More adventure!

Ideas and suggestions for game mechanics and rules.
HEEGZ
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Re: More adventure!

Post by HEEGZ »

Teric neDhalir wrote:Quick point: Items with the plot flag set to true are ignored by the loot system, if that helps.
Also, I was able to figure out that renaming in game items is persistent across logins. However, placing the loot in mob inventory didn't work. Will try setting the item to plot before placing. Also, discovered treasure awarding placeables which I was not aware of before now. Curm has been helping me on IRC make the DM loot tokens and am toolsetting them now.
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Re: More adventure!

Post by Brokenbone »

I can't recall if setting things to plot makes them unsellable which may kind of stink for a finder. I also can't recall if plot marked things "add up" wealthwise on a character sheet, like do they read as 0 or 1, or an actual thought out figure, sellable or not? May want to test that before plot flagging things.
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Re: More adventure!

Post by Zelknolf »

Plot items are unsellable and are reported as having a zero-gold value to all things that ask.

They should not be used for any items that have any utility when it comes to killing stuff or are expected to net any monetary value to the owning character. That will break our wealth reports hard.

Loot-rewarding placeables are generally the way to go.
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Re: More adventure!

Post by HEEGZ »

Thanks for the heads up. I'm testing DM token set to plot at the moment. Will not use plot for other stuff.

Loot awarding placeable seems like the best idea Zelk.
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Re: More adventure!

Post by oldgrayrogue »

I really don't understand what is keeping people from adventuring or what the big "mystery" is about what does and what does not constitute farming. If going out and hunting or doing statics is IC, I doubt anyone is going to accuse you of farming -- unless that is all you do the majority of time you are logged on. Leveling your PC at a very fast rate is also a good way to draw attention and have DMs or Admin inquire as to whether you might be farming (even if you aren't).

I have played a variety of PCs in ALFA but every single one was an adventurer. I have never been uncertain as to what is or is not acceptable.

So to answer the OP -- just go out and RP adventuring. Static quests are great for this when no DM is around. ICly get your group together and go use the static as a "story" to adventure around.

But I feel I am stating the obvious.
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Re: More adventure!

Post by Zelknolf »

I would be more confident in that explanation, except that's not the explanation in the actual ruling thread. Though if proportion of play time is meant to be the actual rationale, and they're just written with explanations that aren't the actual ones considered, I have evidence to overturn some strikes.
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Re: More adventure!

Post by oldgrayrogue »

Zelknolf wrote:I would be more confident in that explanation, except that's not the explanation in the actual ruling thread. Though if proportion of play time is meant to be the actual rationale, and they're just written with explanations that aren't the actual ones considered, I have evidence to overturn some strikes.
I can only comment on the basis for rulings I made as PA, and I am worried you are being paranoid. My point is simple, we are all good enough role players to know when we are and are not farming. Each case turns on its own particular facts, as the ruling thread aptly shows. Rulings also quite appropriately involve the exercise of discretion by the PA based on all the facts and circumstances as is also demonstrated in the ruling thread.

The OP asked how we can encourage more adventuring. My suggestion was to go out and adventure ICly, preferably in a group. Problems arise, complaints are filed, and rulings need to be made when "adventuring" doesn't pass the smell test. If everyone used some common sense we wouldn't need so many rules or have to worry about going out with our toons to adventure.
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Re: More adventure!

Post by t-ice »

"Just go out and do it" really is circular logic at its finest, isn't it.

The main "smell test" of farming to me is simply if I have a good enough IC story as to why the character is there, "adventuring". Or whether the reason is meta, because the player wants to game and kill/explore things. Of course it's a matter of opinion what story is good enough, and what is just a smelly excuse to get the farm up.

What can be done is to create stories in the setting that provide these "adventure reasons". They don't have to be in the form of static quests - often the fact that there's a quest giver and different PCs have advanced to different stages in a tree of static quests just makes it far more silly meta. Have static NPCs give more generic "adventure hooks" (as opposed to static quest hooks like "please fetch my A from B like the last 100 people who were here before you. I sure seem to be forgetting my A's a lot."). Hunt monster pieces is one example of the most common of these "adventure hooks". Patrol area could be another. With general and repeatable quests a PC has a story that pushed him to adventure somewhere, and it's entirely plausible to do it in a group and also several times. As opposed to "oh, he asked you to fetch his A from B, I did that for him last week". The adventure dispenser would also provide some clue as to what level of enemies is expected.

