Jump to content

DISCUSS: CharGen & System Changes


Linda

Recommended Posts

While we do not have the time to launch into any major projects right now, with the current level of activity on the game we do want to start at least considering what projects to prioritize.

To do that, we would like to ask for some input. This is going to be specifically about the CharGen and about any coded systems. We are not looking for feedback on how hard or easy the instructions & commands were but rather we want to know how you feel certain things work in terms of fleshing out your character and enhancing roleplay.

1) CharGen: Assets & Flaws

How do you feel these work?

Are there too many or too few assets and/or flaws?

Should we only have assets and flaws that have direct system effects?

Do you have any suggestions for what to add and/or remove?

2) CharGen: Stats

How do you feel these work?

Should there have been a group for social stats such as charisma, even if they could only be applied against NPCs and through Staff-judgement?

3) CharGen: Skills

How do you feel these work?

Are there too many or too few?

Should there have been social skills such as persuasion, even if they could only be applied against NPCs and through Staff-judgement?

Should there be more skillgroups than Combat or Scholarship? For example a group for Courtly skills that require taking a Courtier asset, just like Combat requires a matching asset. This would probably require more skills that fit in with that group and possibly a reworking of the Noble pool of points.

4) CharGen: In the event of changes...

Are you willing to re-CG if there are significant changes to the system?

5) Advancement

How do feel XP & SP work?

What else do you want to be able to use XP & SP for?

If we decide to go ahead with tier advancement (mainly IV to III), are you willing to re-CG? This would probably mean a loss of XP already spent on skills and any assets purchased would just be counted towards the new limit, not added on top.

5) Rumors

How do you feel this works?

6) Influence & Renown

Far from working as it should currently, but what do you think of the general idea? That is, being able to measure your influence and your renown against others and being able to use influence to improve odds at getting court positions.

7) Female Characters

No, not how you feel they work. ;) But is there anything we can do with the CG or the other code to make it better for female characters?

8) Other comments

The various combat-related systems are not brought up separately because other than the jousting, they are not what we see as close to complete solutions. We'd love to have a full-fledged combat system, but with just the one code, it isn't very feasible. However, if there's anything you'd like to see done with the current systems or any other additions you'd like to see that are CG or System related, let us know.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1) CharGen: Assets & Flaws

Should we only have assets and flaws that have direct system effects?

I think that if we have flaws that have no direct system effects, they shouldn't be limited. I'm only allowed to have 4 flaws, tho ICly I have reason to have more. If we're using them as decoration to the character, they shouldn't be limited.

2) CharGen: Stats

How do you feel these work?

I find stats strange outside of systems. Do they all play into some system? If they don't, I prefer more text oriented descriptions of abilities like you get in Assets/Flaws/Skills.

3) CharGen: Skills

How do you feel these work?

Perhaps I'm a twink, but with the way things stand, I'm inclined to put new XP into skills that support coded systems. I see that as not being ideal. In theory, I likely should have invested points into Janden's hunting skill over the last year, since he spent 6 months in the woods. However, I didn't.

I'm sure some people are good about this sort of thing, but I'd guess the majority will put the points into skills that show up more visibly in systems.

4) CharGen: In the event of changes...

Are you willing to re-CG if there are significant changes to the system?

Sure.

5) Advancement

How do feel XP & SP work?

XP seems fine. But, as noted above, I'm not sure it always gets assigned to the right place.

SP are sorta black magic. I understand the difficulty in assigning these sort of things, so I don't really have great suggestions as to how to make it better than it currently is. Maybe the process could be more transparent.

If we decide to go ahead with tier advancement (mainly IV to III), are you willing to re-CG? This would probably mean a loss of XP already spent on skills and any assets purchased would just be counted towards the new limit, not added on top.

Re-CG is fine. Would the numbers come out to to be roughly equal? I get that the XP already spent wouldn't sit on top of new Tier numbers, but it shouldn't come out as a net loss ...

5) Rumors

How do you feel this works?

I dislike the rumor system as it stands and believe it hurts RP, compared to the systems I've seen on other games. However, I've discussed this before and I'm not going to rehash my reasons/suggestions here unless you really need them again.

