähköjohtoa, jolla laitteen eri osat keskustelevat keskenään. Ne voi kytkeä väärin, en tiedä onko siitä haittaa mutta onneksi tuli valokuva otettua jotta saatiin takaisin samaan järjestykseen. Rungon purkamiseen tarvitaan Torx-avain. Tulppa-palopesä -osan mukana tuli joukko liittimiä ja tiivisteitä, uusia osia katsomalla näkee mitä Webastosta pitää ottaa irti, jotta lopulta päästään itse asiaan. Pilli, jossa polttoaineletku oli kiinni, on sama mikä uudessa palopesässä näkyy.

Uuni hinkattiin teräsharjalla ja paineilmalla puhtaaksi. Sitten Webasto kasaan ja takaisin paikalleen. Muistitko vaihtaa sumuvalon?

Uuni puolillaan karstaa.

Putsattu uuni.

Uuden palopesän mukana tuli paitsi uunin ylä- ja alakannen välinen tiiviste, myös kumitiiviste samaan väliin. Purkaessa vanhaa kumitiivistettä ei tullut vastaan. Olisiko palanut kokonaan pois vai eikö sellaista aiemmin ole ollutkaan, se ei selvinnyt. Kansi oli kuitenkin tiiviisti paikallaan ja tiiviiksi se taas kiristettiin, nyt kumikauluksella varustettuna.

Tältä näyttää tila, johon irroitettu Webasto pitää tunkea takaisin. Kuvattu ylhäältä irroitetun lyhtykotelon läpi. Punainen mökö on sumuvalon polttimo, jota ei voi millään vaihtaa ilman että ottaa Webaston irti.

Nesteet myllyyn ja menoksi

Ulos tullut jäähdytinneste kaadettiin siivilän läpi täyttökorkista takaisin. Lisäsin myös 0,5 dl vettä, sillä tavaraa oli jonkun verran tippunut lattialle astioiden ohi ja lisää valui kun Webasto avattiin. Koska vesiletkuissa ja Webaston sisällä on nyt ilmaa, ei kannata kokeilla laitteen toimintaa heti. Tunnin ajon jälkeen kokeilin ja hyvin toimi. Polttoaineletkua ei ilmattu, mikä tuli mieleen vasta seuraavana aamuna, mutta aamulämmityksen aikana kuului vain tavallista enemmän pientä napsutusta kun Webasto haki polttonestettä tankista.

Webastossa on vikaraportointijärjestelmä. Huoltamolla neuvoivat, että järjestelmää ei tarvitse nollata virheestä palautumiseen. Virheenä oli että liekkivahti katkaisee palon, ehkä tämä tapahtui uunissa olevan karstan takia. Huoltamolla eivät kuitenkaan löytäneet järjestelmän OBCB-nastaa, joten vikakoodin lukemiseksi he irroittivat hallintapaneelin ja liittivät siitä johdoista lukulaitteen Webastoon.

Vuokko ja Paavo cappuccino - ei liity artikkelin tekstiin

Tulipa mieleeni eräs tapaus vuosien takaa, jota todistin pelaajana. Pelasimme Spelljammer-kampanjaa ja Dungeons & Dragons 3.0 oli pari vuotta vanha, juuri sen ikäinen että siihen oli jo julkaistu muutamia pelaajan lisäkirjoja. Kohtauksen muut yksityiskohdat ovat unohtuneet, mutta syy miksi juttu jäi mieleen on kirkas.

GM: Se on ensimmäinen taistelu kun olette 5. tasolla! Vastassa on ogre jolla verinen piikinuija. P1 aloittaa.
P1: Summonoin Mighty Gorgonin. Jee! Olen aina halunnut päästä käyttämään tätä ominaisuutta!
(5 minuuttia)
P1: Voisin muuten tehdä ensi kerraksi uuden hahmon.

P1:n mielessä ei ollut ollut tähän saakka muuta kuin että 5. tasolla pääsee käyttämään metamagickilla höystettyä Summon Natures Ally X loitsua. Yhdessä oli kuitenkin jo pelattu jonkun aikaa. Koska ko. hahmo hylättiin pian tämän pelin jälkeen, eikö olisi ollut järkevämpää vain sopia jonkun kanssa että hei tein tällaisen hahmon, ota sä tää ogre niin heitellään läpi yksi taistelu. Haluan kokeilla mahtisonniloitsua.

Mutta eihän roolipeliä noin tehdä, että sovittaisiin vain etukäteen että pelataan tämä yksi taistelu. Se olisi sama kuin tällainen keskustelu:

Ihminen 1: Hei ajattele jotain väriä?
Ihminen 2: Öö no vihreä?
Ihminen 1: Jes! Olen aina halunnut ajatella keltaista samalla kun joku muu ajattelee vihreää!

Dunkkuun, niinkuin kaikkiin roolipeleihin, kuuluu se että GM tai pelaajat aloittavat tarinan jostain, juoni alkaa kehittyä pelaajahahmojen ympärille ja hahmot ja pelimaailma alkavat elää omaa elämäänsä. Yksittäisen mahtisonnitaistelun simuloiminen ei sovi konseptiin.

Se, mikä tässä jäi mulle epäselväksi, on P1:n suhtautuminen hahmoonsa. Hahmon tehtävä oli ulostaa mahtisonni yhden hahmotason verran etuajassa. Pian tämän jälkeen P1 hylkää hahmonsa, toteamalla että juu ei tällä hahmolla muuta oikein sitten voikaan tehdä, no tulipa kokeilua!

Palataan vielä kohtaukseen. Käytännössä tilanne meni tietenkin näin, jossa, niinkuin pasikurssin kouluttaja sanoi, aikaa kuluu ja tupakkia palaa, eikä mitään saada valmiiksi:

GM: Se on ensimmäinen taistelu kun olette 5. tasolla! P1 aloittaa.
P1: Summonoin Mighty Gorgonin. Jee! Olen aina halunnut päästä käyttämään tätä ominaisuutta! Tää mun hahmo pystyy summonoimaan vitostasolla tän tason loitsun koska sillä on tämä feat kirjasta X ja se on tämän rotuinen, kirjassa Y on lisäsääntö tähän ja lisäksi hahmokirja Z siellä on tämä että kun vaihtaa ominaisuuden A ominaisuuteen B saa ylimääräisen featin, jonka otin täältä. Nyt tällä voi oikeasti cästäillä mahtisonnin vitostasolla.
P2: Wau! Kerro lisää!
P1: (blaa blaa blaa)
P3: (kyllästyy kuuntelemaan kirjaesitelmää ja miettii, mistä veri on tullut ogren piikkinuijaan ja kohtako siinä virtaa myös oma veri)

Miksi P1 on innoissaan hahmostaan, joka nyt viimeinkin teki sen yhden tempun, jota varten hän oli hahmopaperinsa numerot optimoinut ja raahautunut pelaamaan säännöllisesti, viikkokaupalla? Kyseessä ei ollut voitto pelissä eikä jännitysmomentin purkautuminen: tarkalleen ottaen P1 sai kiksit juuri silloin kun hän pääsi lausumaan pelitilanteessa “manaan esiin tämän tietyn hirviön”. Sen jälkeen kiinnostus peliin lopahti. Keksin vain yhden mahdollisen selityksen. Vuonna 2001 ei ollut yhtä helppoa luoda hahmoja tietokonepelissä kuin Neverwinter Nightsin tulon jälkeen. D&D:n pelaaminen tietokoneella rajoittui sellaisiin sinänsä hyviin mutta mahdollisuuksiltaan rajattuihin peleihin kuten Baldur’s Gate, Planescape: Torment ja Nethack. P1 tykkäsi tehdä hahmoja mutta ei ollut kiinnostunut pelaamisesta.

