How to bring back the people?

[danielmn]

Place a beholder in every map. That should make players want to return!

[Blindhamsterman]

Place a beholder in every map. That should make players want to return!

behilders aren't so tough!

(the only ones I've seen died in seconds before I even knew what was going on :/)

[SCI-kick]

Placed encounters are more fun than spawns since they are out of the ordinary. I think unannounced ones would be great, and encourage excellent play.

Anyone who would complain about a placed encounter is not an adventurer, or is a chronic soloer/farmer.

The Three River Corps always "pretends" that there is something around the corner when adventuring (even if 95% of the time there is absolutely nothing). If there happened to actually be wandering baddies around, it would be much more fun, with scouting, tactics of fight or flee, etc...

[Stormbring3r]

Placed encounters are more fun than spawns since they are out of the ordinary. I think unannounced ones would be great, and encourage excellent play.

Anyone who would complain about a placed encounter is not an adventurer, or is a chronic soloer/farmer.

The Three River Corps always "pretends" that there is something around the corner when adventuring (even if 95% of the time there is absolutely nothing). If there happened to actually be wandering baddies around, it would be much more fun, with scouting, tactics of fight or flee, etc...

+1 bump

[Ithildur]

Placed encounters are more fun than spawns since they are out of the ordinary. I think unannounced ones would be great, and encourage excellent play.

Anyone who would complain about a placed encounter is not an adventurer, or is a chronic soloer/farmer.

The Three River Corps always "pretends" that there is something around the corner when adventuring (even if 95% of the time there is absolutely nothing). If there happened to actually be wandering baddies around, it would be much more fun, with scouting, tactics of fight or flee, etc...

+1 bump

+2

This is the way you used to have to play in ALFA1 much of the time; you didn't have to pretend there might be something unexpected around the corner because there often was and they had perception ranges on par with PCs! Roaming many places unprepared/without proper scouting, with or without a DM on, was taking a serious risk back in the day; it forced players to be much sharper tactically than these days imo and it discouraged solo farming (predictable/manageable risk spawns) habits to some extent as well.
I think the veteran SD players' motto was 'Always expect the unexpected'. I for one think surprises, even nasty ones, are fun, predictability boring.

[SCI-kick]

I agree. Even if Olin died, he's ready to "achieve death in battle". We need more fun.

[Veilan]

Nono, I really think we need to get higher rewards for writing self-determined stuff rather than going out and adventuring facing risks we may not have 100% control over!

[dergon darkhelm]

Placed encounters are more fun than spawns since they are out of the ordinary. I think unannounced ones would be great, and encourage excellent play.

Anyone who would complain about a placed encounter is not an adventurer, or is a chronic soloer/farmer.

The Three River Corps always "pretends" that there is something around the corner when adventuring (even if 95% of the time there is absolutely nothing). If there happened to actually be wandering baddies around, it would be much more fun, with scouting, tactics of fight or flee, etc...

+1 bump

+2

This is the way you used to have to play in ALFA1 much of the time; you didn't have to pretend there might be something unexpected around the corner because there often was and they had perception ranges on par with PCs! Roaming many places unprepared/without proper scouting, with or without a DM on, was taking a serious risk back in the day; it forced players to be much sharper tactically than these days imo and it discouraged solo farming (predictable/manageable risk spawns) habits to some extent as well.
I think the veteran SD players' motto was 'Always expect the unexpected'. I for one think surprises, even nasty ones, are fun, predictability boring.

+3 - Are you an ALFA DM but don't have 3 hours for a session?

Log on and place some encounters!

Make the wilds dangerous. That cave that has 4 orcs in front, 3 more in the side room, and 4 plus a shaman in the back?.... Well now it's got a rust monster... or a mind flayer...... or a basilisk! Keep the main roads mostly safe (for lowbie travel), but the wilds should wild.

Wynna used to do a bit of this. Rorax does some now.

[kid]

you cant set mobs in an inhibited cave. I mean you could but you have no way to cancle the existing mobs. they'll just respawn, so you'll have a rust monster playing dice with the orc.

Anyway, I think the general feeling we are getting here is: More risk, more mobs, more adventure, more loots, more stuff to do.
I think that maybe that should be done on a server level and not on the DM level.

[Dorn]

Nono, I really think we need to get higher rewards for writing self-determined stuff rather than going out and adventuring facing risks we may not have 100% control over!

on week out of the job and look at the backsliding.
you're being emotional german. this sort of thing would not be allowed in the fatherland

[Ronan]

BG's spawns are already extremely random. One point might contain goblins, wyverns or redcaps. Another (admittedly rare in itself) might contain skeletons, zombies, or... a lich. You've been warned.

[Brokenbone]

I have seen a random lich! It didn't see our group though, so hurray. Figure that'd be a DM-only encounter to do it super-geniusly and whatnot.

[oldgrayrogue]

3 Wyverns once dropped randomly out of the sky on our party in the BG Woods of Sharp Teeth. Needless to say, my PC rarely if ever goes back there alone.

and yes Randomness FTW! Ronan -- any chance your random spawn scripts could be imported to all ALFA servers?

[t-ice]

Consolidating D&D's power levels, via a cap or whatever, takes more than just dealing with the player side of things. There are all sorts of mobs that would need to be re-tooled, canon NPCs re-written, etc. It'd be a big job to do well.

If we're looking at levels 6-12 or so, it's pretty much where I'd think we are already. That's why "low levels are a dread" and "high levels are a bore". Just make it official, and let people play the levels the game is already geared for. I just don't get why someone who wants to keep playing the long-established story of a PC at level 12 would want the 13th level when the price is not being able to mesh with most players/PCs. When the alternative is to continute the IC story without keeping up with DnD's exponential power growth in levels, and just gain some epic stories, and also possibly items and feats so not complete power stagnation either.

Any "level cap" shouldn't be easily achieved, but there's not point in keeping on exponentially increasing the power discrepancy between 3-year-old PCs and newcomers. Reaching the cap in a couple years of active gaming is not so bad, is it? And if it is, we can stretch the xp needed for leveling at the high end and maybe even decrease in the low end, can't we? Your story and character didn't die when he reached the cap, how is it "thanks for playing, now start over" if your PC stopped gaining levels?

But yeah, overall I agree muchly with Ronan's thoughts.

Randomness is good. But not random death at any time outside the tavern, but randomness when the PCs go look for it. I even have a pretty neat and simple system for it built for Amn, based on "hunting areas" that PCs enter for "our party hunts for monsters in this geographical area (e.g. Foothills of Cloudpeaks)". What is missing is spawn point lists.

[kid]

cap at 13 could be fun imm. still very powerful compared to low levels, but never crazy omnipotent.

unrelated.... but how about when you die or quit forever you can transfer like 20% of your XP to a new charcter?
would make it easier to target the somewhat desired level area of 4-10 or so, and might allow some dead dude to make someone semi capable to join back to his friends in the campigan with a new toon. we usualy allow similar things in PnP.
Just a thought.