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Author Topic: And in threes...  (Read 410 times)

Acacea

And in threes...
« on: October 25, 2009, 02:10:32 pm »
In the perceived ascending order of usefulness...

1. Level 40 Epic.

On a kind of side-step, a couple of Dezza's things reminded me that I was actually talking with someone recently about the loss of the level 30 epic. Not so much its requirement to pass beyond it, but just that there was that "break." The old requirements, while stringent and restrictive in their way, did kind of add a lot at the same time - yes, you had to do something crazy to get past 20 in the first place, but also, and more interestingly to me, your story didn't just stop there. You had one at 20, and that was a beginning. At 30 you continued. There was another at 40, wasn't there? I can't recall. But there definitely a progression. I don't know if there should be another wall or not, but there was the feeling of level 30 being another big thing. Has anyone considered having a level 40 epic? Think about it - it takes you 20 pre-epic levels to get to "WL" in general. What happens after 20 more actually epic levels? heh. What have you spent all your time on? Make it twice as difficult and you either rule the world or go out with a bang, eh? Eh...

Anyway, I don't think WLs should be given more XP, regardless of quests, but at the moment their quests kind of come off very much as a final thing. You got one shot to complete a goal and then you are done and left to stagnate. It is greedy to try to do anything else story-involved a RL year later, you had your turn. In a lot of ways it seems like development stops instead of begins, and I think somewhere the lack of ability to progress in that fashion kinda sucked. What exactly are your Angelas and Alanthas and Storolds and so on doing at level 40? The next time they have stupid crazy idea to try, I say let 'em. Let it near kill them and break all ties and make new ones and whatnot, but let 'em. Make it worth the 20 epic levels they put in ;)

2. 1 hour to CDQs per 5 levels after 20.

 You don't need three WL quests, but with the current CDQ reqs limited to 6 hours every 2 months... it's hard to think of things that fit within the scope of the characters after x level, but can be squashed into two three hour sessions. That isn't even limited to WLs but epic characters in general - it doesn't matter if you've had a WL quest, if you're out killing Essrantor for fun, it will be hard for you to have a meaningful cdq that's aimed for your level range in that amount of time. It can be done and I've seen it done, but still - hard, for both GM and player. Maybe you could even just add an hour for every 5 levels after 20 or something - at 40 you'd cap at 10. Is that unfair?

(That's not snide, I'm curious if it seems unfair, you know? Do level ten characters feel burned by that, or look forward to further development as they continue?)

This was originally in my response to that thread since that's where the other was, but it might be better off here.

3. Use LORE commentary as mini-DM profiles.

Another thing is regarding the both the use of WLs and non-WLs that have gained influence in x area on quests. Profiles can get pretty weighty and still not have things of interest in them - a long time ago I wanted to have a GM setup on LORE where they could see what they needed to see of a character in a glance. With the GM commentary added, it occurred to me to use it as a mini-profile.

You look at your GM event calendar - 6 yes, 18 maybe, 3 no. Looking to most likely characters of those yes, by using LORE you can browse their stats, last used gear, level, crafts, chance of permadeath, and if GMs left quicknotes on LORE, snips of anything that might be immediately relevant.

"Banned from Voltrex."
"+10 Gather Info and Lore when in x region."
"Favored knight of the Queen of Trelania."
"Hero of Hurix"
"Dragoncalled"
"Cannot tap the Al'Noth until date 20/5/2010"

And so on. By keeping them very short one-liners, you can add more of them and see more of them at a glance. If any of those one-liners prove immediately relevant to your quest, you can choose or choose not to go look at where there is more information. In some cases you might need it, but in some cases all the important bit is summed up in a sentence.

It could be that LORE commentary might need to be wiggled a little, but it seemed like having snapshots of relevant information immediately available to GMs just by clicking a stat profile would really help them not have to wade as much just looking to see IF there is anything they need to know.
 
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