Mutta vuonna 2001 oli vaikka mitä roolipelin ja miniatyyripelin yhdistelmiä, kuten Wotcin Chainmail tai GW:n Inquisitor. Nämä olivat tuttuja meidänkin porukassa, joten tietämättömyydestä ei voi olla kyse. Ja kyllähän Baldur’s Gatessa pystyi hahmoja rakentamaan kuitenkin kohtalaisesti. P1 ei selkeästikään ollut pelaamassa voittoa eikä draamaa ja simulaatiopelaajaksikaan en häntä lukisi koska hän ei ollut lainkaan kiinnostunut osallistumaan tarinan luomiseen. Mikä tällainen pelaajatyyppi on? Mitä hän haluaa?

Saattaa olla, että nykyään tällaisia tapauksia ei enää ole. Simulaatiopelaamisesta nauttivat pelaavat roolipelejä tietokoneella ja voivat kokeilla siellä helposti ja nopeasti erilaisia hahmoja. Draamaa harrastavat puolestaan voivat toimia P1:n tavoin mutta tarinapelissä siitä ei ole suurta haittaa, että pelaaja hylkää hahmonsa tuosta vain sen jälkeen kun hahmo on tehnyt jotain pelaajan mielestä kiinnostavaa.

Earlier, I had made my own image manipulation scripts to work things out in this project. All the images can’t be sent through Drupal anyway, I was reasoning, so Imagecache can’t be used. Later problems started to arise, related to image manipulation scripts I had wrote. Clearly they had to be revisioned, but then I got an idea to try to trick Imagecache to do the work for me. It has neat graphic setup page in Drupal, too, so making future changes would be super-easy.

First tryout: symlinks

Symlinks are working with everything, so nothing would be easier than just to link the material folder under Imagecache. That is, to trick stuff under Imagecache-active /styles/ folder, stuff that is not really there.

ln -s /path/to/material /path/to/www/sites/default/files/material

Now, lets try it with browser. I want to get file testphoto.jpg, normally found from local path /path/to/material/test/testphoto.jpg, so I’m going to mysite.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/material/test/testphoto.jpg. All I get is “Error generating image.”. Inspecting from shell, Imagecache creates the path correctly, so new folders /styles/thumbnail/material/ and /styles/thumbnail/material/test/ have appeared. No files are generated though, also no error messages are found in any logs.

Browsing for this suggests two key points: file permissions and memory problems. I worked on for these for a while, with no luck. I verified that Imagecache is working normally with other files. That left one matter open: does Imagecache work with symlinks? Apparently not, although they are saying that since Drupal 7 it would. Well it didn’t work for me.

This is the first time ever I have seen that something is not following a symbolic link.

Second tryout: mounting

The number one alternative for symlink, mounting, didn’t work for me either. There are two reasons: 1. I’m not clever enough to use it and 2. this clients server is some improper CentOS which I’m not too familiar with. Anyway I tried this (as su):

mount /path/to/material /path/to/www/sites/default/files/material –bind –ro

But apparently CentOS is giving troubles when joining stuff from somewhere to itself. After some search I had again tried several choices with no luck, in the end giving me hard time to unmount the testing folder. “Device is busy” or “Trying to umount, but this resource is not mounted”. When I finally got rid of it with umount -fn and rm -rf I had also removed the original source, which I just can’t understand how that happend. It must’ve been abovementioned reason 1.

Third tryout: rsync and it works!

After restoring original files from backups (always remember to back up your stuff!) I had only one more choice to use: to actually copy everything for /styles/. That makes little sense but to make it work I did it anyway. There is a massive update coming to this client’s extranet, so I’m looking forward to change file system for product images the other way around: to upload everything under Drupal and to symlink them forward from there. The more I think it the more it makes sense, as Internet is available from everywhere so using linked stuff from there is guaranteed to work with all future applications.

So but now it is done with rsync, which is great because it can take care of the transferring files now and also to automatically keep them up to date. Also doing a recursive, selective copy is easy with rsync, as we only need JPGs from the material folder.

rsync -av –include “*/” –include “*.JPG” –include “*.jpg” –exclude “*” ~/public_html/material/. ~/public_html/sites/default/files/styles/material/.

Just add this to cron job table to make new files copied automatically. Note that rsync only rewrites new or changed files, keeping load put on your server minimal.

7 10 * * * rsync -av –include “*/” –include “*.JPG” –include “*.jpg” –exclude “*” ~/public_html/material/. ~/public_html/sites/default/files/material/.

Now thumbnails or whatever modified files you set up in Drupal Configure -> Image styles are easily accessible through path/to/public_html/ sites/default/files/styles/your_style_name_here/material/test/testphoto.jpg.

We were five players and after set-up we were ready to present our characters.

• Terttu, 78, granny, president of several local assosiations (might act as the lone member for many, though)
• Kikka Fazer, 47, beauty saloon owner, former cross-country skier
• Ville, 20, neo-nazi, working in a local DIY store
• Markku Pesonen, 25, unemployed father of newborn baby, just out from prison
• Jukkis, 50, bachelor son of Terttu, unemployed, part time criminal

In the opening scene we saw Terttu acting as a Santa Claus (she has a rather low-tone voice) in a local kindergarden Pohjantikka. First NPC got introduced, the head of the kindergarden turned out to be the mother of Markku Pesonens baby. Terttus performance didn’t go that well and in next scene Kikka took her in for manicure for half price as a consolidation (and to get new lojals). Ville happened to pass by and got his first lines: &%#!)&!. From there he went forward with his plan to build a bomb from fertilizers and other DIY stuff. Jukkis conforted him and they joined their forces, looking forward to blast open a safety from some local shop. Meanwhile Terttu and Markku Pesonen met and befriended.

In his first scene Jukkis was stealing summer tyres and selling them to the county constable, who was happy with the deal and left to Kuopio, the nearest town. Then Jukkis informed Kuopios police about stolen tyres and told that the constable has them. Just before that Ville had made report from a crime, summer tyres were stolen from the DIY shop he is working in. Constable got into trouble and Jukkis and Ville were quite satisfied over themselves.