6) Influence & Renown

Far from working as it should currently, but what do you think of the general idea? That is, being able to measure your influence and your renown against others and being able to use influence to improve odds at getting court positions.

I guess it's a decent idea in theory. But, given how it is tied into the rumour system . . . I don't know. Maybe I don't understand it fully. I feel like my influence and renown should be captured by my RP with those around me. It's a hard thing to code.

I'd rather see the game have more low-level staff who have an idea what's going on in day-to-day RP and can play important NPCs, to find good fits for positions and drive that level of political RP.

8) Other comments

Regarding coded systems - has additional code staff been looked at?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1) CharGen: Assets & Flaws

Should we only have assets and flaws that have direct system effects?

I think that if we have flaws that have no direct system effects, they shouldn't be limited. I'm only allowed to have 4 flaws, tho ICly I have reason to have more. If we're using them as decoration to the character, they shouldn't be limited.

There's a couple of reasons for limiting it even so. One is that it just gets hard to overview for us which flaws are the 4 that make up for the assets and which are extras. Another is that we feel that it can be overdone, heaping flaws on a character.

2) CharGen: Stats

How do you feel these work?

I find stats strange outside of systems. Do they all play into some system? If they don't, I prefer more text oriented descriptions of abilities like you get in Assets/Flaws/Skills.

They are used in joust and melee, they would be used in a future combat system, but they are not as important as skills.

3) CharGen: Skills

Perhaps I'm a twink, but with the way things stand, I'm inclined to put new XP into skills that support coded systems. I see that as not being ideal. In theory, I likely should have invested points into Janden's hunting skill over the last year, since he spent 6 months in the woods. However, I didn't.

True, this is a known issue, certainly. That said, I am not sure it can be dealt with. Reducing the skills to just those that work in existing systems would leave it very skewed towards combat.

Technically, any skill can be rolled by Staff if a scenario calls for it. We could make a command for allowing players to test any given skill ... but we're concerned that it wouldn't work well without Staff input.

5) Advancement

SP are sorta black magic. I understand the difficulty in assigning these sort of things, so I don't really have great suggestions as to how to make it better than it currently is. Maybe the process could be more transparent.

What we try do when we assign SPs is to look at the votes for the month and also at what the nominated players have done. Character-developing roleplay that generates roleplay for others and results in a good story, that's the goal. We also try to spread them out, even if the same person might be worthy two months in a row.

Re-CG is fine. Would the numbers come out to to be roughly equal? I get that the XP already spent wouldn't sit on top of new Tier numbers, but it shouldn't come out as a net loss ...

Its incredibly hard to say. In most cases, we don't think anyone could have made up the full difference between a IV and a III, but they may not be able to match all high skills.

It has been very tricky to come up with a good approach. Initially, we thought of just promoting people and giving them new caps and an allotment of points, but if they were to go back on the roster we'd then have IIIs that weren't quite full IIIs around.

5) Rumors

I dislike the rumor system as it stands and believe it hurts RP, compared to the systems I've seen on other games. However, I've discussed this before and I'm not going to rehash my reasons/suggestions here unless you really need them again.

The one thing I wonder about, I guess, is what you feel is worse about this system than systems you have seen on other games? Is it the connection to Influence?

6) Influence & Renown

I guess it's a decent idea in theory. But, given how it is tied into the rumour system . . . I don't know. Maybe I don't understand it fully. I feel like my influence and renown should be captured by my RP with those around me. It's a hard thing to code.

I'd rather see the game have more low-level staff who have an idea what's going on in day-to-day RP and can play important NPCs, to find good fits for positions and drive that level of political RP.

I agree that it is a hard thing to code, but at the same time, I do feel it is futile to do effective court intrigue without some kind of measure of success that isn't just peer judged from scene to scene. Looking at other games, being able to measure your social success in a number seems to have a positive influence on that kind of roleplay. We wouldn't try to run a joust without code because, ultimately, everyone wants to win. Similarly, I think there needs to be a coded arbitrator of the political combat.

In part, perhaps, because its true we do have a very small staff and we always imagined having a very small staff because of the way we want to run the game. But given the increase in players lately, we may have to look at trying to find a couple more.

8) Other comments

Regarding coded systems - has additional code staff been looked at?

