A Land Far Away

A question recently put to the Admin begs a poll to the community, due to fairness issues. It has been asked of the Administration that ALFA honor the Legacy transferal of PC's from the Exodus, Amn server into Alfa. It has been asked that this transference be total, that PC's previously playing in Exodus be allowed a full swap over to Alfa. The PA thought it best to poll the community in this instance, as a transference would be of higher level pc's previously played within a different ruleset under different guidance. The Transference will likely have a great toll on the tech team as far as transference and maintanence, as well as many man hours dedicated to the remaking and swapping over of gear if applicable and doable. Due to fairness issues, the community is asked to respond to the above.

This poll shall in no way dictate the decision of the Administration, but lies in overcoming one of the obstacles presented during the debate, namely will it be fair to the community IF this is done. It is in no way binding toward policy. This poll reflects an inquiry from the Office of the PA in reguards to the community, and should not be taken to represent the whole of the Administration.

Technical issues allowing, i.e., on the understanding that Amn legacy character players are willing to be a flexible should contentious issues arise, why not. Amn’s legacy PCs, if anything, are probably under-powdered and under-wealth by ALFA standards. No better way to welcome the great ship Amn into port than for it to arrive with a few already well settled crew aboard.

I’m not bringing my Exodus PC across; the Frippet is going to become an NPC.

I voted yes with one caveat. If it truly a huge undertaking to reproduce items etc then some alternative should be fashioned. It is not fair to the rest of the community for a group of players to command an inordinate amount of tech work. I propose that Amn PCs be given the option to be remade under ALFA's present system, rebuilt up to their present level and given gold within our guidelines up to average wealth for their level. If there are 1 or 2 "story critical" items that these PCs have and the plater of a PC or a DM wants to tool it and mule it in exchange for its gold value, that is fine too, but it should not be up to tech to do it. This just makes it a simple rebuild without the transfer of actual items from the old Amn server. It gives the players their PCs and a rough equivalence of their items and wealth which I think is fair.

Yes, and contact should be attempted with AMN players who didnt transition to ALFA. Being able to bring back their previous pc may be enough to tempt them into trying the ALFA crack.

Please no, please seriously no...

I think I'm for this. Not too many characters, we're probably looking at 5 or so at best? All good RPers, maybe it can tempt a few back from the beyond. And by high level we're talking around 6 or so, maybe up to 9? Level wise progression was a hell of a lot slower than ALFA, and Amn was basically magic gets you burnt at the stake, I can't see too many standards issues.

Yes,

though not automaticaly. maybe an app sent by PM. That way we retain a measure of control as I really dont know what/how/who are those characters.

I would assume all requests would be granted, but we should at least review the characters before simply taking them in.
If what I-KP/CNS said is accurate then all's well and there would be no balance issues and we can approve them.
But simply approving without checking first seems wrong.

I'd say Ice/bogs probably know most toons and could review such apps.

Also, what rumple said.
Also, one PC per player of course (:

The ACR is not designed for the abrupt appearance of these PCs.
The ACR has never been designed for this.
We've always taken as part of the design that PCs that our ruleset has to handle will be PCs sourced from our ruleset; we can't maintain a ruleset that does anything else.

Attempting to do this will cause repeated visible failures in our data and logging, and provide false reports to our DMs and admin about the PCs unless tech actively works to handle these special characters who are apparently allowed to advance without being subject to ALFA's standards or oversight and little attention paid to compatibility.


Exodus was a splinter project, remember. They actively and intentionally broke off of ALFA because they didn't like the way we were run. They chose to not be a part of this project, and I am not keen on supporting the issues that this adoption implies.

Making the same toon and leveling them?
that wont create too many problems would it?

it mainly means (correct me if im wrong please) that they will simply have a large bank of untapped XP from statics that they could use.

Sense some of them allready have toons here at around the same level, and sense its a low number of toons I dont expect a huge balance upset.

getting a new server + a handful of local toons to that server seems kinda nice.

At first I was thinking like OGR, though sort of like when doing "organized" campaigns in PnP like Xen'drik (sp?) Expeditions. You want to bring a level X to the table, here's your starting gold suitable to level X, buy junk from the following list of books, and start playing.

In ALFA terms this might be "here's the clothes on your back and average wealth per level" (which may be higher or lower than should've/could've had), and you can purchase equivalent kit to what you had in an OOC run around a bunch of shops, or tooling items to match "old items", within the limits of like, the DM extreme award column in our rewards charts. If you run out of gold before you run out of "desirable items of the past", sorry about that, happens. Same goes for checking on legal builds (same point buy as everyone else), legal domains per god, feats only at the "timing" could've been taken in ALFA (watch out for toughness or anything else we made a level 1 feat). This is a lot of manual work, though maybe if it only applies to "a few people", it may not be that big a deal.

However, Zelknolf's comment gave me pause. That is, even with the "manual" chance of kitting out naked equivalents of characters from another project, I will take Z's word for it if this would cause a host of ACR problems (bad holes in data when PCs appear out of nowhere, 100% XP granted by DMs?). Philosophically there could be some differences in "how and why folks advanced", in non-ALFA, I figure though that the apprehensions on point get raised if there was "fast, risk free advancement" vs. what sometimes people say was much slower advancement. No first hand experience here on whether things were fast or slow, makes it hard to comment on philosophy differences.

Don't really know what would be a good idea here. Bringing a character sheet from a different game and asking for an "import" to this game, it almost sounds like a case-by-case decision, but once you do it for one person, would need to have a "fair" way to provide access to further applicants. Extraordinary PC like in its way. Strange stuff.

Further explanation is perhaps needed; would rolling new pc's with the names of the exodus toons with at least some appropriate gear and xp given to match their old lvls break ACR? If not, then I would support this.

I am probably just ignorant on the tech implications, but how would creating a new PC from scratch under our ruleset, then awarding it XP equivalent to prior level on Amn and gold according to an average for wealth according to guidelines screw up our ruleset? I see the static quest issue -- valid point.

That said if it does cause all sorts of issues then change my vote to no. If you are really in love with the concept, just reroll the PCs and start them over here from scratch.

All I ask for if I swap is a remake, XP given, and items, gold equivalent. I don't need an import. Whoever is asking for a full import and intergration is ignoring the tech side.

That being said, if even a remake under the ruleset of ALFA is considered' too much... Seriously? Our PCs wouldn't be getting anymore attention then XP and gold for gear. hat'd DM, not tech.

did all exodus characters start at lvl 3?

We currently have PCs who were remade and had XP and gear dropped on the spanking new toon -- we've also had characters simply being renamed without tech's help.

We've had unhooked adjustments to XP; we've had rebuilds by yanking all of a PC's levels away and making them redo the lot.

These things never go perfectly smoothly. The players often think so; experienced DMs often think so. But it looks like things work because tech is behind the scenes putting out fires; I honestly don't even know exactly how frequent it is-- I know that all of my projects have been at least somewhat behind schedule on account of them, I know that we've had to create entire new projects to handle some of those wrecks, I know that some of the problems they produce go unreported for years (we're finding out more often now, though, because we've made such dramatic improvements to our reporting tools, and more frequently rely on those assumptions defined in the early ACR), and I know that I'm not the only one on my team resolving them.