Past not forgotten

Flashback scene from 70′s told the story between Terttu and Kikka. Kikka was a promising cross country skier, but when Terttu sent her to Helsinki, she met Mr. Fazer and became Mrs. Fazer. A few years later Kikka returned home alone. In their teenage years, Jukkis and Kikka were close. This Fazer thing brought bad blood between them, and some unthoughtable ideas started to play in Jukkis’ mind (we learned more on this in his last scene). Back to 2010′s, where Ville, Markku and Jukkis joined in high-ground training camp: Jukkis is now training for veteran cross country skiing. Terttu talks about his sons coming success to everyone. Jukkis is on his way to become a local celebrity!

Kikka returns from a holiday in Tenerife, Spain, bringing a dark Spaniard with her. The man hears about Jukkis’ high-ground camp and joins the guys in the forest. The Spanish method takes place and Jukkis, unconsicous at the moment for drinking too much, gets an injection. Couple of days later the skiing race, Finlandia Hiihto, starts, but Jukkis is caught on doping. “I don’t know where that hormone came from”, he explains to the press, but it is too late. Terttus hopes are crumbling and everyone are returning home, angry and disappointed…

Something is burning

…well, not everyone. During the training camp, Jukkis, Markku Pesonen and Ville had plenty of time to think about where to place the bomb Ville has made. Jukkis is persuading the others to go for the county constable, but that has its risks. Ville would rather take first some simple test subject. When Finlandia Hiihto is over, Terttu drives Jukkis off from her home. Jukkis contacts a family friend who invites Jukkis to stay in their barn house summer room. With no better place to go, Jukkis moves there, although its winter. Meanwhile Ville is executing the bomb test plan. He chooses an easy target: nearby barnhouse. Bomb is already set, with a timer, and when Ville is taking exit he realizes Jukkis is sleeping in one room of the barn. Ville goes in panic and knocks himself off by running against the wall.

Barnhouse belongs to a farm who is ran by the father of kindergarden Pohjantikkas chief. That means he is the grandfather of Markku Pesonens baby. Markku Pesonen, who knows about Villes plan, can’t let this happen and he goes to explain the bombing plan to his father-in-law the farmer. Together they run to the barnhouse and save Jukkis and Ville just in time before the barn explodes.

In the last scene of the game, Jukkis takes a major step in his life and comes out of the closet, with the county constable.

What happens next?

In the aftergame, Terttu suffers the worst, having lost all hope to his son and everyone else. Jukkis is happy to live with his new boyfriend, although performing minor crimes without getting caught becomes much more difficult now. Ville lets neo-nazism go, Kikka moves out from the village. Markku Pesonen scores the best, managing to leave his past behind and getting his family together.

Analysis of the session

This was a typical game session of Fiasco! It took about 2,5 hours and we had a wonderful time. Like often in Fiasco!, the story is drawing a big circle. The closet part in the last scene was totally unexpected from the player of Jukkis, it put the whole story nicely in packet. Fiasco! is wonderful in that it offers a huge room for spontaneous reaction by all players, but also it offers chances to build up something to be finally revealed in the last minute.

There is one more thing that deserves to be mentioned here. I said we were five here. That includes me, my wife, her brother and mother and the substitute grandfather. Two of us had player Fiasco! before, three of us didn’t even know what a role playing game is.

It did not matter one second.

Without big explanations, all were ready to start to introduce their character and the gaming started like nothing. This proves, again (I’ve seen this happening before), that RPG suites everyone and can be used as family sosializing. Just don’t pick up that newest D&D rulebook, pick something like Primetime Adventures or Fiasco!

GM: At morning, fog gets even thickier than what it was before. You can barely see a small hill with a cutting, 30 metres from here. That was the hill you abandoned last night as a too obvious spot for a camp. Gilnash is on guard. He hears heavy footsteps from a far.
P1: Giants! I’ll wake up Marmorn, Walgor and Zedna.
GM: Steps are closing from west.
P1: Gilnash makes sure everyone are awake. He moves silently 20 metres to north and goes in hiding.
P2: Walgor summons the dragon, mounts it and they fly silently up to height of 100 feet.
P3: Marmorn stays prone and crawls deeper into a bush, trying to find a pile of stones or something to hide behind. I’ll prepare my weapons.
P4: Zedna follows Marmorn. Ground is still frozen, is it?
GM: It’s zero C. Ground is in rime.
P4: I’ll cast a frozen spell on my coat, silently, so it looks like part of the ground. Marmorn, do you fancy?
P3: No thanks, I’m freezing already!
GM: Good. Giants are closing. Soon you can see two shapes, advancing ten metres from each other.
P1: I’ll try to listen if there are more coming. Listen 36.
GM: The third one follows the others, ten metres behind. He’s steps are heavier than the steps of the others.
P1: Gilnash is waiting.
GM: One of the giants is walking straight towards your hiding place. Five metres from you, he stops to sniff the air.
P1: Gilnash grips his sabre, waiting still.
P2: Walgor prepares to charge at once on the first sound of battle.
P3: Marmorn waits.
P4: Zedna waits.
GM: The giant close to Gilnash starts moving.
P1: Gilnash waits.
GM: The giants walks past you and goes checking the small hill with a cutting. The third giant appears from the fog. He is huge even for a giant, might belong to kings bodyguards.
P3: Marmorn tries to recognize the giant from his features or belongings. Knowledge Nobility 18.
GM: You don’t know him, but he surely belongs to the clan you are dealing with.
P3: Marmorn prepares a counter-spell and is ready to use it if the big giant starts to cast a spell.
P4: Zedna casts an illusion. Shadow wyvern attacks from fog on the leftmost giant.
GM: The giant drops his weapon and takes off!
P2: Walgor charges towards the running giant. 33 to hit, damage 88. Dragon 33 to hit also, damage 28.
GM: The dragon dives on tundra, smashing to the running giant. Walgors lance hits the target and dragons tail finishes the blow. Giant falls and won’t rise again.
P1: Gilnash charges the big giant. 24 to hit, damage 18.
GM: The noble giant parries the attack easily and starts to cast. Marmorn?

Quite a cinematic battle! Atmosphere is high and people are enjoying their time! Too bad in real life the gaming went like this:

