Experience Idea

[Rhifox]

I made my second character a pirate partly because I realized my gnome would -never- have the courage and bad-assness required to even enter the goblin cave or turn a camp of gnolls into living torches, Drado would just piss his pants. I did it because it was all OOC, because I wanted to have a look around the server, dungeon crawl with my friends, progress my character, etc...

Exactly. Yet these characters, when they ARE thrust into those situations, are wonderful to RP. Courage-less characters are wonderful to play so long as they get a sufficient reason to get thrown into dungeons and so on. My biggest problem in most RP situations is that I want to be able to RP fear, but that if I do so, I would have no reason for being in the fearful situation and should rightfully run away from it.

Am I suggesting to only make foolhardy characters? Well... to some measure, yes. Adventurers are those who are outgoing enough to take some risks and ripe the rewards. Those that don't, apart from wizards, simply do not make it to Level 1. Duchesse Whatchamacalit, Lord of Waterdeep and shrewd politician who keeps to her audiences and directs a sprawling city, is still Level 0 according to the system. Duke MiumMcburger, also Lord of Waterdeep but who has ties to the Waterdeep underworld and once was part of it, probably has some rogue levels, because he lived in the rough for a while. Well to me it all makes sense, anyway.

Yeah, that's the point of wizardry, and is why I have it. Most other classes are combat-oriented classes where it is appropriate that they gain experience through combat. Fighter for instance, is something that you really can't advance without being thrown into combat time and again in order to built on that combat instinct and intuition. Wizards on the other hand are characters who are trying to learn how to be powerful without any risk to themselves. Personally I don't even consider my character to have a hitpoint bar. I consider her to have a constant magical shield over her that protects her from hits, a weaker but persistent Mage Armor-ish thing. The shield dropping is her willpower and ability to maintain the shield dropping, and when I take potions or get healed, it is her forcing more willpower into the shield to keep it up. When I get knocked down to 0 or less HP, that's when someone managed to finally break through the shield. This is because my character would break down and surrender at even the smallest scratch from a sword or whatnot.

Unfortunately, we're forced into going into dungeons grinding over and over again to gain levels. This is why I try to grind solo whenever possible (though it's impossible for wizards at low levels), as that way I can say that my character gaining increased ability was simply from research and practice rather than running around blowing shit up in a dungeon over and over without having anyone to say otherwise.

EDIT: I slipped a bit, but anyways, what I meant was that in D&D, "Level" refers semantically to "Adventurer Level" more than "Character Level", which is much broader in sense. It seems to be the flaw you see in it all, but well, yeah, as I said it's a dead-end.

The flaw is that the system is only designed for characters like that. While some powerful characters might not have character levels, those characters are NPCs only because most RP situations revolve around combat oriented adventures, and most non-combat-oriented skills require either a commoner-class (Expert, etc) which are never implemented in games like this, or gaining character levels, just to be able to increase them. As I said, the smart rogue with low level vs the dumb rogue with high level thing. The smart rogue can't be a smart rogue because it needs to be a dumb rogue in order to get levels in order to be able to increase its smart-rogueish abilities.

Rhifox, damn you and your well put and well thought out reasonable posts

Boadicea.. not it wasnt aimed at you, more Rhifox, but really just anyone willing to read it

When i say 'adventuring' i dont really just mean dungeon crawling and killing any monster in sight, i mean the whole kit and kaboodle- political 'quests', rogues shennanigans and thievery, nefarious goings on, thwarting plots etc etc.

The problem is that dungeon crawling tends to take up the majority of it. As I said, the inability to level off of the 'whole kit and kaboodle' and the forcing of grinding the same dungeon over and over again in order to gain levels in order to be able to participate in the better 'kit and kaboodle' things.

2) The sort of interactions that you talked about (intrigue, politics etc...) are of course the bestest and most fun of things, and as you rightly pointed out they require multiple sentient parties (other players, maybe DMs depending on the circumstance), the problem with this as opposed to a P&P game is that the right people simply may not be on.

