Proposal for Xp awards for Bios, please give your thoughts

[gonz.0]

Everyone plays their own way. And in their own time. Me, 80% of the time i'm on, I have a rug rat I"m keeping track of, adventuring is bloody difficult. But I can keep track of rp well enough that most times, no one notices. But I can say 'afk' and walk away to clean up a mess or change a diaper, and come back and keep playing. There is no player run pause button for your adventures here in ALFA, so it does not surprise me that people like me do not come in, and immediately go on a quest for XP.

But when I can, it's IC, and DM approves my character's involvement, I get involved and go find some adventure. I think that ALFA is a great place to play, but I think the one thing we all need to learn to do, is to allow everyone to play. Quit worrying about exactly how they do it, and let them play.

Back on subject, again... I think the bio reward is a good idea, but again, think that if it could be done through the game, and update-able by the character/player, that is the way we should.

[Mikayla]

Castano:

I agree, but no one goes adventuring, they hang in the tavern chatting. Personally makes me want to slit my wrists. But each to their own I suppose.

That is simply not true. The Calishite group goes and does statics as often as we dare, which is not all that often given that if we do them too much we'll get accused of abuse. We also go kill spawns as often as we dare, which again is not all that often for fear we will get called farmers. And if there is a DM on who will DM us, we are there. So, we get out of the tavern and adventure as much as we can given ALFA's rules about static abuse and spawn farming. If you want us adventuring more than we do already, either provide more DMs or eliminate the rules regarding static abuse or farming. Otherwise, getting out and "adventuring" more than we do will just earn us strikes and get us kicked out of ALFA.

[Castano]

was not talking about your group, just the past 2 yrs in ALFA...if a DM is on people go out. If not it's hard to get a group to do stuff with.

[Swift]

Well written bios do absolutely nothing but show that the person is a good writer. Simple as that. How many great written applications have we had from people throughout the years, only to find out that when they get in game, they are horrible roleplayers or a bad fit for ALFA? But hey, they nailed the written app!

The only thing that proves someone has good RP or not is how they actually roleplay in game and you don't need a bio for that. You don't need anything more than basic appearance and a couple of random ideas to let you develop your character on the fly to make for good Roleplay.

And then you know what you do? You reward that good RP with experience, be it from the RP XP script or from a DM. A well written bio for a level 1 character has very, very minor benefits because, for the most part, you will still get the same range of generic quests from DMs at level 1, simply because you are so easy to kill. A couple of 1/3 goblins attacking a farmers cattle/crops, a lost child, some odd business going on around town etc. The interaction with others has far more effect and far more benefit on a PC than the bio.

If a DM starts up a low level thing and sees a brand new player with a brand new PC that has no bio, he isn't going to leave them about because "Oh I have nothing to hook him with because he has no bio" so I am utterly failing the see what benefit this serves other than taking steps towards eliminating level 1 completely. Players keeping bios up to date is far more problematic, especially when PCs wander away from where they started and the DM Teams of other servers have nothing to go on but old, out of date information.

[HEEGZ]

I prefer we not do this. Not a strong opinion, but seems odd to me.

[Galadorn]

How many PC's have you played at level 1 in ALFA? I ask because I remember your toons being very static.

I've been much more cautious then I was in ALFA-1... and I've still got 4-5 dead toons in my vault in a month of playing. And it's not at simple to get to level 2 as some think. Yeah, it probably is once your familiar with the content of the server, but if you're going through the first time and don't know where any of that static content IS... it's much harder.

For example, on TSM my extremely non-combat oriented Bard was trying to help another bard with his muse... and got smacked dead by a spirit in the middle of the city. With that, the gnome Chomsky who I had spent a lot of time developing in my head went poof. It probably is fine for existing ALFA players. But it's very tough for new arrivals.

KS: Please clarify what you mean by "static", especially with respect to my toons. I assure you, in my opinion/definition of static, NONE of my toons I ever played on ALFA 1 or ALFA 2 were ever even close - simply said, my toons are not at all static... so perhaps we might think differently what "static" means.

Not only that, I simply hate the idea of a "home server" for any toon. I play on 'ALFA'. Currently ALFA has 4 servers. My PC wanders and sees them all. He does have an "IC-home" on 1 live server currently. But he was not created on that server, and does not spend any majority of time the past year real time on that server where his IC-home is. He also has a Divine Shrine, on another server, not the one his IC-home is located on. Where the story takes him, he sets his hat... for a time.

I made my current toon to be a loner. I feel happy and if i do say so myself proud that i was very consistent enough in that PC-trait that almost everyone actually thinks all he does is sit around campfires and brood, doing nothing. On the very real contrary, my toon is extremely well traveled, on all 4 servers, over almost 3 years of play. In fact the only reason I know people think all I do is sit and soak up RPXP, is the real fact that for over 2 years I literally play 2-3 hours every weekday, and 5-9 hours every weekend, day, without fail.... and unfortuantely for a long long long time, and still recently, there's just no one on. So my toon's development over so long almost required him to become even more of a loner.