Its pretty much impossible to find coders for a MUSH today. Especially coders willing to work with established systems done by someone who isn't a top-notch coder. Not to mention coders that we'd trust with the privilege levels needed to do coded systems. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My comments are really only about SP/XP. I definitely want to see advancement, but losing almost 5 years worth of XP that I've RPed for, where I've demonstrated learning and practice in RP and spent the points accordingly...that would probably hurt. That said, I understand that there are stat increases that would come of changing tiers, and I very much want to see that change made possible, but would it not be a better measure of advancement if it were modified so that skills stay the same, considering that the increase in skills are what demonstrates (codewise, anyway) the amount of work done on a character's development?

Of course, code-wise I've no idea how that would work. But much as I dearly want the opportunity to advance Reyna (and I've avoided playing any char above a IV in hopes that I will be able to), I'm not sure it's worth sacrificing the consideration I put into which skills to improve and which had no basis in RP and were therefore not worth improving, if that makes sense.

As far as awarding XP/SP from +noms, I think we're all a bit in the dark about how that's done. What is a "big" award of XP, and what a "small?" I got some XP out of the last round after most of the Highgarden RP had been done, and had no idea how to feel about it because we have no way of knowing what constitutes a large XP award. Maybe a scale would be helpful? Then we'd know whether to be proud of our accomplishment, or whether to ponder making more friends. ;)

R

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There's a couple of reasons for limiting it even so. One is that it just gets hard to overview for us which flaws are the 4 that make up for the assets and which are extras. Another is that we feel that it can be overdone, heaping flaws on a character.

It could still be at your discretion. I just feel if I have 2 enemies, I should be able to list 2 enemies. Or I shouldn't list any at all.

They are used in joust and melee, they would be used in a future combat system, but they are not as important as skills.

I just wasn't sure if they were all used or not.

True, this is a known issue, certainly. That said, I am not sure it can be dealt with. Reducing the skills to just those that work in existing systems would leave it very skewed towards combat.

Technically, any skill can be rolled by Staff if a scenario calls for it. We could make a command for allowing players to test any given skill ... but we're concerned that it wouldn't work well without Staff input.

If the system were to be re-worked heavily, I could picture combat being put into it's own box.

Appropriate characters could have advancement for both combat skills and 'other' skills, with a different pool of points.

Because, while I said 'twinking' above, I also think it's fairly justifiable for Knights to be improving weapon skills all the time, assuming they drill and practice as many do ICly. But, I also think it's reasonable to both improve in Sword and Dancing in the same year.

The one thing I wonder about, I guess, is what you feel is worse about this system than systems you have seen on other games? Is it the connection to Influence?

So, part of the problem is the system itself. I realize it's supposed to promote IC sharing of rumours that you know and others don't. The only time I've ever seen this used is when people start chatting on a channel about who has rumor #7, and then find someone to 'share' it with them. I think rumors get created and never get heard by anyone. Characters who are no specced properly just never hear the rumors, and thus they don't actually come into play.

As for other games? I like the ability to post rumors that are not necessarily terrible gossip, but stuff that would be floating around the Keep. Little tidbits that would 'telephone game' through the servants and nobles and would give people something to talk about. I want to post these rumours about myself, honestly. Similar to the RolePlay board, but it's more an accurate representation of what's really happening, rather than a tease that encourages others to talk about it.

So, if Janden and Melissa were to ride off into the woods for an afternoon, that might get noticed by the NPCs of the world. But, no one is going to use the rumor system to post it. Who would even know, if it's just a scene we played? But, it might make for interesting court gossip. Maybe cousin Jonn doesn't like the idea of her being with that nasty Melcolm fellow without a proper escort. I don't know. As it stands right now, no one will ever know that scene happened unless we tell people.

I realize you're concerned about abuse of an open, anonymous board. I like to think that people are pretty reasonable and wouldn't be posting hurtful and spiteful things into such a space. I imagine most people /like/ to have rumors about them listed. We like scandal, we like reasons to RP with each other, we like conflict.

If this can be accomplished within the current system, I'd be happy to work without those constraints.

