Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Butterface 08-30-07, 10:04 PM	Chris, are we going to see a system for Time Units in LFR that is similar to the LG system? I came into the fold with the start of XE, and am not familiar with some of the particulars of Living Campaigns. How will this work for LFR? Kevin PS - When I joined the RPGA, your predecessor had just quit the job. . . that was VERY chaotic. You've given us a lot of feedback, and are doing a great job so far IMO!
WotC_Tulach 08-31-07, 02:00 AM	Right now, I'm still working out the details of the play opportunity mechanics, although it's about 90% done. Since there's still possibilities of changes to the system, I don't really want to give info now just to take it back in a couple months. Hold tight - we'll be putting out information as we confirm it. We still have a long way to go before Gen Con Indy next year. Oh, and thanks for the compliment. We're trying to do our best to be more accessible.
miked_msn 08-31-07, 07:30 AM	well Chris ... I think you have been doing a great job. In terms of the question, FWIW, I think that some sort of 'TU' accounting would be a good thing. I am not particularly 'tied' into the LG system, but think it worked well enough. I just think there should be =something= <g>
MatteBlack 08-31-07, 09:23 AM	I play enough to have used all my TUs in LG on 2 characters had the system remained through the end of year plus a bit more. I liked how the TU system keeps a lid on advancement of individual characters but not player opportunities. It also drives longtime and more frequent players to create secondary characters that can play along with players newly entering the campaign. Anyone getting in on year one could keep up with with the other characters while later entrants don't find a campaign evacuated by low level playmates. This also has a secondary effects of turning the focus from a players main character toward the campaign and community and allows more people to DM without fear of "falling behind". Even if it is not TUs, I really hope their is some sort of system that limits the advancement of characters down to what can be maintained by players with a more moderate play frequency. Good character populations through more APLs will be better for the campaign that the potential for powerlevelled PC juggernauts. Lee
tharlan 08-31-07, 09:37 AM	Even if it is not TUs, I really hope their is some sort of system that limits the advancement of characters down to what can be maintained by players with a more moderate play frequency. Good character populations through more APLs will be better for the campaign that the potential for powerlevelled PC juggernauts. Lee Any good Living Campaign has to have a system that limits character advancement while at the same time promoting character play. In the Living Kingdoms of Kalamar campaign that I help manage we have a progression where by the time you have played 25 games you are approx 5th level. If the LFR Campaign was to generate 25 or so games a year that were playable by anyone (Region, Meta-Region, Core, Core Special, Adaptables) that promoted play up to lets say, 5 levels a year, then you would be looking at a minimum 6 year campaign. Now.. on the other hand, Living City did not worry about that, and that was somewhat shortsighted in hindsight. We willy nilly threw as many scenarios out there as we could (we had TU's back then, but they were for meta-game activities, not pay to play). I look forward to seeing what system Chris and whomever is going to be on the campaign staff will come up with. There are a LOT of ways to do it (we use Non-Adventuring Activites in Kalamar) that still allow for a LOT of play opportunties. Then again, I am not opposed to people having more than one character. :-D Take care and good gaming! Troy Daniels Living Kingdoms of Kalamar Lead Director Former LC Director All around nice guy... :-)
Jonathon_M_Johnson 08-31-07, 02:58 PM	Hello all- I like the idea of TUs, as it shows the concept of the yearly time. What I do find funny is that I played in a CORE module that the time frame was over 8 weeks, 8 TUs; but of course since it was a CORE module, it was only 2 TUs. I understand the TUs are the bases for travel time going to and from the place of adventure. Though alot of snickering was at the table in regards to the time frame in the module; some players even wanted the ability to craft items while traveling to the new area. LOL I think that TUs should be changed to 365 TUs. This way if the PCs do something different in a module, they can get charged a couple of TUs for their different planning; instead of charged 1 LG TU which is actually alot at higher levels. In regards to the comment above regarding TUs versus actual inside game time. What about this idea, in the above 365 TUs, even though it might be complex. When PCs go on an adventure, they really don't know how long they are going to be gone; this way one adventure might take 4 TUs, whereas another adventure might take 24 TUs. There would be a base TU count in the module; but as I said above, if they do different planning, then they would get charged for more TUs. Now on the downside to that idea is 2 things: 1- Players couldn't plan out their PC to what modules to play when they get really low on TUs. I.e. If they only have 14 TUs left and they want to play a module, that module might have a base TU count of 18. The only solution that I think might help is that if there would be a TU base count in the blurb. I.e. This adventure lasts a minimum of 14 TUs. Heck... There is an APL in a blurb, why not a TU base count. 