Mage
At roleplaying group today, I realize that my goals in a given campaign are way different than the goals of the rest of the party. Everyone else likes to punch people really hard and goof around, my character wants to sit back and handle the problem with finesse, or barring that, fail to handle the problem in an entertaining way. Unfortunately, a lot of roleplaying games are written to feature a lot of fighting, especially those we’ve been playing, so I spend approximately 20% of the time we play completely useless. I’m not sure how to reconcile this; especially considering how much I favor Fourth Edition D&D, which is all combat. I supposed I like it because it knows what it is and goes all out, mostly untying roleplaying and non-combat from the game mechanics (not completely, though, and it’s specifically those parts I don’t like. Non-combat utility powers bother me, and skill challenges are often boring). I guess my problem is when we are playing a game like Mage, in which 70% of the book is devoted to fluff and nearly all your points are going towards non-combat skills and off-the-wall magic use, I think we shouldn’t be fighting at all, but rather exploring and investigating. It’s that part that interests me about roleplaying at the moment, and I wish there was a system that would just divorce itself from combat as thoroughly as D&D 4E divorces itself from roleplaying.
Aside: This is not meant to imply that I think roleplaying is inconsistent with a D&D 4E experience. I rather think that you don’t need mechanics in place to force roleplaying and exploration. When you have to decide at character creation how much you will lean on either combat or being good in combat (or, as 3rd edition required, having your class determine just how useful you’ll be at a given time), it just feels like there’ll be a major divide that will rip at the party if everyone in the party doesn’t lean the same way. What I like about 4E is that it makes the decision for you; here is what you will be able in combat, which will inevitably come up. You can make your character act however you want, but it won’t sting if you don’t want to act like a barbarian. You’ll still be useful. Same to you, barbarians. You’ll be good at climbing and screaming when there isn’t a bugbear about. Let your DM know. Now have fun, and I hope you have some table space.
Anyway! In terms of the game that we played, I finally was told the huge mystery that they had been taunting my character with for a month. It was, drumroll please, they stole a car and kidnapped a guy. Oh, and they recruited the two new players, who are kinda insane. Okay, one is very insane, the other balances him out. It wasn’t completely shocking, but it did set up the impetus of the session, mainly, hiding the kidnapped guy, so I rolled with it.
We tried to heal him, which didn’t work too well, and we walked him to my home to hide him. (I’m started to take real issue with the DM’s 1 minute driving equals 10 minutes walking, because a) he’s taking his estimated time driving from Google Maps, which exaggerates driving time on city streets to account for stop lights and stuff, and b) in no possible way would it take 2 hours to move 2 miles. That’s unreasonable. Heck man, you’re on Google Maps anyway, just hit the walking directions button.) After a night sleeping, I send all the other party members off in a car, pretending they are moving a body, while I stay behind with the unconscious kidnapped man. I used my magic (because I’m a fucking wizard) to dive into his subconscious and try to convince him through the power of dream that I was a friend of his. As far as I knew he’s never seen me, so it might have worked. I really enjoyed this bit, diving deeper into his subconscious, following some animals and going into a really creepy cave and finding him in his quiet place. My attempt to really trick him failed, but it was fun doing some exploration stuff.
Then some downtime as we tried to figure out what everyone was doing (if the answer is nothing, they just move on!) and then we see a really creepy bird, so we pack up and move the body to a basement library that we had access to, in hopes that no one would find us. Unfortunately, a robot cat found us (robots cats in the Mage universe have the power to go anywhere and tear information right out of your mind, and they are also adorable, according to the book). A cave opens up and a bunch of dicks ran out, and we kill them, but they manage to wake up the guy we kidnapped and he somehow knows how to teleport, so he’s gone. We almost had another hostage though, but she started to teleport away and one of the players shot her in the head the exact moment she was leaving, which backfired and apparently caused her to explode it was really gross.
It’s becoming slightly frustrating that all of my plans to avoid confrontation always go awry because if they ever worked, then there wouldn’t be a combat encounter that session, but I understand why it has to happen, it just makes me want to contribute less so that I don’t feel like every action I suggest is absolutely useless. Of course we’re going to have to fight someone, despite my character’s complete reluctance to let it happen. He doesn’t want to get his hands dirty, he just wants to get these punks out of his town and run his club already. But it’s a roleplaying game, where shit goes wrong often. I just wish it wouldn’t go wrong in a way that completely invalidates my decisions.
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