Tolerating Distractions

Once again, enlightenment from another blog's comments.  Normally when I read the comments on internet articles and blogs, I'm left with disappointment over the state of humanity, so this is a welcome change of pace.

I recently followed a few gaming blogs on G+, and through that stumbled across this article regarding gamers who don't pay strict attention at the table.  Knitting at the table is kind of awesome, and is less distracting (for the other players) than my backpacker.  I know one GM who sometimes crochets while running the game, when the players are planning things out and so on.  In most cases, it is as easy to pick up and put down as anything else and is productive to boot.  I'm fairly lenient when it comes to distracted gamers, though I'll admit to some of the typical insecurities regarding whether or not the person is invested in the game, and whose fault that may be if they aren't.  However, my wife and I have discussed at various times her envy-inducing multitasking abilities, so usually I'm able to keep in mind that even if she doesn't appear to be paying attention physically, her mind is still focused on the game.  It was nice, then, to see this comment from "dfjdejulio":

So, on the “knitting while playing tabletop games” thing, I might be able to give a little perspective on why some people react so negatively to it.

My spouse does this sort of thing. I do not.

I was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult. My spouse has some ADHD-like symptoms but has never gotten a diagnosis. Right around the time of my diagnosis, I studied up on the condition, reading a lot of books and some articles from medical journals and stuff.

Some people with ADHD cannot concentrate well *if* more than one thing is going on. Other people with ADHD cannot concentrate well *unless* more than one thing is going on.

(What *seems* to be going on is, when the primary activity isn’t stimulating enough to occupy every last drop of their attention, they can “bleed off” some of the excess need-for-stimulation via secondary activities. If they’re blocked from doing this it gets frustrating and they fidget and daydream and stuff and just can’t focus.)

Whether she actually has ADHD or not, the latter certainly describes my spouse. She’s even got empirical data to back this up — when she started studying and doing homework with the TV *on*, her grades went *up*, and that correlation remained in place from high school through grad school. It was an objectively measurable effect, not just a subjective experience.

I, on the other hand, am the sort who can’t concentrate if anything else is going on.

Her behavior drove me *nuts* until I understood it, because if *I* had been behaving that way, well, it would have meant that I cared so little for the game that I had no intention of participating in it. But she needed the extra distraction in order to participate. What would have been a display of contempt from me was an accommodation in order to remain involved from her.

(Similarly, when we’re ordering pizza, I have to either pause or mute the TV, because otherwise I often can’t even read the pizza menu — my ability to multitask is *that* poor. This drove *her* nuts until she understood my nature better.)

I don't have ADHD (or at least, have never been diagnosed with it), but this still resonates with me very strongly.  I cannot multitask well at all.  If I open up a browser window while playing on a MUD, there's a good chance I'll get focused on whatever is in the browser and forget that I'm still logged into a game underneath it.  If there is a television within my field of vision, I have difficulty focusing on anything else in the room, whether it's visual or aural.  Trying to use multiple devices with multiple screens, something becoming iconic in the world of geeks and gaming, is simply beyond me.  I can listen to music while doing something else, but anything visual typically ends up derailing me.

My wife, on the other hand, typically has about twenty browser tabs open and is connected to the MUD while doing her college coursework, with the television on.  It makes me jealous, and also sometimes makes it difficult for me to understand comments that she makes because I wasn't paying attention to whatever source spurred the comment.  But, she cannot deal with having a lot of noise, or multiple sources of aural input, especially if she's trying to talk.  Music playing while the television is on ends up being too chaotic and cacophonous.  Sometimes just music on the radio is too much - she focuses better with silence.

So, I can handle background noise but not background visuals, while she can deal with visuals but not noise. There are exceptions on both sides, but this is the typical situation.

Both my wife and our friend Jonathan use their laptops to store character sheets for my game.  It's a lot harder to lose a laptop than a piece of paper or even a folder, and digital files are much easier to edit (and don't suffer from eraser marks).  Most of my game rules and information is also kept on my computer, though I try to only open it up on an as-needed basis.  So I have come to expect a certain level of distraction during my games, and for the most part I've built up a tolerance and I'm okay with it.  I have my limits as well, but it doesn't come up often because I know that it's mostly just satisfying the need/urge to fidget when the player's character isn't in the spotlight.