2- Too many players complained about LG being Living Accounting and all of the number crunching they had to do. I guess the complex of the TU counting above might definitely bring that around again. But that is why we have ARs; this way they can see how many TUs they have left. That should do it for me. Thanks for your time. Jonathon M. Johnson Colorado
ankhwearer 08-31-07, 03:42 PM	I think that TUs should be changed to 365 TUs. TUs are play opportunities, not in-game weeks. (Yes, I know, 52 of them suggests that these are weeks. But this is only roughly analogous, as your example above illustrates.) This limits a character to 8 regionals, six metaregionals and 19 core or other-regional adventures per year; possibly less if any of these are two-rounders. That's the intention of the TU system; although these numbers were selected to give the facimile of 52 weeks of the year. Switching to a system that counts the number of days in the adventure would result in pressure on authors to have one-day adventures so that players could play more with the same character in one year. Also, camping, alternate routes and other factors that would affect the length of the adventure would mean a significant hit on the character in reduced play opportunities that year. It would become an efficiency race, where everyone struggles to do the mods in the fewest days possible. That doesn't sound like any fun at all, at least not to me.
catsclaw 08-31-07, 04:14 PM	Switching to a system that counts the number of days in the adventure would result in pressure on authors to have one-day adventures so that players could play more with the same character in one year ... the fewest days possible.It doesn't have to. The RPGA approves all the mods; they can certainly guarantee that all the mods that come out have an average cost of 5 units (or 10 units, or X units). You can certainly play all the "one-day" mods you want with a specific character, but you'd still have to wait three-months real time between them. And if the authors write in bonuses for taking longer -- stay in the city looking for rumors an extra 2 days, and you find out about the secret door leading to the treasure vault in the dungeon -- you'd see as much pressure to spend more time, as opposed to less time. It bugs me to no end that whenever I travel out of region my characters have to spend double time units for mods, because (apparently?) I couldn't just rent a room in the area for the 6 adventures they go on. I'd be happy if there was a simple system for including travel time in TU's.
Grimslade2001 08-31-07, 09:14 PM	We need some method of handling level advancement in the campaign. 5 year story arc, 30 character levels = 6 levels a year. How the XP and leveling system ends up in 4E will determine how many play opportunities we should have in a year to get us through 6th level. I also think that the TPTB should consider lengthening the first year of the campaign. LG had almost 18 months of play in 591CY. It allowed the triads to get organized and the whole LG community to learn the new edition. Authors got a chance to stretch as the first CY went on. Rules were tweaked and many lycanthropes were faced with nothing but silver candlesticks. :rolleyes: With the premiere mod debuting at DDXP tho this might be excessive. Brian
Britt 08-31-07, 10:21 PM	Experience has shown that 5 year story arcs are too long. The average player does not have that kind of attention span or dedication. 3 year story arcs seem to be more appropriate, possibly composed of three one-year, mini, story arcs, much like a play with three parts. You also wouldn't want everyone getting to 30th level; I would think somewhere around 15th or 20th level would be appropriate. If you slow advancement at higher levels to keep the number of high level characters low, you're looking at something like 7 levels in your first year of play, 5 levels in your second year of play, and 3 levels in your third year of play. I think something like that would give the best mix of capping levels, avoiding a deluge of high level PCs, giving fast advancement at low levels to get people excited about new characters, and still leave some advancement at higher levels for those that want to keep playing the same character. Obviously, people are going to disagree with me, but based on my experience, I think something like this would work best.
jhorred 09-01-07, 01:00 AM	I don't like the 365 TU idea. Too much accounting. I like the abstract 52 TU method better. Limits play but isn't overly complex. At cons, there isn't a whole lot of time and you could better use of time to get some food or use the restroom than to try to determine how many TUs it cost the party to complete the mod.