GM: At morning, fog gets even thickier than what it was before. You can barely see a small hill with a cutting, 30 metres from here. That was the hill you abandoned last night as a too obvious spot for a camp. Gilnash is on guard. He hears heavy footsteps from a far.
P1: Where are we?
GM: Well, in tundra, 300 kilometres from… oh you ment where are you on the battle grid. Well place your minis.
P4: May I be here?
GM: Ok.
P3: I’ll be here.
GM: That is too far, because the small hill is suppoused to be 30 metres from here, that is 100 feet, and everyone sees it.
P3: Well here then.
GM: Giants are coming.
P1: I’ll hide into this square.
P2: I’ll fly up to around here.
P3: I’ll hide here.
P4: I’ll hide behind him. Would I cast some ice spell, would it give me a bonus on stealth?
P3: Can one get bonus from that?!
P4: If the ground is icy and I’ve got mire on me, it should.
P3: But you’d damage yourself!
P4: No I have this energy resistance.
P3: I see. Clever!
GM: You can do that. The giants are closing. Two shapes appear from fog.
P1: Where are they?
GM: Well, uh, lets place them here.
P1: I’ll check with my Perception if there are more coming.
GM: Ok.
P1: I’ve got 18 before die roll. Am I getting any extra bonuses?
GM: No.
P1: But giant is my favoured enemy. May I have something from there?
GM: Sure but just make the roll please, your bonus is so high anyway so bonuses won’t really make any difference.
P1: Ok 26.
GM: The third one follows the others, ten metres behind. He’s steps are heavier than the steps of the others.
P1: Where is it?
GM: 30 feet behind the first ones. It’s on those squares. But you won’t see it yet! This giant walks here. Gilnash?
P1: I’ll wait.
GM: The giant waits.
P1: I’ll wait.
GM: The third giant comes visible. The giant next to Gilnash walks to the small hill.
P3: I’ll do ready action, counter-spelling if the third giants starts to cast a spell. Btw do I recognize him?
GM: Roll for a knowledge skill, do you have any?
P3: Lets see… I’ve got Religion and Nature. Nobility has one rank, too, but Religion has better bonus. May I use it?
GM: Religion? No you can’t use Religion on this giant, his not a minister.
P3: I guess I’m forced to use Nobility then.
GM: I guess.
P3: I got total 18. Anything?
GM: Not really.
P4: I’ll cast phantasmal killer on that enemy.
GM: It runs off.
P2: I’ll charge! Where is it?
GM: Giants speed is quite high, so it would be… this battle mat is too small.
P3: Lets make some room.
GM: That’s enough thanks. Here!
P2: Charge!
GM: Go ahead!
P2: Lance! To hit 33!
GM: Success!
P2: Yeah!
GM: Roll for damage!
P2: Yeah! No I’ll roll for dragon to hit first! 31!
GM: Success!
P2: Yeah!
GM: Roll for damage!

This is how an audio recording of the battle would have sounded. However, in my head, the scene was still closer to version one than the rather dull version two. Despite the large amount of meta gaming in our words, static miniatures on table and very limited description of events, I believe other gamers, including the GM, had their own, colourful visions of the scene in their heads.

Two worlds: inside and outside of my head

Why there is such a difference between the gaming jargon and the image that the jargon makes in our mind? In a way, there is nothing wrong in having good imagination and making things up differently, suiting ones own needs and experiences. But if tabletop role playing is about coming together to play, why the experience is not shared? One could get these personal, individual visualizations from any MMORPG or playing Nethack or reading a book. Why bother to organize a gaming session, if all you got from it is in your head, created by you and shared with no one?

I’m sure there exists a group of literature intelligents in this world who could play a game that sounds like version one above. I’m sure there are a lot of gaming groups whose play sounds like version two. And big part of gamers are somewhere there between, most of the time closer to version two than the other. In my experience, in D&D or PFRPG it is quite rare to share one’s thoughts, feelings, needs, successes and fears with others, be they the gamer’s own thoughts or the thoughts of his or her character.

Almost all the time the communicating is about one of these three topics:

1. statistics information, “I have STR bonus +5″
2. description of an action, “I’ll draw my sword”
3. a sort of mixed player/character evaluation of the situation, “The rabbit is a clue. That elf had a rabbit in her necklace.”

There is no need for anything else. If anyone disagrees, please let me know. This is all that is needed and most of the time this is where it stays. Campaign books can be played with these three types of communication. Stories are sort of told with this information, although the story is composing inside of participants heads, each in their own way.

Community is greater than its parts

Some years ago, me and my wife had a chance to live and work in Tanzania for five months. From that trip I learned a lot and one of the things was the meaning of a community, that is, the people that are not me, but are hanging around nearby. We Westerners have often difficulties to understand a concept so simple as this: there are things other than just me. For a Tanzanian, personal stuff is personal, meaning it is almost a secret. Everything else is shared with community. For a Westerner,  personal stuff is pretty much everything. Westerner does everything by himself, for himself (being humble or not, you know, for you can even do charity for personal reasons). Tanzanian lives through the community, being individual but respecting the community over himself. Everything is done together, through a shared attempt.

Back to D&D. I don’t know how Tanzanians would play RPG, for I had a break in my gaming during those months. But I know how D&D is played in Western world. It is just like described above: we are coming together, but leaving with solitary experiences. Could it be changed to something that touches not only me as an individual but to me as a part of the group? I am repeating myself but I think it is just pointless to come together to tell a story and then everyone present are not saying anything, just keeping their story for themselves. It is like going to a movie theatre and then turning seats to face the projector.

Putting it in an action, traditional way

Now Westerner thinks what he can do to be better in telling the story on his part. “Personal solution 1: Less metagaming so the immersion would be stronger.” Talking about rules, statistics and combat situations belongs to D&D and PFRPG and trying to get rid of it is just beating one’s head against the wall. It is kind of difficult to say “my to hit roll is 33″ without saying “33″, which is a matter completely out from the game world, breaking the immersion immediately. Most gamers shine when they can plan combat tactics and suggest good actions for characters of other players. Planning tactics is probably something that many people value as the most interesting part of D&D experience, so it is out of the question to even to think to stop doing it in favour of keeping the story strong. Personal solution 1 does not work.

Westerners “personal solution 2: going in-character when game starts and staying there“. This idea might include a house rule that when someone is not speaking in-character, that is, in the voice of his character, he has to stand up, raise both hands or use uppercase letters or something like that. Making it different or even difficult to communicate outside your in-character mode should enhance in-character thinking, thus, strengthening the story. The problem here is that it is just not handy to try to communicate things like tactics on a battle grid in-character. “Wizard! Use your magic from that stone to that tree and exclude our hobbit chef who is hiding in a ditch, 25 feet north-west from you!” “Uh I beg your pardon sir, did you mean the single coniferous tree in this area or this burned tree in the direction where my hand is pointing at the moment?” This is giving a whole set of new problems, just forget about it. Still, doing a house rule like this might be fun and even useful in some cases, but it won’t work as an answer to the story-building problem I’m discussing here.

Westerners “personal solution 3: everyone must describe their actions in a colourful way“. So instead of saying “I’ll hit the orc with my sword” a player must say “Rrfaktaldurlk the troglodyte warrior swings his or hers club towards the black-skinned orc with a blue kilt, with a lunatic stare in his or hers eyes“. Does this rule apply also when you hit the same monster, or its’ fourteenth sibling, a second and a third time? This kind of sounds like sharing the trouble of describing the world with the GM, but often players stop to do this after two or three times. They forget the rule, they run out of ideas or they feel that making up a different story at every swing is too difficult and they rather do something else than what they would like to, just to be saved from the prosaic burden.

Putting it in action, yet unseen way

“Now what? None of the solutions above are of any help, and I can’t figure out anything else I could do to improve the story telling.” All of these solutions are demanding more from an individual. How about trying to face the problem as a group, like a Tanzanian would do?

What I’m going to discuss here is the feedback I got from the judges. I want to share their thoughts, so anyone else attempting to present their works for people with long involvement in this industry might learn from what I have learned. You know, there is another submission open as we speak. The competition was held in English, thus the English post in this mostly Finnish blog. (Also I seriously doubt there will ever be a similar change for only Finnish-speaking audience to take part in a similar competition, with judges of this caliber.)