When I'm a player, though, rather than a GM, I use paper character sheets, and limit my "distractions" to random dice rolling and fiddling around on the guitar if there's no other music playing.  That's how I was raised, in gaming, so that's how I feel comfortable doing it.

Delusions of Shakespeare

So why am I "The Bard?"

Contrary to the title above, I'm not trying to horn in on Will's racket. I've always been very musically inclined, and am an accomplished vocalist. I've been operatically trained, have been appearing in plays and musical theater productions since Elementary School with an actor's resume some 5 pages long. I've played trombone, piano, and guitar, but my primary instrument is my voice. As a young child, brought to events by my parents, my goal in the SCA was to join the musician's guild (and go fight in full armor, but what kid doesn't want to do that?). I am a Master Harper in one such SCA guild, modeled after Harper Hall in the Dragonriders of Pern series (and sanctioned by Anne McCaffrey).

I even bring my guitar, a Martin Backpacker, to gaming sessions. When I was a regular attendee at the Tuesday Games(tm), I would have it out nearly every session. Because of its small frame, it didn't interfere with most dice rolling, and it's easy to put to the side when the action gets heavy.

One particular Tuesday night, playing 3rd Ed. D&D, the party was trying to make their way down a corridor that was bottlenecked by a horde of goblins. As the rest of the group began discussing options, I started plucking out a tune I'd picked up at the St. Louis Renaissance Faire a year or two prior, modified for the current events:

"They're standing in line.
They're standing in line.
They want to get killed so
They're standing in line.
They're standing in line
For a very long time.
They want to get killed so
They're standing in line."

"Everybody sing!"

And everyone did. I led half a dozen people on an impromptu sing-along reprise, most of which had never even heard the tune before. There was no hesitation on anyone's part. No one missed a beat, and no one missed a word.

To make a group of full-grown men break into song without prior training or expectation of performance? That's a powerful feeling. If I'd needed any more convincing of real-world bardic magic by that point in my life, that event would have satisfied me.

So that's why I'm the Bard.

DDO: Monks and Bards

I discovered something the other night, logging in to DDO. Despite my love for bards and monks, I've actually found they're two of the most stressful/difficult classes to play. I think I've managed to narrow down why.

In DDO, monks get a lot of nifty, customized abilities that weren't part of 3rd edition. It adds some flavor and flash, and there's some talk about them being overpowered, which of course makes them desired by anyone who wants to be unbeatable. I have to admit that they can be very lethal in dealing out massive amounts of damage, and pretty quickly. In that regard, they're on par with a dual-wielding rogue with sneak attack. Yet fighters and rogues both have ways of dealing with the aggro that comes from dealing massive damage: fighters have more HP, and can wear shields to increase damage reduction, while rogues have an enhancement ability that decreases the aggro (or "hate" as it's called in-game) that their sneak attacks produce. Perhaps a Constitution-heavy monk would be better at taking the hits, but they'd also be less adept at giving them. Some of the monk abilities can reproduce a few beneficial (but at low to mid-level relatively unused) clerical spells, like removing blindness or curing diseases, but overall I end up feeling like I should multiclass into rogue or cleric so I can be more useful.

Bards are another issue, one that extends beyond just DDO. Jack-of-all-trades, master of none, yes, I get it. They're supposed to be able to make up for an existing lack in party balance, tossing in whatever low to mid-level magic is necessary that the cleric and wizard are too busy to cast. Plus they get the bard songs. But the bonus the party gets from the songs is minimal, and in many cases is easily replaced by spells from other classes, and you'd be hard pressed to find a party that wouldn't rather have a second cleric than a bard. Because the bard's role is so varied, you either end up wasting time trying to figure out what your role in this party needs to be, or you end up being told what you should be doing which may or may not correlate with the skills and spells you've taken as a bard. Regardless, more often than not you end up feeling superfluous or just plain weak.

More than clerics, I think bards have a significant in-game and balance reason for needing the ability to switch spells on a daily (or in DDO, per-rest) basis. It wouldn't really help their survivability, but it would let them tailor their abilities to each party a bit better, much like a wizard or cleric can. As it is, in DDO they can change one spell every 3 real-life days, and pay in-game currency for the privilege.

