Clarity seeking:
Players will each consider their own lore based power level (as opposed to mechanical) when writing their posts/actions.
I'm not sure what "lore based power level" refers to, so I'm guessing neither do most other people
My guess is that this wasn't meant to ignore mechanical skill levels entirely (despite the wording) but rather say that if a character has a high skill level at one thing, and none or little at another, that the former is used in posts/actions and not the latter to avoid the need for skill checks. If you have experience in something (which is represented mechanically through skill points that may have sort of meta-adjustments behind the scenes from quests etc), or someone (previous quest ties and such) then do that, not things outside the bounds of your experience. Is this correct?
(edited to allow for established NPC relationships outside of skills)
(hehe, sorry, just saw the ask in ask-a-gm in the other thread )
Clarity seeking:Players will each consider their own lore based power level (as opposed to mechanical) when writing their posts/actions.I'm not sure what "lore based power level" refers to, so I'm guessing neither do most other people My guess is that this wasn't meant to ignore mechanical skill levels entirely (despite the wording) but rather say that if a character has a high skill level at one thing, and none or little at another, that the former is used in posts/actions and not the latter to avoid the need for skill checks. If you have experience in something (which is represented mechanically through skill points that may have sort of meta-adjustments behind the scenes from quests etc), or someone (previous quest ties and such) then do that, not things outside the bounds of your experience. Is this correct?(edited to allow for established NPC relationships outside of skills)
More or less, yes.
We're essentially trying to encourage looking beyond simply the sea of numbers on a character sheet. These things still bear some importance of course, but what we're looking for here is less the hard restrictions of the character sheet itself and more how world lore and other character developments define the character beyond mechanics.
As an example, people often look at spell lists for their casters and think "Gosh, these are the only tools in my bag." While we understand that mechanically these are the only tools in the bag, quest situations often involve some creative uses of magic that do not necessarily map directly to defined spells. We'd like the same sorts of thought processes to apply here. Keep in mind what your classes are and mean, how they work, etc.
Associations, titles or other capabilities gained from quests (generally from CDQs, WLDQs and/or plot quests, but other instances have occurred) that do not map to mechanical abilities should also be kept in mind. "Secondary" abilities like crafting...think less of "Well, I've reached the 20th circle in Alchemy, and I can make that potion with 90% success rate" and more of "I am an alchemist of no small degree of skill and expertise..." and consider the potential for using Alchemy in ways that may not exactly overlap a defined recipe but rather use those same IC skills in a creative way.
Also though, we don't want people to use the forums' opportunity for greater narratives to overstep the capabilities of a character.
Example: "I, Schmendrick The Pure call down the full might of my powerful God to smite this unholy boss-level enemy!!!" said no 5th level Cleric ever with any degree of success. Ever.
So basically, the lore-based power level does include mechanical things, but what's more important to us is the intent behind those mechanics, what they mean in an RP sense. Our characters are, afterall, much more than the sum of their stats.
And of course...if you're not sure if something's possible, just ask! Or worst-case, we adjust what was written to keep things in line with a character's capabilities.
Can we also assume this would include knowledge or skill from the background story and journals as well?
Such as (and yes, I'm using my character as an example), Lia spent the last 50 odd years sailing, some of that time being the quartermaster of a ship. While that information wouldn't transfer mechanically in game, in the forums here we could assume that she would know alot about ship's, seamanship and decent at piloting a ship as well.
We would like to encourage this yes, but tempered with the limitations that everyone will have. Few people will be an expert on anything but using relevent knowledge to further the story is definitely encouraged.
Additionally, when considering these things we hope folks will try very hard to keep their character's knowledge separate from their personal knowledge. For example, we're hoping no one wants to try to use magic to 'isolate the virus strand' or something of that nature as that's clearly beyond the tech level of the world. Using the character's healing knowledge to perform more intensive and less effective (by modern standards) experiements would be welcome.
We certainly want to prioritize lore and story over mechnics and boxes but we do want to balance it with some IG reality.Lia has spent the last 50 years sailing, but these are elvish years (re-)learning and not human years and the knowledge is somewhat skewed by this fact. Additionally, her sailing methods and knowledge may be highly influenced by the crew(s) she sailed with and so not everything she knows may translate across the board.
We know this is as much a WIP for you guys as for us, so don't worry, we're all figuring this out by turns together.
~row
Yes, makes sense. Basically, like she would know, to a degree, how a merchant ship is run, but would have no clue how a militaristic ship would be run as the rules change with that environment. She is good at steering, but she wouldn't know how to steer appropriately to make the best use of ship weapons (was about to say cannons, don't think we are in that era). These are just a few example, but I get the point, 50 years experience might make her look an expert in comparison to others, but her knowledge is limitted to what she was learning, how she was learning, and also the fact that she is an elf so took her time learning and perfecting.
Additional question: should our respective location threads entirely replace PMing except in the cases mentioned of NPC-meetings? Or are they for things that others have no reason not to know (ie characters probably don't know but could easily find out, but no biggie if things get mixed up), and someone like an evil* character would still handle shady details through PMs but post broad strokes here? I am curious about this in a broader sense than just Retribution also, though I suppose you could just have an invite-only forum for shadier (CD)quests and such.
*or secretive, antisocial, whatever! Not like we have any of those
For now, operate like you would on a quest. What you would openly emote put in the thread. Something you would send over DM channel handle via PM or IRC. Best judgment will apply here and if we need to tweek things as we go, we'll do that.