Being Inclusive and Arabel
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It is what it is.
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I am fine with player characters hoarding secrets and plots like for example Sheep's gnome does, since it makes it challenging and fun to try to get them and may create interesting conflict. It is not always best to try to forcefully spread the plots just to endear yourselves to the DMs or inflate the sense of your PC's importance because that may cause plot fatigue among other players and remove the element of mystery from the server. One needs to decide on ad hoc basis.
As regards questing, there are the easy quests suitable for involving new players and making use of the quest as the vehicle to start interactions, make friends or enemies, and allow everyone explore and learn. Then there are the difficult quests which have often been made even more difficult because a few highly skilled players had it easy and the DMs did not like that, making it prohibitively risky to try involving less experienced players on them and suffer from their mistakes. It takes time to level up into the fun levels range; people with busy RL value that time and try to avoid needless rinse and repeat that comes from dying on quests. The best method to avoid dying is to quest in small, coordinated and skilled groups.
I see certain condescension toward rushing on the quests and events. As the current difficulty level stands, your survival depends on consumables and spells, unless you are a min-maxed build or stay in the rear line (or have super high, imbalanced stealth). Consumables cost gold and reward from quests, events, or DM spice is not always commensurate to the spent resources. Thanks to Strife's new nifty tool, the quest/event economy should become much more balanced but until I see a pattern, I will personally continue to try not to waste time on the quests, especially when I see most of the waste does not come from quality roleplay but rather from afking or OOC indecision. A solution, beside using Strife's tool, could be to extend the RL duration of NWN time units but I suspect that may create even more issues.
I feel the overall balance of things is fine as it is and see no urgent issues that need fixing in regard to the above topics.
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A related note on "involving" characters that might be your IC enemies.
We should still be involving our characters enemies, though it will probably be in a different way than we involve our allies. There are more ways to involve people than just inviting them to your party for quest or event, or handing them plot hooks. You can still facilitate their story.
An example:
If you are a good guy, sure it might not make sense to go quest with that up-and-coming necromancer. But that's only one way to involve them. You can do things like hire spies to follow that necromancer around and find out what he's up to. Once you know, you can "involve them" further by finding a storied way to oppose them, rather than just ganking them with your character who is 5 levels higher and taking all their gold. If you find out they're trying to animate some zombie dragon thing, you could work on a plot to call forth a celestial to battle it. You can do all manner of things to involve someone without ever meeting their character.
This can also mean giving the other guy a sporting chance when you might not have to. So you've just found a fledgling necromancer on your level 12 militiaman. Sure, you could chase him across three maps, could tie him up, take all his contraband, and maybe get a tick towards promotion. Or you could accidentally let him get away (Darn it, he sure did run quick!), knowing that your story will be more interesting if the conflict becomes more even.
The tl;dr would be that even if its difficult to interact character to character, you can include them by facilitating their story. Participate in other people's plots, either for or against. Player plots are plots too.
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You can quest with an evil necromancer of utter doom as a good paladin, so long as you are consistently roleplaying the fact you are, the entire time, trying to redeem them, it's not likely to be a very efficient quest though. You might have to stop and kick their ass, and/or throw them out.
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You can quest with an evil necromancer of utter doom as a good paladin, so long as you are consistently roleplaying the fact you are, the entire time, trying to redeem them, it's not likely to be a very efficient quest though. You might have to stop and kick their ass, and/or throw them out.
False.
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I disagree with Zool here.
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If you're a Church Paladin subordinate to a cleric of your deity, you can allow the cleric to do their job- of redeeming, but your job is to prevent him and stopping him from doing evil.
Ergo, if you're in charge, you're responsible for his behavior. If your Priest is actively working to redeem them, THEY are responsible, but YOU are still effected by their behavior.
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@SpiffyHas:
I disagree with Zool here.
That's weird because I was agreeing with you.
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Seems you have taken it too far.
