I've been talking to a lot of you and gotten game ideas. Could you toss your ideas into here so I can organize and deal with them better? Feedback is welcome as I set this up.
<Dracos2> you're avoiding the repeat dungeon system right? or using that again?
<Anastasia> This dungeon is not fair. I will not play nice. Expect to be hit back and not get away with the same tricks forever. There will be moments of asshole DMing. You will die, often in hilarious or painful or gruesome ways. Roll with it.
<Anastasia> Mmm.
<Anastasia> I'm still up in the air about that.
<Anastasia> I'm thinking of a more randomly or semi randomly generated dungeon setup with some points in each floor set.
<Anastasia> Kinda like how some randomly done dungeons in RPGs are done these days.
<Dracos2> Might work. I'd suggest that each floor is sort of a unique trial.
<Dracos2> Everyone loses, we lose ground in some scoreboard or sense
Random rabble.
I dunno, it sounds though like wacky might be more fun as a way to take it :P
I think we're going to be in trouble if the game assumes the party begins together and generally stays together. Progress will be too slow with 5 people playing by post, no matter how optimistic we are. Any dungeon design should accept this and encourage or enforce splitting up. In general we should aim to have smooth play with few breaks.
For example, a simple method is a dungeon that has two starting locations with the party distributed between them, and to 'win', tasks must be accomplished on either side. Communication and timing may or may not be possible (it might be that everything must be coordinated post-death in spiritland for the second run), and there may or may not be intersection.
Another concern is combat. I'd like it infrequent and to require careful planning as opposed to 'you see three bears! roll init'. Same goes for any challenge, actually- but combat in particular takes years, as we all know to our chargin.
I have to say I agree with Rat's suggestion re: two starting locations or somesuch. If we have to plot at the speed of one post per day between people from incompatible timezones, I just might cry.
Dying in the previous variant was hilarious, especially since I brought it on myself with low int and backstabbing allies. Waiting ages as they began to actually play carefully FROM THAT POINT ON was hate, though. Let's avoid that~
Reading the rules topic...
Hmm. I'm all for comical and wacky dungeons and stuff. But this is one game where
GAMING FOR BLOOD!!!!!111could actually be neat. Incentives to actually win on our first try (and at least some chance of this being possible) would be cool. As a general axiom, I feel we should never *have* to die to succeed in the dungeon.
Also.
Quote from: DuneYou are not allowed to build a copy or a near copy of an avatar form for the next venture in. You have to try something different. Skirting close to violating the spirit of this rule will result in a balor skirting close to your health and well being.
Is this rule really necessary? I get that it's probably supposed to inspire creativity or prevent us using some hyper-efficient avatar over and over again, but I think it might start to irritate me later down the line, particularly if I have some plan that requires certain abilities arranged *just so* but I'm not allowed to put it into action because I've already done something like it.
If anything, I think you can trust in our own desire to try stuff out in general rather than mandating this (I certainly won't be playing a druid every run, even if it is the most sensible option guaranteed.)
Aditionally, Cube should be mandatory viewing for all players.
It would probably be better to unlock classes/abilities based on their utility/power rather than just what book they come in. If we have all the core classes to start with then that's wizard/cleric/druid right there if you want the most powerful option, and it won't matter if we unlock psion or binder since they're objectively weaker.
Also I think it might be neat to offer 'one-off' rewards. Like say doing X lets the player use a +ECL race with no level adjustment in their next avatar, but once said avatar dies they can't use it again.
My first thought on starting really low is to start you guys with either one of these:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/genericClasses.htm
OR
http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/classes.htm (The five NPC classes on the far right.)
We're at five players right now; Laggy, Rat, Eb, Drac and Cor. I have two more interested parties: Gatewalker and Merc. Considering the high turnout I'm going to to be using multiple groups at the same time for certain now, up to perhaps three of them depending. I've tentatively capped things at five; I can try up to seven but I'm undecided on that.
Guys, could you list what times are good for you in EST? This'll make my work a lot easier.