The simplest rule of thumb to me is that we have good enough roleplayers that metagaming happens overwhelmingly only solo. 2 or more people going at it together overwhelmingly do good RP, but very few people RP alone. (Which was a big reason for Amn's "hunt monsters area" design simply refusing entry to soloers)
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Re: More adventure!

Post by Swift »

HEEGZ wrote:The major drawback of this is that server resets nix the whole idea.
And inconsiderate players who fuck it up for everyone else which leads the DM setting the encounters to escalate the difficulty out of the range of most PCs even if they group up, thus only serving to reward the player for being a dick.

Yes, this happens. It is one of the reasons such encounters do not happen much on TSM any more.
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Re: More adventure!

Post by HEEGZ »

I can see how that would happen. Well, there are other ways of going about it I guess, sending hooks via PM instead of on a forum post.

Zelknolf showed me something from a couple of years ago, a special encounters thingy. Tested it out successfully on MS and did a quick dungeon crawl. Basically, I spawned in an AT from the DM client, populated a dungeon area with loot/monsters, and a PC was able to AT in, combat, loot and AT out all without any help from me.

So I can conceivably make an AT on the server when no PCs are online and create a mini adventurer using DM client. Then, I can give some hints to the players about where to look, etc. and they can check it out themselves when I'm not online. I toolsetted some DM loot tokens today and was able to place them in the random encounter area and PC looted it. Will reward for it later on when I have the time by swapping an item for the token.

Will continue testing it out a bit to see how feasible it is. Player reported that it worked pretty smoothly on his side of things. Again, a server reset would nix the whole idea, but it is a bit more elaborate than placing things on a world map. Was fun to test it all out though after chatting about it in this thread.
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Re: More adventure!

Post by oldgrayrogue »

HEEGZ wrote:I can see how that would happen. Well, there are other ways of going about it I guess, sending hooks via PM instead of on a forum post.

Zelknolf showed me something from a couple of years ago, a special encounters thingy. Tested it out successfully on MS and did a quick dungeon crawl. Basically, I spawned in an AT from the DM client, populated a dungeon area with loot/monsters, and a PC was able to AT in, combat, loot and AT out all without any help from me.

So I can conceivably make an AT on the server when no PCs are online and create a mini adventurer using DM client. Then, I can give some hints to the players about where to look, etc. and they can check it out themselves when I'm not online. I toolsetted some DM loot tokens today and was able to place them in the random encounter area and PC looted it. Will reward for it later on when I have the time by swapping an item for the token.

Will continue testing it out a bit to see how feasible it is. Player reported that it worked pretty smoothly on his side of things. Again, a server reset would nix the whole idea, but it is a bit more elaborate than placing things on a world map. Was fun to test it all out though after chatting about it in this thread.
Would be cool if this could be tied to a static quest giver. Take the quest, AT spawns. Or even a key that lets you into locked and stocked dungeon.

To T-ICE's point, yes, more consistent story based statics are preferable, but presently its hard enough to find scripters to write even the simple fedex statics. I think most of the statics on our servers are written so you can imagine different groups of PCs doing them without breaking immersion. The point is that most do provide a simple "backstory" to allow people to group up and RP around when DMs are not around. So as circular or simplistic as it may sound, just go out and do it, is the solution if you want more adventure in your game. My 8th level PC Toc has yet to do many of the static quests on BG, and still has not explored many of the areas on the server. I really don't feel like there is any shortage of IC content for my PC to explore without a DM. I'd say the same is true for TSM. I am not familiar enough with the static content on the other servers to opine. Honestly though, IMO the main impediment to just going out and adventuring has been finding like minded players to go out and adventure with me. Many players on ALFA are extremely risk averse. This keeps them in taverns relying on the (riskless) RPXP script for advancement rather than going out and adventuring. Taking on the risk of adventuring can also yield negative returns in ALFA. The cost of consumables, at low levels, and low value loot drops, can make going out and adventuring a losing proposition for many classes. So yeah, seeing more "adventure" type RP rather than tavern style RP does really just require players to just go out and do it, unless ALFA is willing to alter the current risk/reward formula. Personally, I like to adventure and take risks with my PC because that is part of what makes RP fun for me. Many players don't share that attitude, and without a story or reward based incentive, one can see how even ICly they don't leave the tavern much. I am not advocating any changes as far as risk/reward here. My point is that more adventure may depend more on change in player attitudes than on anything DMs or builders are doing to promote it.
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Re: More adventure!