The Rules

I already mentioned that the theme was open, but everything pointed to traditional fantasy role-playing. Rules had to be Open Game Licensed. 7000 words and playable in four hours, that’s all. As far as I’m aware, all works presented to judges were good old dungeon looting adventures, modernized version of that, or some kinds of sandbox settings, all with high fantasy theme.

My Entry

If you are interested, download it here or here.

Judges at Work

I believe the workflow of judges work was something like this. The three masters red the entries, made notes, came together to make a decision of the top three, held a panel for general feedback and were done. For authors, feedback came afterwards.

See Scenario Contest Panel posting.

What I would like to do is to present comments I got from all judges, but after six weeks of waiting I’ve only got comments from one of the judges. Now this is already four months in past and all hope to get anything from Mr. Raggi and Mr. is lost. Rest are coming, the Ropecon Master of Game Masters says, but I’m not so sure if I would ever see anything from Mr. Raggi or from Mr. Mentzer. Here are all comments from Mr. Mona. He had written these in red ink pen on a printout of my adventure. Words in italics below are my additions to explain where the comment is related to. Rest is from the red pen.

B+
Good

• interesting story
• PCs fit into background of game desired by author
• jumps right into the action
• interesting setting
• strong encounter flow
• looks fun to play

Bad

• Hamadi way too powerful relative to PCs and risks overshadowing them
• no maps
• more help on secondary content would help the GM to run this, especially at con
• quite linear
• combats lack tactical complexity and might not hold player interest

ACT 1

• good way to get players right into action

high on pesh

• game effect?

Warrior stats Shortsword to hit +4

• this might be wrong

Copy cat, Dust of Emulation

• calling out and describing unusual powers and class features will make this easier to run
• list what books you need up blant

ACT 2
Chapel

• a map would be helpful

Dagger hunting

• Are the PCs meant to use the wooden and broken bronze daggers as weapons? If so, you should provide stats for the woody daggers, and make this a bit more explicit. If not, I wonder if this encounter might be — doing some other task for the Mercy, perhaps one that involves skill checks (like Diplomacy) and dice rolls. Without this, there isn’t much to this encounter beyond “we go get daggers”. The plot with Tet-Herit at the end with Norgorber dagger is good, though.

ACT 3

• this encounter is ok. it could use a little more tactics info for the scorpion.

ACT 6

• you’ve got to be careful that Hamadi doesn’t become a — – GM pet NPC whos is for more powerful than the player characters.

Characters
Madu

• you should summarize this [Trait: Desert child]

Tarik

• explain [Traits]
• these quotes are a nice touch [background]

Huval

• how can he make perform checks with no flute? I’d let him keep it as his last, jealous, suicidal possession.

Didn’t got one word from his handwriting about Hamadi becoming a GM pet NPC but everyone can get the idea.

I think what I can learn from this is

1. be confident that I can write an interesting and coherent story
2. get a bit of an idea what Pathfinder RPG is about, according to Paizo
3. realize that number crushing and playing by the book are not my strong points

Judges were saying in Scenario Contest Panel that many adventures they red looked like a lot of fun, if ran by the author. My adventures definitely goes in that group. There are errors and shortcomings in my written statistics and little information about combat tactics. However, characters are thoughtfully tied to the story and there is a strong flow. In my test game, during the writing, my two test players were a bit stuck in several places. In game time the adventure lasted three days and two nights. With the help of test players (thank you Liffi and Tommi!) I re-arranged the scenes and later decided to fit the whole adventure in one day and one night. In Rocepon I ran the game for two persons unknown to me. They were newcomers to Pathfinder RPG, having a strong experience in D&D3.5 though. The game was very good, the players liked the atmosphere and had a lot of character in their PC:s. I enjoyed running the game, too. So, I can take it that there is nothing wrong in my adventure, except if someone else tries to run it, which, of course, is the whole point of a pre-written adventure.

Echo in the Dark (That’s Me)

Seriously doubting anyone would care, but I want to answer some of Mr. Monas comments. First of all, I got an American school degree from him, which feels funny. And that’s not too bad degree, so I’m happy for this. About the point of no map present, this is, well, a bit embarrassing thing to explain. I had a map there. I drew it with Ubuntu LibreOffice Writer and it was small but ok. What I also did with Writer was to make sure the adventure, with all pre-generated characters and their statistics, was under the limit of 7000 words. That included an action to mindlessly strip off white spaces between character statistics and stuff. Stupid me, because after that it was difficult to read, but hey; and I’m returning to this subject later; what I really don’t care about when being an GM are stats. In writing contests these things matter though and so when the Master of Game Masters got my entry he nicely undid my word trimming, turning the stats back in readable format. During that time, the map unfortunately disappeared and so Mr. Mona could complain about not seeing any drawings. I consider this as plus-minus situation, because without the Master editing I would have gotten grunts about unreadability.

Apparently Mr. Mona was doing this in haste because he is asking after a list of book needed. The paper starts with that information.

I wrote a scene where PC:s are sent to collect seremonial daggers from the slums they a living in. Mr. Monas point about dagger hunting part was this: doing something like just quickly describing that PC:s are off to do some particular activities and coming back, without any skill checks or dice rolls, is a waste. I know how this would have been done in an adventure published by Paizo. There would be a table of Diplomacy check results and maybe several other options of what skills to use and how many pieces of collected items that would give. I didn’t want to do it like that, because it’s completely secondary to the thing this scene really was about: to add doubt on players that their most trusted NPC is maybe not honest in his words. Collecting operation also was a bridge to introduce the third main NPC. The result of actual collecting was fixed in advance: to add one or five pieces by successful Diplomacy rolls would be just using game mechanics for the sake of game mechanics.

Just yesterday I enjoyed reading Traveller rule book, where the same sentence, see later, was printed thrice in three key places: in introduction, in beginning of skills chapter and at the end of skills chapter. Remember that Traveller mechanically resembles a lot of OD&D, except that most of the dice rolls during a game session are skill checks. The sentence was that normally GM shouldn’t ask players to roll skill checks, because most of the time, having a rank in a skill is enough to be able to take care of that matter. I think that makes a lot of sense and keeps the window open for role playing, instead of asking players to make routine dice rolls just that they wouldn’t get bored. It is like if you can roll for something, you or GM doesn’t have to describe the actions of your character, instead you can just stare the dice and read the results. This is big part of the things I had in mind when I wrote this post.

Keeping things in order of importance, my last and biggest critics about the comments I got from Mr. Mona comes now. It is the matter that I have inserted a level five NPC in the adventure written for level one PC:s. Mr. Mona clearly does not approve and I think he sees this a flaw so great that the adventure is unplayable. Several points I considered when writing it like this:

• In a high fantasy game like Pathfinder RPG, main villain should be very powerful, to create tension. You won’t talk him out of bad habits, you will encounter him in deadly battle.
• I hate it when the adventure finale goes like fighting your way through the minions to finally get to kill the main bad guy. While this kind of ending has it’s epic uses, most of the time it is just done because game mechanics require you to use out 50 % of your resources before the final battle.
• Experienced players have little to no difficulties to win battles against mechanically far superior powers.

