JaydeMoon wrote:Thank you, Avaz
Below, I'd like to address something brought up in the other thread, and by extension lewt generation and standards:
NickD wrote:I'm kind of with Mikayla here. Sort of. My memory may be a bit off here, but I vaguely remember Jayde twinking FI when he was a DM and she was a player on WD. There was no charge and nothing was proven as such, but it was pretty blatant nonetheless. However, it was also quite a long time ago and he has since said that he has improved, which I think is fair enough.
At this point, I think Jayde is probably our best option. Even if a bit of favouritism happens behind the scenes between himself and FI, our other options include someone who is apparently running as a joke, someone who was DMA before had some sort of nervous breakdown, abused an entire server and quit and one of ALFA's biggest powergamers, who shouts and screams and throws tantrums whenever someone tries to punish him.
Eh.
Mikayla wrote:Your memory is not off. The investigation was just starting when FI's toon either died or was retired, thus mooting the investigation.
The investigation did not end as a result of FI retiring that PC. Had there been something untoward going on, it would have been investigated as an inappropriate act. The retiring of the PC did not erase what 'may' have happened. The oversimplification of what she
perceived to have happened does Mikayla no credit here.
I'll start with a strange notion to put out there, considering everything else. It was Squams that said:
Squamatus wrote:Now before anyone starts crying about Jayde twinking a roommate or a buddy, please keep in mind that Jayde twinked everyone
While I wouldn't go so far as to say I was twinking
anybody, somewhat supported by the fact that no one ever talked to me about giving items out to anybody (other than mutterings and forum flames), I did operate under an attitude that this was high fantasy adventure and I was more than willing to drop loot on my players. This attitude was not shared by most of the DM Corps, who mistakenly felt that we were a single PC, permadeath,
low-wealth PW. Even with standards suggesting that it is alright to grant PCs a moderate level of wealth, DMs are still wary of giving anything out, as many players on TSM will tell you.
So yes, I felt no reason not to give out fun magic and gear.
To
ALL of PCs involved in my campaigns, plots, and one-offs.
From my platform:
I can not express how important I feel the standards and training process is. I am a DM who enjoys rewarding PCs tangibly. There are some who will tell you that I have been heavy-handed about it in the past. They would not be wrong. I did not have a solid idea of the worth of certain items and effects, their intrinsic value.
So I actually already addressed this.
However, to the facts behind this
particular incident:
Posted (rightfully so) by Rick90210 was a concern about gear he found on a character played by FI. It included a ring that blew Rick away.
Ring of Health
CSW (5) 2/day
CMW (3) 2/day
CLW (1) 2/day
Heal (11) 1 use only (after which the entire item crumbles to dust)
Now, njuberry of creating what amounts to a 5th level Cleric without actually having a cleric around aside...
The value of the ring was calculated (I think by AcadiusLost) as 34650. Standards of now would value it at 19598. That's a decrease of more than 40% of the original estimated worth. Suddenly it's a little less eye popping and more in the realm of jaw dropping
Now, onto the facts that were not revealed in the post, but that I discussed with an AR:
This item was a drop during time spent on Daggerford. It as during a dungeon crawl that involved SEVERAL players, ranging in level from 4-9. It involved lots of nasty critters. The ring was the most valuable drop.
I would like to note that the even the corrected value of the ring is outside current wealth standards for a 9th level PC. It is just outside the 'extreme' award level.
I did not know pricing at the time and especially did not understand 'secondary property penalties' and the like. I didn't think about how in adding more properties, the properties were more valuable because they came on the same slot as another property. It's something I totally understand now. The secondary properties were a full 3000 of that value. Not that it matters overmuch, but the non penalized value was well within the 'extreme' award value and a theoretically a justified drop if the CR of the encounter were high enough.
Now, my thought behind creating the ring was that somebody who was not a healer would be able to have and make use of the ring when they did not have a healer present, or their healer had exhausted healing magic.
It did not occur to me that such an item would be given to a healer.
I dropped the item near one of the higher level PCs as they searched the area.
It was picked up and identified. The person who had it determined that it might best go to the healer and thus gave it to FI's PC. I was not in the habit of blocking what I felt were actions taken IC.
In hindsight, maybe I should have. I should have said, "No, that's for you! Don't give it to anybody else."
The interesting thing about NickD bringing this up is that, when this fact that it was a drop that another PC picked up and that PC gave it to FI's PC came up, NickD came out of the peanut gallery (that is to say he was otherwise uninvolved with the whole discussion and was not a player or DM for the PC, or on the servers involved) and made a presumptuous statement when he said:
NickD wrote:Read: That member decided Lira should have it because Jayde told him that it was meant for her.
Without full view of the facts, operating solely with the information that A) FI's PC had the item and that B) It was said that another PC got the item first and gave it to FI's PC, NickD came to the conclusion that I
must have specifically said to the PC that initially picked up the ring, "Hey, I know I dropped that where your character would pick it up, but really I need you to give that ring to FI." Because no other explanation is at all posible, given the circumstances, right?
---------
I would like to point out that even in the Wild West days of ALFA, while I was giving bags of loot out to everyone and their mother, and no one else seemed to be, every once in a while you'd run across a special item, or PCs with a grip of special items, kind of out of nowhere.
And during those days we had a 10K+ item thread. Supposedly all 10K + items were supposed to make it into that thread. However, they did not and at the beginning, because I did care about
trying to get things right, I not only entered items I gave or that were commissioned (at the time it was considered that on WD if you could pay the price, you could get the item crafted, that changed after an incident involving a true seeing helm), I entered any items I found on any PCs. I did not actually differentiate, at the time, between items I gave or items I found, but the breakdown is thus:
Items I dropped or awarded: 4
Items commissioned on WD that I adjudicated: 4
Items I did not create but found on other PCs: 13
The first three pages are mostly me posting. In a time when no one else was really giving out any magic items, there I am recording 21 10K+ items. No wonder I was being seen as a lewt generating machine.
I stopped posting everything in the 10K+ thread after finding a 50K item on a level 9 PC. 50K is more than TWICE the 'extreme award' cut off value for an item given to a single PC. When I brought this up as potentially an issue, I was shouted down, told that the player's RP was impeccable, that only the Bracers (of Dex+5, 25K, yet another item outside the extreme award cutoff level for a level 9 PC) were really worth anything (the 50K item was Keen Rapier +2 +1d6 Divine), and to basically stfu.
Told a 50K item wasn't really worth that much, and one wonders why, in the days of my njubbery in regards to standards, I didn't think a ring that cast healing spells was really all that great an item?
Shortly thereafter I stopped posting in the 10K+ thread, considering the whole thing a farce that had sullied my reputation.
So anyway, items, I like seeing PCs have that special item that means a lot to their character's development and I love that we have standards in place to guide me to a path of balance and fairness.