By sentient, I didn't necessarily mean players or DMs. I meant smart opponents. Not monsters. Monsters I hate. It's demonizing the enemy to the point of beast status and turns character development into making everyone hunters. Or mass-retard-slaughtering psychopaths killing the endless supplies of poor-intelligence races. The Dark Advent makes a much better opponent than the Spittlefists, because the Dark Advent is sentient and has the ability to know what it wants, why it wants it, logical and moral reasons for wanting it, and so on. While goblins and ogres and so on are given the blunt 'evil' label, and are never anything but. One of the DMs that did the goblin rebellion thing awhile back ago had a fresh take on that, and I wish we could see something like that expanded, giving the non-sentient organizations at least some duality. Having tons of pointlessly evil creatures out there to kill is a form of demonizing and thus diluting the moral consequences of killing. If we go out there and kill people, there should be a clear moral issue with doing so. Sentient organizations can have defendable reasons which makes it possible to force characters to ask themselves 'why are we fighting? Is the other side right?'.

Look to WoW for an example of this. The best enemy factions in the game were the ones that had real reasoning behind their actions. The Defias Brotherhood was a band of former architects that were not given their payment when they rebuilt Stormwind and cast out of the city for requesting it, thus were opposing the city out of revenge for an obviously immoral action. It was something that, if you thought about it, your character could in fact find sympathy for. Same thing with the Scarlet Crusade, which was a zealous crusader faction against the undead, obviously doing the work of the good guys, yet their hard stance about having non-Crusaders in the Plaguelands (killing them in case they might be undead spies etc) made them out to be an enemy faction. Yet your character had every ability to step back and realize that the Scarlet Crusade was actually a good faction, and was actually doing more successful work against the Scourge than the Argent Dawn, the 'good guy' undead hunting faction.

They also provide for a much better dungeon experience. Sentient dungeons don't need a DM to be there, you have the ability to tailor the dungeon to be its own self-contained story. Again, WoW was amazing in their ability to take dungeon crawling and give it life by the way they built the encounters. Bossfights against intelligent mobs in the game were some of the funnest I've seen so far.

In DnD terms, the best factions are the humanoid ones. Luskan, the Zhentarim, Thay, etc. Though even then DnD is big on demonizing all of them with the typical 'arrogant and dumb outwardly evil' traits, though they have started changing this which is good (Thay for instance becoming mysterious and powerful merchants instantly turned them from yet another boring evil tyrant nation into a unique and original "antivillain" nation (antivillain meaning they're still villains, but they have a quality that allows them to be allies with the heroes). Thay was completely demonized and boring in the original 'Dreams of the Red Wizards' handbook from 1988, but nowadays they've become a very unique and intriguing power in DnD lore)



Okay, my post is getting too long, so I'll just cut it off here.

[Machiavelli]

By sentient, I didn't necessarily mean players or DMs. I meant smart opponents. Not monsters. Monsters I hate. It's demonizing the enemy to the point of beast status and turns character development into making everyone hunters. Or mass-retard-slaughtering psychopaths killing the endless supplies of poor-intelligence races. The Dark Advent makes a much better opponent than the Spittlefists, because the Dark Advent is sentient and has the ability to know what it wants, why it wants it, logical and moral reasons for wanting it, and so on. While goblins and ogres and so on are given the blunt 'evil' label, and are never anything but. One of the DMs that did the goblin rebellion thing awhile back ago had a fresh take on that, and I wish we could see something like that expanded, giving the non-sentient organizations at least some duality. Having tons of pointlessly evil creatures out there to kill is a form of demonizing and thus diluting the moral consequences of killing. If we go out there and kill people, there should be a clear moral issue with doing so. Sentient organizations can have defendable reasons which makes it possible to force characters to ask themselves 'why are we fighting? Is the other side right?'.