I'm good with generic or NPC classes to start with, although we need to open up weird and wonderful classes that never see play later on - I want to try a binder and a warlock at some point.
As for times I can post on SR from work (I can't roll, but I can trust the GM to do it for me), so basically any time that I'm not sleeping. Say 6pm EST to 4am?
Quote from: Carthrat on November 04, 2008, 09:35:04 AM
Reading the rules topic...
Hmm. I'm all for comical and wacky dungeons and stuff. But this is one game where
GAMING FOR BLOOD!!!!!111
could actually be neat. Incentives to actually win on our first try (and at least some chance of this being possible) would be cool. As a general axiom, I feel we should never *have* to die to succeed in the dungeon.
Also.
Quote from: DuneYou are not allowed to build a copy or a near copy of an avatar form for the next venture in. You have to try something different. Skirting close to violating the spirit of this rule will result in a balor skirting close to your health and well being.
Is this rule really necessary? I get that it's probably supposed to inspire creativity or prevent us using some hyper-efficient avatar over and over again, but I think it might start to irritate me later down the line, particularly if I have some plan that requires certain abilities arranged *just so* but I'm not allowed to put it into action because I've already done something like it.
If anything, I think you can trust in our own desire to try stuff out in general rather than mandating this (I certainly won't be playing a druid every run, even if it is the most sensible option guaranteed.)
1. Agreed. I'm going to design things where it's possible to succeed on your first try, just not likely. Rewards for good play will follow. Eb had a good idea about free +ECL races or temporary boons for this, or perhaps needing to do so to unlock some particularly juicy bit of goodness.
2. Kinda-sorta? What I'm getting at there is that I don't want you making the same character and blindly throwing them at problems until enough blood and luck solve it. The idea is to encourage you to try different results and different approaches beyond a few comfort zones. I'm trying to avoid situations where only one class or one setup can have a prayer of winning an encounter.
You do make a fair point and I'll take that under consideration.
Quote from: Corwin on November 04, 2008, 09:19:45 AM
I have to say I agree with Rat's suggestion re: two starting locations or somesuch. If we have to plot at the speed of one post per day between people from incompatible timezones, I just might cry.
Dying in the previous variant was hilarious, especially since I brought it on myself with low int and backstabbing allies. Waiting ages as they began to actually play carefully FROM THAT POINT ON was hate, though. Let's avoid that~
Yeah, the wait was the worst part of the first attempt. I need to concoct something that allows for much swifter rejoining - I may just be cheap about it and have respawn points be fairly common, with the option to wait in the void if you need to or some shit. I'll have something worked out there in a few days. Suggestions welcome.
Update: Laggy had to drop, so we're at 4 confirmed people. I think I'll just do six now since six divides so well. (2 teams of 3, 3 teams or 2, ect.)
That means players are now: Eb, Gate, Cor, Rat, Drac and Merc.
ah, fast moving topic is fast. :)
I'm generally most available around 10-11 pm EST onward. Except on weekends and craziness.
Lots of good ideas too.
A)Respawn points. I think that's a good idea. Anything that keeps players in play = good.
B)Temporary/One Shot rewards for special things? I really like this. And with the feeling of it being temporary, there's less odds of a "Oh...giant." *Squish* "man there goes permanent benefit."
C)Multiple teams sounds good. Especially having to interaction asynchronously.
D)Letting GM roll using an OOC message on action = Awesome. :) Definitely would help with posting at random intervals.
E)I don't favor starting really low. 2nd ed frontloads more character decisions than 3rd ed does, so I'm a big fan of starting a few levels in on 3rd ed. If we do, I favor the npc classes and keeping out particularly odd character bases. Monster+Character+gestalt+base classes=confusing and time consuming character to build. I'd say keep Attribute Points, Races, Classes, SpecialAbilities and Items as your adjustment points and leave special templates/point based, etc stuff left out. Things that are added that make the options cooler without adding significantly to character creation time is best. Basically, its a game where we die a lot and thus create characters a lot. The more complex char creation gets, the slower this loop is for quickly going "I died, new char, let's roll"
F)Multi teams can allow for other competitive goals as well. The challenge could be part circus for the dark lord.