Mr. Monas particular problem with this is that this 5th level NPC called Hamadi will become a pet of GM’s. That might be so, but not in my game. I never intended to play Hamadi as GM’s PC, my intention was to pass him to players for them to play as an extra hand in final battle. That’s what a GM is supposed to do in some games, like Savage Worlds, but it seems that in PFPRG this kind of thinking is unheard of.

PFRPG Ultimatium

This last chapter is written a few month later than the grunts above. I’ve been thinking about D&D and PFRPG a lot, especially now that we just finished our Legacy of Fire campaign after 23 months of regular play. I thought the problem that I have with PFRPG is not the game itself but the culture around it. You know: “we’ve been doing this power-play/by-the-book-simulation/eenie-weenie-non-combat-style-adventuring and nothing more and you should not question us. That’s how D&D should be played!”.

But then yesterday I was, again, looking for a reason to discard the dice, to find a sentence from PFRPG Core Rulebook to say that you know, you really don’t have to roll an attack die if your 15th level fighter is facing this 33rd 0.5th level goblin warrior. And the ultimatium was found from the very beginning of PFPRG book. Not in these exact words but the message was this.

The definition of PFRPG game: it is a game where players are encountering with a fantasy world, but unlike a storytelling play, it is the die which is deciding what is going to happen.

This is the end of my PFRPG gaming. Or not. Maybe it is just the end of complaining about the game I so much like. Because, after the ultimatium, there is not much room to say “can’t we just skip these mechanics to get the story right”.

Logical sentence defining a full Pathfinder RPG experience is as follows:

die to roll =
IF (GM calls for saving throw)
saving throw
ENDIF
ELSE IF (Strength check)
Strength check
ENDIF
ELSE IF (possible to use Diplomacy) OR (possible to use Sense Motive)
Diplomacy check OR Sense Motive check
ENDIF
ELSE IF (combat)
IF (round zero)
initiative
ENDIF
ELSE IF (losing)
IF (magic user)
escape using magic
ELSE
use skill
ENDIF
ELSE
most favourable combat action
ENDIF
ELSE
use skill

I believe you can apply this sentence to many no-need-to-think, non-old school role playing game. Bigger the rules book the better. Issues discussed below are raising from Pathfinder RPG, but they are particularly present in Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 and Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition, too. One could argue to include Role Master in this group, but I’m not doing that. Role Master is honestly complicated, while these D&D variants are trying to be easily accessible, hiding complex mechanics behind nice artworks and fancy miniatures, and at the end of the day you realize all you got was a role-playing experience light on creativity and hard on mechanics.

Choosing most favourable action sounds like a lot of decision-making, which requires intelligent thought. That conclusion is, however, false, as we see later in this article. It is very simple to use the formula above.

The equation is missing a possibility for retreat. I’ve seen that withdrawn happens seldom in Pathfinder RPG. Fights are fought to bitter end. But lo, there is a mechanics for withdrawal, an action called Withdraw. But who uses Withdraw, as you can do it better using Acrobatics skill check to tumble yourself to safety? Wait a minute… did I just say skill check to retreat? Ok, I just presented a case where the formula works.

Then one very important clause: this discussion shouldn’t be understood as exclusive conclusion that all modern fantasy is as non-intelligent as what I’m presenting here. There are lot of new games that require a whole set of different mental capacities. Playing style makes all difference between the need of individual thought and leaving the simulation up to the computer (or GM). And finally, there is nothing wrong in taking part of a simulated game and having a good time.

Minimum amount of intelligent thought needed to play Pathfinder RPG

When I was hinting about the need of mental capacities above, I really mean that Pathfinder RPG doesn’t need any. It does not prevent you using your thought, but it is not a requirement. I could run a game of Pathfinder RPG to our two dogs:

1. buy newest Pathfinder RPG module or Adventure Path
2. print pre-generated characters
3. make the dogs sit and stay, place character sheets in front of them
4. start running the adventure
5. if a player has difficulties finding particular modifier etc. from his/her character record, or has troubles in throwing a die, GM can help

How can this be? Why I’m even suggesting something as stupid as playing an RPG with animal players? You see, the thing is that players don’t have to do anything, if they don’t want to. Published adventures have all the statistics ready for players. The scenario is often quite close written, offering hints to cover unexpected situations but as long as players are following the path, everything is going ok with just occasional “yes, GM” and a dice roll. All information can be gained with dice and any NPC interactions are covered with Diplomacy check or some other skill check. Outside combat, there is no encounter, puzzle or situation where a good skill check couldn’t be applied. D&D 4th edition and Pathfinder RPG are pushing this up themselves, calling these situations “Skill challenges”. No roleplaying needed, no discussion between a player and a GM is needed. When the GM says “you have to gather information from this village”, players can just say “yes” and roll a die. When playing with dogs, you can take wagging tail as yes.

I’m not arguing against published adventures, quite the opposite: most of the time I’m playing or running published adventures, and I like it. This is an argument against games which don’t require thinking.

Business plan

Should I rather say: this is an argument against a playing style which doesn’t require thinking. I’m not against that, anyone can play just as he and his group likes. What I disagree with Paizo and current D&D publisher (which I’m not supporting by mentioning their name in a keyword-hungry Internet) is that they present their products as simulations of imagined worlds and are trying to fool people not to think any further. Where is the chapter in the rule book saying “yeah, these are the rules, but, you know, it’s more important that you play the story not the rule book?” Endless are the times when Pathfinder RPG players and GM’s have been arguing against a particular action, because it is not covered in rules. When I’m GMing, I’m getting these things from my players: how could the monster do that, it’s not in the book? Or when I, as GM, approve to particular plan of player A and other players tell player A and me to keep it: “that is not mentioned in the book, it can’t happen”. The single argument to justify these cries is balance.

Game balance in a role-playing game is a big joke. Balance is important if you are playing a tabletop wargame, where opposing forces are built up with point-buy system and are facing each other in a tournament. It is much needed feature in several games: in bigger scale, like DBM or Warhammer Fantasy Battle, or in smaller scale like in Hordes, where a handful of fantasy characters are facing each other in a tactical battle. Uh, did I just say a group of characters in a tactical battle? Sounds just like Pathfinder RPG marketing talk! Quick conclusion is that the area where Pathfinder RPG really shines is combat. That sounds like fun!

Battle encounters are battles in real life, too

But mind our two dogs and think again. In our adventure, a battle encounter is just starting. I really don’t have to ask what players are doing, because they both already rolled for initiative and are counting squares of the battle mat at the middle of the table. At the first possible moment, sorcerer starts to fly and throws fireballs, while barbarian character goes in rage and charges. No big brainwork needed and this has been seen already hundreds of times, only difference is that this time, with his new ability, the barbarian character has fire resistance of 10 instead of 5, adding extra half an hour the time of resolving this scene, when average damage is recalculated, reminders on dice rolls are shouted retroactively and a lot of square counting takes place to position the hits and stands the most effective way. The random encounter of five poor half-level hobgoblins meeting the two high-level PC:s got 45 minutes to resolve, when with a little of creative mind it could have been solved in one minute. Like this:

• GM: “Sound of a guard patrol closes. What do you do?”
• Player: “We could probably win the fight easily, but my character is not interested in bloodshed for nothing, and anyway we were on our way to ask some questions from the prisoners. I say we just hide.”