Do you think people would not call huge FOUL on me, if instead of spending all that time alone "soaking up RPXP", if I DID go out farming spawns all the time for more XP (while gaining RPXP as well!)? My PC is very wise. While "I" know I can farm almost any server with minimal risk, for huge XP, I don't because my toon would not do that.

I'd be fired and called a PGer then. Instead I get a sense of DMs calling foul on logging in! "PGing RPXP" sheesh, especially alone, and sitting at campfires or in taverns waiting for others to RP with to show up...



The "charm" of my "plan" for my current PC, was to "be there" when other PCs "just happened to walk by". The lonely, sagely, quirky Druid, that adventurers "happen by" often enough "somewhere" out of the way, or along a roadside, and hopefully (as so many dozens of other PCs have done the past 3 years) hopefully sit down at the campfire and chat a while... find out who this strange fellow is... It so happened, and thank goodness, the RPXP allowed my PC to also advance (very slowly) while doing this. But he sure is non-static.
This PC is quite a pacifist but in a very "Bruce Banner" style/kind of way... when needed, he'll drop the bombs no doubt. But would rather heal/protect/buff others who are silly enough to head out into that very dangerous wilderness!

To defend my non-static-ness, in ALFA1 my PC was a Tempus Beserking pure Fighter (for almost 4 years real time give or take, level 13 was last count before the "fall" of ALFA 1) - that did his quasi madness enraged adventuring very often on all ...what was it... 6? 7? ALFA1 servers? VERY minimal DM attention, and NO RPXP at all. I still played everyday for 4 years, and had a real fun time traveling everywhere. Again, playing in terrible timezones from South East Asia, usually alone, but consistently loving ALFA anyway, and logging in, cause that's what i like to do, just play.

[t-ice]

I think players will be much more inclined to keep their bios up to date if they saw it themselves, as opposed to buried on DM forums. Also they could maintain a version, as opposed to add stuff sporadically.

+1

I keep my bios on a wiki, for just that reason.

Yes but I do believe such a wiki needs some permission settings what is for DMs and what is for all. Perhaps not for every character, but for many. Which is already built into the website. I see stuff about servers I DM on when I log in, so the website knows whether I'm a DM and on which servers. Perhaps the player herself could even set which DM teams see the DM side of the bio and not.

I know it's just pining for more features to the system, but I have a feeling a "PC database" might prove to be popular. Also the public side of bios could act as an inspiration for others in the community and more importantly as PR. Wouldn't it be great if new players could browse and read about some of the active characters in the game! All maintained by the players about their own characters, soon as a platform for that is set. Dead/retired characters could probably be automatically marked as such since the website already hooks to that info. We could have last played info, too, to keep ancient and dusted characters from glogging the list. Add in player Timezone to help facilitate game.

[Zelknolf]

Don't believe Drupal will let you make a document with complex permissions (e.g. "Me, my friend Ted, and the BG DM team") or permissions that you don't have (e.g. "The BG DM team, even though I am not a BG DM").

Drupal's also super bad for discussion threads. So, some problem in how to organize such a thing.

[t-ice]

Don't believe Drupal will let you make a document with complex permissions (e.g. "Me, my friend Ted, and the BG DM team") or permissions that you don't have (e.g. "The BG DM team, even though I am not a BG DM").

Drupal's also super bad for discussion threads. So, some problem in how to organize such a thing.

DM discussion threads obviously should be aside, remaining on the forums. It would be a good thing to not have the bio info, and all the legacy versions of the bio, and pages of DM discussion all tangled up. Maybe there could be direct links between the two pages, but not crucial.

The objective would be three-fold:
1) Provide DMs with a up to date, concise version of your PCs story.
2) Provide a platform for players to showcase their characters, to read about each other's characters and be inspired (to RP even better, or plan interactions, etc.)
3) Create a showroom of existing characters for new and/or prospective members.

It does crucially depend on having a good enough interface to the database of PC bios to work. A sortable list of some kind? (timezone, last log in, server, status (active,retired,dead)) Certainly not a trivial thing. Dunno if it can be built peacemeal, starting from a simple alphabetic list of every active PC with a submitted bio? Sorting only becomes relevant once (if?) the database starts accruing more entries.

Shame if permissions are too hard It would have to be a minimum of "Me and DMs" on one side and "Every member" on the other, some way effectively. If "DMs" and "Everybody" are the only permission options, then could we have a separte "Export my PC bio as DMs see it" -function on top of that? I can see and retire my characters once logged on the website, so a handle that tells "this is my PC" must be there ... ? It'd be kinda funny to write the DM side of the bio so that you don't have access to it once submitted to the database (presumably from a form like a DM application?). But if you could then separately export your DM side bio to double check the current version it should work?

Well, just tossing ideas of what might energize the community, without much knowledge about what works. (as always)

[Zelknolf]

An up-to-date sorted list of active characters, by the servers they play on, is a big part of what the Advanced Log Parser does. We have that. And sorting will be relevant. There's like 140 of them right now (40 of which look like new guys who probably don't have anything written about them).

