More adventure!

Ideas and suggestions for game mechanics and rules.
Rumple C
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More adventure!

Post by Rumple C »

Further idea,

Castano has hinted at this, and I think he is on to something. Can we try to change our paradigm a little, and get adventurers adventuring more? I love the tavern RP as much as anyone, but i note that groups which have flourished recently (and i have had direct experience of seeing) have tended to be those which got out and adventured. Filling in the gaps with their RP. (Offcourse these groups also tend to level faster and bog down in high levels as they become victims of their own numerical sucess, but i digress!)

Calishites and 3 Rivers group spring to mind, as well organised groups that adventure(d).

How can we encourage adventuring, without straying into "farming"?

Varied content (low-mid), DM set encounters, NPC given mandate, player driven plot...

Any other great ideas?
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FoamBats4All
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Re: More adventure!

Post by FoamBats4All »

Can we get less penalties for adventuring? I know I sure as hell would adventure more -- even on current content -- if it didn't mean arbitrarily getting a strike or not, depending on who your friends are, or who you've pissed off.
Matti
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Re: More adventure!

Post by Matti »

My recipe of how to add adventure to the much debated trickle of rpxp would be to use cooperation. Plots could be shared by several DMs that cooperate as players flock to the cause and adventure, I've witnessed several of these occasions during my time in ALFA and most of them have gone better than anticipated. And in the spirit of cooperation plots could be enhanced and enriched by adding venues for groups of low, mid and high levels separately with the help of other DMs and some patience from the player groups.
That way awesome stories might grow in depth and the DMs creativity could both be spread among a larger base of players and with several DMs acting along it the strain on individual DMs could be lessened.
Trusted builders could provide some level of assistance to DMs as well by creating smaller areas that fit the story arch the DM wants the groups to explore, and items etc can be created in similar fashion.
Further along this path of cooperative thoughts I would like to point out that good manners between players and DMs also work wonders in keeping the story and roleplaying at the front seats instead of the easily encountered swift spiral of negativity and tension that joins the discussions if we forfeit respect towards one another.
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Mikayla
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Re: More adventure!

Post by Mikayla »

There are two ways I know of to adventure without getting strikes for farming.

1) DM'd adventures. This requires, naturally enough, DM participation.

2) Balance: The Calishite group will go and do a static or two, or may go hit a gnoll cave, or clear the Cloakwood board of goblins .. and then we go back to town and get back into our love-quadrangle-soap-opera with Aliyah/Nisha/Kori/Kyrinil/that-hot-tavern-wench/etc. We are keenly aware of ALFAs stand on farming, so .. we kill .. we talk .. we do a mail run .. we talk .. we hunt .. we talk. Its all about balance.

The reason we are able to do what we do though is that, as Rumple pointed out, we have a tight crew. In-Character we don't exactly have a lot of love in our hearts, but Out-Of-Character the core of the group is pretty damn tight - we don't always stick together, and we don't always like each other in-game, but we are cohesive enough that we can frequently go out to hunt or do the occasional static.

So .. keys to adventure survival (meaning without dying and wihtout getting strikes) in ALFA are the same as always - work in a group, and get DM time.

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Zelknolf
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Re: More adventure!

Post by Zelknolf »

The problem, unfortunately, is that PA policy has not been to account for how much time you spend talking. It has been to check how much overall benefit you've taken from static content over a real-life duration. If you log on every day, do two statics, and then log out, you are viewed as being equally offensive as someone who plays 6 hours and performs the same statics-- as colored by who your friends are, of course.

I maintain that I would implement a system of diminishing returns that would gain approval from DMA and cause the PA to drop farming as a thing in the APM, pretty well regardless of the complexity. I rather firmly believe that play is massively damaged by the absurdity of these rules and unpredictability of their enforcement (something that the current PA calls desirable even, having asked me to be vague in any programmatic feedback from fear that people might "game the system" ... that is... they might stop what they're doing if we tell them exactly when it's starting to become unreasonable. And then they might become reliant upon some kind of feedback for the purposes of norming themselves to the community).
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chalksoul
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Re: More adventure!

Post by chalksoul »

The big things that stops me form out monster hunting (without DM adventure involved) in caves are (in no particular order):
1: not enough players online, my character knows going alone anywhere outside common roads are certain death (not much to do about except hope for more players that play when I'm at the comp)
2: very few clues of where I could go adventuring when i have a few adventurous friends. I neither ic or ooc have any clue where a reasonable cr adventure could be and would be aimlessly wandering either fining nothing but turnips or geting insta stomped by the magi-boars liches (perhaps some retired adventurer npc and the ilk could give good vague enough clues?)
3: Well.. the world is deadly and Tarin isn't stupid or insanely greedy. Would you go out to a probably death for a handful of gold if no emotional story was pulling you/making you curious etc? He's a brave little bugger when it comes to help people and do the right thing, but isn't violent enough ot just go out killing for the heck of it (could be solved with "random" statics perhaps? geting some "goblins in cavern x is causing trouble" quests that change on weekly basis or something)
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HEEGZ
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Re: More adventure!

