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[Another installment of Short Fiction Friday, about a few NPCs from my current Shadowrun campaign. Once again, if you like the art, while I’ve used it for my NPCs, credit goes to http://tapastic.com/series/fisheye — the comic that’s the source of these characters.]

Nick knew the Boston underbelly better than his companions. He hadn’t grown up there, but it was similar to the warrens he’d been driven to when his family cast him out. He returned to old habits quickly, and found places to hide. It had been a while since he’d used his talents, but they came back to him quickly. He made sure they couldn’t be found while they got situated, and he suggested they all stick together. Ken agreed, and Alice was in too much shock to argue. Nick worried about that, but had other work to do first.

Without any kind of formal training, Nick had a hard time explaining technomancy, and what it was he could do. Using his power felt like merging with a computer– on the rare occasions he tried to describe it to someone, he’d liken it to falling backwards into a swimming pool. He was eternally curious how ‘normal’ people worked with computers, because he couldn’t imagine it was like what he did. He swam through streams of data and made little edits and slight alterations as he saw fit. He was aware of defenses, tuned to keep out normals, and he’d developed weapons against them, more fluid and unpredictable than any program. He could even create clones of himself, which would do things he needed them to while he wasn’t around, as if they had a mind of their own. Maybe they did, he wasn’t sure.

He’d been accused of being spacey, before his family had thrown him out for being a “mage freak”, and he’d never been able to explain what was going on. He was paying attention, as best he could, but he was also paying attention to a hundred other things– someone’s nearby text messages, what the screens in four other rooms were displaying, what the cameras were showing. In middle school, he’d been picked out as an easy target and had a larger boy give him grief. It became apparent quickly that the bully was smart enough to seem innocent, sometimes remotely harassing Nick with programs he’d written while sitting attentively in another class. Months of attacks followed; Nick was small and not especially quick-witted, and being distracted by the constant technological cacophony around him made it hard for him to fight back. He spent most of a school year with some injury or another and no friends, thanks to the other boy’s dedicated efforts. It was the first time he’d actually tried to change any of the digital things he observed, and it turned out he was rather good at it. Setting the bully’s phone to blast illegal porn (swiped from another computer he’d found) at full volume in the middle of class had been satisfying, and disabling all inputs so it couldn’t be shut down was doubly so. He considered it justice for the technological, social, and physical abuse he’d endured, and when he glimpsed the boy being led off by Boston Police he didn’t feel any remorse.

Now, his passive awareness was laced with intent. He could feel the gentle tug of Alice or Ken pulling him along when he slowed down, but his mind was ahead of them, checking cameras and making sure they didn’t walk into the field of view, or disabling them if that was impossible. It was exhausting, and sapped his attention, but he knew that they’d be ID’d and found if even one camera saw them. He insisted that they all stick together, explaining why, and the three traveled as a group for the first month of their lives in the shadows. Alice’s money bought them food that first month, and Ken found odd jobs to do to supplement things.

In the second month, they turned to stealing. It started simply– they didn’t have enough money for a full box of biscuits, so Ken bought a half-box and swapped it right after checkout, when he knew no one would catch him. Ken had a knack for that kind of thing, and it kept them eating. He needed to be alone, though, which meant Nick couldn’t protect him. Nick, for his part, was exhausted from the constant vigilance, and was fighting illness. Alice had been keeping to herself, mostly practicing magic and giving the other two money, but the stress was getting to her. They were living in a forgotten concrete box, one of ten thousand like it in the city, and had to occasionally fend off other vagrants. Magic was the easiest for them, and with years of training and natural talent, they easily outclassed anyone who encroached on their space.

The problem was, their use of magic garnered attention. The first few invasions of their adopted home were by the very desperate: violent, drug-fueled types who were beyond reason. Alice had tried to give them a scare, but they were too far gone for it to register. Ken had been out, and Nick had looked up from lying semi-conscious in bed to see Alice get grabbed by two men larger than she was. There was a flare of light, then just Alice and two piles of ashes. Alice got quiet after that, and as Nick slipped in and out of consciousness he saw her talking, crying, and talking again with Ken, and the next time a frothing troll burst into their space she incinerated him without a second thought, an icy expression on her face.