Reneshat 09-01-07, 02:41 AM	Trying to tie TUs to actual time spent is needlessly complicated, restrictive, and would in some ways ruin the feel of the Living campaign. The TU system as currently used, simply keeps track of the amount of adventuring you can do, focusing on the exploits and challenges faced rather than the mundane. Moving it to actual time instead of adventuring opportunity, changes the focus to the mundane.
catsclaw 09-01-07, 03:19 AM	Trying to tie TUs to actual time spent is needlessly complicated, restrictive, and would in some ways ruin the feel of the Living campaign. The TU system as currently used, simply keeps track of the amount of adventuring you can do, focusing on the exploits and challenges faced rather than the mundane. Moving it to actual time instead of adventuring opportunity, changes the focus to the mundane.Except, of course, it already tracks the mundane, from year-long jail sentences (52 TUs) to crafting time (which is a 1-to-1 TU-to-week exchange). I'd rather track something "real" to my character like time than track something artificial like "adventuring opportunities".
Reneshat 09-01-07, 04:01 AM	Except, of course, it already tracks the mundane, from year-long jail sentences (52 TUs) to crafting time (which is a 1-to-1 TU-to-week exchange). I'd rather track something "real" to my character like time than track something artificial like "adventuring opportunities". Crafting in most cases is the manipulation of magical energies, and jail time is yet another chapter in the story of your character. These are far less mundane than which route you took to get to the city.
catsclaw 09-01-07, 09:06 AM	Crafting in most cases is the manipulation of magical energies, and jail time is yet another chapter in the story of your character. These are far less mundane than which route you took to get to the city.How is jail time "yet another chapter in the story of your character" but how you traveled from place to place not? That's a pretty fine distinction, there. I'm a little confused about people who say it's too hard to do the bookkeeping -- I like the living campaign because it allows we to describe what my character was doing while they levelled up to their current position. Tracking time is a way of removing an awkward and nonsensical abstraction (artificial limits on the amount of adventuring you can do a year) from the game. If the bookkeeping's too hard, why aren't you arguing to drop TUs entirely? Or for that matter, why not a level-bump campaign, so you don't need to track gold or experience either?
Sieylianna 09-01-07, 09:28 AM	Don't forget that forgotten realms uses 10 day weeks. So 52 TU per year doesn't translate well. If you wanted to go with TU, I'd have each one approximate 5 days, so 73 TU per year. Ed
Reneshat 09-01-07, 07:33 PM	How is jail time "yet another chapter in the story of your character" but how you traveled from place to place not? That's a pretty fine distinction, there. I'm a little confused about people who say it's too hard to do the bookkeeping -- I like the living campaign because it allows we to describe what my character was doing while they levelled up to their current position. Tracking time is a way of removing an awkward and nonsensical abstraction (artificial limits on the amount of adventuring you can do a year) from the game. If the bookkeeping's too hard, why aren't you arguing to drop TUs entirely? Or for that matter, why not a level-bump campaign, so you don't need to track gold or experience either? Actually, the bookkeeping doesn't faze me. I enjoy it. However, it would be prohibitively great for others. The reason I said jail time is another chapter in the story, is it has dramatic use. Being thrown into jail for something heroic (or not so heroic) you did just adds something to the sacrifice you made (or the fact you got caught.) In some regions certain Triad members and authors might have fun throwing people into jail for stupid things. This of course fails to add anything to the characters story, but that would be a problem with the operation of the adventure or triad to begin with, not a problem with the TUs. I understand where you are coming from, and your point it logical, but I still feel it bogs down the characters in the mundane, and makes the record keeping NEEDLESSLY complicated. Many people have been complaining about the "oh so difficult" record keeping of the current living campaign. If the current simplistic record keeping is prohibitive to them, how much more so would the record keeping be if you were keeping track of actual days?