G)Recall that without any additional knowledge, the first run is simply random characters. Last time I leaned standardly on the first run on 'What will get me the most information for my second run', thus usually a rogue or cleric. If there is ways to get info on future dungeons, ideas, whatnot, it might lead to actual directed strategy on the creation side, which would be fun. Even as simple as "knowing who you're with" is going to lead toward some of it. I think that could be interesting, even if some of it is sometimes wrong or fake. Basically, avoid the first run being pure chance as much as possible. Yes, some build xs will simply be bad, but we'll start leaning naturally to build reliable rather than build wild/fun/weird if being wild/fun/weird drastically increases our chances of being curbstomped off the bat.
I don't really have a regular schedule and I don't know what time offset EST is at, even after all these years. Since I'm looking for a job at the moment, making promises right now would be dumb.
I'm fine with starting low. Level is purely relative to the threats we face, and if we don't start off with that many options anyway then being level whatever won't mean so much. It's all just numbers anyway. 3rd level is fine.
Respawn points scattered through a larger dungeon would probably be fine. Items that confer instant ressurection would also be fine.
If we do things episodically and treat every first run as a 'gather information' run, I will so play as a dwarf barbarian who took toughness three times, constitution 18, and aims to simply run through everything and live as long as possible to see what's what. >_> (At level 3, that's 46 hp! Not bad...)
Drac's point G is also very relevant. CRYPTIC CLUES, or maybe the possibility of staggered entry (one guy goes in, looks around, and relays what he thinks is needed to the others) or even changing avatar on the fly. All of these could be oneshot boosts accumulated through prior play.
I get home from work anywhere between 6pm-7pm EST unless I'm going to Tae Kwon Do class, in which case it's around 10:15pm. Once I'm home, I'm available until around 12:30am EST. Weekends I'm generally pretty free.
On ideas:
I do agree that you might want to make classes/abilities available based on how useful/powerful it is, rather than by book.
Respawns would be nice and you could do some different things with respawns too to add randomness sometimes. When someone respawns, they could come back with a different goal (that could be detrimental to the main group), or spawn at a separate place from the group, or spawn in the body of a monster/enemy without the ability to communicate with the others but being able to interact with things trying to kill the others, etc.
I recall someone actually wrote a list of how powerful the classes were, roughly, on the optimization board.
I really like these ideas, people.
QuoteRespawns would be nice and you could do some different things with respawns too to add randomness sometimes. When someone respawns, they could come back with a different goal (that could be detrimental to the main group), or spawn at a separate place from the group, or spawn in the body of a monster/enemy without the ability to communicate with the others but being able to interact with things trying to kill the others, etc.
This is good stuff right here. While it needs to be limited, the idea of the Dark One adding dickery to the mix could be quite amusing if done right.
QuoteDrac's point G is also very relevant. CRYPTIC CLUES, or maybe the possibility of staggered entry (one guy goes in, looks around, and relays what he thinks is needed to the others) or even changing avatar on the fly. All of these could be oneshot boosts accumulated through prior play.
More good ideas. I'm thinking of giving you at least some minor clues and info to start a new level, so that you'll have an idea of how exactly you're screwed. Making these things bonuses to win would help encourage competition. This is giving me more and more ideas and sneakiness, thanks. This really inspired me. <_<
QuoteC)Multiple teams sounds good. Especially having to interaction asynchronously.
Yeah, two team minimum now. Meeting up will be a goal of most levels, or perhaps a variation on that. Strength in numbers?
QuoteD)Letting GM roll using an OOC message on action = Awesome. :) Definitely would help with posting at random intervals.
Yeah, I'm going to try and streamline rolling as much as possible. I'll be posting a rules segment about this in due time.
Quote from: Carthrat on November 04, 2008, 08:31:55 PM
I recall someone actually wrote a list of how powerful the classes were, roughly, on the optimization board.
