Magic and Race

So I'm puttering about, as usual, with my various spreadsheets and text files, trying to determine how many or which magic systems I want to keep, like I do.  I'm starting to separate things out by assigning which stat is used for casting, when suddenly a thought hits me: what if your character's race determined what sorts of magic you had access to?

So maybe humans have access to gem magic, which I figure is more or less universal, as well as some other type, probably based on the spell lists in various resource books.  And maybe elves can use gem magic, as well as the free-form d6 based magic system I came up with.  In the meanwhile, maybe dwarves can use gem magic, as well as something based on runes, and halflings get gem magic and... I don't know yet.  But the idea just hit me about five minutes ago.

Whaddaya want for nothin'?  A rubber biscuit?

City of Heroes: Freedom

Surprisingly, the in-game graphics are not far off from the box art.

City of Heroes is a MMOG based on the premise of comic book style superheroes, with adjoining City of Villains filling out the other side of the gallery, and the recent Going Rogue expansion portraying an alternate dimension with a few more shades of grey.

I've played this game off and on for a few years now. Thanks to my alt-itis, I don't tend to get very far with any single character, but this game almost encourages that by having one of the best, most variable character creators I've seen. From mixing and matching power sets to designing the appearance in much more detail than I've seen possible elsewhere, you really get the chance to personalize each character. Heck, there are times I've wanted to resubscribe just to fiddle around with the costume designer!

So I should probably be happy for the upcoming change to the game's business model, following in the footsteps of other games that have switched to the "Free to Play" format. Despite the company's reassurances, though, I still have my doubts.

Part of it, I suppose, stems from the sense of elitism one gets from being part of a game that requires a subscription to play. The $15 per month charge keeps the "riff-raff" out, as it were. But there's a not-so-snobby truth to this as well, because as anyone who's played both a subscription and a F2P (Free to Play) game knows, F2P is notorious for the number of griefers, spammers, goldbots, farmers, and otherwise irritating players not as prevalent in a subscription-based game.

This ties in, somewhat, with the points I made back here, too. The unofficial RP server on CoH is Virtue, and it already has a full load during peak hours. The people who have been playing there for years have already well-established their characters and supergroups (player-run guilds) on the server, but may end up being muscled out because the server is too full for more players once it's open to everyone. The company states that a new server is in the works that will be open only to Premium Subscription members (basically, the people who don't stop paying even once it's F2P), but why should the people who have already established their characters and supergroups be, essentially, required to start over somewhere else? Especially since they'll be competing with similarly-displaced players from the other servers as well, making it likely that this new server will be just as full and lagged as Virtue is now.

But, the costume creator will be free to play around with at last. That's gotta count for something, eh?

Free Sound

If you're looking for sound effects for Softrope (see my last post), this site has free, searchable sound files. You do have to register an account, but there's no credit card or such involved. Along with music files I already had, I've managed to create soundscapes for a good many adventuring environments with the sounds from there.