MatteBlack 09-02-07, 10:20 AM	It bugs me to no end that whenever I travel out of region my characters have to spend double time units for mods, because (apparently?) I couldn't just rent a room in the area for the 6 adventures they go on. I'd be happy if there was a simple system for including travel time in TU's. While I think the proposed 365TU system would equate to alot of accuracy that would be unpopular with a majority of the players, I think it would be a nice addition if they replaced TU doubling with travel time. Especially for those who might go to an out of region con. Neighboring and Core regions would be an extra TU to the adventure and then an extra TU back to your home region but, if you stayed in the region you are visiting as per your ARs the additional travel TUs would be waived until you crossed a regional border by playing a mod elsewhere. It would basically be giving players back a few TUs and would promote playing mod series in order and goig to neighboring regions. It would also add a bit more realism to our character's stories while allowing more character freedom to enjoy upcoming online play. I could see where it might cause some additional friction mustering at a con because a player is being very TU frugal but a bit of planning(never an assumption of all gamers) and aligning seperate characters for different regions could reduce that. One other consideration, how many weeks do the realms have? I know the calendar is different and it could be a nice opportunity to give players a few additional TUs, if there are more than 52. Lee
Southernskies 09-03-07, 07:11 AM	Neighboring and Core regions would be an extra TU to the adventure and then an extra TU back to your home region but, if you stayed in the region you are visiting as per your ARs the additional travel TUs would be waived until you crossed a regional border by playing a mod elsewhere. Lee That could be easy to administer. Base TU cost (based on current LG rules): Regional 1 TU Core 2 TU Out of Region 3 TU (2 TU if your previous AR is the same region) OR Out of Region 2 TU (1 TU if your previous AR is the same region).
Rerednaw 09-04-07, 10:05 AM	Do we really need TU's? Just cap xp. Cap wealth by level the same way. Cap 'goodies' in a similar fashion. Each cap is set by year. For every year of play, the character has a higher cap. You still have the same limits...and a lot less bookeeping. Is this completely unreasonable or too complicated?
smerwin29 09-04-07, 10:46 AM	The only way it might not work if it is still possible to "use xp" to gain benefits. For example, a crafting PC might be able to spend xp to gain wealth, and perhaps skew the wealth charts that way. It would also allow PCs, if LFR supports metaorganizations, to join every single one and gain those benefits without any limit (TUs currently limit those "out of game" activities). It would also be a little complicated in rare cases. Let say a player plays lots of adventure in Year 1. They get to the cap of wealth but still have lots of xp to go to reach the cap. Thus they would be playing adventures to gain XP, but they would be receiving no treasure for it. Or vice versa: would you allow players who have hit the XP cap for the year to play but not accept any experience but gain treasure until they reach that cap? I am not saying that plan couldn't work, but it would require a lot of changes to the way the current Living campaign runs.
MatteBlack 09-04-07, 12:34 PM	Do we really need TU's? Just cap xp. Cap wealth by level the same way. Cap 'goodies' in a similar fashion. Each cap is set by year. For every year of play, the character has a higher cap. You still have the same limits...and a lot less bookeeping. Is this completely unreasonable or too complicated? Alot of the things you spend TUs on beyond adventures tend to give you benefits that would likely cost gold or XP or at least offset penalties to gold or XP. Just tracking XP toward a cap would basically give even greater advantage to players who know how to play the meta-org game or make meta-gamey decisions for the sake of ARs. I like the TU system.