I agree that it is a hard thing to code, but at the same time, I do feel it is futile to do effective court intrigue without some kind of measure of success that isn't just peer judged from scene to scene. Looking at other games, being able to measure your social success in a number seems to have a positive influence on that kind of roleplay. We wouldn't try to run a joust without code because, ultimately, everyone wants to win. Similarly, I think there needs to be a coded arbitrator of the political combat.

In part, perhaps, because its true we do have a very small staff and we always imagined having a very small staff because of the way we want to run the game. But given the increase in players lately, we may have to look at trying to find a couple more.

I realize people want to win at court too. So, I agree we need something here. But, hopefully others have better suggestions than I.

Its pretty much impossible to find coders for a MUSH today. Especially coders willing to work with established systems done by someone who isn't a top-notch coder. Not to mention coders that we'd trust with the privilege levels needed to do coded systems. :)

Yeah, I guess coders were always rare to begin with.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My comments are really only about SP/XP. I definitely want to see advancement, but losing almost 5 years worth of XP that I've RPed for, where I've demonstrated learning and practice in RP and spent the points accordingly...that would probably hurt. That said, I understand that there are stat increases that would come of changing tiers, and I very much want to see that change made possible, but would it not be a better measure of advancement if it were modified so that skills stay the same, considering that the increase in skills are what demonstrates (codewise, anyway) the amount of work done on a character's development?

The problem with just leaving the skills as they are is that in most cases, the setup of a III will be better than what a IV has trained up to. The idea with reCGing on advancement would of course be that you now get to use the full allotment of the new tier.

Because skills are purchased with a 1:1 ratio in CG and a sliding scale outside of CG, its been very hard to calculate how to handle things if we let people keep their current skill setup. In many cases, they would need more points to be a "proper" III, but we have no idea how to calculate how much they would need since the points aren't worth the same when you practice a skill as when you buy a level in a skill in CG.

As far as awarding XP/SP from +noms, I think we're all a bit in the dark about how that's done. What is a "big" award of XP, and what a "small?" I got some XP out of the last round after most of the Highgarden RP had been done, and had no idea how to feel about it because we have no way of knowing what constitutes a large XP award. Maybe a scale would be helpful? Then we'd know whether to be proud of our accomplishment, or whether to ponder making more friends. ;)

How about the examples for what various tasks are worth? Do they give a guideline? From: http://www.westeros.org/BoD/Helpfiles/Advancement_Experience_Points/

Some examples of player-level +jobs (as well as some tasks that may not always be added to +jobs) and the XP rewards associated with them:

* Creating characters: 1-2 XP for a partial setup depending on what is needed, 5 XP for a full CG

* Descing public rooms: 1 XP per room

* Running plots, planning events, etc: 1-5 XP depending on complexity, scope and workload

* Running NPCs for plots and events: 1-3 XP depending on complexity, scope and workload

* Various other tasks: 1-5 XP depending on complexity, scope and workload

Plots can also be player-initiated, they do not necessarily need to first have been posted up as player-level jobs by Staff, but in order to be eligible for an XP reward they cannot be personal plots that center around the player’s own character.

In addition to completing player-level jobs, players can also earn XP for helping out in the following ways:

* Recruiting new players that finish CG and are approved: 5 XP

* Submitting properly formatted and filled-out logs: 1 XP per log (max 3 XP per month)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It could still be at your discretion. I just feel if I have 2 enemies, I should be able to list 2 enemies. Or I shouldn't list any at all.

Though you can still make it plain in Relations, of course.

If the system were to be re-worked heavily, I could picture combat being put into it's own box.

That is sort of the thinking behind the combat skill group, so I am not sure it needs to be taken further. But that was a way of not tossing everyone a mass of points and leaving non-Knights with too few skills to spend it on.

So, part of the problem is the system itself. I realize it's supposed to promote IC sharing of rumours that you know and others don't. The only time I've ever seen this used is when people start chatting on a channel about who has rumor #7, and then find someone to 'share' it with them. I think rumors get created and never get heard by anyone. Characters who are no specced properly just never hear the rumors, and thus they don't actually come into play.

I agree it has been hard to get consistent, solid usage out of the system, but I am not sure it doesn't stem from us saying we're not fully done with influence and renown. So people don't care so much.