The rules for bard and sorcerer spells were based on a system in which the character would be played with (generally speaking) a single group. It didn't account for having five different parties in a single day, and having to re-figure your character's role in each of them.

Mabinogi is releasing G4!! Soon! Yes? ... Maybe?

Mabinogi is gearing up for its next big generation release, and pretty much everyone in-game is chomping at the bit. Unfortunately, while a lot of people thought this patch was coming in just 2 days, on Feb 5, it seems that it may just be the release date of another teaser. This comes as a disappointment to many, myself included. You can only build up suspense and excitement so much before people start wondering if anything will ever happen at all.

I think that Nexon's decision to release another teaser rather than the real deal is ultimately going to demoralize their playerbase rather than heighten the excitement, building more irritation than anything. And that's not the kind of tension you should be going for.

I'm personally hoping that G4 will see the release of something a bit more "worth it" for bard characters. At present, the skills Composing and Music Theory have been capped at rank 9 (rank 1 being highest, and F through A being below). This meant a person could get their Instrument Playing skill to rank 7 fairly easily, since you could create scores that would give you skill experience for playing.

At rank 7 playing, however, in order to advance you must resort to playing 'default' music, stock music created by the game designers. When playing default music, the song you play is completely random, so you cannot choose to only play one song, or even songs of a specific difficulty. Despite this, I managed to spam my way to rank 6 of Instrument Playing.

The reason someone would put so much into these skills is that once you have Composing and Music Theory to rank 9, you can create score scrolls that have magical effects. Some regenerate HP, mana, or stamina. Some give boosts to a single stat, such as Strength or Luck. Some of them have other effects, such as charming animals or giving direct combat bonuses. The better you are at Instrument Playing, the better effects you can do, and they affect all party members within a rather large area. Sounds nifty, right?

Problem One:
The type of score scroll you get is determined by random, and it seems that some types are more likely to be generated than others. Furthermore, whether or not your score gets a magic effect (which is determined at creation of the scroll) is also completely random.

Problem Two:
You need to be at least Rank 5 in Instrument Playing before you can use any magical music aside from stat boosts or regen. So I'd have to spam my way with default music through yet another rank. Not so big of an issue, since those types of scores are harder to come by anyway.

Problem Three:
There's only a handful of scores that are actually useful below Playing rank of 5. Strength boosters are good if the party is heavy with melee fighters. Dexterity is good if you have a lot of ranged fighters. Intelligence might be good if you were in a party full of spellslingers (not common at all, even individually) but is otherwise only useful for a quick boost when trying to enchant something. As far as Will and Luck go, the questionable bonus received from a boost to these is hardly worth mentioning.

The regen scrolls, at first glance, seem much more worthwhile. Instead of being a single temporary bonus (that seems to end an amount of time after the song ends roughly equivalent to the length of the song), they would regen the specified amount at regular intervals throughout the playing. Unfortunately, only the mana and stamina regen scores seem to be at all useful, and even then only minutely. The majority of the players are simply too impatient to wait for a slow regeneration effect. Potions already exist that will restore HP, mana, and stamina, and these are both quicker and more plentiful than score scrolls anyway, not to mention bards who can play them. Regen scores are much harder (it seems) to produce than stat-boosters, as well.

Problem Four:
Another reason that the magic music is so relatively useless takes some explanation. The numeric potential of the stat-boosting and regen scores is determined by your Playing Instrument rank, and you need to be at least rank 9 to get any effect at all. No matter what rank you are, however, the value you get is determined within a set range which always starts at zero. If it's zero, then you get a message saying the music seems to have no effect.

Rank 9 playing grants 0-1 for stat boosts and 0-2 for regen, according to information available. When I was rank 9 playing, more often than not my score would work, and I'd get a value of 1 regardless of what type I played, and I figured that was fair enough.

Rank 8 playing grants 0-2 for stat boosts and 0-3 for regen, again according to available info. Once I got to rank 8, the biggest difference I saw immediately was that my score scrolls had zero effect more often than they had before. I very rarely got a value of 2 from a stat boost, and even more rarely a value of 3 for regen.

