ALFA's Faerun

[HEEGZ]

I've found myself wondering what the community feels about ALFA's version of Faerun. We currently seem to be offering a high role-play, mid-magic, high advancement, high crafting atmosphere. Is this by design or simply where things stand at present?

What I am wondering is what we see as our goal for playing in Faerun in the future? Do we want high advancement, high magic? Do we want low advancement, low magic? What sort of ratio do we want for gear between player crafted and adventured for?

I'm not entirely sure what my own answers are to these questions, but I'd like to hear some views on this. If you have a look at our pillars:

http://www.alandfaraway.org/node/467

...you will find that this pretty much describes the ALFA experience. However, what are preferences for rate of advancement and wealth control? Permadeath... how often do we want to allow IC resurrections? There are other questions, but hopefully you get the idea: what type of ALFA experience would you like to see, and how do we get there from here?

[Rumple C]

Low advancement, low magic.

Rolled (or averaged) hitpoints!
No safety net.

Perhaps an increasing failure rate on rezzes (if people want to keep bringing their pc back)

Wealth advancement should be merit based. Ie - You take the adventuring risk, you get the reward. You spend all time cybering, you collect only carpet burn.

[HEEGZ]

As a quick example of what I'm after, here's my take on a few of the pillars:

4 ) Permadeath. ALFA has permadeath for player characters.

So our players can die, but how often do we want to permit IC rezzes? My preference is almost never. Also, do we want to keep the -6 floor or get rid of it? etc.

7 ) Moderated Advancement. Character level advancement shall be moderated by the DMs and by standards.

We have RP/XP scripts. Players can level pretty rapidly at present. Do we want the current rate increased or decreased, or keep about the same?

8 ) Controlled Wealth. Wealth, which includes gold, gems, magic items and mundane items as well as intangible items, shall be controlled by the DMs in accord with standards set by the Administration for the purpose of ensuring play balance.

I think we are low wealth but mid-magic. I wouldn't mind seeing us loosen up wealth a bit, maybe more of a mid wealth or high magic setting, with slower advancement overall. Maybe it is easier to just leave as is...

[Adanu]

High Advancement, mid-high magic depending on DM campaign needs, high crafting depending on willingness.

We're about roleplaying and having fun with our characters first and foremost, so it only stands to reason we get attached to our PCs unless you're OGR and have a perm detachment from everything :p

As far as I'm concerned, advancement of character xp and wealth wise is absolutely necessary in terms of power since there are some things you simply cannot fight without certain items or spells, or do without getting levels for diplo or whatever. Make our advancement as low as Exodus was, and watch everyone leave due to no ability to survive.

Crafting is really all about peoples patience and DM willingness to deal with it. Personally, I've been dealing with crafting since I became a DM and I have no problems with making stuff or importing items for players. Crafting is in the world.

Only real thing I think should be discussed is how people feel about current PC turnover rate. I guarantee that'll get a discussion

[HEEGZ]

Only real thing I think should be discussed is how people feel about current PC turnover rate. I guarantee that'll get a discussion

Care to elaborate? I'm hoping for a candid discussion.

[Ithildur]

I don't think we've actually gone full tilt high advancement/high magic or anything even close; believe me, I've seen PWs that are like that.

We're certainly faster advancement compared to earlier days, but it seemed like that's by design for better or worse. We're simply reaping the consequences of what we've been sowing for the past several years, incrementally making the game easier and less lethal and giving way to the 'breeze through low levels' trends.

Whether the results are desirable or not is another question, but there it is; we've intentionally been making the game easier/less 'hardcore' for some time. Seems like that's what people kept wanting, and now that we have it, they don't play much.

[FoamBats4All]

Yeah. We're certainly not high-magic. Or high advancement. I'd say:
- Roleplay: Medium-high.
- Magic: Medium-low
- Advancement: Medium-low
- Crafting: Medium-low

Which is fine I guess. Until you get to the higher levels, at which time things should become a bit more high-magic/crafting if applicable. But, not always the case, varies by character/DM.

Our balance is fairly good, with (H)DMs tilting it a variety of ways based on preference. Sounds fine to me as-is.

[dergon darkhelm]

Advancement: back to the 1,000 XP a week a guideline.

Wealth: Only really matters when it comes to obtaining magic *see below

Magic: Should be readily available off-the-shelf but monitored for wealth guidelines relative to PC level.


Resurrection Spend the cash and know a cleric that will cast it? No problem with me.

[Castano]

we're not anywhere near high advancement, unless you play 24/7. I had proposed XP caps for people that zoom in levels because they are simply logged in 24/7, but that went no where.