What became a problem was when the sane people tried to move in. They could be reasoned with, and when Alice started conjuring flame, they backed down and fled. Word spread quickly of the mage-kids and their location, and they started having obvious gang members, several fully armed, watching their location. Ken suggested, once again, that they move. Nick had already scouted another location but was feverish and exhausted; they couldn’t go out without him and he’d only gotten sicker. The move was more than he could handle, and as Ken carried him through the Boston streets, he desperately fought to stay conscious so he could turn off that next camera, to fend off the specter of men in uniforms with guns descending on them, that none of them could entirely forget.

Nick lost about a week after that, sick and bedridden. Ken had somehow managed to steal two weeks of food and some medicine, and he and Alice were nursing Nick back to health while ensuring he wasn’t needed to go out. They were out of money and Nick couldn’t keep this up forever. They needed some way of paying for things and they needed to be able to stop worrying about the cameras dotting every street corner.

Ken was the one with the plan, as usual. He was very, very good at finding creative solutions to problems. Near the end of the two weeks, when Nick was finally feeling better, Ken walked in with a large white box. He set the box down and pulled both Alice and Nick outside with him. As they walked, he pointed a camera out to Nick. “Watch that camera, but don’t turn it off unless it tries to alert someone about us”. Nick had seen the camera alerts and had shut them down, but it was taxing to do so; turning the cameras off pre-emptively was usually safer. Ken seemed to know what he was talking about, though, and the three of them walked into sight of the camera, Nick bracing himself for the systemwide alert ping that never came. For the first time in nearly three months, they were standing on the street in full view of a camera with no need to worry. Nick could only stare at Ken as they walked back inside.

Ken was quiet as they walked back, but beelined for the white box as they settled back in. Alice was full of questions and Nick was simply confused, but Ken wasn’t answering anything until he opened the box, passing out some of its contents and showing off the rest. He handed Alice and Nick new ID cards, with new, unfamiliar System Identification Numbers. They were new identities, high quality disguises to make sure they couldn’t be found. They could operate freely, independently, without worry. Ken smiled a tired smile. “We’re going to have to do a bit of work to pay those off. Sorry.”

Ken also held up the box, showing off the rest of its contents. There was a large cake inside, obviously from a higher-end pastry shop above the plate, and in chocolate was written “HAPPY BIRTHDAY NICK”. Another, smaller box contained a single serving of crème brûlée. That night the trio celebrated, relaxing for the first time in months. It was the best crème brûlée Alice had ever tasted.

So, the Pokemon Go trailer is making the rounds. If you haven’t seen it, it’s here, and I’ve embedded it below.

Curious about the future of MMOs? I’m going to go ahead and say you’re looking at it, right there. It’s tech and concepts that have been around for a while, but it looks like they’re being polished to a mirror shine, and given a context that’s incredibly compelling. Look at what the video is promising– PvE (catching pokemon out in the world), PvP (trainer battles), and endgame raids (the final scene). It’s the essence of MMOs distilled into a mobile platform, and I have a suspicion it’s going to be massive.

Don’t believe me? That video has been up for less than 24 hours and it’s pushing a million hits. Pokemon has an absolutely enormous audience at a really broad age range– basically if you’re likely to own a smartphone, you’re probably familiar with Pokemon. The smartphone gaming market dwarfs any other gaming market you care to name, and it’s way, way more inclusive than other gaming spheres. You’re looking at an MMO that’s able to tap a market that dwarfs anything else out there.

The trailer is brilliant, too. Take a moment to watch it, if you haven’t:

Check out the people it’s showing. Opening shot of the world. We get some rapid cuts to a huge variety of people– a 20-something businessman, a dad and his kid, a studious looking woman, a bunch of teenagers, then a giant crowd at the end. The only child is the one playing with the dad– note: playing WITH the dad. This is a game where everyone can play together, friends with each other, parents with children, people from all walks of life, and everyone’s having a good time. There’s not a lot of advertising, especially in the game sphere, that promises that.

Just to further push that whole “this is a neo-MMO” concept, the trailer manages to capture that wonder of exploring as a newbie, the excitement of PvP, the fun of meeting new people in-game, and the tension and exultation of raid bosses in a three-minute trailer. The structure is identical to the trailers for a ton of other MMOs, down to the order in which everything is portrayed.