Rank 7 playing, in theory, grants 0-6 for stat boosts and 0-4 for regen. By this point, I was getting zero effect from my magical scores more often than I got any effect at all, and the majority of the time I was still getting 1's and 2's. Occasionally I got 4 from a regen. I still have never seen anything above 4 from a stat boost, and usually only got 3 at best. Most of the time, if the party needed hp or stamina regeneration and didn't want to use potions, the Rest skill would regen them faster than my music could, anyway.

Rank 6 playing is supposed to give 0-10 for stat boosts and 0-5 for regen. I've only been rank 6 a short while, but so far it seems my success ratio (success being any value above 0, failure being 0) is about 50%, which is an improvement on rank 7 (but still not as good as I remember rank 9). I'm seeing more 3's and 4's from both stat boosts and regen, though not reliably. As I said before, I've never seen anything above 4, which is a shame because a bonus of 10 to a stat like Strength or Dexterity could be a major boon.

So Problem Four is actually two-fold: 4a) The range of the bonus, regardless of playing rank, always starts at 0. 4b) The value you get doesn't seem to be based on anything you can effect. It's not entirely random, or else you'd see more high numbers than now. I suppose you could call it semi-random, erring on the low side with higher numbers being exponentially less likely.

With weapon damage, you have an attribute called Balance, modified by the weapon type and by your Dexterity, which determines where in the damage range of the weapon you're likely to have your hits fall. On average, a damage range of 10-20 with a Balance of 50% will generally mean 15 damage each hit.

With spellcasting, there is Magic Balance, modified by Intelligence, which determines where in the damage range of the spell you are likely to hit.

There does not seem to be any apparent equivalent "Music Balance". If there is, I'm completely at a loss as to what effects or modifies it.

As far as the regen scores go (at least so far), HP is pretty much worthless, both inside and outside of combat. Inside of combat, the Healing spell and hp potions are much faster and more reliable. With a roughly equal chance of getting any effect and no effect at all, chances are your music won't do any healing the first try, and if it does, it's too slow to save anyone's life.

Stamina regen scores are marginally more useful. It can be easy to run out of stamina (which is used up by using skills) in a long fight, and sometimes you don't have the time to quaff a potion, or maybe you didn't realize you were low. Having a constant regen of stamina, regardless of the amount, could actually save someone in combat. Outside of combat, it's pretty much useless. The Rest skill regens faster.

Mana regen is, arguably, the most potentially useful effect below rank 5 Playing. Since mana regen is naturally very slow (faster at night, but still fairly slow), it can be nice to have another method of regenerating it. Again, however, potions are plentiful, especially if you have the Herbalism and Potion Making skills. And like with the HP regen, you're not going to get enough benefit out of it during battle that it's likely to make a difference. Outside battle, it's more useful.

So: HP regen? No use. Stam regen? Potentially useful during combat, but otherwise not. Mana regen? Potentially useful outside of combat, but otherwise not.

Problem Five (What, you thought I was done?):
The musician is rendered immobile while playing. Now, the area of effect is pretty big. I can stand in one corner of a normal dungeon room and reach party members almost in the opposite corner. But stat-boost effects will end early if the song ends early. So if the party wipes out the room and starts heading on to the next one, the bard either gets left behind to finish the song (if it produced an effect worthwhile enough to continue) or to cancel it and catch up so that he can play it again (possibly getting a worse result) in the next room.

Further, because the bard is immobile, and because monster spawns in a room are random in their location, it's quite possible one will aggro on the bard and hit him, ending the song prematurely, before the party can assist. This means a wasted attempt, and the bard has an instrument in hand instead of a weapon to defend himself with, if he's still alive.

So, half the time (or less) you make a scroll, it's magic.
Half the time (or less) it's magic, it's something useful.
Half the time (or less) it's something useful, you can get it to work.
If you get it to work, half the time (or less) it's actually worthwhile.
1/2 of 1/2 of 1/2 of 1/2 = 1/16
So... I guess 1/16th of the time (or less) it's worth playing a bard?

I swear, I'm going to de-rank Music Theory.

Overall I think the biggest problems are the abundance of potions and the impatience of the majority of players, followed by the unreliability of the effects. These are the main factors that make playing a bard so frustrating and, quite frankly, useless.

Funny... I guess I expected bards to be more powerful in a game called Mabinogi.