Yes, Video Games are Art. There. I said it.

This is a common question that's come up over and over: Are Video Games Art? If so, what makes them thus? And so on, and so forth. Typically, the argument is divided by people who don't care for games saying, "No! They're silly kids' entertainment, and cannot be Art!" and people who like games saying something that sounds a lot like, "well, I like them, so they must be Art!" and people who like games, but want to be snooty about it saying, "well, what is Art anyway? And some are Art, and some are not," et al.

But what we're actually talking about here, at a fundamental level is legitimacy: should games be taken seriously as a medium and a format, or not?

And yes, I am using Art with a capital A, because it _is_ to be high-falutin' here. Or some junk. And because I am unable to avoid pretension or fulmination, because I am not as awesome as Shieldhaven. But I digress.

First, we have to separate Art from value judgement. That is to say: whether or not you like something has nothing to do with it's status as Art. There's plenty of bad Art. But the fact remains that movies, books, music, and visual art are all Art, and video games combine these elements with interactivity... thus, Art. But there's another reason too... the economics, the production, and the marketing of video games are all consistent with those for Art of various media.

I shall explain.

Information Presentation: D&D Next and Fight Building.

Shieldhaven having sent me the latest Legends and Lore post, I was struck by the following portion:

Is a monster having immunity to non-magical weapons negating the concept of not strictly needing magic items?  Or is the intent to force players to get creative when facing such monsters?

We believe that not all monsters need to be able to be defeated in a straight, head-on fight. Some monsters should require players characters to either have the right tools for the job (in this case, magic items), or be creative in how they deal with them. We don’t want the answer to every monster problem to automatically be “stab it until it dies,” and that goes for spellcasting, too; there may well be monsters that end up in the game that cannot be harmed by spells. We think this is good for two reasons: one, it makes having the right tool for the job (and the tool itself) much more special and valuable, and makes the player feel good for having it; and two, it adds texture and problem-solving to adventures rather than encouraging players to simply barrel through every adventure using violence as the only solution.

All that having been said, any time we deal with something as impactful as immunity to spells or immunity to nonmagical weapons, we have to be sparing with how often we sprinkle it throughout the game. We don’t want to end up in a situation where those monsters that provide that texture become the standard, creating a reversal where players are frequently frustrated by having to constantly deal with monsters that cannot be harmed by traditional means. Like all things that present a non-traditional challenge to the players, we need to be judicious in their use so that they retain their value as an exceptional thing that provides texture, not a constant source of frustration.

All good points on the part of Rodney Thompson (thanks to Haven for the edit. :P), but what doesn't get addressed here is how to use them as a GM. "We" here doesn't seem to imply the GM, after all, but the overall design. And that's fair; they're clearly aware that giving even a significant portion of the monsters huge, sweeping immunities could easily lead to a lot of player frustration. What they don't get into, and what I'd really like to see in a DMG 1, are some basic uses for monsters with weapon/magic immunities, and how to make them fun.

For starters, don't have that be the only kind of monster in a given battle.

This could actually be a very general statement: where possible, include monsters of different types, with different strengths and weaknesses. The NPC roles of 4e were very useful for this, as having a controller, a couple soldiers, and a bunch of minions with complementary abilities often made for complex and engaging fights with a lot of layers. The magic or weapon immune monster could be likewise interesting, but the trick is providing enough stuff for the characters whose go-tos are obsolete something to do.

Thus, my next suggestion is, where possible, include manipulable elements in the combat location, and make sure that the excludes players can use them. In a battle where the big bad is immune to spells, don't have a lot of strength-check challenges, but structural items that spells can weaken and knock into the monster? Pretty awesome. In one where the monster is immune to non-magical weaponry, having a lot of mundane adds, or say... having something like a giant fire-pit where the fighters can temporarily gain a swing or two of enchant, but have to do something to keep it going? Very cool, and gives everyone something to think about while the combat is going on. If you can't tell, I was madly in love with terrain powers, zones, swarms, and special terrain in 4e, and I very much hope to see those come back in D&D next.

I think in general, a basic ideas guide in the main released DMG on how to stat fights for this edition, and how to set up the fights to be entertaining would go a long way in helping everyone at the table have fun with it. At this point, most people playing/testing Next have a lot of expectations and habits built up from previous editions. A little bit of guidance in how to make the most of this one, and how to realise what the designers had in mind for combat structure, would be a very good jumping off place for making it their own.

The Way of the Rules Chick.

So, I like rules.

The reason I like rules is because, apropos of Shieldhaven's post about Wizards, and some other stuff I've seen in games, when systems don't have comprehensive rules, they go SQUISH! and you're floundering in an undefined world where, it is reasonable to ask, "well, why don't you just teleport Frodo into Mordor" because there's nothing defining what the possibilities actually are.

