xp for regular dm'ing

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Rumple C
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Re: xp for regular dm'ing

Post by Rumple C »

kid wrote:So you have at least one person who will DM now and then when he can (even if not regularly) if you would give him minimal xp reward for it.
I understand the resistance (hey swift) but even taking that into account it seems like the benefit would be greater then the potential damage.
So there you have it. Where there is one, there is more.

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Zelknolf
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Re: xp for regular dm'ing

Post by Zelknolf »

t-ice wrote:
kid wrote: (possibly we'll need to establish some sort of cap, to make sure its not abused and make sure we dont get absurd results like a DM that DMs a lot having his toon level without playing at all.)
Probably such a cap should simply be on RPXP in general. (I.e. no more rpxp if a PCs xp consist of more than X% rpxp)
I wonder how well you've worked on the math for this?

This proposed system would fail immediately and catastrophically, and would fail first and hardest for that more than half of our players who never see a DM (DM plots are, have been for as long as we've kept logs, the single largest source of XP in ALFA. Their absence in a character's development dramatically inflates the proportion of XP acquired from other sources). Seems like it would be punishing players for things they can't control to me.
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Re: xp for regular dm'ing

Post by Wild Wombat »

Zelknolf wrote:
t-ice wrote:
kid wrote: (possibly we'll need to establish some sort of cap, to make sure its not abused and make sure we dont get absurd results like a DM that DMs a lot having his toon level without playing at all.)
Probably such a cap should simply be on RPXP in general. (I.e. no more rpxp if a PCs xp consist of more than X% rpxp)
I wonder how well you've worked on the math for this?

This proposed system would fail immediately and catastrophically, and would fail first and hardest for that more than half of our players who never see a DM (DM plots are, have been for as long as we've kept logs, the single largest source of XP in ALFA. Their absence in a character's development dramatically inflates the proportion of XP acquired from other sources). Seems like it would be punishing players for things they can't control to me.
Explain please for those of us that are too dense to follow your logic ...

The proposal was made to increase the availability of DMs. The hope is that more DMs DMing will increase the likelihood of a player logging on and finding a DM. I can guarantee it won't decrease the likelihood.

Unless you are saying that we need to make things fairer by eliminating DMs completely. That way nobody would get any DM XP. (Yes, I am being snippy ... well, I hope you aren't suggesting that!)

Zelknoff, I really don't see where you are coming from with your argument. It really seems like you are saying that more DMs available is a bad thing.
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Re: xp for regular dm'ing

Post by FoamBats4All »

Wild Wombat wrote:
Zelknolf wrote:
t-ice wrote:
kid wrote: (possibly we'll need to establish some sort of cap, to make sure its not abused and make sure we dont get absurd results like a DM that DMs a lot having his toon level without playing at all.)
Probably such a cap should simply be on RPXP in general. (I.e. no more rpxp if a PCs xp consist of more than X% rpxp)
I wonder how well you've worked on the math for this?

This proposed system would fail immediately and catastrophically, and would fail first and hardest for that more than half of our players who never see a DM (DM plots are, have been for as long as we've kept logs, the single largest source of XP in ALFA. Their absence in a character's development dramatically inflates the proportion of XP acquired from other sources). Seems like it would be punishing players for things they can't control to me.
Explain please for those of us that are too dense to follow your logic ...

The proposal was made to increase the availability of DMs. The hope is that more DMs DMing will increase the likelihood of a player logging on and finding a DM. I can guarantee it won't decrease the likelihood.

Unless you are saying that we need to make things fairer by eliminating DMs completely. That way nobody would get any DM XP. (Yes, I am being snippy ... well, I hope you aren't suggesting that!)

Zelknoff, I really don't see where you are coming from with your argument. It really seems like you are saying that more DMs available is a bad thing.
I think what she's saying is that if you cap RP XP, you're going to have a failed system. Most people aren't getting DM activity, so capping one of their few sources of XP is kind of a bad idea.
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Re: xp for regular dm'ing

Post by Wild Wombat »

^

Ah, yeah, you're right, Foam.

Sorry, Zelk.

I agree that capping RPXP would be a huge hit to those that don't get DMs. Don't do it.

Now, the idea that RPXP from DMing should be capped ... well, that may be okay, but I'm not sure that that is necessary, or even a good idea. (I admit that I haven't thought it through, but I have a feeling that there would be some unintended consequences there.)
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Zelknolf
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Re: xp for regular dm'ing

Post by Zelknolf »

The point is that it would only hit players who aren't being DMed.

Two players are average ALFAn static content goers. That means about 125xp/week.
They're active for a couple hours a day. That's about 210 xp/week
They kill some stuff, but this is ALFA so that's not worth much. 60ish is average
One of these players never sees a DM. The other one gets an average-rewarding DMed session once per week (about 160xp).

