CMX gets a pink slip.

So CMX, manga imprint of Detective Comics Comics, the franchise churn for Time Warner and whatever other media giant they've added to the mix since I've last cared, is closing its doors on July 1st and I'm quite upset by this.

DC and Marvel no longer make comics, they turn out multi-media franchises that fans only tune into to see how much they've fucked them up. I stopped caring which superhero mind-raped or sodomised another years ago. Recently, I was disappointed to read yet another arrogant Mark Millar snark on the imaginary castrated man-children he believes are the only people reading his books.

CMX printed comics though. Certainly, there weren't too many superheroes within those pages and few of the titles appealed to the fairy tale of Comic Dork A, but they appealed to me and considering how often the books seemed to sell out, they must have appealed to someone else. I just picked up Diamond Girl Vol. 1 last week and now I'll never see Vol. 2. Dorothea and Orfina were the best examples of pure fantasy I've read in a long time, not bogged down with all the updated cool factor or self-aware bullshit that plagues nearly anything I experience from the US. Emma makes victorian period drama vastly entertainingly fun somehow! In a comic! Where else but in manga do you even see people trying that sort of thing? Western comics are nothing but rape and muscles and zombies in conveniently transferable packages these days.

I suppose, though, that you just can't crank out some film that will dissappoint fans from that sort of material, or make a shoddy video game or toy designed to appeal only to a parent buyer's vaguest understanding of their child's interests. Comic publishers just don't produce comics anymore.

In light of this, I think I'm just going to refer to all comics as manga from now on since the big two comic publishers are doing such a shitty job of representing the vast majority of what is labeled as comics now. Maybe comics can have its own name again when it actually bothers to be something beyond a cheap prostitute, but until then, they may as well be considered the red-headed stepchild of a sector of sequential art that can actually cover more than one genre with relative success.

If You Meet the Gygax, Kill the Gygax.

And no, not literally; no disrespect intended.

This is a twist on a Buddhist quote from Linji: If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha. If one is told how to attain Enlightenment, if they feel they have reached a plateau, they are mistaken and allowed themselves to be distracted from their true path by a false image or ideal. Doing away with that false image and continuing on without pretence will set them back on their course, or arguably, lack thereof, hee.

Similarily, what is the true way to game? How did Gygax want you to game? Can you pull up one of his quotes to win an argument?

Mucking with Combat Returns

After thinking about this post from yesterday a bit more, I've come up with a quick and dirty attack system:

-Characters divvy up a base attack progression between three attack types, Power Attack, Relentless Attack, or Finesse Attack. There are also corresponding defences of each type.

-The base attack progressions range between 1/1 (+20 at 20th level), 3/4 (+15 at 20th level) and 1/2 (+10 at 20th level) and what slots are available may vary between classes, possibly, maybe.

-Power manoeuvres are modified by Strength or Charisma. Relentless manoeuvres are modified by Constitution or Wisdom. Finesse manoeuvres are modified by Dexterity or Intelligence.

Now for the part where there's actually a point to this...

-Each attack has a strong or weak defence; it will do bonus damage against a weak defence and less damage against a stronger defence, but standard damage against the same type of defence.

-Power attacks are strong against Relentless defences, but weak against Finesse defences.

-Relentless attacks are strong against Finesse defences, but weak against Power defences.

-Finesse attacks are strong against Power defences, but weak against Relentless defences.

I'm not sure who bonus damage should work out quite yet.

Thoughts on RPG combat.

Inspired by this post, and a comment made by Jeff Rients, I did a bit of thinking on RPG combat and its necessity in any given game.

Jeff made a note about the lethality of the Chainmail rules:

'No hit points, just one roll to see if you killed the monster and one roll to see if the monster killed you. You better believe any sane player would stay away from combat!'

What's really interesting here is how a very lethal combat mechanic can encourage players to avoid combat and thus combat becomes rarer in the game while still maintaining the danger of its possibility. Sounds a bit like...reality, doesn't it? It's an elegant solution that doesn't laden non-com characters with killing-machine motivations or goofy powers to keep up the pace.

I believe, though, that the heart of the original post is not to create some sort of hippie wonderland of peaceful dungeon-crawling with time for tea breaks, but rather to represent a pulp-style adventurer raiding tombs without the benefit of a +10 vorpal sword of throwing and returning. Should the idea of a non-com adventurer automatically exclude all forms of combat? Indiana Jones is a perfect example of a character who avoided combat like the plague and once a fight did break out, he relied on wits and cunning to win more than what was likely an 11 Str at the very most.

Let's consider a minor D&D gripe for a moment: strength enhanced melee attacks used against a dexterity enhanced dodge. At face level, it seems a bit backwards, but it can be explained as muscle power complementing the attack in a way that makes the attack harder to dodge such as with a fuller wide swing or multiple powerful stabs which each must be avoided. Basically, it's a powerful attack which the defender is choosing to avoid through pure reflex and the basis of every fight Captain Kirk ever had with a monstrous powerhouse.

What happens if we inverse this logic and apply it to Indy up there though? He certainly wasn't powering his fist into Nazi faces with every attack. You see him moving about and relying on agility, he makes tactical, intelligent strikes to a kidney, spleen or nose, he uses subtle ruses to get a cheap shot in or just takes a beating until his opponent is winded. No feats or edges or daily-use paladin abilities; these are all just simple, strait-forward attacks relying on just about every ability but strength to slog through a combat.

So...lets say we have a theif character with a high Charisma. If this theif is able to attack at a full base attack progression using bluffs and trickery and generlly whatever under-handed attack manuever that the player can imagine as charisma overcoming horsepower, what part of the game gets broken?

This isn't snooty rhetoric, or a dig on any system, I'm actually curious to hear any insight people may have about that sort of change.