As for other games? I like the ability to post rumors that are not necessarily terrible gossip, but stuff that would be floating around the Keep. Little tidbits that would 'telephone game' through the servants and nobles and would give people something to talk about. I want to post these rumours about myself, honestly. Similar to the RolePlay board, but it's more an accurate representation of what's really happening, rather than a tease that encourages others to talk about it.

This is something we actually have talked about putting into the system as an additional feature. It can already be done if you submit it to us, we just haven't done it so players can do it directly. But yes, we can do fully anonymous, more casual, gossipy rumors that you start about yourself and that are widely known. We're just somewhat concerned about it being misused if we put it into the system, but maybe if those get shown as gossip instead of rumors, people would see the difference.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is something we actually have talked about putting into the system as an additional feature. It can already be done if you submit it to us, we just haven't done it so players can do it directly. But yes, we can do fully anonymous, more casual, gossipy rumors that you start about yourself and that are widely known. We're just somewhat concerned about it being misused if we put it into the system, but maybe if those get shown as gossip instead of rumors, people would see the difference.

Right. I have little interest in it being tied into the system in any way. I'd just like to see the feature to promote RP.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One I suggestion I have is related to Janden's earlier comment about including more important NPCs and somehow driving political RP forward. I understand the difficulty of coding a complete renown or influence system that could help determine who "wins" in court/political battles. My suggestion is that, maybe instead of focusing too much on a coded system right now, we include more overt political RP in the game.

Most of the public events we've been having divide down the middle into more combat-oriented (jousts, melees) or more entertainment oriented (masques, guided tours, hunts). I'm not saying these aren't fun and great, they are and people put a lot of thought and effort into them, which is greatly appreciated. At the same time though, I wouldn't mind a public event that is political in nature (eg. the Hand of the King hears petitions on certain issues, which could be PC driven and worked out ahead of time, and at the same time, be open to the entire court so everyone could attend). I understand these would be pretty time-consuming and take a lot of effort, but they need not be very frequent.

I'm just thinking maybe we are focusing too much on having a "coded system" right now, when we could be focusing on just more political RP in general. In King's Landing however, meaningful political RP, which naturally is all about power at court, requires at least some interaction with important NPCs, eg. members of the Small Council or their agents. I get why you are wary of letting these important positions be played on a day-to-day basis, so why not set aside special public events where PCs may interact with them in some meaningful way. In my opinion, one such major event could open up a variety of RP opportunities between the various PCs that may last quite a little while.

I think once we start adding this type of RP into play, we may be able to discover some type of renown or influence system grow organically out of the role-playing itself. At first, a lot of the decisions will likely have to be made by staff, but I think the more RP we do in this area, the more likely we are to figure out some sort of system to help us out.

I am honestly unsure how to tie this into the existing rumor system. I have used the sort of "general court gossip" thing already, by sending +jobs to Bal and Nym for them to start general rumors about something that's happening in court, that's somehow related to my PC. So that's something that maybe could be promoted a little more? That if you want a general rumor started about yourself, that's more like gossip as opposed to "rumor," you can +job it to Bal or Nym? Yay, more work for the two of you! :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Our ideal is without question a combination of both more political roleplay and completed coded systems to quantify it. So one doesn't exclude the other. However, we could definitely use more solid suggestions for how to get political roleplay and intrigues to work better than it has so far. One issue has been, and remains, that most of those interesting in holding power at court are not applying for older, established characters, they apply for younger characters and want to work their way up. But they can't work their way up without interacting with those older characters that no one is playing.

We have some plans in the works for fleshing out the existing important NPCs through the Profiles wiki. This would include short bios (would also be added to their CDBs) and some notes about who they are associated with. That might help give a sense of various political associations at the courts. Beyond that, we're a bit stumped, admittedly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One issue has been, and remains, that most of those interesting in holding power at court are not applying for older, established characters, they apply for younger characters and want to work their way up. But they can't work their way up without interacting with those older characters that no one is playing.

I chatted with Nym in game about this for a few minutes.

I think this is a major issue. And I feel a bit part of the problem is the people who are most comfortable with the game already have a lot of time invested in a character. And even if they were willing to no longer play that character, they'd be unwilling to watch someone else play the character.