tombollis 09-04-07, 01:28 PM	Alot of the things you spend TUs on beyond adventures tend to give you benefits that would likely cost gold or XP or at least offset penalties to gold or XP. Just tracking XP toward a cap would basically give even greater advantage to players who know how to play the meta-org game or make meta-gamey decisions for the sake of ARs. I like the TU system. With or without TUs (or DUs as in LC), it makes more sense to me for out-of-module activities to grant xp rather than cost xp, speeding level advancement rather than slowing it. If a player wants his PC to get to high level faster, playing fewer modules, with fewer ARs and what they grant, let him - it's his loss of play opportunities, and doesn't cost others anything. He will reach retirement sooner, when he reaches the limit of supported play, and no exceptions should be made to allow him more play or to tailor modules to his abilities, but rules aren't required to hold him back. Tom Bollis
RanielK 09-04-07, 02:02 PM	Except, of course, it already tracks the mundane, from year-long jail sentences (52 TUs) to crafting time (which is a 1-to-1 TU-to-week exchange). I'd rather track something "real" to my character like time than track something artificial like "adventuring opportunities". Yes, but you would add to those two things (and craft or out of adventure work) the extra mundane tracking of how long did your party camp each day of the mod? How long did you as an individual take to get to the start point of the mod? How long did it take you to track the baddie through the wilderness? And many others I can't think of at the moment, all to get the "true time" cost of that particular mod for that particular player. After all, some of you lived there and some had to travel to get to the "hook." Then you'ld have to account for your next GM why you're from the Moonshaes, but you're hanging out in Cormyr at the start of this mod. Or why it only took one day/tu of travel instead of the 11 it should have taken to go straight from there to here.
TetsujinOni 09-04-07, 02:09 PM	The only way it might not work if it is still possible to "use xp" to gain benefits. For example, a crafting PC might be able to spend xp to gain wealth, and perhaps skew the wealth charts that way. In one of the presentations, I recall a statement that in 4e, XP will not be a resource to be spent. Crafting will work some other way, which should alleviate the XP=>Wealth mapping issue. It would also allow PCs, if LFR supports metaorganizations, to join every single one and gain those benefits without any limit (TUs currently limit those "out of game" activities). Affiliation score penalties for multiple membership, and better metaorg affiliation 'gateway' requirements, would seem to address this entirely. I am not saying that plan couldn't work, but it would require a lot of changes to the way the current Living campaign runs. With changes that were already in progress, and an announced change from 4e, some of these issues seem readily handled. Need more 4E Crunch to think about what next year is like. Some of us like the planning game as much as the over-the-table play *grin*
catsclaw 09-04-07, 02:24 PM	Yes, but you would add to those two things (and craft or out of adventure work) the extra mundane tracking of how long did your party camp each day of the mod? How long did you as an individual take to get to the start point of the mod? How long did it take you to track the baddie through the wilderness?I'm not arguing for that level of detail. Each mod should specify exactly what the TU cost is for playing it (i.e., this one requires two weeks travel to the north so it costs 14 TUs, this one occurs over the next three days, so it costs 3 TUs). Each mod should also specify additional things you can do to adjust that time (spend 2 days researching dragons in town, or travel through the wilderness for a week to fight the optional encounter at the end). I think it would add a lot to the game, and it wouldn't be onerous for the players. Just have the GM tell you how long the mod took, and write it down on your AR.Then you'ld have to account for your next GM why you're from the Moonshaes, but you're hanging out in Cormyr at the start of this mod. Or why it only took one day/tu of travel instead of the 11 it should have taken to go straight from there to here.That seems like a different issue; if you have antagonistic judges, there's nothing a tracking system can do to help that. Granted, I've never suffered through an audit, but the only times I had trouble explaining something on my ARs was when I had screwed something up. And I've never had a judge give me grief over some detail on the ARs.