I'm familiar with this, yes, and I plan to use this as a point of reference.
Cor and Gate, post times soon so I can start organizing that.
Team of 6 healers GO
Monday-Thursday: On the comp generally from 3-9 EST time.
Friday: On the comp from the same time periods, but generally less avaialable due to DL writing.
Weekends: I do not exist.
Posting times in EST:
My times: 10 AM to 4 PM EST, 11 PM - 2 AM EST. I can fiddle these a bit at times.
Eb: 4 AM to 6 PM. Hour-ish gap around noon.
Dracos: 11 PM on, but sometimes available during the day as work permits. Weekends are better.
Carthrat: ??????????
Merc: 6 PM-12 30 AM. Weekends are better.
Gate: 3 PM-9 PM. Weekends are bad and Friday is a bit dicey.
Cor: ??????? Fridays and Saturdays are clearer.
Eb, Cor and Rat tend towards earlier hours and the other three cleave the other way most likely. Keep this in mind for grouping.
Quote
If we do things episodically and treat every first run as a 'gather information' run, I will so play as a dwarf barbarian who took toughness three times, constitution 18, and aims to simply run through everything and live as long as possible to see what's what. >_> (At level 3, that's 46 hp! Not bad...)
Well, I hope, technically, we don't. I don't think it's as fun as figuring out and trying to come up with clever solutions. At the same time, if the average traversal is 3+ attempts, we're totally going to do that by habit.
Quote<Nao> Hey, Dune, question
<Nao> WRT to spirit forms and how you mention alignment doesn't need to match
<Nao> Our avatars, I mean
<Nao> Do our spirits, fluffwise, create their avatars as they are intentionally, with forethought?
From IRC and worth answering:
I added a small bit in the rules about selecting an alignment for your spirit and dropped the alignment bit in the avatars section. I did a really poor job of saying what I meant, so I changed that up entirely instead.
I'd like to see spirit posts by Thursday, by tomorrow if possible. If that's an issue speak up now.
Re Dungeon Randomisation, I think that might be taking things a step too far, but I would like an evolving dungeon - basically whenever an avatar dies, something in the dungeon changes, like a new path being opened or an old one being closed. Basically something to keep us on our toes without necessitating that we learn an entirely new layout. If this inconveniences the surviving avatars (like say if someone was scouting ahead and the death of someone in the main group causes a path to seal and cut off the scout until another way to meet up is found) so be it.
Quote from: Ebiris on November 05, 2008, 06:17:33 AM
Re Dungeon Randomisation, I think that might be taking things a step too far, but I would like an evolving dungeon - basically whenever an avatar dies, something in the dungeon changes, like a new path being opened or an old one being closed. Basically something to keep us on our toes without necessitating that we learn an entirely new layout. If this inconveniences the surviving avatars (like say if someone was scouting ahead and the death of someone in the main group causes a path to seal and cut off the scout until another way to meet up is found) so be it.
Thank you for that, this gave me a nice idea. I'll roll with that.
I'm going to be doing some more behind the scenes polishing for a day or two, but I'm going to throw the first IC topic up. Feel free to roleplay in it and get your feet wet while I finish up shit on my end.
Okay, Gate's computer blew up so he might be delayed. We'll just roll without him and have him spawn when he's alive again.
On Jenna's work laptop for just a second here. (It's only here on the weekends, so can't use it regularly, sadly).
Looks like the power source is the problem, no idea how long this will take to fix. I may be gone for a really long time here. >_< More details in the Good Morning thread in the rpgdl forums.
Sorry about this guys.
Quote from: Gatewalker on November 09, 2008, 04:48:47 PM
On Jenna's work laptop for just a second here. (It's only here on the weekends, so can't use it regularly, sadly).
Looks like the power source is the problem, no idea how long this will take to fix. I may be gone for a really long time here. >_< More details in the Good Morning thread in the rpgdl forums.
Sorry about this guys.
Okay, thanks for the heads up.
Ouch. Good luck, Gate.