So, basically, they're not going to switch, even if that is of interest to them.

My ideas fell flat (briefly: possibly allowing certain characters to be closed if experienced players were wiling to take a different role, or creating some kind of expanded alt-policy . . . ).

Does anyone else have ideas here? I'd really like to see them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I want to stress here that the reason we say no to closing characters just to keep someone else from playing them is that it really would mean a fundamental change to how we built the game. Personally, I fully sympathize with this position, but I feel that for the individual player, we offer options. If you are in a "smaller" role, you don't have to worry about losing that character unless you disappear for a very long time. But yes, not all characters can advance to top positions at court.

For a focus on politics and intrigue, I feel it would be very damaging to allow multiple alts in one area. Temp-alting for plots, yes, but not permanent alts.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1) CharGen: Assets & Flaws

How do you feel these work?

Are there too many or too few assets and/or flaws?

Should we only have assets and flaws that have direct system effects?

Do you have any suggestions for what to add and/or remove?

It is easy to overdo it here. Both with assets (for someone who wants to be uber...) or with flaws (for someone who wants to be "too cool, and so flawed, and.."). I think limiting assets/flaws is OK, there are only so many things one needs to put emphasis on, A&F shouldn't work as the depiction of our chars whole character and personality, those are done in persona, through relations, history, etc. (or at least that's how I understand it).

2) CharGen: Stats

How do you feel these work?

Should there have been a group for social stats such as charisma, even if they could only be applied against NPCs and through Staff-judgement?

I would actually be for losing the Mental stats. I don't know if they're actually used for anything but looking good on women. Somehow I doubt people playing knights give a lot of points into INT, when they can put another 10 in Strength. And thus we have a whole lot of intelligent, witty and remarkably charmable characters whom I suspect of having Mental stats on below average (I may be wrong of course, but somehow...). The Mental stats don't really show anything as it's still the player who fleshes out the character and we all like to talk with a flourish and a swagger, to throw in a witty remark or a neatly constructed jest.

Or put in some restraints that "if you have an INT/WIT below 40 you cannot jest and make witty remarks, 'cause you're too stupid" ;) (I don't think that would work, but maybe some kind of guidelines as to that should be made...? I don't really know how much points do people tend to give to their Mental stats, but I have suspicions...). The only point of these stats for me would be that of not putting everything into fighting stats and then there would need to be "if a Noble, you cannot put less than 40 in Mental", or something.

3) CharGen: Skills

How do you feel these work?

Are there too many or too few?

Should there have been social skills such as persuasion, even if they could only be applied against NPCs and through Staff-judgement?

Should there be more skillgroups than Combat or Scholarship? For example a group for Courtly skills that require taking a Courtier asset, just like Combat requires a matching asset. This would probably require more skills that fit in with that group and possibly a reworking of the Noble pool of points.

Same as above. Some skills just sit there to swallow points. Like Janden said - one weapon skill to the max and the rest for good measure. In a "normal" pen&paper RPG there'd be dice rolls on these skills whenever we try to give a lecture on the world or flesh out an "elaborate" in our minds battle plan. Here - you don't actually feel it.

I'd gladly see one thing though. The option to speak Valyrian. One can speak to someone other in Valyrian and the message would go through depending of the other's skill in Valyrian. If not skilled enough you'd get a "Your @%$#$ is $$%%$#@ $%*& %?}{ utter crap". Same goes for overhearing these conversations. That would actually make it important, or at least practical to give some points to Valyrian. Maybe there could be other such implementations - when someone more skilled in warcraft uses a "@warcraft" command and speaks his plan, depending on your skill you'd get a message saying (for example if the speaker is skilled and you're not) "You have heard one of the best battle plans ever. You can't find anything wrong with it" thus making it impossible for your character to oppose the first one and try to make your own plan. Same can go for, well, almost everything else I guess. It could lead to abuse or, hopefully, it could lead to people actually thinking which skills to add more points to, so that they are actually good at them IC.

4) CharGen: In the event of changes...

Are you willing to re-CG if there are significant changes to the system?

Yes, no problem with that.

5) Advancement

How do feel XP & SP work?

What else do you want to be able to use XP & SP for?