Same with the topic, actually. A shame, I'd love to discuss paladins. :) -
Hi guys, I'm no longr IG, having found another outlet for my creativity , but, I had to weigh in on the LG pally Can work with suspected evil, if you are trying to be sure or trying to redeem. no, you can not. Will Lost points from LG. As was explained to me. once you suspect, you may not work with. Pally's are hard. but so worth the effort.
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I see the paladin was a terrible example, as this thread has now officially derailed.
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While plots I worked on with Thersos demanded some semblance of secrecy I never turned people away from participating in them. There's a balance that can be reached with plots that allows people of all sorts to take part and plots (I can think of one in particular that I thought was the dumbest thing in recent memory) that demanded ABSOLUTE DO NOT TELL ANYONE ABOUT THIS PLOT secrecy. Don't run plots like that- You can leave parts hidden, but the greater plot available for anyone within reason to join. Most of the plots we have these days fall into this category and I'm very satisfied with that and have found that people generally like to get others involved with their plots. There is of course, an IC element to this where occasionally your In-Character reputation will cause people to absolutely not trust you to work with them. Sometimes you can get around this, and sometimes your PC is just too much of a scumbag to merit giving them a chance to "help" when they're more likely to just stab you in the back. There's a difference between keeping a plot a secret for "teh win" and keeping it from that one hyper shady guy who you KNOW you cannot trust IC. It's usually a pretty clear line.
When it comes to questing, though, less is more for me. I would, every single time, rather have a core group of two or three others that I know I can count on (plus one or two extras) than bring every stiff sitting in the spire on my quest trains. It's a balancing act where soon people stop contributing meaningfully and start becoming a liability. When you have 10 people on a quest it very easily turns into a total clusterfuck that the frontline (in these cases is often very small comparatively to that optimal small group,) cannot possibly contend with or help everyone at once and people start to die very quickly from small mistakes. Quests scaling out of control in relation to ChallengeRating instead of ACTUAL party strength and composition I think is the culprit here, but I don't think there's a way to accurately define what that actually is with any reasonable accuracy since it changes all the time and has always had dozens of definitions.
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Unless I am really FORCED TO, I will involve and invite every person I can. Like Thune, I believe in inclusiveness, even if I might lose to people who are far more focused on the win. I kicked 3 people out of the castle once, because I was doing something EXTREMELY sensitive. But otherwise, I will invite people to my secret plot meetings, I will spread out plot hooks so others can pursue them (Ask Era how I handed him plot hooks left and right when I first encountered Gawyn Carre). Do I win by doing it? No. Does it give me sweet loots or RP tokens? Nope. But, I am of the old CoA School of the Plot Wheel, that can only be turned by involving others, even if it seems booking dms for events gets you results 5 times faster.
That said. I hate questing (scripted) with large parties. Less EXP, Far harder spawns, and 3 times more people to share the same amount of loot with, not to mention RP goes out the window with more than 8 people on.
So In short, I am on team Sheep.
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_Dagon literally destroyed one of my character concepts, did terrible things to me IC, his PC was a total dirtbag that I can't even talk about without getting mad… Yet the character I played after that one was Dagon's sister, and she loved his character to death: I retired her for him. We play League of Legends and Age of Empires and whatnot, often: we've bonded, despite our IC struggle. Tancred? His latest PC? We barely interact. See a pattern? IC does not equate OOC my friend. Yes, both my most recent PCs absolutely despise your current PC, but that doesn't mean I would not concept you for the next one or invite you to do X outside of Arabel.
All I have to say is: respect IC interactions if they are indeed IC, and do not internalize them. Do take in mind that your character is probably the most mechanically annoying of all bad guys possible: so sneaky and so unpredictable that it is a hazard to have him around for any character with int 12+ and a good alignment. Have you considered that people don't want to interact with the mechanical aspect of your character, instead of -you-? Because I sure as hell don't want to be online whenever I see your PC is on as well. I don't want to be checking my coin purse and counting my potions every five minutes._
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^^^^^^
I don't particularly find much enjoyment in the realization that a pc can just waltz in, grab shit out of my inventory and walk away, without my being able to do anything about it.
