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Author Topic: How to Quest in this Forum - Guidelines - Please check back regularly for updates  (Read 1678 times)

Rowana

Hello all,In an effort to make this experimental quest-by-post as smooth a process as possible and make sure all sides understand the expectations and obligations we are posting this guide. This is an evolving set of guides that may change at any time. We would like to eventually establish an accepted norm out of what is developed here, if possible. Please do check back here before making new posts in the case of new or updated thread so that we may all remain on the same page. Guide for the Dragon Retaliation quest threads:GM obligations:*Row and/or Dorg will do their best to post advancement of events every Wednesday or Saturday. If you have actions you wish to have considered for the update, please post by the evening before each day (so Tuesday evening and Friday evening). We will do our best to accommodate actions posted prior to those times, but if we cannot (perhaps we didn’t see your post till the next day and GM work had already been done for the posting), we will be able to catch your efforts in the next pass or in an individual response thread as we have time.*Private requests for information will be dealt with as soon as possible. If there will be some delay in response for some reason (largely affected by RL here) we will post a response letting you know approximately when to expect the next response. Priority will be given to problematic situations.*NPC interactions will be dealt with as soon as we are able. It would be ideal to have those dealt with outside of the threads via PM or an IRC appointment, if possible before posting. We understand this is not always possible and will do our best.*We will attempt to give an idea of tracked time in each Wed/Sat update to help players keep track of the passage of time. Player Obligations:*Players will each consider their own lore based power level (as opposed to mechanical) when writing their posts/actions. We would like to keep the story flowing as much as possible without having to stop movements for mechanical skill checks (though we will certainly do that as much as necessary). The exception to this is if crafting skills are involved. We will adhere tightly to character’s actual crafting level or quest given crafting abilities. Please don’t indicate working on Mithril shields if you are still mechanically working in the lower spectrums.*As an aside about crafting: GMs will not concern the quest with actual in-game resource availabity except as necessitated by quest (such as an item related to the quest) or unless the items in question are considered rare/top tear. I.E. No churning out platinum emerald rings for everyone unless the resources are actually available to the character doing the crafting. Secondly, items of lower tier nature will just be always assumed a successful creation (such as if someone wanted to craft blankets for the cause. GMs and player will simply come up with a realistic amount of blankets crafted in a certain time period). If the player wishes to spend the time IG to do this, and donate them IG, this is perfectly fine and for larger scale donations this would be preferable but not mandated.*All posts should halt at direct NPC interactions to allow GMs to respond as soon as possible. Conversations or actions needed by NPCs necessitate GM interaction. You are very welcome to contact us prior to your post and work out the details. PM or IRC is fine, though allow for delays as we often are doing our GMing from RL work environments.*No overt post bumping. Again, if we don’t respond to an action, it may just have been missed due to our work period vs your time of post and we will respond in our next loop of responses. If you feel this is not the case, please do contact us privately. Again PM or IRC work best.*Players can post combined posts (such as conversations between two or more characters) so long as the approval from included players is given. If any conversations or actions are force emoted we will ask the player in question to walk it back (at the request of the inconvenienced player). If you need to request an action/conversation be walked back, please contact us privately rather than posting in the RP threads. We will take care of it as soon as possible, including editing player posts to keep confusion to a minimum. End notes:Please remember that this is a work in progress (WIP) and we may adjust as time goes on to compensate for issues that arise. GMs will do our best to keep players apprised in this thread of any updates to the guide. If all goes well, we will be running a second, related quest set with similar guides.As mentioned in the previous post on this matter, characters will be rewarded with IG exp/fortune etc as appropriate.~row (with Dorg)
 
The following users thanked this post: Acacea, cbnicholson

Acacea

Clarity seeking:Players will
« Reply #1 on: October 04, 2016, 11:51:12 pm »

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 :P 

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 :P)

 

Dorganath

Acacea wrote:Clarity
« Reply #2 on: October 05, 2016, 12:07:10 am »

Quote from: "Acacea"&cid="2761196"

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 :P 

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.

 

Chuckles_McChuck

Can we also assume this would
« Reply #3 on: October 05, 2016, 12:48:47 am »

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.

 

Rowana

We would like to encourage
« Reply #4 on: October 05, 2016, 01:03:42 am »

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

 

Chuckles_McChuck

Yes, makes sense.  Basically,
« Reply #5 on: October 05, 2016, 09:33:53 am »

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.

 

Acacea

Additional question: should
« Reply #6 on: October 05, 2016, 11:06:16 am »

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 :P

 

Rowana

For now, operate like you
« Reply #7 on: October 05, 2016, 11:17:22 am »

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.

~row