Alive Merc? You're up.
*waves weakly at merc* Merc-on-kenobi, you're my only hope~
In good news, Gate's ailve. Hopefully he'll be caught up within a week and raring to go.
---
<Dracos_at_Work> It feels like there's no sensible option but to rest right now with that. Merc can try accomplishing things, but I pretty much am likely to die heading down any corridor.
<Dracos_at_Work> post
> My most salient thought is to simply make zero HP lethal and remove the buffer zone. Maybe give some bonus HP to compensate, so that we don't have these disabled istuations. They're not conductive to the dungeon layout.
<Dracos_at_Work> I see nothin' wrong with that.
<Dracos_at_Work> Technically, they'll be more sensible when we have resources to take a hit or whatnot
<Dracos_at_Work> but right now the only response we have to 'we have damage' is ignore it or wait for it to go away at a really slow rate.
<Dracos_at_Work> And the disabled stat removes the ability to ignore it in any sensible fashion.
* Anastasia ods.
> Lemme make a post about it.
Relevant information here. Considering it's two groups and resting could put a group out for much of the dungeon and awhile in IRL time, it's not really viable. I'm thinking of reforming things like this to make resting less essential, thoughts?
Play 4th edition!
Or have the natural healing rate changed from days to hours.
Or make the heal skill able to actually recover hit points!
Honestly, this problem will vanish as soon as we open up various classes/feats that allow free/dirt cheap healing, so I'm not in favour of major houseruling to deal with it. Really, it makes sense to practice mercy-killing at this stage so a disabled player can jump in with a fresh avatar.
I agree this will mostly vanish later on, or at least be a very rare occurence where we have parties without heal options and with disabled characters, but whenever it happens its going to be awkward to lame. I think a no-recovery system makes 'trying to play conservative' a little dumb (and similarly with rewards on such and looking after each other), but it's fine for gameplay just we should avoid situations that force it to be silly. Disabled, long term slow poisons, etc. Things where the correct mechanical answer is "Wait x hours" don't work well in the setup since there's no downtime. That's no problem, since there's tons of results that just say "you're dead" or it's effectively permanent loss for the course of the character. We're playing a setup far more akin to Paranoia then it is to Tomb of Horrors since waiting, delaying, etc is unacceptable as an option and respawn on death only really costs player time as on option.
My suggestion? add 5 points to all base hp and have 0 be instadeath.
Alternate? Fudge it. If a player is going to be in a disabled state, flip a coin. Heads they have 1 hp, tails they're dead. Whatever. Same with anything that's effectively 'you're a burden' type getting knocked out. "You're unconscious for 2 hours?", "Paralyzed for an hour", etc.
The reason to handle it GM side rather than player is it makes a very sort of 'who cares' attitude to the teamwork if we're pretty much casually cleaning up other players who got injured which can be kinda distasteful "We're working together, working together, worki...oh you got injured? *facestab*". Sure, we could be very casual about it, but I think being casual about death in it sort of diminishes the experience. "We're going through a dungeon of challenges where the penalty for failure is death...um..but we die all the time anyway, we're like lemmings all equipped with explode." "You just pushed him into that trap? Who cares, he'll respawn in a second and do the same to me."
This kind of situation is exactly what the suggestion of mid-dungeon respawn was trying to avoid, only it ended up slightly worse where we've been completely stalled for a week since I took the hit, without even merc being able to really make a move to continue on since he's saddled with my unconscious and now disabled self and is characterwise not used to/comfortable with the notion of just stabbing the person he was working with a second ago.
Yeah, I'll just be fudging it for now. For the rest of the floor, assume that zero HP or long term incapacitation will mean a ticket to the dead list. Let's see how that works.
Any signs of Merc?
Thanks for posting, Merc.
I probably won't post tonight, really out of it and not feeling right.
S'fine. I just finally remembered to log onto Rat's channel, so I should be easier to poke into posting.
Sorry about the delay, I had the strange night and day of hell.
The purple chocobos didn't let you ride them?
Okay!