Combat is the part of the Pathfinder PRG where the mechanics are heaviest. It is also the part where most of the time in a gaming night goes. I find combat in Pathfinder RPG very, very disappointing. While I like the aspect of thinking actions (note that true players are often talking about fancy tactics instead of lame actions) for my character, the time of actually resolve combat actions is taking way too long. In fact, if I really go into this, the most enjoyable part of combat in Pathfinder RPG is preparing for it, meaning, advancing levels in my character. That is the time where I think various options, choose feats, change weapons and pick up spells. When the time of actual combat comes, all is already done: I have my feats, my magical equipment and I have discussed, during character creating/advancement with my fellow players about combat roles. The spotlight, the combat, is, in fact, very boring, very slow, and after a time, at the level of zero though. Just executing the plan, the feats, the spells.

Saved by the book!

Up comes the time when new Bestiary (what was known in earlier times as Monster Manual) hits the shelfs and GMs are sighing: finally something new! What they are missing is not a new book with more and more of rules, but a chance to give surprises to their players. Chances which all-defined, unquestionable policy of playing by the book denies.

Lets go back to my most favourite part, the character creation. I can spend days in thinking my character. Not actively of course but every now and then I find myself thinking them, both thinking about their needs and motives and the numbers and other mechanics on character sheet. Lately, I’ve been taken more by the needs and motives part. I’ve been quite happy with Herolabs, that is a small Windows application that runs nicely in Wine of my Ubuntu notebook and does all the number crushing needed for character creation and advancement. With the help of my notebook, the time comes when I finally am happy with my character and the evening for next gaming session starts. Like Paizo suggests, part of the session is used by NPC interactions and other half goes to combat encounters. With five player characters, a single, simple combat takes easily 30 minutes. In that time, everyone has maybe two or three rounds. That means, in half an hour, my character can do three things. I already know what the three things are, and everyone else in our group knows it, too. Also I know in advance what other players characters are doing with their three actions, and other players are knowing that, too. Now what is the logic of spending half an hour of our precious time to play the act everyone already knows? And would it be interesting act, like from a real theatre play, well yes, or from a story telling game like Fiasco!, certainly, but it is an act that we have already seen two or three times a month for eleven years (as long as D&D 3.0 has been available). Rogue sneaks, bard sings, fighter uses power attack, wizard throws magic missiles and cleric supports everyone. That was the battle. Was all the effort put on my character creation worth it? I honestly  think it was. Was time spend wisely tonight? Certainly not!

I have seen this before. Spending hours in creating my Magic: The Gathering pack was fun: the gaming itself was not. Spending nights and nights in preparing my Warhammer Fantasy army for a game of WHFB 5th edition was fun, the actual gaming was not. Maybe it is the lack of some characteristics of my own. Gaming spirit? Urge to be the winner? Or opposite, lack of competitive mind? Could be. Doesn’t apply to Pathfinder RPG, where there are no winners or losers. Read further.

Proper melee fighting games?

Some games are enjoyable even when you are repeating the same kinds of actions from battle to battle. You prepare your forces, put big thought in composition and maybe even write some background story. Good examples are DBA, historical miniature game which typically takes 15-45 minutes to resolve, and Warmachine, where battle can last from 10 minutes to an hour or more. Both games can and typically are played so that would one of the players face drastic disadvantage, like losing his command-in-chief at first round, game ends by common agreement and battle restarts or players which opponents. Typically in Pathfinder RPG, when player characters face an opponent they clearly overpower, they won’t resolve the matter quickly in one way or another but instead start to using their secondary abilities, which normally are not getting much use during “proper” fights. Keeping in mind that Pathfinder RPG combat encounter often lasts between 3 to 6 rounds, every character will always have a lot of unused abilities.

Some RPG:s are fast, too. Combat in old-school RPG:s are often fast and deadly, combat in Savage Worlds is fast and fun. Both are fast because there are no restrictions what a character can do. The more and more you add rules, more it restricts player choices, because if feat X makes action Y possible, you can never do Y without X.

Tonight: game for 0 players, enroll yourself now!

What was I earlier saying about players playing NPC:s? What I mean is that what they get from Pathfinder RPG, according to rule book, is an array of numbers and feats. Without outside influence, like an older gamer telling what table top role playing is compared to computer simulated role playing game, they see their character as a piece on gaming board, nothing more. During a gaming session, all they have to say is declare in which order they are using their spells. After a time, players get used to each others preferences, after which creative though is no longer needed. At this point, GM can take over the PCs and start running the simulation, earlier called a game, on his own.

I’m sure someone who knows predicate logic can come up with a formal presentation of the Pathfinder RPG equation. Please post in your suggestions!

Place was Ropecon 2011, Sunday afternoon, Scenario Contest Panel. The three venerable judges, Frank Mentzer, co-author of the Red Box; Eric Mona, the Paizo Publisher and James Edward Raggi IV, author of Lamentation of the Flame Princess were discussing about scenario writing.

Who is an Editor?

In the presence of 50-100 people, the judges were talking about the competition entries and scenario writing in general. Many flashes of old times came up, from the times when judges themselves were starting to be authors. In panels limited time, a lot of time was used in discussion about the meaning of an editor. Editor edits authors text. Without talented editors, we wouldn’t have ever seen many of the works nowdays regarded as classics, especially mentioned here was Tracy Hickman before he joined forces with Margaret Weis in the iconic Dragonlance series.

Mentzer told about his tasks in TSR. He was co-authoring many books and adventures, but didn’t put out so many works alone. Tomb of Horror was brought up as an example: Gary Gygax started the adventure, writing rather detailed material from beginning, but getting more and more obscure later. Mentzer was asked to finish the adventure, so he took on where Gygax started to be less descriptive, finished those parts, guessed what he was talking about in next step and finally wrote the conclusion himself. No one, even they themselves, couldn’t tell from the finished product what was Gygax’s text and what Mentzers.

Unrelated

Mona pointed out that nothing Paizo puts out ever gets to it without heavy editing. Some authors have had problems with this, but in the end everyone have been a lot happier, he says. Now I have an earlier, personal experience about this. We were playing part three of Paizos Pathfinder RPG Adventure Path Legacy of Fire when I spotted the author of the fourth episode at Paizos messageboards talking about the changes that happened on his scenario just before the publishing (link to the thread). I sent an email to the author and he most kindly replied with his final draft of Pathfinder #22 main adventure. I had grunts of Legacy of Fire before, and getting ready to run part four I was getting a bit sad of what was coming. With the draft straight from the author I got my spirit up again. His version was great, while the published one was just mediocre.

