Intrigue and Adventure VS CoA Sims
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How can we go look for Relic/Magic Spell/Tome/anything if we don't know it exists, IC or OOC?
You go into the sewers (mountains/forest/desert/deep sea caves/crypts/ancient gnome ruins full of gnomish practical jokes) and submit yourself to harrowing ordeals (may be including, but not limited to, naked wrestling of dire wolves, practicing of dentistry on elf maidens, getting lost in the sunken Labyrinths, finding the elusive princess of naughty nixes) and, having suitably impressed the powers of Fate, receive a cryptic omen helping you in your nefarious goals.
Or maybe you don't receive anything, but you'll have trod on enough toes and run into enough other PCs in search of accomplices, to keep you busy for the next few months, all sight of your initial goals being lost. -
Essentially, clues to lots of things are in game; but if players make up something–there are also lots of myths in game. Just don't assume because you made up the Holy Sword of Evil Smiting Bane that you'll find exactly that. It may turn out you find the Moldy Sword of Smiling Jane instead.
What counts is people out with a group of players (you know, average DnD party size group 4-8) exploring dangerous places, fighting terrible monsters, even taking people on scripted quests seeking out the HSoESMB; especially the less done more dangerous quests; and DMs will tend to notice this and reward it.
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By INTRIGUE we mean:
Cults worshiping angelic beings hoping to elevate them as a new divinity intriguing to gain more worshipers and wealth for their cult.
Mercenary Guilds seeking to seize power in the city, whereupon they'll implement a theocratic dictatorship of Lurue intriguing to build alliances to support their future government.
Elves plotting to unleash a virulant plague to destroy humans intriguing to recruit other elves and those angered at the human dominated control of the city.
1 a : a secret scheme : machination b : the practice of engaging in intrigues
2 : a clandestine love affairsynonyms see plot
Posting this in hopes that it benefits other people who grew up in French, because I had no idea that's what intrigue meant. In French, it's largely used as a synonym for mystery, a much more passive term, and a difficult thing to create in character (for me, anyway).
Basically, A&I = Go out and do stuff, come up with means toward goals, and have people around.
"intrigue." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2009.
Merriam-Webster Online. 16 November 2009 -
Basically, A&I = Go out and do stuff, come up with means toward goals, and have people around.
Also, make groups of people go "Huh? What? Who the hell did that.. we have to find out!"
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Also, make groups of people go "Huh? What? Who the hell did that.. we have to find out!"
That was my original (now defeated) assumption. I've never actually seen this sort of thing from a PC, short of when someone does something wearing a pot helmet. I still have no idea what intrigue means, let's leave it at that!
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You can do it. You have to trust me on that.. and it has nothing to do with pot helms >.>
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Yeah people are doing it to me right now. I have no idea how people do these things though, and have less idea how to look into it most of the time!
It's fun for people, I reckon, I just get stressed after a while of not having a clue though, but that's just me.
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Timezones seem to add to the kind of confusion Bablefish is having. There's just no way to be on 24/7, and things tended to happen while I was asleep even when I did have huge amounts of time to invest.
In the end, if I'm playing my character the way I envisioned it, and they don't get important clues they should have, I wouldn't stress over it, it's not my fault I have a life too, after all.
For people in a faction, perhaps the faction NPCs should/could help out here by recapping some of the things that happened over the last couple of days, to make sure everyone is on the same page, even if they weren't online to 'catch' the sendings and shouts made about it when it happened. (A general 'sending' log to review would be nice anyway)
P.
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We rather expect faction PCs will share the clues with their factions.
This is part of the reason you give you terrific little perks, free rest, free powerful gear, and a private forum! We figure, you'll keep your buddies up to date on plots and Intrigue.
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I keep them up to date on how confused i am and how little information I have!
My advice to anyone else in my position of total confusion, is to just keep plugging away and dooing what you know how to do, your bound to come across something eventually, true, that something might just be a huge hoarde of undead, or manticore, or gorgons, or whatnot, but you might find something or think of something along the way.