If we decide to go ahead with tier advancement (mainly IV to III), are you willing to re-CG? This would probably mean a loss of XP already spent on skills and any assets purchased would just be counted towards the new limit, not added on top.

Still too young a player and char to be able to say anything. I have, like, 1XP on the whole. Ask me in a year :D

6) Rumors

How do you feel this works?

Don't know, never used them myself. And never heard any. If this culd be employed as a gossipy kind of thing as Janden talked about it, cool. Otherwise - I just didn't see any, don't know how it works game-wise.

7) Influence & Renown

Far from working as it should currently, but what do you think of the general idea? That is, being able to measure your influence and your renown against others and being able to use influence to improve odds at getting court positions.

Same again. Never used, don't know. Sorry :(

8) Female Characters

No, not how you feel they work. ;) But is there anything we can do with the CG or the other code to make it better for female characters?

Ummm... And yet again I feel useless. Maybe I started talking about changes too soon after just getting into the game?

9) Other comments

The various combat-related systems are not brought up separately because other than the jousting, they are not what we see as close to complete solutions. We'd love to have a full-fledged combat system, but with just the one code, it isn't very feasible. However, if there's anything you'd like to see done with the current systems or any other additions you'd like to see that are CG or System related, let us know.

A propos of the combat. I know that the melee uses the mounted combat, etc. But can't we really (just for now, until the other systems, except for jousting, get completed) replace the "...is knocked out of his saddle!" line with something like "...is knocked down onto the ground!"? It wouldn't change much meritum-wise, but would do oh so much good for the purist in me :) And be usable both for joust, horsed melee and foot melee. And even a bar fight, if we ever get one ;)

Hope I didn't say too much bull. And sorry if I talked about hings already implemented, that I just didn't know about... :(

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It is easy to overdo it here. Both with assets (for someone who wants to be uber...) or with flaws (for someone who wants to be "too cool, and so flawed, and.."). I think limiting assets/flaws is OK, there are only so many things one needs to put emphasis on, A&F shouldn't work as the depiction of our chars whole character and personality, those are done in persona, through relations, history, etc. (or at least that's how I understand it).

That's a good way of putting it. Yes, it can be overdone both with assets & flaws.

2) CharGen: Stats

I would actually be for losing the Mental stats. I don't know if they're actually used for anything but looking good on women. Somehow I doubt people playing knights give a lot of points into INT, when they can put another 10 in Strength. And thus we have a whole lot of intelligent, witty and remarkably charmable characters whom I suspect of having Mental stats on below average (I may be wrong of course, but somehow...). The Mental stats don't really show anything as it's still the player who fleshes out the character and we all like to talk with a flourish and a swagger, to throw in a witty remark or a neatly constructed jest.

It does actually play a role in the rumors and could play a role if people roll other skills for a plot.

In part they are also there as a balance. We do tell people when they CG that if you put very low INT, you are slow, plain and simple. Of course, we can't run around monitoring all roleplay.

They might play a small role in a fully fleshed out combat system, as well.

3) CharGen: Skills

Same as above. Some skills just sit there to swallow points. Like Janden said - one weapon skill to the max and the rest for good measure. In a "normal" pen&paper RPG there'd be dice rolls on these skills whenever we try to give a lecture on the world or flesh out an "elaborate" in our minds battle plan. Here - you don't actually feel it.

Its absolutely true that many skills are there just to show a well-rounded noble; if the player doesn't like rolls during plots, they may never use them. But during CG people are monitored to so that they setup as proper nobles and you do need a minimum number of skills, so people can't just ignore them.

We don't want to go towards a more code-heavy implementation where people use skills against other PCs more often. That really should be down to roleplay as much as possible. However, we can work skill usage into determining effects on NPCs or success at doing various plots.

I think most of our players are of the kind that they'd find additional code usage during roleplay intrusive. However, we have tossed around some ideas for using courtier skills and tying that to reputation. One included trying to work in fashion/dress sense and being able to set trends at court, at least among the NPCs.

Speakable Valyrian... part of the problem is that we've simplified things. The skill covers High Valyrian as well as dialects of Bastard Valyrian, and that's indicated in the background. Otherwise, yes, whisper code could be modified.