smerwin29 09-04-07, 02:27 PM	In one of the presentations, I recall a statement that in 4e, XP will not be a resource to be spent. Crafting will work some other way, which should alleviate the XP=>Wealth mapping issue. I heard something similar, and then something different. :) So you are correct, we have to wait to see 4e before we can fix old problems (or create new ones) in the Living format. Affiliation score penalties for multiple membership, and better metaorg affiliation 'gateway' requirements, would seem to address this entirely. Again true. Metaorgs will need to be reworked if there is a switch to a non-TU system. And hence my mentioning it. With changes that were already in progress, and an announced change from 4e, some of these issues seem readily handled. Need more 4E Crunch to think about what next year is like. Some of us like the planning game as much as the over-the-table play *grin* Yes, some seem readily handled based on the released 4e tidbits and rumors. And others don't. Regardless, with the amount of adventures that are probably going to be available for anyone to play, there needs to be a limit on play opportunities for each character if the campaign is going to grow at a reasonable pace. Regardless of how that limit is achieved, integrating it with 4e is going to mean knowing how 4e works. It may be easy to drop TUs completely for some other method, but if the reason for dropping TUs is to get rid of complexity and paperwork, the system replacing it is going to need to be less complex and require less paperwork than using TUs. From an administrative standpoint, RIGHT NOW it is easier to allot TUs and figure out the most XP and wealth a character can achieve based on play opportunities rather than give unlimited play opportunities and then build a structure around that which takes into account all the "extras." That may change though, as you say.
MatteBlack 09-04-07, 03:36 PM	With or without TUs (or DUs as in LC), it makes more sense to me for out-of-module activities to grant xp rather than cost xp, speeding level advancement rather than slowing it. If a player wants his PC to get to high level faster, playing fewer modules, with fewer ARs and what they grant, let him - it's his loss of play opportunities, and doesn't cost others anything. He will reach retirement sooner, when he reaches the limit of supported play, and no exceptions should be made to allow him more play or to tailor modules to his abilities, but rules aren't required to hold him back. Tom Bollis I can certainly understand your side but, the TU's limit on levelling has the additional effect of populating the lower levels with hardcore character's secondaries which maintains a low-level game for new players to more easily enter the campaign. It also has some impact on reducing the campaign's the powerlevelling mentality by blunting the race to be the highest level character. Additionally, it makes it easier to only need to provide content for 10 levels or so in the first year rather all 30. I think limitless character advancement would only encourage powerlevelling, discourage quality play and leave a great potential for underpopulated lower and eventually mid level tables. I think comparison to MMOs holds here and I have definitely seen games where once it is a year or two into the campaign finding people to play with at low levels can be difficult. Lee
Reneshat 09-04-07, 04:26 PM	I can certainly understand your side but, the TU's limit on levelling has the additional effect of populating the lower levels with hardcore character's secondaries which maintains a low-level game for new players to more easily enter the campaign. It also has some impact on reducing the campaign's the powerlevelling mentality by blunting the race to be the highest level character. Additionally, it makes it easier to only need to provide content for 10 levels or so in the first year rather all 30. I think limitless character advancement would only encourage powerlevelling, discourage quality play and leave a great potential for underpopulated lower and eventually mid level tables. I think comparison to MMOs holds here and I have definitely seen games where once it is a year or two into the campaign finding people to play with at low levels can be difficult. Lee Yeah, what he said. (I am someone that has managed to effectively blow out TUs on 3 characters in a year before.)