I would say we are high advancement for some people, low advancement for others. I suggest we work on balance, not making changes that will negatively impact 80% of the players due to a few edge cases.

[Ronan]

A Song of Ice and Fire is a good example of low magic fantasy. FR and D&D are just not low-magic settings. Its hard to be low magic when a 3rd level character can FLY on his own power.

I think your average Joe prefers low-magic, less epic fantasy. Consider the popularity of SoI&F, the Lord of the Rings, and that sort of thing. High-magic settings seem to appeal more to gamers, geeks, and people who enjoy exploring complex rulesets instead of exploring stories and plots. Thats not to say there's a dichotomy between story and magic, but games can only be so complex and one can be simplified to make way for the other. Also, as magic becomes more powerful stories become more about the magic system, its rules and idiosyncrasies. They become less like stories we're accustomed to because they're based less on how reality works.

Its also a lot harder for a complex magic system to be internally consistent (ok, as Gödel showed this is probably impossible, but there are degrees of believability here), because its all make-believe. D&D is very inconsistent, and D&D settings cannot be taken to the logical conclusion of the ruleset. Some players may say they want the rules applied evenly everywhere, but this is impossible. D&D works pretty well for adventuring games, but falls apart if applied much beyond that (e.g. crafting and the economy).

There are other reasons to like low-magic, such as less of a need to worry about PC wealth. For example, having 25 +1 swords ('cause +1 is the best there is, lets say) doesn't improve anyone's adventuring power beyond a single +1 sword. However I don't think D&D can be made low-magic very easily; many classes would have to be changed.

Higher-levels and higher-magic also mean more abilities, which means more things are needed to run a game: coding, DM and player knowledge, etc. This is one of the reasons I prefer lower-magic (and therefore lower-level) play. In all my time in ALFA I can only think a single DM I've ever had who had a complete grasp of D&D's magic system, and that was Spider Jones. I'm sure others are as or more knowledgeable, but I can't recall any who have DMed me. The vast majority of DMs are just not interested in learning the caster meta-game well enough to apply it mid-session. They want to run sessions, tell stories, and scare the wits out of their players.

ALFA has a sweet spot for characters of levels of around 3-10, though obviously this varies by server. We can't provide the same quality of experience for characters of every level. ALFA is just too small, and we don't have enough DMs and content to cover that vast range of PC power. We were better at this in NWN1 when we had a lot more servers and DMs, but there was still a lot of grumbling about the level 20s and a lot of deathtraps for the level 1s. Since we have a level 1 start we must support low-levels, so its generally the higher levels who suffer from lack of content.

Magic: I wish we were in a lower-magic setting, but that is not D&D. Oh well.

Advancement: I wish our range of character power was more constrained, so dying was less of an OOC penalty, staff had less content to maintain, new players could jump right into the action, older PCs had more to do, and like-powered PC density was higher. Advancement speed I don't care about so much. I don't like RP-XP, DM-XP, or anything which provides OOC "rewards" to a PC.

Crafting: Crafting or adventuring for loot? Doesn't matter to me, though I have no interest in supporting crafting myself. Someone had to have made all that crap adventurers keep taking from dead bodies, right?

Permadeath: Rezes are part of the setting. I don't care so much about this but don't see any problem with how things are currently.

[Castano]

well you can make it low magic if all you use are orcs goblins and kobolds...but who wants to play that game?

[Xanthea]

All right you asked for it.

1) I want a lower level spread because that makes for better gaming for everyone. This doesn't mean "Rargh kill everyone repeatedly eternal level 1s woohoo character turnover!" This means I want a non-linear advancement system. I want it to take (all on average of course) one month for a fresh character to get to level 6. I want it to take six months for a character to get to level 9. And then I want advancement from that point on to slow to a glacial and challenging endeavor. This type of advancement reduces the level gap without getting us all stuck in some sort of primitive poking goblins with sticks, forever, loop.

Let's talk more about advancement at 9+. By that point I want advancement to basically require great deeds out of the PCs. No more RPXP farming. No more "Here you chatted with an NPC have some event xp". I want the vast majority of xp from this point on to be DMXP and I want it to be earned. If you want to advance further you basically have to slay a lich, or a dragon, or found your own temple, or start a merchant company, or take control of a region. Epic deeds. People getting above 9 should damn well earn it and everyone should damn well know who the hell they are and why they're so badass.

Getting to 6 is a right. Getting to 10 is something you earn and not everyone is going to have what it takes. And while we're on the subject of DMXP, drastically increase rewards for PCs who do risky and brave things.

2) The death system protects the helpless and lets the strong stand on their own two feet. Bleed cap = your PC level. A hapless level 1 can't drop below -1. A fearsome level 10 can get smacked straight to dead in one swipe.