This is a huge problem when we're talking about magic, but it applies to other systems too, particularly in games, where you want your magic users, your fighters, and your fighter-mages (among your other tropes) to be at about the same competence for amount of time spent building skills.  Yes, I am assuming that game/character balance is a desired thing. And I refrained from saying, of the same level to allow for systems without levels, like Ro3 LARPing, or World of Darkness Tabletop, which define advancement in other ways. 

I know a number of people, however, who do not like rules. At least, they express discomfort with rules which ranges from, "I am just not a rules person," to "I fucking hate rules because they get in the way of my ability to Just Play."

I won't get into the expectations connected with who hates rules and why, but will point out that for most people, the thing isn't that one really hates rules. One hates rules that...

• Seem arbitrary (also called, "are too obvious/visible"), 
• Are badly presented,
• Are convoluted and difficult to parse,
• Change or explode too frequently to keep up with,
• Are 'solved' (there's a right way to do things) or easy to exploit (unbalanced).

So allow me to go into some completely unsolicited advice for people who do think of themselves as Rules People, who love to design, modify, or add to rules systems for fun and/or profit.

Running around in the woods beating up your friends with foam weaponry.

So, I've some maunderings about wandering monsters and 4e that I haven't yet put into coherent form, but nu, the main thing that has been occupying my time of late has been boffer LARPing, which, as you may recall, is a Thing That I Do. It is perhaps the very breath of the obvious to say that woah, this kind of game is Completely Different from tabletop-- frequently, the things that you can get away with plotwise and characterwise in one would simply not work in the other. Now, admittedly, I am very spoiled when it comes to LARPing-- I never played Old School NERO, and the joys of counting down, as a monster, from 250 by seventees are largely unknown to me. But perhaps I am getting ahead of myself. Lemme 'splain.

The two games in which I play (King's Gate and Eclipse) and the game that I shall be helping to run (Dust to Dust) are what are known as a) Hit Location Systems and b) SI/Chimera style.

Hit Location means that there is no concept of 'body', or ever upward spiralling hit points, that eventually reach 0, killing you. Through magic, a pc may have 'skins', usually not more than 5, that work about the same way, exceptional cases in really high build games may have 8. You can also have protectives like 'wards', 'resists', and 'shields' that block single attacks. NPCs have 'toughness', which /is/ like Hit Points in that it can be healed, though once again, this is usually a fairly low number-- 10 is a really beefy monster, even several years into a campaign. Compare with Nero/Solar style, Hit Point games, where one may have as many as 100 HP as they advance in level. I'll get to level in a minute.

Also, all one-handed weapons swing a base of 1, 2-handed weapons swing a base of 2, if you are trying to use a 3-handed weapon get the fuck off my site. This can be increased temporarily (usually 3 swings a combat) through wounding blows (a plus to damage, implying martial skilll) or strength effects. Base damage does not increase, and you never have to call damage for a base swing with a one-handed weapon. You should call '2' for a base swing with a 2-hander.

The other difference is that in Hit Location, well... where you hit the person matters. After you've blown through all the protectives you might have, you start taking wounds. A wound renders a location useless. You can take a wound to each leg and each arm, and also the torso. A torso wound renders you unconcious, at which point you have 5 minutes to be stabilized or healed, or you bleed out.

Now, the SI/Chimera difference. In NERO, you have levels and classes. In SI/Chimera, you have neither, exactly. You have build, which you get as a blanket after an event, which you may spend on various skills. Some skills lock out others, but this means that you can be a fighter and caster, and indeed, most people one would think of as primarily brute fighters have some kind of magic/psionics. You may advance in level in specific skills, but your character doesn't have 'level', like in D&D. What you have is a build total, which gives a rough idea of how many skills you may have purchased.

Further, you do not have 'mans', or lives, or souls, or whatever. When a character dies, the death is logged with plot, and the other characters attempt to ressurect them by whatever means makes sense in world. This may or may not succeed-- a fate is drawn from a specially made-up deck of cards, and bad cards = a permenant death. NPC the rest of the event, and roll up a new character. Yes, this means that you can perm on your second death or so-- usually you cannot perm on your first draw. However, you /can/ perm your first death-- if you were to remain dead, say, past sunrise or sunset, which are the in-game markers for when dead spirits leave the world.

NPCs, of course, do not work this way-- generally if you are killing blowed, you are ded. Fortunately, you can ressurect at a spawn point and get your crunchy killing on as much as you like.

Everything beyond that is pretty much flavour of the individual game, though there's some standards for magic that are /usually/ true, like having a single mana pool, and damage causing spells being called darts (1pt), arrows (2pts), lances (1 wound), blasts (1 wound to every location), and infernos (you are ash, everything you are carrying takes a destroy effect). LARP magic is handled typically by throwing packets-- cloth bundles full of birdseed-- or through voice and point effects. Most spells have multi-syllable verbals, where the length of the verbal indicates the strength of the spell.

Which is my basic-- very basic, leaving out a ton of stuff-- run down of Boffer LARP combat. I shall actually venture opinions of various topics LARP related anon, but felt that a basic overview of what I mean when I am talking about LARP things may yet prove useful. To someone. At some point.