The trick, of course, would be linking it up to something else that players can edit, with a player interface that is safe to put in front of players. If we want to showcase bios, how do we pick which ones to showcase? Like if I were to pick on Dyslexic_Author's Sharran o' "oh no I'm really a merchant (you just know I'm not right because I have neither grace nor guile)", who is now long dead with other PCs rolled after so I can totally talk about it-- we can't really publish that.

So, yeah. Not a simple thing-- and probably not something that already exists out there.

[t-ice]

If we want to showcase bios, how do we pick which ones to showcase?

Because that list will grow stale quite fast, and to borrow a rhetoric tool, obvious polished advertising ploy is obvious. There's a huge difference in how it looks if a prospective members sees a list where the last edit was months ago versus a living list of actual breathing characters and their players. Something that inspires, and probably lessens the entry barrier by answering the question "what should I roll as my first PC to be a good match and mingle and have fun and games" with examples.

[Zelknolf]

I'd meant more from a "What set of metagame information to we find acceptable to present to everyone?" angle. The example of yonder dead Sharran merchant-- when he was alive, it would've been pretty hugely disruptive to play to make the information public, both to the character (who is now "out" while not being "out" -- but it's hard to scrub the knowledge from one's brain) and his rivals (who now have a burden of proof to show that their character's suspicions, if they're had, are valid).

I suppose we could filter those out, but that'd make ALFA look goodier than it is. There's a slight leaning in that direction in the actual population, I'll grant, but it's trivial compared to ALFA PCs' leaning toward chaos (or, at least, toward not being lawful).

[oldgrayrogue]

I would add that there are likely quite a few players in ALFA who have earned bucketloads of FREE RPXP from the script simply because they have many hours available to remain logged in game that others do not have.

I find it interesting that you call something free in the same sentence that you list the cost of the thing.

I might also notice that there are quite a few people in the world who have FREE FANCY CARS, just because they have more disposable income to spend on things like frivolous means of transportation.

I mean "free" in the sense of no risk and not connected to any requirement that you actually RP to earn it. The RPXP script does certainly come at a cost of time, though it seems like a lot of people are alone in a room, semi-afk or doing other stuff while reaping the benefits of it. My point, however, was that awarding XP for bios is not much different than awarding RPXP per script. I actually like the script, believe it or not, I just think it should be capped in some way so that people who have many hours available to be logged in don't end up with massive amounts of XP relative to the more casual player for just being around with a lot of time on their hands without the actual RP to back that XP up. What I would really love, and encourage, is if the script could be tied to actual IC RP. Then I would say INCREASE the XP awarded by the script. I played on a Middle Earth server where the amount of RPXP awarded by their script would make the Swifts among us cringe (And I say that with all affection Swifty) Hundreds of XP for tavern RP. The script even docked XP if it caught you using certain OOC phrases like "LOL" or "CYA" or whatever. It was pretty buggy though. The point was it was meant to incentivize IC RP by rewarding that style of play. If we could devise a script that basically made DM style awards of XP for actual IC RP then that would be a truly amazing system.

[Castano]

OGR I've toyed with the idea of finding a way to bonus RPXP (w/o touching the current system, as much as I dislike it, I will not make changes because we consistently have so many un-DM'd PCs).

Bonus RPXP woudl be for RP occurring in dangerous areas, or so many mins/hours after a combat versus a spawned monster, that sort of thing. This would drive RP XP towards rewards for playing DnD while RPing your PC. That would be my dream system.

As for PC bio XP I think we should award something for it. We should reward people maintaining IC-ness and a bio is part of that.

[Matti]

Promoting rp of any kind by rewarding xp isn't a bad idea at all. But I feel that handing out a static amount of xp for a bio isn't as effective as using the contents of the bio as both a source of inspiration and plothooks, and would gladly see something along the lines of t-ice reasoning. A dynamic and living document would be of both greater benefit and use for players and DMs alike when planning sessions and when really immersing oneself in a character. Most database solutions would handle this quite well, even Drupal can handle it some some extent I think by using a complicated venue of group affiliations and moderated threads. Surely a hassle to implement and not all recommended if it is as complex as I think it is, but I do think it is possible.

off-track: I do agree that rpxp is inferior to DM awarded xp and would happily vote for removing it, when we have a DM coverage that allows players of different time zones and carcadial rhythms to experience it.

Castano:(note, the following part is based on own experiences only) DMs that come online are quite seldom interested in creating an adventure or even participating in what happens right now and they seldom respond to tells or other forms of inquiry. At least according to my own experiences, they work best when times and dates are set for adventures. I've encountered a similar problem with player groups as they aren't always too keen on bringing along another player to their interaction or adventure. Something that might work here is to update the player groups listing on our homepage or to use a similar venue for players to check so that they can create and tweak their characters somewhat closer to existing groups and therefore enhancing their chances to rp with ALFAns.