I’m pretty excited to see where this goes. It’s obviously a bit early to throw around words like “wow-killer”, nor is that even a meaningful concept anymore, but I have a suspicion that this is the MMO future we’re going to be looking at. I’m honestly pretty excited about it; it goes back to the roots of what got me into MMOs in the first place. I hope it takes off.

I’m surprised more cooperative games don’t have variations in their progression systems. A given group of people is going to have a pretty different amount of time to spend in a given game than another group, and especially for self-contained games, it seems like there should be a progression speed slider. I’m mostly looking at tabletop RPGs and multi-session board games here; I’ve been playing the Shadowrun: Crossfire board game with some friends lately, and while I think it’s a great game, it has insanely slow progression.

Here’s how the game works: You have a character who starts with a basic deck. As a session (a “run”) progresses, your deck is going to increase as you play, and at the end of the session you flush the entire thing, and get a certain amount of XP (Karma) based on how successful the run is. You can then use this Karma to purchase upgrades, which change how you start the game and give you particular special abilities. It’s a neat system, and the ability to add on various means to make the runs harder on yourself for greater rewards is neat.

However, progression is SLOW. With a fresh group starting from scratch, you will have to win two games or lose five to get to your first upgrade; you’ll be playing the same mission each time until then. You’re not going to have the edge you need to go for any of the bonuses, and the game is pretty difficult; you stand a fair chance of losing each run. That first jump isn’t so bad, the first tier karma benefits are 5 karma apiece and you have one free slot to upgrade into. Here’s where it gets silly. To unlock another “slot”, you need to pay 10 karma, twice what you needed to get the first one. You THEN need to buy the upgrade, and upgrades cost anywhere from 5 to 50 karma, in increments of 5-10. You’re looking at a LONG time between your first and second upgrade, and a really long time before you’re looking at a fully kitted out character who can even attempt some of the harder missions.

The missions have expected karma levels, and some of the higher-tier ones suggest you have 75-100 karma at minimum to attempt them. That is a TON of playing this game just to get to that point– even the higher-tier missions only grant 4-6 karma each, and optional difficulty boosts add 1-2 karma apiece, and will rapidly overwhelm you.

We opted to simply double the experience gain, so that we could purchase fun upgrades after the first session and so that we can actually get to later missions. For our group, we might play this game once or twice a month, which, at 3-6 karma a session, is more than a year to reach the later missions, optimistically. It’s a fun game, but I’m pretty sure that it doesn’t need to have progression quite that slow. We’re speeding things up and should be able to do other interesting variants more quickly (and have more interesting options).

It’s a pretty minor tweak that works well in Shadowrun: Crossfire, and it makes the overall experience for the group a lot better– we can keep it fresh and different without spending a ton of time doing the same missions. It puts me in mind of the way I handle XP when I run tabletop games. I have a standing rule that experience is held constant across the party, so that everyone is always at the same experience level. It makes things better for people who can’t make every single session and it makes it a LOT easier for me to build and tune encounters; I know what kinds of things the party can handle.

I also give out XP to match the pace of the campaign. I used to make campaigns that were open-ended, but I’d fizzle out at some point and the story would falter. Now I plan a single significant arc and sometimes a few side arcs; the story has a specific end point that marks the conclusion of the story. If that means that I grant players a level every session for a few sessions, just so they can face whatever enemy I’ve got waiting in the wings, that’s fine– if we finish one game we can start another, and I usually start planning the next campaign about 1/3 to 1/2 of the way into my current one, so there’s always something ready to go.

I think that there’s a lot of value in tuning your game experience to the group you’re playing with, and it’s surprising to me that more games don’t have those options built-in. Certainly it’s not hard to just write house rules to suit you, but it’s interesting to me how many of the reviews of Shadowrun: Crossfire slam the game for its slow progression, and how many veteran D&D players mope about starting new level 1 characters, because it “takes so long to get to the good stuff”. Neither of those need be true.

Having talked to various people about house rules and other things, I’ve noticed that there’s often a moment of shock when I suggest changing the rules as they’re written to something that works better for us. Some people are staunchly opposed to it, other people look at me and have, in some cases, outright asked “wait, you can DO that?” as if there needed to be some permission to make the game more enjoyable.

The answer, really, is yes, yes you can. There are a number of games that I don’t like, but after a few rules tweaks are a lot of fun for me. If it’s a game I’m just playing with my friends who have the same viewpoint, why not change things so we can enjoy it more? It seems like a no-brainer.