I've talked about this with most of you already, but I'm going to ask you guys not to rest until the end of the floor. It doesn't really work for a group to spend time to recover when another group is working and may not need to rest. I'll work out a solution at the end of the floor, in the meantime I'll be more generous with healing items to keep you guys going.
---
Likely house rule changes so far at the end of the floor:
1. Death at zero HP, some sort of HP bonus to compensate for no buffer zone.
2. Something to compensate for not being able to rest. Rat suggested Tents, ala Final Fantasy. It's kind of cheap, but it works.
Drac, could you move your second avatar out of the current avatars topic? Thanks.
Hey dudes when we have two players in roughly the same point in init i.e. monster 1 > player 1 > player 2 > monster 2 it is OK for player 2 to queue up their action if they're around before player 1.
You know, just saying. Maybe PM it to the GM if you want to hide it for some reason. Whatever.
Yeah, I was thinking about the same thing today with you being on front of Cor in the initiative. That's fine, it streamlines things.
Question time
If we take stuff like tiefling, do we take the level hit as per normal?
Yes, unless I say otherwise. A chance to ignore LA and other perks may become rewards as the game progresses. Frankly, fire res 5 would be pretty handy for you guys already, see the flaming golem and the hot steel vats?
Though yes, I'm aware that losing a level right now is a hard choice to make.
Do note that when you die, your unlocked magical items return to the void as well. Any PC can reselect them again when making a new avatar. So the Mephit Whistle is available again for the moment. See the game rules topic for details; I suspect I'll make this a separate topic/post later.
Okay! We have a coupla slow days, let's pick up the pace again. I'd like to have a solid run before the holidays and all that away-ness.
Just as a note, starting friday, I'm off form work until the 5th of january, so I can post at other hours besides evenings.
Awesome Merc.
---
As a tangential note, start thinking about what teams you guys would like to start with next floor. I'd prefer it if you mix it up so you guys have RPing variety when possible amid time considerations.
I don't mind going with whoever wants the easily-led serial killer along with them.
That said, can you match my posting speed? IT'S ON
That would be one hell of a competition. Can anyone keep up with CARTHRAT?>?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
Ranmaru and Sacchin should prolly go to different groups, being the two who are most frontliner inclined, I'd think. Other then that, Ranmaru is also happy to work with anyone, though he would inherently gravitate abit towards working for the man who has identified himself as a Lord, feudal samurai sort that he is.
Being a frontliner really depends on what classes are avaliable. Playing a spellslinger or backstabber has just as many, if not more opportunities for causing people to stop breathing.
At the moment, though, yeah, you're right.
Fair enough, yeah. Though even once other options for spells and backstabbery open up, Ranmaru will probably stay in melee classes for the most part. The idea with him is Meatsheild, mostly.
Heh, I dunno. I'd like to get a faster posting speed. We started well and then got anemic toward the end. :(
Waiting on merc :P
Rat is going to be living the gaijin dream by going to Japan for most of the month. He's asked to be NPCed during the time. Do any of you want to run Sacchin or shall I?
Not I. I can barely keep up with just Ranmaru. <_<
I can do it if I have to/if Rat prefers it. Otherwise, I'm cool with you running Sacchin the wondrous vampire of few words.
Any preference here, Rat?
I said Cor can do it.
If there's ever a vote on a course of action, Sacchin picks the one most likely to let her kill things.
Okay, our posting groove is slow lately. This is partly my fault, but let's try and pick it up a little on all ends? </DM nagging>
Won't post until tomorrow morning, stomach sick tonight.
FUNNY STORY TIME!
So you know how we were all chatting in #elysium about viruses? I come home tonight to my brother having issues windows errors and possibly virii on my computer after he used it. Irony lives, folks! I dunno when I'll be around to post, this could range from a quick fix to a full on reformat. I'll post again when I'm good.
This story is not funny!
It wasn't but it's resolved. Yay.
Sorry about the unplanned stoppage, guys. My attention wandered. I wish I had a better reason but I don't.
It happens.