They commissioned a company to make Doctor Who stories using Flash animation. The first story was Scream of the Shalka. It featured some voices we've since seen in the revived series, like Richard E. Grant and Derek Jacobi.
And it would've been a canonical continuation of the Doctor Who franchise, with the Ninth Doctor... except that shortly before Scream was finished and published, the New Series contracts were signed.
The BBC allowed Scream of the Shalka to be finished and it got a low-profile release (you can download it from their site for free), but the Shalka Doctor is not canonical.
Have you seen any of the animated reconstructions of lost episodes?
(If you listen closely you'll hear an uncredited cameo by David Tennant, who was doing voicework in the same studio one day and begged his way into the cameo.)
In my limited experience, the GM provides a story to the players, ant their "main" characters mostly react to the environment. Having a look at a couple of random highly-voted (and IMO high-quality) answers on this site, confirms the same impression:
As a GM, it is your job to create an enjoy...
literally the ideal of D&D is to get all the xp and loot
usually through quests or dungeon crawls
this requires the party to work together to actually be effective and transforms the party into one sort of amalgam character who is then the action hero who goes through a rather flat narrative arc.
I guess a big different between RPing and Dice games I didn't realize until now is dice games is focused on fighting and looting where I have not been in a fight in the rp I do for about a month now.
@besw not disagreeing, just saying its not immediately apparent from a player perspective when you've gone through all the trouble to make a backstory, flesh out your character concept (mechanically and storywise) and you barely know the other persons' because for RP purposes you just met at a tavern, you shouldnt know their entire backstory
@JoshuaAslanSmith But from the get-go, the typical adventure game expects you to recognize that you have to act as a group, for instance. Present a united front all the time. Integrating the personalities and all that is just part of the internal character development of the party.
True, I also feel its an issue where the myth of D&D conflicts with the reality as a 4e player/gm. I've had to deal with so many people's ideals which we influenced by stories about 2nd and 3rd edition and usually about highly dysfunctional parties
@Trajan Yes, Dwarf Fortress does need some side reading, but I found the Wiki to help a lot.
But as a game with no victory condition and plenty of ways to lose, ranging from miserable failure to disaster of peic proportions, the Dev's motto "Losing is fun" makes a lot of sense
@shatterspike1 All you need is a tall mountain, and a magma pump at the top with a "fuse" that trips to turn it own when the water hits a certain height.
I can come up with fun concepts or mixes of class/abilities... but when it's time to explain "why?", I tend to get stuck. Not only why the character is adventuring, but also why he sticks with the other characters.
Of note: my current thinking is "D&D fantasy" but I doubt the genre or setting is what's giving me trouble.
I was wondering how others did it and if there was any trick I was missing. Or maybe there isn't and it does a week to write a proper background & motivation?...
but to continue on what im talking about, tell me who this is: a young millionaire watches sees his parents brutally murdered before his eyes in a petty robbery gone wrong, in response he devotes himself and all that he has to a one man war on crime with one rule, no killing
Well, whether it's wrong or not, I happen to be a concept person, so yeah. I'm more "That dude has a draconic ancestry and can manipulate fire!" rather than "Mm, some guy looking for redemption".
im saying the mechanical concept should inform your mechanical choices and from there you layer the story concept ontop
to return to batman, when he first showed up in detective comics you didn't have the iconic backstory yet
just the mechanical concept, man in a bat suit fist fights villians
he has no super powers, just gadgets
it was later that the creators of batman wrote the origin story (the story concept) for why the character became a dude in a batsuit fighting villians with gadgets
@JoshuaAslanSmith Sounds tricksy. While I wouldn't mind postponing the backstory, it seems like it would be hard to play such a character. How to imagine their decisions without knowing what makes them tick?
Or are you just saying "mechanics first, then backstory", but still prior to a game?