Post by HEEGZ »

I don't remember the details, but in the past I believe DMs did the following:
  • Log in and make an encounter at a set CR, leave a chest/loot nearby.
  • Log out and go to forums to make a post.
  • Make an rumor post to forums for PCs to investigate when DM absent.
  • Can follow up on the after action reports via forums, and XP the PCs later.
The major drawback of this is that server resets nix the whole idea. I may give this a shot this week actually. Will try to plan something to test it out. Actually, I could try doing one encounter per server and see how things end up. If anyone has ideas they want to PM me, I'm open to suggestions/variations on this idea.
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Darkmystic
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Re: More adventure!

Post by Darkmystic »

Explore the server, learn the maps, there is content. I know players who been in alfa for years now who havent explored their servers, blame yourself for being bored.
t-ice
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Re: More adventure!

Post by t-ice »

One offs like Heegz mentions are good, but by their one-off nature take relative much DM time. Whereas ALFA statics, let alone "farm me -spawns", tend to live in isolated pockets of extremely generic "adventure" that tends to drift to farming. To brige the difference, a large scale plot would be needed to which statics can be created. These statics would need to make pretty good IC sense providing RP and PC reasons for doing them. So if there's a longer-term war with orcs going on, put down a few static quests (at a range or CRs) of patrols/skirmishes against said orcs. Forge these stories for each server for a couple types of enemies. And provide the IC factions and quests-givers for these quests.

Also, this was Amn's solution to static spawns and adventure, which haven't come to fruition yet, but feel free to kidnap it (it's in Amn's repo):
http://www.alandfaraway.org/phpBB3/view ... 36&t=48369
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Brokenbone
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Re: More adventure!

Post by Brokenbone »

HEEGZ, you weren't maybe active at the time, but "set encounter stuff", people do (or did) a fair bit of, though over time DMs also learned to maybe not actually put LOOT in a chest, instead putting tokens of various weight in a box or bag renamed as "HEEGZ Loot Token" with a description of "contact a DM to discuss this item." Negative experiences with setting encounters for lowbies that could easily be solo'd by higher PCs were part of that, same with encounters where why bother fighting anything, just loot the chest with our bugged invisibility etc. and leave the monsters be... same would go for stealth, is it reasonable that a bunch of monsters would stand around a box like mannequins, not notice the chest open up, get 50lb of noisy arms and armor taken out of it, and a guy tip toe away with the goods?

People do dig rumor type posts about that kind of thing though, and hopefully in cases respect if a DM says "hey please keep it within such and such level range", the idea of using a token means maybe having to go to the relevant DM and say "yeah I read about your zombie plot hook for level 1s, but my level 10 smashed the hell out of them all, where's my gold?"
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HEEGZ
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Re: More adventure!

Post by HEEGZ »

Thanks for the feedback BB. I think the chest would be used to represent loot, although I think it could be placed in inventory of enemies, requiring killing them for it to drop. Also, the renaming of a token sounds like a good alternative. Not sure if an item renamed in the DM client will retain it's new name within a PC's inventory upon logging in. Will check now with someone in game.
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Brokenbone
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Re: More adventure!

Post by Brokenbone »

Items stuck in a critter's inventory I believe, on death, will see interference from loot drop scripts, saying something like "jeez this +1 sword is way too valuable to drop for a 1xp kill... instead let us drop a 3gp violine gem!" I am not sure if the scripts say exactly that, or in a funny accent perhaps either. So while you may find yourself thinking "eh, when they kill this wizard they'll get a dozen scrolls, sounds good for reward..." you may find out later that zero drops, or just like, one 12gp cantrip scroll out of the stuff you "salted" the NPC with.

EDIT: In Nwn1 though, your method would've worked fine, load a dude up to drop loot like a pinata type of thing. Unmodified Nwn2 as well, but we have loot scripts in play.
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Teric neDhalir
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Re: More adventure!

Post by Teric neDhalir »

Quick point: Items with the plot flag set to true are ignored by the loot system, if that helps.

The question of scaling of encounters to the party is perennial.. I put a lot of time into hiding interesting things away when WHL went Live and made sure to add triggers that warned lower level parties off. What happens is that 1 very high level PC then reamed through the lot in a fortnight without breaking a sweat. Sad face.
Perhaps it's worth revisiting the encounter triggers that came with the OC as they will spawn mobs from their built-in list until they match the EL of the party and in theory could be made persistent (i.e. will fire until the boss is killed).
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dergon darkhelm
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Re: More adventure!

Post by dergon darkhelm »

Player groups -- Mikayla has it right.

Every patch of consisten regulat DMing I have seen in ALFA since 2005 has been based on that around a group or faction.

Shar faction, Team Helm, The Moonshaes Skaug group to name the most for me.


Encourage player groups of 5-8 or so PCs ... they can do things with/without a DM.

Much easier than trying to do storylines for every solo PC out there.
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Zelknolf
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Re: More adventure!

Post by Zelknolf »

The OE encounter stuff was really designed for single player mods-- I don't think it would be a viable solution for our circumstances, given how exploitable they are. Not a big deal in single player-- no one cares how much you cheat there-- but in a persistent world that's serious business. And we'd have trouble detecting it.

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