Post by Zelknolf »

So... few points here.
-- You need no scripting knowledge to write a static quest, and the ACR is full of common tools to be sure that literally anyone can write a skill check, a fedex, or a messenger quest. Doing so is the obvious way to learn how quests are put together and work your way up to more-complex ones.

-- We have self-locking doors already. And we even use them on some statics already. Sniff 'round a bit. There are totally places that will lock you out unless you're on the quest or with someone who is. Also something that literally anyone can tool (you don't even need to tool 'em, though-- those are standard templates).

-- The old Surprise Encounter Creation System that HEEGZ mentions is still a thing that people keep forgetting about. Noteworthy, of course, that the ATs are harder to find, and are never in the way of someone who was looking for a statically-placed area. (also a thing that literally anyone can contribute to-- build generic adventure-sized areas!)
---- The areas in that thing can also totally nest. You can put a transition into a second area inside of the first one.

-- You could post unambiguous level caps with the things you drop, if you want them to be capped. As long as you don't... say... put them down physically blocking the path to some other locale (hint: see previous bullet point) I would expect better compliance with clear guidelines. Most people aren't trying to 'be dicks', but most people also don't share your perspective, culture, or norms, and thus need guidelines and feedback that may seem obvious to you.
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Re: More adventure!

Post by danielmn »

Too harsh a playing paradigm for our current playerbase.
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Re: More adventure!

Post by Ronan »

I would be adventuring more if I could get in-game more. Alas I cannot, and so must troll the forums instead.

Easy way not to have to worry about farming:
Don't worry about character progress. If the PA goes "hey ur leveling 2 fast!11", go "ok whatevs, take some XP then!".

As Veilan has occasionally complained, my past PCs have tended to level very quickly (on account of me having lots of free time when I've been active in ALFA, and my l33t PGing skills). My NWN1 main had a few thousand XP voluntarily taken from him at various points, out of 100,000 when he retired. No big deal. I would really be surprised if a PA went "ok I'll take ur XP, and give you a strike!", then don a monocle and stroke his pencil-thin moustache. Same would go for GP.

Here are my lessons from observing BG's statics:

On static quests: In my experience any static gain that can be had without the player paying any damn attention to anything will tend to be completed as such, and often solo. I can't count how many mailmen have walked right past a hook of mine because they were AFK. Yawn.

IMO the best mileage in static quests comes from scavenger hunts. Find some rare item tucked away in a multitude of random locations? You might need a guide, scout, muscle, etc. I did a few of these as DM-placed quests and they kept players entertained far longer than quests where the goal was in some known location. These were the sort of quests I was planning on replacing the mail runs with (though not in dangerous locals obviously, and centered around the city to prevent player scatter). I really hoped TSM would do something like this with its massive UD areas, because there is great potential there.

The spawn system can handle most of the work here. Be sure and award XP when the item is found though, and gold when its sold. If XP is granted when the item is turned in, the items become a sort of XP-currency. Plus it just makes more sense to award XP as its found, as selling the thing is the easy part.

Repeatable mail runs I really dislike. They can be completed solo and spread players out across the server. So often when I would log into BG, thats often what I'd get: a bunch of solo mailmen. They're great for giving PCs reasons to see the server but I don't like them when there are reasons to keep repeating them. Sounds like dimrets might've done away with this though.
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Re: More adventure!

Post by Veilan »

Ronan wrote: As Veilan has occasionally complained, my past PCs have tended to level very quickly (on account of me having lots of free time when I've been active in ALFA, and my l33t PGing skills).
Hah, I merely tipped my hat in respect of your considerable PG-Fu.

In any case, adventuring is a risky and often non-lucrative proposition in ALFA - it is the one time where you may still have to surrender some narrative control over your character's fate (unless you have a friendly DM watching out or reason to have faith in the -6 stopgap), and it is not at all required to be "successful" in power terms.
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