@JoshuaAslanSmith OK. My problem, though, is that I tend to be stuck before even "looking for redemption". More like "I have a fire mage... now what?". I know he's going to go into dungeons and kill stuff... but why would he do that? And I don't just mean for a single scenario where there may be a hook (though not always)... more like a general "why would such a person become an adventurer?" (or a spy, or a space pirate, or whatever else)
I'm currently trying to come up with an out-of-context list of what I deem plausible motivations for adventuring. I may be frozen by too much freedom still.
my caution is that ultimately you will not find full satisfaction unless you are in a 1 player controlling a party (2-5 characters with one defined main character) game
realistic mechanical constraints mean that your story will never fully get the spotlight and there are certain OOC things that just need to happen, the party staying together because the DM can't adjudicate all of your separate adventures
the best way to address this is to have a big first adventure where the PCs are forced to be in a party for a long while despite their differences and through that adventure they form a common bond
@BESW That may partly explain why I'm having trouble. Though even in normal writing (of which I barely do any), I tend to suck at motivations anyway...
for example: Theres a war and a draft is on and you and everyone else in the party were rounded up and selected for your special talents to form an elite squad, OR You all are gladiators (some by choice, some from debts, some were slaves) forced to fight as a team in the arena to win your freedom
countless other examples
@leokhorn 1st rule of writing, fake it till you can make it. Crib from other, successful writers and stories until you fully grasp the concept and can do it yourself
this isnt a patron or a contrivance so much as there are powerful external reasons for the party to initially be together against their will and divergent individual goals, when they escape from or fufill these obligations they are essentially free again, but they now have solid friends/colleagues and the party as a whole should have matured and grown into a unit in a sense
issues being that players rarely actually RP their characters realistically and actual character growth in terms of values, story, personality rarely occur
Vampire: the Masquerade. Its character mechanics and inbuilt personality system gave characters very little reason to want to work together--in fact, it frequently encouraged them to attack each other.
So the GM generally started each campaign with "if you don't work together, a very powerful and unpleasant person/group will kill you all."
@BESW A group of Italian players I know is trying to play Vampire by the book. Turns out it's way better than how it was traditionally played in their group.
PCs are usually played like action heroes (rambo, john mcclane) where they get more poweful but dont have a real arc and players arent interested in an arc just in being a badass at what they do.
Vs. the dramatic example where you see a characters internal outlook and abilities change allowing them to make new actions. King's Speech is a good example. Looper actually shows the two different character arc approaches within one film.
It has things like "at the end of the session, players -tell what their charachter has learned- and get 1xp. It's really similar to Apocalypse World in that regard (except for the "if the ST agrees" formula)
that's a way to do it but there's no way to ensure that players will actually incorporate that into anything their character actually does in the future.
@leokhorn If you want to take a mechanical build and attach a motive to it, look at the combinations and speculate on what would cause someone to make those choices.
@JoshuaAslanSmith Well, see, I'm not even sure I'm even aiming for character development (though it'd be cool). Just... excuses for things to work as they do. But I'm definitely noting the "external force" thing since it's a classic.
As for why he dungeon delves... the issue here is that the motive can't ever be resolved. If he delves for money to bail his dad out of jail, then he stops delving when he gets X gold.
the fire mage with draconic heritage is out for redemption because as a teenager he misused his developing powers to burn down a village in reaction to persecution for his heratige
@BESW Right, I've thought of doing that. Assuming I don't mind spending the time, I even think justifying every skill and ability can be nice to patch the holes. But it's really hard work...
Also, why do they remain adventures can be best answered by they've come to enjoy the new life they took on for reason X even though reason X was resolved by Y.
Ah, don't take stats or skills or feats or items based on their name and their fluff
@BESW Eternal motives. I like the sound of it. So, basically, motivation is "because I love doing this!", with a few varied reasons that, most often I assume, won't be quite explainable.
@JoshuaAslanSmith No, no, I was saying the other way around. Look at the build and try to think of a few background elements that can justify most of them. It's often possible to combine many into one: "I have Cleave, Power Attack and a lot of Strength because I was trained by Sir Hitsalot of the Grand Eagles" (plus, NPC and potential plot hooks, woop)
what I was saying is despite said power/feat/item's description, you could ignore that description and describe it (fluff) as something else entierely whiles still using the mechanics of said thing
Say he has high Bluff. A fighter with high bluff? Mhh, but why? In Pathfinder, if you really plan to use it for Feints, then, maybe that's the deal: it comes from his fighting style. But maybe he's really just good at fast talking or lying. It may be nice to explain why.