Why? Because high levels have the tools to defend themselves, low levels don't. A high level character has the hp to protect from some stupid x3 axe crit slaying them on the spot, he has healing, he has AC, he has any number of other useful tricks. A low level lives or dies on the roll of the dice and getting obliterated because some mook rolled double 20s is not fun. Additionally the variable bleed cap makes mixed level parties more viable. You can threaten a high level with horrible death without risking smearing the low level who just wanted something fun to do across the floor as a fine red paste.

And while we're at it, IC raises are not a bad thing! Right now we have the situation where you can basically either KILL the PC or you can bounce him off the bleed cap without any consequences whatsoever. An IC raise is the happy middle ground where PCs can lose something meaningful (tons of gp and xp) without having to be wiped off the map. I want to see MORE IC raises because that means people are doing risky things and taking heavy blows without losing characters. Because a high character turnover rate is not sustainable for the server.

3) I want a sizable chunk of PnP spells gone. They're incoherent, unbalancing, and make for a dumb fantasy setting. 3.5e is not a fantasy setting, it's a comic book. It is next to impossible to have a serious setting when you have lunatics zipping around in the sky or talking to each other over magical telephones or teleporting across the world for a cup of tea. I like high levels, it's more fun to me when you're not going to go down to a goblin flinging a pebble at you, but I HATE the baggage that comes along with high levels in the form of casters breaking the setting over their knee and laughing heartily.

If people love their PnP spells too much then my alternative offer is to make level 1-3 PnP spells require Spell Focus in that spell's school, and level 4+ PnP spells require Greater Spell Focus in that school. Okay so some casters can teleport and others can cast Sending. But no one caster can do everything, and they're paying an actual price for this enormous RP power their chosen class gets. And maybe casters develop a reputation as "that guy" you go to if you need to do X instead of them all being nearly interchangeable.

4) Get rid of the goddamn loot standards as related to PCs. Standards are fine for DMs in terms of "Did this level 1 REALLY earn a +20 ice cream machine for stepping on the rat in the basement?"

But, in similar fashion to point #1, some people earn greater rewards than others. The PC who is a multiple dragon slayer, nearly dying horribly (or actually dying and getting raised!) repeatedly has earned the right to be 20x richer than the similarly leveled bar fly. The master thief PC who has broken into the houses of all the lords in town has earned the right to be 20x richer than the similarly leveled goblin stomper.

Worry less about adhering to some concept of "B- but at level X the guide clearly says this PC should be able to kill monster Y." Some PCs are just going to be more capable than other ones and less worrying about DM guides and CRs would do this place a world of good.

Edit - I forgot 5)

And in the same way I want high levels to be hard to get to, I want high levels to MEAN something. I want high levels to be the ones who are getting out there and shaping and changing the setting. I want them to be ruling towns, I want them to be PCs of political influence and clout. I don't want it to be "Okay you're level 10 now... now you get to fight SUPER DIRE GOBLINS. In the UNDERDARK!"

This is a persistent world, not a MMO. Let's see PCs who've earned it through their trials and tribulations have the ability to start making some persistent changes to that persistent world.

[Ithildur]

well you can make it low magic if all you use are orcs goblins and kobolds...but who wants to play that game?

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1231


Some of your points I don't disagree with Xan, although this

Getting to (lvl) 6 is a right

is utter nonsense. I really think fundamentally your gaming tastes are a poor fit for ALFA, and that says it all. *shrug* Nothing wrong with those tastes, they just don't fit ALFA well. And oddly enough I note that you just enjoyed a campaign with Rumple where 'Getting to lvl 6 is a right' would have made no sense.

[Xanthea]

is utter nonsense.

Perhaps if you didn't read it. It is a right in the sense of "You don't need DM xp and to be doing awesome things to get to 6. You just need to not die and to suck up plenty of timed XP or whatever, who cares."

[Xanthea]

Oh and one other thing that's a much more minor quibble.

6) Let's get away from the dumbness that is NPC/world level guides. I'd rather not have the majority of the world dying to a house cat or exploding if you so much as look at them.

Let's say that the level for the average healthy but unremarkable adult is level a 3 commoner. Let's say that the average "green" recruit is a level 3 warrior. Let's say that the average veteran soldier is a level 6. In short let's at least try to make the setting seem like lower fantasy than it is by not giving PCs the ability to effortlessly cleave through a million town guards without breaking a sweat.

And while we're at it, if it's codable, let's start all PCs as 2 commoner/1 class level. And after they get 1k xp they become 1 commoner/2 class level. And after that they become 3 class level, their shameful commoner levels gone forever.