I'd personally love some advice on how to create this kind of hidden awesome, for when Novo eventually dies/retires, so I can cause this kind of confusing addictive fun for others.
I'm still personally not too good at much other than adventure, and wish I was.
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I will post something very short, but very ranty…
Players that want to get involved need to use the fourms!!!That's it, really. Here's what I'm getting at. I love playing Arabel, but the fact of the matter is, I can't devote 5 or 6 hours a day to it. In fact, in a given week, I'm privleged if I can play maybe 3 out of 7 days for a couple hours each day. During that time, I really have 2 scenerios that play out.
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I log in and no one I know is playing. I wander about a bit, trying some strange things like convincing random characters to go on a search for something plot related for me. This fails, b/c most of the folks I actually come across are merely sitting in the market or Adventurer's Guild, and really don't want to do anything other than sell things or go on quests. I try to find a DM to advance a plot, but this seldom happens, probably because the DMs here are busy as hell trying to spread the fun. Eventually, I get discouraged and either log or cave to someone asking me to help them on a quest, after which, I log anyway.
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I log on and there are numerous people online I recognize. I try to organize an adventure to further a known plot, but can't seem to find the people I need for such a thing (they are probably off doing something of their own). I go to gather others to spread plottiness, and inevitably get bogged down in politics or crafting. a one to two hour discussion ensues in the Mage's Guild, and then I need to log to get back to RL. THe result of the conversations is usually positive, and I have more ideas to spread plot, but no more time to do so.
The result of the two listed scenerios is that my only outlet to spread plot about is to try to hand things off to people via the forums, and hope they take the initiative IG to follow up on my suggestions and clues when THEY have the time to log in game to play. Of course, the fault in this logic is if they are experiencing the same conditions under which I log in, they won't further any plot either; and if the players I'm trying to spread plot to don't bother reading what I place out there on the forums, the if doesn't make any difference anyway.
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We rather expect faction PCs will share the clues with their factions.
Still, they could all be off-line when something happens (although you'd hope your rivals wouldn't stoop to that on a directly conflicting plot, you can't expect nothing to happen at all when your faction is all off-line but two others have 3 members on each), and that's were it would sometimes make (imho) sense to get something slightly more solid than the 'rumours' thread available.
This is part of the reason you give you terrific little perks, free rest, free powerful gear, and a private forum!
Related to this, I'm actually not convinced these (except for the faction forum) are at all needed; being in the faction should be enough 'reward'/'incentive' without all those other perks making for a divide between the people in a faction and not in there. The only thing I really miss since getting my character 'resigned' from her faction is the forum, for the reasons pointed out by Ko-Ri-Us.
Free rest just means you get to walk to your HQ instead of flopping down on a bedroll, that you carry around anyway. The faction gear was 'nice to have', but not flexible, so in the end just a hindrance.
If these extra perks weren't give out, or at least not to everyone, maybe more different players could be convinced to join a faction. I get the feeling that most of the factions are just the same players shuffled around all the time.Mage guild novices, that don't need a full application, are a good example of how people benefit of being in a group. Even if most of them stay at novice level forever, at least it will get them more involved than lone-wolfing around. Contrast this to the Stark Wyverns, that do need a full app, and are having trouble to get even one PC in.
P.
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This is part of the reason you give you terrific little perks, free rest, free powerful gear, and a private forum!
Related to this, I'm actually not convinced these (except for the faction forum) are at all needed–-
I actually feel that these are a great boon. Free rest, free sendings, powerful gear (appraise +5 ring) are the reasons why I can pay a group of adventurers 1000+ gold for some plot related tasks (without needing to constantly power quest to keep funds coming in) - And perhaps get them interested in the plot themselves. After all, I wouldn't be throwing so much gold around if there wasn't a real chance of actually getting something valuable out of it, right?
