Travel System: Take 27

[White Warlock]

In PnP, travel is rarely handled the way i've encountered here in ALFA. I would have to travel, alone, through multiple areas before encountering a portal. Most of the time, those travels were uneventful, but very time consuming... and incredibly boring.

I am of the belief the intent of these proposals is to bring ALFA closer to a PnP experience, without having to rely on DMs. To remove the drudgery and boredom presented in the existing server travel. As such, any counter-proposal that dismisses this aspect, serves little purpose but to provide... variety, and is thus unproductive work.

Let's deal with some accepted notions. Timeline has been debated countless times in ALFA, but inevitably most everyone comes to the conclusion timeline is relative. Campaigns present 'time stoppages' and individual characters create breaks in the timeline, with their adventuring 'inbetween' campaigns. Thus, timelines in ALFA should be given the consideration it presently holds for campaigns and otherwise, in which it is not universally linear. In other words, time should be disregarded for the greater good of roleplay and playability.

On this same line of reasoning, travel between points, for the greater good of roleplay and playability, should be provided in a manner that allows players to easily and quickly meet up with other players ingame.

Like everything else, there need to be checks and balances, a means to watch such activities to ensure they are not abused... but the mere fact they 'can' be abused is absolutely no reason to disclude such options. Especially when such abuse does not pose a leveling imbalance. And, as always, ALFA's goals should be to provide encouragement, through module construction and community enthusiasm, of roleplay... not to impose blocks for powerplay that ALSO ends up posing blocks for roleplay.

If we can't make travel an enjoyable adventure, I don't see any of these restrictions worth doing. As the responses on the proximity poll showed, people aren't interested in remaining faithful to the setting when it comes to travel. Sorry.

I completely agree with you Ronan.

hence my suggestion that we allow *offline* time to be taken into consideration when travelling.

While this 'sounds' like a reasonable option, i daresay it is not. When I get off work, or find time within my busy schedule, roleplaying in ALFA is what i want to do. If, on the other hand, I log on to find my server empty, and a nearby server loaded with players... why should I be forced to wait my entire gaming window just to do what I wanted to do in the first place.... which is roleplay?

As to your earlier concerns of abuse, let's deal with the abusers. Let us not impose arbitrary penalties on the entire community. It is not only unfair, but uncalled for, and reminds me of the curfews imposed at some beaches, because of a few miscreants. The argument posed by the city councils are that they do not have sufficient people to police the beaches, and thus must impose restrictions on the entire community.

My questions to you are... do you feel this is the same situation in ALFA and do you feel that such an approach, of taking away liberties to all, is a reasonable solution?

This doesn't mean the PC has to wait an hour to travel on either caravan. They can travel to their destination immediately, but they would have to wait an hour before making a return trip. A PC cannot use teh same caravan in the same 8 hour game time span and couldn't take more than two caravans in the same 8 hour game time span.

The best compromise is presented here, which is to allow the travel transition time to be short, but that the time 'inbetween' travel transitions be lengthy. This allows for roleplayers to meet up with each other, whilst still taking a bite out of the concern people will travel back-and-forth in a short timeframe.

I think we can use this to alleviate a lot of the pain of getting together to play across server boundaries and actually have some fun with it too.

Absolutely

But you cannot have both systems in place unless they are unified in time. You can't have one PC making the journey instantaneously whilst others are spending an RL hour or two enjoying some ship-board excitement.

Why not? The ultimate goal is entertainment, not realism. Each and every campaign in ALFA undermines linear timeline, so do we compensate for this and remove all campaigns? Of course not, we adjust to the spatial nature of the game and play it out with the 'heart' of true roleplayers. As previously indicated, there are a ton of things ALFA does not impose upon us, such as 8 hours of downtime whenever our character is required to sleep, or forced lunches. These must be roleplayed, or ignored... for the greater goal of 'viable' roleplayed entertainment.

In no uncertain terms, i am adamantly opposed to any ingame mechanics that penalize players for wanting to meet up with other players, when their goal is to roleplay. We must recognize that ALFA provides the landscape of Faerun', but cannot possibly hold to the same physical laws.

The goal of trying to recreate the best parts of PnP should not be frowned upon over creating the worst parts of PWs, or the worst parts of Real Life. Let's keep things in perspective.

[White Warlock]

Exactly, Stormy. The way I see it, is if you board a ship or caravan, and log off, the next time you log in, you'll be presented with the world map. The world map will have a list of destinations your PC could've traveled to on the boat or caravan in the time that has lapsed.

Inaubryn, this is a deviation from your initial proposal, and one i'm not keen with. As stated earlier, many people who 'left' ALFA did so because their gametime availability was limited, and they wanted to play 'when' they had the opportunity to do so. If, however, they choose to jump on a caravan and have to come back many real life hours later, it defeats the purpose. It would eat up their window of opportunity.

Any factors that impose the 'option' of logging off and coming back later may be reasonable to some whose hours are theirs to do with what they will, but it does not address the circumstances of the 'majority.' The majority of people in the world simply do not have that luxury and must struggle with many real life limiters. When they get that window of opportunity to play, that's exactly what they want to do. They don't want to log onto an empty server and 'hope' someone else logs on, and they don't want to use a transition script (boat, caravan, whatever) then have to wait for an hour or more before their character is transported to a server where others are playing.

The greater good should not be squelched by the fear of the greater evil.

[Inaubryn]

Let me clarify what I was sayin'. This wouldn't be a forced thing, WW. No matter if you stayed on or logged out, you'd still get a world map with a list of destinations your PC can travel to.

So, say you're logged in and travelin' from Asbravn. Well, you'd have destination choices of Scornubel or Beregost. If you see that lotsa players are on both the servers with these two places on them, you can head there.

Now, Beregost is the farthest destination so you may have a 30% chance of being waylaid along the road. Scornubel is closer, so the chance may be 15%. Either way, you have those choices. Or, alternatively you could travel east to the Dales from Asbravn.


Now, say you log off, you'd log back in with these same choices.

So logged out or in doesn't matter. You still get a world map on clickin' a caravan or ship that displays destinations within range of that particular caravan or ship.

Edit- each caravan and/or ship will only go so far anyway.
Hope that clarifies.

[White Warlock]

nevermind. lol

I misunderstood your last post to Stormseeker.

[Stormseeker]

*grins* i get confused by my post to. It's easy, you can travel and stay logged in playing to your hearts content while your "travel time" catches up with you or you can travel and log out building up"travel time".
If you travel to the wrong server and want to continue but dont have the built up "time" a dm can choose to reset it if they so choose.

[Mayhem]

In defence of my proposal that has so offended WW, I'd just like to point out that it was based on the assumption that the admin were never, ever going to allow a system that said "screw the visas and continuity, you just log onto whichever server happens to have people on it whenever you turn up to play".

Of course, if the admin staff have changed their minds to that extent, then the proposal has no merit beyond allowing people to RP journeys together if they want to.

Mind you, if the admin staff have changed their minds to that extent, we will be able to introduce the porcine aviatory travel system as well.

[Wild Wombat]

In no uncertain terms, i am adamantly opposed to any ingame mechanics that penalize players for wanting to meet up with other players, when their goal is to roleplay. We must recognize that ALFA provides the landscape of Faerun', but cannot possibly hold to the same physical laws.

I don't think I have ever read a statement that summed up my feelings about ALFA better. If you don't believe me, see my new sig.