Thank you for commenting. :) Its valuable to get input from newer players as well, it shows the more immediate reactions.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My only suggestion to this point is related to Assets and Flaws. In general, I don't see players using their assets and their flaws in daily RP as often as I think is ideal. As a result, there is often a sense of sameness to many of the characters on the game. I am not singling out one specific player or group of players; this is just a very generalized observation, and there are obviously exceptions to this.

I think that players should be reminded, encouraged, and rewarded for not only using their character's assets to their advantage, but also for letting their flaws dictate the course of IC events, particularly when that course of events results in a negative or non-beneficial outcome that contributes to an interesting story or scene. And I don't necessarily mean rewarding a player with the Infamous: Pervert flaw for RPing as if their character is a perv; that would be understood, and if they didn't do so, then that's a problem. What I do mean is for an infamous pervert to RP their character in such a way that, not only are they caught out behaving perversely, but that the results mean damage to their character's reputation, censure, or some other negative consequence.

Rewards are tough, I guess you have to do it with XP and SPs. But in any case, I think this is something that, in general, the system sometimes misses.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is a very good point and something that was always part of what we wanted to do with the flaws. Any thoughts on how to get a grasp on this, though?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Some examples of player-level +jobs (as well as some tasks that may not always be added to +jobs) and the XP rewards associated with them:

* Creating characters: 1-2 XP for a partial setup depending on what is needed, 5 XP for a full CG

* Descing public rooms: 1 XP per room

* Running plots, planning events, etc: 1-5 XP depending on complexity, scope and workload

* Running NPCs for plots and events: 1-3 XP depending on complexity, scope and workload

* Various other tasks: 1-5 XP depending on complexity, scope and workload

Plots can also be player-initiated, they do not necessarily need to first have been posted up as player-level jobs by Staff, but in order to be eligible for an XP reward they cannot be personal plots that center around the player’s own character.

In addition to completing player-level jobs, players can also earn XP for helping out in the following ways:

* Recruiting new players that finish CG and are approved: 5 XP

* Submitting properly formatted and filled-out logs: 1 XP per log (max 3 XP per month)

This is cool. But what does it mean if you get 3 XP at the beginning of the month after +noms are considered? Or 2? Or just 1? That's what I was hoping for an answer on. Also, how does one get XP for, say, running NPCs if there are no admins around to witness that? D ran at least 20 in various ways during the Highgarden tourney, for example, but I don't have an exact count. During jousts, we both ran them without keeping count. Do we self report? Or report each other and anyone else who helped out? I know from experience that recognition is a very key tool in keeping folks interested, and this is a good way to do it, we just need to know how.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The values we hand out based on votes tend to range from 1-3. So, if you had one or two votes, it'd be 1. If you're the person with the most votes, it'd be 3.

We've tried to stay conservative on the numbers to avoid XP inflation, which most people tend to agree is no good for a game.

For NPCs, the file might need clarifying. Running joust NPCs would be something we'd count under running the actual event. The sort of NPC running we'd give XP for would be when a character is run as part of a longer-term plot.

To some extent, though, we do need feedback on what people have done because we do miss a lot of the roleplay.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is a very good point and something that was always part of what we wanted to do with the flaws. Any thoughts on how to get a grasp on this, though?

I'm not sold on rewarding the playing of flaws. I feel like people should want to play these in order to make the character interesting ... and if they don't ... well, that's too bad.

I like the idea of rewarding the playing of a character well, but I think we already do that with noms?

I just fear that if they have rewards attached, they'll get over used. People who play with me, for example, don't want me to go on about how I hate my family constantly. I do bring this into RP, but it's not an every day thing. Nor is talking about how I have a feud with my brother.

If you read the help for noms, it specifies that characters who are playing both strengths and weaknesses should be praised for it . . . and that might be the best we can do.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Its true that some flaws aren't ones that should be brought up in roleplay regularly. The ones we had in mind personally were Defects. They should be played up and those we would like to reward people for playing up as they have no other system effects.

For a while we wanted to pair them with a set of Advantages, positive character traits basically, and if you earned points for playing Defects, you could spend it on invoking Advantages. Not quite sure how to do that, however. But Defects are something we do want to reward people for playing up.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...