I think I've finally begun to understand how Arabel really works - and it's amazing.
-Tomppa
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I will post something very short, but very ranty…
Players that want to get involved need to use the fourms!!!That's it, really. Here's what I'm getting at. I love playing Arabel, but the fact of the matter is, I can't devote 5 or 6 hours a day to it. In fact, in a given week, I'm privleged if I can play maybe 3 out of 7 days for a couple hours each day. During that time, I really have 2 scenerios that play out.
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I log in and no one I know is playing. I wander about a bit, trying some strange things like convincing random characters to go on a search for something plot related for me. This fails, b/c most of the folks I actually come across are merely sitting in the market or Adventurer's Guild, and really don't want to do anything other than sell things or go on quests. I try to find a DM to advance a plot, but this seldom happens, probably because the DMs here are busy as hell trying to spread the fun. Eventually, I get discouraged and either log or cave to someone asking me to help them on a quest, after which, I log anyway.
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I log on and there are numerous people online I recognize. I try to organize an adventure to further a known plot, but can't seem to find the people I need for such a thing (they are probably off doing something of their own). I go to gather others to spread plottiness, and inevitably get bogged down in politics or crafting. a one to two hour discussion ensues in the Mage's Guild, and then I need to log to get back to RL. THe result of the conversations is usually positive, and I have more ideas to spread plot, but no more time to do so.
The result of the two listed scenerios is that my only outlet to spread plot about is to try to hand things off to people via the forums, and hope they take the initiative IG to follow up on my suggestions and clues when THEY have the time to log in game to play. Of course, the fault in this logic is if they are experiencing the same conditions under which I log in, they won't further any plot either; and if the players I'm trying to spread plot to don't bother reading what I place out there on the forums, the if doesn't make any difference anyway.
If/when it gets to the point where the forums are my primary means of plot advancement, I start thinking about ending my character. I appreciate where you're coming from, but it leaves a stale taste in my mouth before long.
I stand by what I said in some other thread a while ago: that the best way to really get into the intrigue part of the game is to get together with other people who often play at the times you do and expand from there. Obviously you need to be playing the kind of character who gets involved, is open to getting together outside of quests, so on, but a bit of momentum courtesy of having more than one in the club goes a long way in my experience.
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I actually feel that these are a great boon. Free rest, free sendings, powerful gear (appraise +5 ring) are the reasons why I can pay a group of adventurers 1000+ gold for some plot related tasks (without needing to constantly power quest to keep funds coming in)
Well, one faction's perks may be more useful than another, but in my case they just showed how little common sense my 'employers' (not that I had wages or anything, in fact I paid quite some money into the resurrection fund, and by dealing out consumables to absentminded wizards) had as they were either a small improvement on skills I already had (2 more points of concentration if wearing a helm, a 3 lbs lighter shield), duplicated class abilities (some minor clerical spells 1/day, free rest if willing to make a detour), made no difference because of my class (reduced arcane spell failure), or even worked against it (medium armor on a ranger, a shield for someone with a deity whose favored weapon maps to a two-handed weapon (and has the ranger two-weapon fighting skills)). Free sendings would have helped, or access to the crafting areas (even if not using them actively, but just to be able to patrol them), or if they really wanted to provide something useful, either a weight reducing bag or STR enhancing belt/gloves/whatever would have made a difference. I wasn't even provided with a weapon..
But guess what, despite all that, being in the faction was still a lot of fun, because of the group of PC 'allies' (quoted, as for me there was more intra-faction tension than inter-faction tension) and the forum binding them all together and giving you something more or less meaningful to do when you couldn't be online but had some spare time to spend.
After all, I wouldn't be throwing so much gold around if there wasn't a real chance of actually getting something valuable out of it, right?
Yes, I was/am looking to get something valuable out of it, but to me (and my character) that wouldn't be 'loot', but soft things like helping characters change their ways/views, and players having a good time. I doubt I'm being very effective but at least one player is still having a good time.
P.