And while I do respect that you're probably not scummy enough of a player to abuse the ability to do that, and won't grief people with it.
My character has an intelligence score above 14, and knows a threat (minor or major) when he see's one, and it'd be very out of character for that character not to treat a threat as a threat.
If you're roleplaying a character with the intention of being creepy on purpose, and succeeding at it, people pretty much have to roleplay being creeped out unless their character is desensitized to such things (or just don't roleplay well).It's important to remember that while it is considerate for people to act slightly out of character for the sake of another players fun and enjoyment.
Playing a concept that puts people in a tough spot, where they HAVE to act out of character to include you in stuff, and then getting offended at them for staying in character, is just as inconsiderate (if not more) to them. As them not including you is inconsiderate to you. -
Because I sure as hell don't want to be online whenever I see your PC is on as well. I don't want to be checking my coin purse and counting my potions every five minutes.
Sheep has not only made it clear that he is doing this, but has made sure that it is very visible in game when he does from what I have seen, but has also justified stuff and allowed others to see what he has actually taken ooc in his diary posts.
We all have a right to hostile him and make his job more difficult if we think that it is going to be something that our character would be on the look out for now he has shown his hand.
Back on topic…
Sharing plots requires other people to actually come along and see what you are doing too. Don't ignore other peoples sendings because you don't see a direct reason for you to be there, go along and share your thoughts and receive others - that is what makes the wheel turn.
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So, instead of looking to get the biggest party possible, we should look towards hiring an optimal group of maybe four or five with us on our adventures to get the best out of it? Should we therefore, limit the party cap of quests to ensure this?
If that's the case, we should also ensure that those who are left out of these parties also have a chance to do something. If you're taking all five super frontliners along, leaving all the bards and whatnot useless shadowmancer sorcerers out, they'll have no chance of doing anything as they're either too afraid to adventure outside on their own, or don't trust enough on the mechanical capabilities of others left behind. OOC courtesy, in this regard, is very important I feel, as the server's future depends on it.
As for those that want to argue a basis on why they don't like my character, do so elsewhere. I know my character is controversial and everyone in CoAland has a reason to be exclusive of him for what he is. That will not change here. If you want to personally address issues you have with the char and the way I play, do so through a PM. I will be happy to discuss it there.
This thread is about whether or not you are happy with the way inclusion is currently being handled in CoA.
I feel like this is summed up pretty easily. If you are excluding someone out of OOC fear of losing, do not do that.
Someone mentioned a rule once. DON'T BE A DICK.
Thinking outside the box for the sake of inclusion does not mean you're acting out of character. I do like what people said here. IMO, if you find your character abilities of inclusion limited by your own fear of loosing- you need to get over that fear.
I also see good examples made by a number of people here. Keep them coming!
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I mean, if I can't participate in a quest, I can usually offer spells as a cleric, in exchange for prayers and be included in that manner. Once I get them, I sit and read manga on one side of my computer screen, waiting for the group to return and show me what magical items they found. For me, I don't actually need to attend a quest to roleplay, and thus, I'm usually the first one to step out of a party.
Now, obviously this doesn't hold true for other support roles, like bards and their short-lived songs. But low level bards can usually find a group, or do an easier quest where they can tank. Yesterday, I took two low levels out to leech me on a quest - I didn't push myself beyond what I was capable of (aka we didn't do the optional), and they still got great XP.
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I work best helping other people's plots. I would much rather be included in plots and stories, regardless of who you play. I'm really not the loot whore everyone makes me out to be. I would rather log in, have allies to do stuff with. Being alone with all the loot in the world really sucks.
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I work best helping other people's plots. I would much rather be included in plots and stories, regardless of who you play. I'm really not the loot whore everyone makes me out to be. I would rather log in, have allies to do stuff with. Being alone with all the loot in the world really sucks.
You are the loot whore everyone makes you out to be. You want plots, loot, and lebul tin. :P We give documentary overtures about you in the VOIP.