Ever get obsessive about a game? Not just “This is the best game of the year” level but spending every last waking moment either playing the game or thinking about playing the game when you can’t be playing the game? This winter break my buddy and I probably played 60 games of the board game Pandemic. In college, Deus Ex, the Thief games, and a few old MUDs held those spots for me.
In 2010, the same year I really started taking my role as a DM serious, the game that did that for me was Mass Effect 2. I would come home from work and play that game for 6-7 hours, then sleep, only to repeat the next day. There’s so many little things that make this the perfect game for me, meaningful choices, the scope of the threats and the responsibilities presented to you, the emotional roller coaster you’re taken on, yeah, the game itself is a masterpiece.
But as I really started to take the reigns of my gaming groups this year, stepping away from the comfort of published adventures and into the wilds of homebrew, I soon realized more and more that I was stealing bits from Mass Effect 2 (ME2), or trying to mimic the feeling or interactions found in the video game in my pen and paper prep.
All this month I’ll be breaking down ME2, showing how the things that made it one of the best games in this console generation are the very same things that can improve your own table top games. Note, I’ll be discussing huge, central spoilers to both Mass Effect 1 and 2, so if you haven’t finished either you’ll want to skip my posts for all of January and come back later.
In fact, here’s a huge spoiler that everyone knows about for ME2: Your character dies before the opening credits roll for ME2. This was in all the marketing, all the trailer videos, all the discussion and buzz that led up to the game’s release, so it’s not Luke’s father levels of spoilerage. After the credits finish, you’re told that you have been revived to go on a suicide mission through a gate that no one has returned from to end a dire threat to humanity, and you have to do it because you’re the only one strong / smart / cunning enough to even have a shot. (AKA, you beat the big bad in Mass Effect 1.)
Everything else in the next 40 hours of the game revolves around that nugget of knowledge gained in the first hour. You’ll need to build a team of specialists to get you through. You’ll need to earn their loyalties if you want them at your side in a suicide mission. You’ll need to upgrade your weapons, your armor, your ship to have a shot at facing what ever it is at the other side of the gate. You’ll need to find a way to unlock the gate, and try and research as much as you can about the gate before going through.
And Mass Effect 2 wouldn’t work as well as it does without this plot bomb being dropped on you in the first 60 minutes. From random conversations to the much-hated resource mining to navigating the tangled web of crew loyality, every choice and action made somehow drives to this looming goal forward.
In the 4e world, the level spreads are divided into 3 tiers: Heroic (Levels 1-10), Paragon (Levels 11-20), and Epic (Levels 21-30). The wisdom of the masses says that in heroic, you’re trying to save your province or country, in paragon, the whole world, and in epic all worlds, not just yours. To that I agree with, it fits with the power curve of the game. However, very commonly the scope of the conflict is the same as what you’re fighting, in heroic all you know of is your province or country, in paragon you become renowned world wide and in epic you usually become gods of the multiverse.
We’ve all fought kobolds and bandits at level 1. We don’t often know why we’re fighting them, other than they’re attack our village or city. When I fight a human bandit at level 1 with characters-on-the-first-page-of-the-heroic-journey-not-yet-having-heard-the-call-to-adventure, I have to assume that the DM has some plan to make things grand, that some time down the road I’ll know why I’m fighting.
ME2 says otherwise. “You are a bad ass. The enemies are bigger bad asses then you. How much so? They’ve killed you once already and all you’ve pressed is start.” Instead of a slow build up to the eventual goal sometime after you’ve started, the game presents your ultimate challenge front and central, something DMs should do to readily engage players from the start. “That kobold hoard is being lead by a demon general. Who is praising Bahamut’s name as he slaughters the village folk, all its attacks are radiant, and he is surrounded by a radiant, holy glow.” “The captain says to you all that his crew is part of a force looking to be the only survivors of the end of the world, which is upon us. The ones that are left get to renew the world in their image, and become its gods. Think you’re up for it?”
How could the player, let alone the PC, refuse something like that? They may not think overcoming those types of challenges are even possible, but hey, that’s what the next 30 levels are for.
This takes some planning on the DM’s part. They have to know what the epic level threat to the worlds is going to be while everyone is doing character generation. Planning a session is hard enough, having enough foresight to roughly sketch out 30 levels is daunting. But it tells the players what they can expect the end point to be, it can galvanize a group into planning for that end point starting as soon as the very first session. It can generate a buzz and excitement about where they see their character helping out for the end goal, get ideas going in game and in character, and out of game and character. And maybe it’s just me, but as a DM, that crackle of creative potential energy in PCs means I’m doing my job well.
Next week, ME2’s ship, and how a constant, central home hub can provide more of a journey then actual travel.
I am looking forward to your posts. I love Mass Effect 2 and everything about it.
I’d be curious to know whether the same level ME2 of awesomeness exists when you haven’t imported an ME1 character to play with.
When I did so with my ME1 soldier, the awesomeness existed because the game reflected those choices. The citadel councilmembers had survived. That annoying senator was put in his place. The rachni queen was loose in the universe and sending me messengers to thank me and promise her support when the time came. There was a photo of Ash on my desk in the captain’s quarters. Wrex was on the throne. Tali was a respected member of the Flotilla.
All of this stuff had been brought about by me. I had experienced first-hand all the events that established Shephard’s awesomeness.
That same feeling doesn’t exist now that I’m running a second playthrough using a non-ME1 character, and I suspect the awesomeness you’re after would be likewise missing in a D&D campaign unless you somehow bring back characters from a previous campaign to participate.
I think it does. ME2 is greatly improved if you import an ME1 game, for the reasons you listed. The game is yours; all the small choices made in ME1 matter, and you get to see them matter.
But even if you’re starting fresh in ME2 and taking the default, canonical options, things still hold up. Heck, this weekend Quinn Murphy aka @gamefiend finished ME2 without importing ME1, and he was raving about it.
In this week’s post I’ll be talking about the Normandy 2, and nothing more. I think you’ll see in this that, regardless of an ME1 import or not, there are plenty of ideas to use in your campaigns, which is what the crux of this series is about.