Non-DMed player gets 395 xp/week, 53% of which is RPXP
DMed player gets 555 xp/week, 37% of which is RPXP

And then there's the added bonus that any concerted effort by player 1 to adjust that percentage downward (that is, doing a lot of static quests or killing a lot of monsters) is farming.
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Re: xp for regular dm'ing

Post by Ronan »

I don't mean to digress too much, but the notion that players have no or little control over whether or not they get DMed is simply false. A lot of people go un-DMed voluntarily, because getting into a DMed party involves sacrifices they may not be willing to make. The biggest cause of involuntary no-DMing certainly seems to be timezones.

At any given time there is obviously not enough DMing to go around, and never has been. The players who are most willing to make sacrifices into order to get DM attention will get it, while those who are less willing won't. Sacrifices include starting a new PC (Xan hates this), making a PC which fits well into a group (I like playing loners and explorers, other people like playing total dicks), playing with people you'd otherwise not want to play with, trying out different playstyles (e.g. rorax in a diplomatic plot), not complaining when mistakes are made, etc.

The biggest blocker was obviously one PC per player, and I'm glad to have helped reform that rule. However players wanting to play old PCs instead of rolling up new ones for group play still seems like a common theme. If a player wants an uber, high-level PC they are unlikely to be able to depend on consistent DMing, and so will need to keep playing that PC when DMing might be available elsewhere. DM sessions get harder and harder as PCs increase in level, especially the high-danger sort of DM sessions which provide lots of XP. Its also really rare for a DM or even an entire server to offer consistent DMing throughout a PC's life. If the player wants their main PC to keep increasing in power then they might play that PC in lieu of finding DMing elsewhere. This is voluntarily abstaining.

I don't think we could ever realistically get near 100% DM coverage, but the supply of DMing is definitely not a fixed pie (graph). It depends greatly on player actions, which have a much greater effect on DM motivation than any trickle of XP from scripts ever will. If you are nicer to your DMs, they will DM more.

Strangely the players I DM don't seem to get most of their XP from DMing. The last party (mostly SEers) averaged 35.4% from RP XP ( with a range of 14-45%), with the median being 40.6%. Percentage of total XP gained from RP XP would be > 35.4 as the two lowest levels had the least percentage of RP XP. Again I have no DB access, so I'm just going off of what I've seen IG.

I am not really sure what ALFA gains by making indefinite mechanical advancement of any given PC a guarantee. Can someone enlighten me? I can understand no one wants to be stuck at level 1 without anything to do, but if you're level 8, 10 or 12? Whats the big deal? And yes I realize players always want to be more powerful (me included), but catering to positional goods with negative externalities (as a higher-level playerbase requires makes being a new ALFAn suck even more, e.g. TSM's roflorcs) is generally a poor idea. On the other hand I guess XP is an easy carrot, and XP in D&D is cumulative.
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kid
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Re: xp for regular dm'ing

Post by kid »

Either way the idea on capping DM rpxp is just me thinking about those times I used to DM a lot (too much) and probably would have been leveling my toon (if we had that rule then) to level 2-3 without even playing it. So thats something I think we should avoid. Some reward would still be nice.
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t-ice
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Re: xp for regular dm'ing

Post by t-ice »

Ronan wrote: I am not really sure what ALFA gains by making indefinite mechanical advancement of any given PC a guarantee. Can someone enlighten me?
...
XP in D&D is cumulative.
I suppose that pretty much answers that. It'd be hard to imagine a D&D-based system that worked otherwise. I would personnaly prefer a system like E8 or E10 where PC progression is slowed drastically (but not stopped!) after some point, instead of the accelerating progression speed of D&D. But that's a leap way too far from the game we have, so I play with what we got.

I guess this is derailing some, but if we had a limit of, say, 50% or even 66% xp from RPXP, I really don't see how it would ever be a problem for any PC that is actually played? It's just a sensibility cap for if we provide rpxp from entirely external sources (such as DMing or hypothetically tech). So that you can't have a lvl7 character who has appeared in two sessions. I do suppose lvl1 PCs should be exempt from the cap, though, as it would suck that you don't get even rpxp at the very beginning and if you're alone everything is silly dangerous.
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Re: xp for regular dm'ing

Post by Veilan »

kid wrote:If I would have gotten RPXP for DMing i'd likely just the same rather log and actualy try to give people some fun while still giving my toon the same 20-30 xp.
If that makes me a horrible PGer so be it.
This doesn't make you a PGer in my book, but a human being with a plausible capacity for honesty and self-awareness.

I still think the issue is not that people would "DM for 20-30xp", but that they would stop feeling they miss out / are punished, even if by such small margins. Psychology isn't always weighed in numbers, and the feeling of appreciation is usually more important than money.

And as I said then, I'll say again: if it just causes one person to give a brief interaction as DM rather than heel-kicking as PC, that's one iota more of a living, breathing world with no damage done.