Like - hexblade + draconic disciple is a good combo. Add Black Guard and you add charisma to your saves again, plus you get a terrifying aura just like dragons.
@JoshuaAslanSmith but beware. Some DMs are really of the opinion that if you reskin it then other characters can't recognize what it is and it's an unfair advantage for you.
@JoshuaAslanSmith What I meant is that some reskinnings don't quite fit. A recent example was a suggestion to skin "normal human legs" (a default) into "a tail-like body" (mermaid and such). It can partly work (character may slither as fast as two-legged characters) but sometimes it won't (you can mechanically wear boots but... um...)
@JoshuaAslanSmith Mm... how do you deal with, say, resistances to the specific type? If I take a Divine Ray that does divine damage, but skin it as an Arcane Ray... won't it still do divine damage?
@leokhorn IMO if you skin it as a lesser damage type it's no biggy to change it, though I'm not a fan of changing damage types at all...just reflavoring it (with no mechanical differences even if it clashes with the flavor every once in a while)
I guess that'd also depend on your world... if you have a place where clerics can only deal divine damage and arcane damage is specifically something that only mages can do, I think that would need to have a pretty decent explanation for it
I think where were differing on skinning/refluffing is that I basically see it as only changing the fluff/descrption of said power and non eof the mechanical ramifications.
An arcane or martial class which deals divine damage could actually provide interesting RP opportunities. Are you the arcane equivalent of a paladin? Did you attempt to make a deal with a higher power and got an angel instead of an elemental?
yeah, as far as I'm concerned, if a player wants to reskin the crap out of something, go with it as long as it a. makes sense and b. doesn't unbalance the game (which gets back to your point about a reskin being about changing the fluff and not the substance of the ability)
I would tend to encourage that sort of creativity, in fact
I dunno. I still have an issue with it if the refluff ends up not making sense in-setting. I do think it works really well with lighter systems where damage is damage (Fate, Mutants & Masterminds, Savage Worlds possibly) and such.
And for the previous example, I don't mind if the magic user does divine damage with an ability. As BESW says, there are ways to justify this happening in-setting, and it can make for very interesting hooks.
@JoshuaAslanSmith I assume 4e still has Undeads more vulnerable to divine damage? What happens when your arcane-but-really-divine attacks hits one? That's what I don't get :)
so you could rename Curse of the Dark Dream and describe HOW its working in a story sense differently but you'd still use the mechanics (keywords etc.) for that power
so the only thing you could or would change on the card on the left would be "Channel: Divine mettle" and the text "your unswerving faith in your diety empowers a nearby creature to resist a debilitating affliction. "
this is extremely important for divine classes because often you have to worship a specific deity or alignment of deity to get access to certain divine powers for your class.
its silly because 4e does not care about alignments at all outside class options for divine classes
its a sort of house rule but its really on an outlier that on the border between house rule and reskin
alignments existing at all in 4e is a vestigial holdover from past editions and frankly was put in either because the designers couldn't think to not put it in despite it in no way affecting mechanics for anyone outside the example I gave or because of the grognard ire that would have erupted.
@BESW What I've been confused about is understanding whether some players/GMs use reskinning without house-ruling mechanics/restrictions (I'm sure it's the case), and if so how far removed from the mechanics the reskinning is allowed to go.
I personally tend to limit it in a system such as Pathfinder because almost everything is mechanically defined, whereas I don't care much in Fate/M&M because either it's not defined, or the rules explicitely tell you to define it yourself for every ability.
Ah I think the distance between us is that you see reskinning and houserule/custom content on a spectrum whereas I see them as completely separate groups where only a few outliers from one or the other meetup up.
In my limited experience, the GM provides a story to the players, ant their "main" characters mostly react to the environment. Having a look at a couple of random highly-voted (and IMO high-quality) answers on this site, confirms the same impression:
As a GM, it is your job to create an enjoy...