Again, I'd tend to agree in terms of my own personal enjoyment, and yes it is up to players to give life to the reasoning of their character for taking some actions, and to develop opinions on the various opponents. But there is more to the "lesser-intelligence races" in Sundren than you seem to give them credit for (not all of their members are that stupid either). Consider the mossclaw...There are alot of them, they're organised, there will be a few among their number with a fair degree of smarts, they're a potential threat to Sundren; on the other side of the coin, of course they're angry, theyre being kept in the forest by military force when only 200 years ago Sundren was effectively their land to squabble over with one another (check the history of Sundren, and Mundus's trick on the Gnolls). Also, they're a potential army for any *cough cough* militant Banite enterprises. Hey, you might even just see the orcs as a potential workforce for building a wizard tower in the forest . There are a number of potential character-development/moral/plot issues involved with these opponents around which RP can be developed (I'm surprised to hear you say there aren't). I'd agree that the Advent make a better opponent (or protagonist) in a straightforward fashion as something seemingly self-contained, but the "monsters" that you talk about also have their place, especially once you fit them into a wider context (and in RP terms, I'd say no character with smarts would disregard the potential importance of the forest denizens in the outcome of any conflict... but maybe that's just me). Quick summary: I know what you mean, but I think to some extent it's always there, even with the "monsters", if you figure out the lore surrounding them. Our clever Devs haven't shoved in random monster grinding areas (though they can be used that way), all these places have some relationship to what's going on in Sundren. To some extent if you discount the "monsters" as mindless grind-material, then you might miss out!

{EDIT} Also, it's D&D... Some people can, and will want to, make character development out of slaughtering hordes of monsters (Bob the barbarian shows off his abilities to stomp Gnolls while drinking ale to his friend Nertwiss the Gnomish bard, so that an epic poem can be composes about Bob's maginficence). There's character development there for both parties, the poem or song or whatever may well bring entertainment to other players later, and so on. This sort of thing can be fun, and as stated it's what alot of people will be looking for, and also will make sense for many d&dish characters.

[Boadicea]

Good stuff, now, apply the original concept to it

Very much enjoying this conversation, the opinions have actually made me rethink my RP style; meaning how to improve on it.

But for you posters who have done a great job in spot lighting the many aspects of RP, can you take the original concept (xp generated through a script that rewards RP in balance with lower xp via adventuring) and apply it to your RP style.

• Would it help new RPers stick with it and develop in to good RPers?
• Would it help if applied to specific areas (great test case) bring players to those areas the server wants to draw them too?(taverns, firesides, guild halls, and so on)
• Could it offer a alternate path for RPers who are not the adventures type, a method to gain xp while just working on character development with their player style?
• Would it add a new tool or xp reward approach for the server to lower adventuring xp and balance it out with this option?
• This being answered and along with the thoughts already given on RP styles I am sure the cumulative thread can offer some insight to the server developers as to how the community sees RP styles and related rewards, and can most likely put this thread to rest.

Good stuff and thanks for all the feed back.

[rustediron]

GBX? No xp for grinding? 0_o
*completely unimaginable concept*

[Infernal_Havok]

Just a suggestion. Why not have other activities non related to combat that give xp on chance. For instance, I've seen scripts that give xp for somebody who actually spent time using the fishing rod to go fishing for a while. Every successful catch (which was really really rare) yielded a small xp reward and a food item. Or trying to successfully ignite a camp fire (with a really high Survival or Int DC) for a miniscule 2xp or something. Tie both activities to a location and then you have a decent meeting place where others may gather and can interact in character. I've also seen mining or lumbering for materials which is a neat way to gain small amounts of xp (nothing compared to monster grinding) and use the crafting system of the PW. Not sure if Sundren has a crafting system in place yet. Maybe successfully scribing scrolls (as difficult and expensive as they are) may yield a tiny xp reward as well.

All of these are non-persistent type of activities, so they are not like quests activities which log your progress in some data-base and will not let you repeat them. It is just a normal alternative to combat xp, for non-combatant types, the rewards are tiny compared xp monster grinding and dungeon crawling, but the RP benefits will be greater as well as character development.

I understand that the staf is working on a questing system which will hopefully resolve the desire for persistent non-combat oriented xp.

My small examples were made to add a few types of non-combat non-linear ways to spice up typically ordinary features or actions on a rare chance a player succeeds a High DC roll.

[GodBeastX]

http://www.sundren.org/forum/showthread.php?t=4977 Read #8

Topic closed.