You seem to be one person.
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Re: xp for regular dm'ing

Post by Mikayla »

Giving DMs RP/XP for their toon at the normal gain-rate for players seems like a pretty damn good idea to me. DMs make the world better, by a LOT. Only through DMs can we get really involved and interesting story lines (granted, we don't need DMs to have soap-opera love triangles and such, but that is only one type of drama). DMs get little enough reward as it is, other than our gratitude. So, why not? Its not like this makes DMing a better way to level a toon - they won't get anymore XP than a Player would for the same time, and the risk is the same - a Player's toon sitting in a tavern is at very little risk (unless she happens to have a 4,000 GP bounty on her head!!!! - Thank the gods that came down!) so ... I dunno, as long as (a) its technically feasible and (b) the tech-folks have time/willingness to implement it, it seems like a great idea to me. Let the DMs have some tangible reward for DMing.

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Zelknolf
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Re: xp for regular dm'ing

Post by Zelknolf »

Mikayla wrote:(a) its technically feasible and (b) the tech-folks have time/willingness to implement it
So, not to construe answering this as particular support for or opposition to the idea; I'm neutral on the notion generally, and prod at specific proposals because I would rather not allow this to be an opportunity for anecdote, collateral, or misinformation to motivate any specific change.

If RPXP for DMs were approved I'd probably be fishing for help, on account that I'm waist deep in a foul-smelling pool of statistics and item modification right now-- but this isn't quite the deadlock we have with the death system, where there's overwhelming risk and a tiny use case. RPXP is a quite stable system, DMs logging in and doing stuff is a pretty core experience/use case, and we established player identification distinct from GSID identification as part of the public server project. The needful things would be a reliable identification of which characters are valid recipients of DM XP (and thus reliable identification of which player IDs correspond to which DM and their times of activity relative to each other / current status), some method of allowing the DM to select the target of said XP, handling for players with multiple game clients, and reliable identification of the DM's presence and its correct connection to the DM's target character's CID.
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Re: xp for regular dm'ing

Post by Ronan »

t-ice wrote:...instead of the accelerating progression speed of D&D.
Does it accelerate?

Take the rule of thumb that a 3.5 character doubles in power every two levels, and say the time -> xp function is linear (i.e. xp gain is constant over time):

power = 2^((level - 1) / 2)
xp = 500 * level * (level -1)
power/xp = 2^((level - 1) / 2) / (500 * level * (level -1 ))

Level, 1000 xp per "unit of power":
2: 1.41, 3: 0.67, 4: 0.47, 5: 0.40, 6: 0.38, 7: 0.38, 8: 0.40, 9: 0.44, 10: 0.50, 11: 0.58, 12: 0.69, 13: 0.82, 14: 0.99, 15: 1.22, 16: 1.51, 17: 1.88, 18: 2.37, 19: 2.99, 20: 3.81

Of course the above assumptions are highly imperfect. The first few level ups produces a lot of gain relative to other levelings, and higher-level PCs generally have more trouble finding non-RP sources of XP (meaning time -> XP is not linear). Then there's wealth, etc. Still I suppose its obvious the power gain accelerates at higher levels.

T-ice, I realize indefinite power gain is a staple of D&D. It helps them sell more books when you need new monsters, feats, items, etc. every few levels. That doesn't mean it makes any damn sense for the people actually playing the game though.
kid wrote:...that makes me a horrible PGer...
I concur.

Another option would be to make DM-PC XP gain a function of the amount of "quest time" the DM has handed out via the DM XP tool. This makes self-twinking easier, but it in honest hands would be a more accurate measure of how much a DM is really DMing.

Zelk, do we really pretend to support people with multiple CD keys? I thought that was a "no no" anyhow.
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Re: xp for regular dm'ing

Post by Zelknolf »

Ronan wrote:Zelk, do we really pretend to support people with multiple CD keys? I thought that was a "no no" anyhow.
We don't, but we do support aliases and NWScript sucks at collections. So I don't expect that bit to be straightforward.

Unless it's done in C#, in which case creating/ debugging a new CLRScript project isn't straightforward.
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Re: xp for regular dm'ing

Post by HEEGZ »

t-ice wrote:At the end of the day DMing is a hobby. A hobby needs to be fun in itself to be worthwhile. There's precious little "currency" we have available to give incentives here. The illusion that XP (or GP) is such a currency comes from the fact that it can provide incentive between doing A or doing B while in the game. XP or GP does not make playing fun.
I have to say that I agree with this completely. I don't really have a PC to play that motivates me to DM. In fact, my DMing is limited mostly by RL obligations, and a few demotivators. My number one challenge as a DM is assembling a regular group of players at a specific time each week for sessions.

That said, I find this idea of XP for DMing a bit odd, though some will likely enjoy it. I also felt the same way about XP for a Bio, but whatever. I think we should pour our energy into connecting people willing to DM with players and that will sort out a lot of issues. As for the XP for DMing and Bios... I guess we just go with a majority opinion, I don't really care too much.
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