I fully believe Mona’s cause, for truly editing is really important and needed, and taking Paizos recent success in account it looks like they are doing their work very well. My personal observations on Pathfinder #22 are probably just a coincidence of personal taste, maybe things important to me are not in line with results of Paizos market research. Back to Ropecon. In bigger scale, this #22 case is a minor matter and on the limits if it is related on the topic Mona seemed to had in mind: most of the authors are shining with ideas, but crappy when it comes to create a publishable material.

Raggi took on the consept of idea factoring and revealed his own method of creating stuff: idea bashing. When has an idea, he is trying to kill it, trying to figure out why it sucks. If that fails, he knows he has something valuable to push forward. He, like others, were underlining the importance of writing. Write your ideas down, write adventures, write and write until you get used to it. Like Raggi put it, he has had so much experience of bad ideas of his own that choosing good pieces from trash has gotten pretty easy.

Formula for Good Scenario

When it came to entries of this competition, judges weren’t saying anything specific for this contest only but more general what they expect a good scenario to have. Mentzer thought the most important aspect of an adventure is the flow. Game has to go forward, it has to have moments of action and moments of downtime. He also thought character design is very important. In fact, he told that often when he starts to write an adventure, he writes the characters first and using that as a base, writes the scenario for these persons. I believe what he meant here are the attributes, skills and equipment of the characters, not their personalities. Still, it is a worthwhile comment for any kind of game, just change the part of writing for numbers to writing for personalities.

Atmosphere was the thing for Raggi. He said little more. By the way, when asked for their personal favourites of published scenarios, he mentioned Shadows over Bögenhafen, which says something about the kind of atmosphere he likes. Mona’s favourite was The Village of Hommlet. Don’t remember what was Mentzers favourite, I think he didn’t clearly name one, but he was joking about self-modesty and talked about The Temple of Elemental Evil series.

Personal History of Scenario Writing

This lead Mona to talk about his own history as an author. Blaa blaa about Dragon, Dungeon and Living Greyhawk Campaign. With shy glances towards the old man, who he though to have a lot of involvement in his sources, Mona told how he was working on Expedition to Castle Greyhawk. Later in discussion, when marketing was briefly touched he told about the process of creating an award-winning adventure in Pathfinder #19, Howl of the Carrion King. The original author failed to provide his material in time, so, being last in line, Mona took it to write the whole matter in two weeks. He had just traveled in Europe, where he had seen some nice medieval/renaissance chapels and wanted to introduce a scene inspired from that for some part of the adventure. Another thing he had in mind was a kind of a monster, a small menace with unluck aura, called pugwampi. He also had a vision about setting up a fight at the highs of the monastery, on a fragile ground, creating a danger of falling down on the chapel floor. From these thoughts he build up the adventure, and from personal experience I have to say it is a really good one, by far the best in Legay of Fire series. When Mona was talking about the ideas he had, I almost had to laugh out loud because when we were fighting against pugwampi up there on the rotten second floor of the chapel, it went just like he had visioned, to the end that one character fell down on the altar on the last round of the combat, barely stabilizing himself.

Mentzer would definitely had have an endless supply of interesting and insightful stories about his works, but one that he mentioned here, related to marketing matters, was The Immortal Storm. Immortal Rules expansion set for OD&D had just came out. TSR:s marketing team had one task for Mentzer: the name is “The Immortal Storm”, provide. Mentzer did something and the module was published. He thought it is one of the worst things he has done, luckily it is quite rare and forgotten nowdays. Of course, right now someone from the audience jumps up shouting, drawing the book from his bag. Fun moment!

Mike Pohjola asked judges’ opinion on one of the few modules translated in Finnish, Castle Caldwell and Beyond. None of the three people memorized this piece of work. They were sorry in concert that such a crappy module was ever chosen for translation.

GM Versus Author

The important difference between the GM and an author was pointed out by Mona. A GM can write wonderful stuff for herself, but those notes might not do much good if another GM tries to run a game from them. Enter the author, who writes not for herself, but for any GM. On the concept of this competition, Mona’s biggest grunt was that almost all of the works were written by GM, not by an author.

Panel was called to an end by approaching Final ceremony. Judges feedback from my work and my own thoughts on the scenario writing contest here.

Drupal on massiivinen ohjelmointialusta, joka moduulirakenteensa ansiosta sopii minkälaisille verkkopalveluille tahansa. Heti alkuun on lyötävä pöytään valtava puute: Drupalissa ei vieläkään ole kunnollista verkkokauppalaajennusta. Ubercart on miltei käyttökelpoinen moduuli, mutta Smilehousen tai Clovershopin helppokäyttöisiä sovelluksia tulee ikävä. Niinpä verkkokaupan suunnittelija joutunee turvautumaan kolmannen osapuolten palveluihin, tai tekemään oman verkkokauppalaajennuksen. Tästä päästäänkin itse Drupalin ytimeen: järjestelmän laajentaminen moduuleilla on koko Drupalin käytön ydin.

Ohjelmointitaidotonkin saa Drupalista paljon irti. Teemoja ja valmiita moduuleita on pilvin pimein. Pienen yrityksen verkkosivuna tai omaan blogikäyttöön Drupalia voi käyttää vallan mainiosti, vaikka asetelma onkin samankaltainen kuin jos lähtisi kuuraketilla maitokauppaan. Vuonna 2010 1 % kaikista Internetin verkkosivuista käytti Drupalia, mikä tarkoittaa Drupalin olevan ehkä laajimmassa käytössä oleva verkkosovellus. Ainakin puhutaan sadoista tuhansista tai miljoonista sivuista.
Drupal 7 on edeltäjiään parempi kaikin puolin. Loppukäyttäjälle muutokset ovat pieniä mutta dramaattisia: uusi ylläpitäjän työkalupalkki on niin kätevä, että vanhoja Drupal 6-sivustoja on kerrassaan kurja käyttää. Drupalin ydintiimi käytti runsaasti resursseja käyttäjäystävällisyyden kehittämiseen ja sijoitus kannatti. Vähiten muutoksia on ehkä niille Drupalin käyttäjille, jotka rakentavat Drupalilla sivuja ilman ohjelmointia. Teemojen ja päivitysten asentamisessa on tapahtunut parannuksia, block-työkalu on ennallaan ja CCK on osa Drupal Corea, mutta CCK on Drupal 6:llakin ollut miltei välttämätön lisäosa joten ei kummempia muutoksia sen suhteen.

Ohjelmoijalle Drupal 7 on erinomainen. Sisäiset rakenteet on pantu uusiksi, oliot ovat enemmän esillä, tiedon kuljettaminen tapahtuu nipuissa (ei tarvitse enää muistaa kymmenen attribuutin järjestystä Drupalin funktioita kutsuessa) ja Entity-ratkaisu parantaa tiedon järjestelyä. Drupalin tietokantakäyttö on valitettavasti yhtä sekavaa kuin ennenkin, tai ehkä vieläkin sekavampaa (miksi CCK:lla luodun taulun nimi on field_data_field_order, miksei pelkkä field_order?).

Ei paluuta vanhaan, Drupal 7 on todella hyvä. Drupal 8:n suunnittelu on muuten jo aloitettu.