tombollis 09-04-07, 04:41 PM	I can certainly understand your side but, the TU's limit on levelling has the additional effect of populating the lower levels with hardcore character's secondaries which maintains a low-level game for new players to more easily enter the campaign. It also has some impact on reducing the campaign's the powerlevelling mentality by blunting the race to be the highest level character. Additionally, it makes it easier to only need to provide content for 10 levels or so in the first year rather all 30. There is no need for the campagn to provide content for character levels 11-20 or 21-30 before it is planned just for players who have rushed PC advancement; the players can play other low level PCs until content is available. Also, many, possibly most, hardcore players will play multiple characters at various levels for the added play opportunities anyway. Once high level modules are available, why shouldn't a player be able to rush a character up to play them if he wants to? I think limitless character advancement would only encourage powerlevelling, discourage quality play and leave a great potential for underpopulated lower and eventually mid level tables. I think comparison to MMOs holds here and I have definitely seen games where once it is a year or two into the campaign finding people to play with at low levels can be difficult. I disagree re living campaigns. The continuous creation of low level modules, with fewer high level modules, would serve the purpose better once some characters have reached high level, regardless of whether or not rapid advancement is allowed. Advancement if a living campaign won't ever be limitless, as the books only dirrectly support limited levels (1-30 in 4e), modules have ro support the character's level, and most should not support levels too high for the story arc. Tom Bollis
Stormhawk 09-04-07, 08:57 PM	If you took a firm poll, not just a few of us on these boards, I think you would learn that largely most players like the TU system for LG. My first LG character is coming up on a year old and I'm 7th level and was almost out of TUs for the year before the rule was lifted. It's a good system that is not broken. Just because the Realms is "new" doesn't mean that we shouldn't take the good things that work for LG - like TUs and ARs. One of the major benefits a living campaign offers is logitc control and player auditing if it is so desired by a judge. Rob
KoboldChieftain 09-05-07, 12:08 AM	Ok, here is my copper pieces on the subject: One of the problems that artifically limiting advancement seeks to solve is the problem of getting a table together. We have all been there when two players have a high level character, two more have midlevel and the other two are low level (but of course too high for 1st level character to join!). By artificially limiting the amount of play a single character can get, the player is forced to play a second or even third characters. With the loosening of the regional play restricitions there might even be more!! This greatly expands the pool of playable characters without the need for more players. Secondly, it allows the campaign staff to build up the library of scenarios from the bottom up. This allows for the staff to supply more high level scenarios when the characters get there without sacrificing the lower level play opportunities. The lower level characters can be played in the already existing pool of low level adventures! Once the players have saturated the play range the distribution of scenarios will be equal for all levels. These are just my thoughts and opinions. I hope I have made some sense and added to the conversation. If this is just rehashing stuff I am sorry for wasting your time. :)
Gunnah 09-05-07, 12:24 AM	TUs are play opportunities, not in-game weeks. (Yes, I know, 52 of them suggests that these are weeks. But this is only roughly analogous, as your example above illustrates.) This limits a character to 8 regionals, six metaregionals and 19 core or other-regional adventures per year; possibly less if any of these are two-rounders. That's the intention of the TU system; although these numbers were selected to give the facimile of 52 weeks of the year. Switching to a system that counts the number of days in the adventure would result in pressure on authors to have one-day adventures so that players could play more with the same character in one year. Also, camping, alternate routes and other factors that would affect the length of the adventure would mean a significant hit on the character in reduced play opportunities that year. It would become an efficiency race, where everyone struggles to do the mods in the fewest days possible. That doesn't sound like any fun at all, at least not to me. You're not taking into account the cost for joining or maintaining membership in Metaorg's. I don't recall exactly how many, but it was close to 1/3rd of my TU's to advance in the two meta org's I was in this last year, with just one charactor. TU's are a good record keeping device, at the same time I think many Meta org's cost a good deal more TU's then is reasonable, espcially since many meta org's are mostly for role play.
tombollis 09-05-07, 06:32 AM	One of the problems that artifically limiting advancement seeks to solve is the problem of getting a table together. We have all been there when two players have a high level character, two more have midlevel and the other two are low level (but of course too high for 1st level character to join!). Players can still have PCs at different levels if you don't artificially limit advancement, and newer players are more likely to have one that can play at higher levels if they can speed leveling. I thing the artificial limitations aren't as beneficial as you think here. By artificially limiting the amount of play a single character can get, the player is forced to play a second or even third characters. With the loosening of the regional play restricitions there might even be more!! This greatly expands the pool of playable characters without the need for more players. I don't see this as true. I think there would be an expanded pool of compatible PCs if the artificial limitations are left out. Secondly, it allows the campaign staff to build up the library of scenarios from the bottom up. This allows for the staff to supply more high level scenarios when the characters get there without sacrificing the lower level play opportunities. The lower level characters can be played in the already existing pool of low level adventures! Once the players have saturated the play range the distribution of scenarios will be equal for all levels. You seem to be basing this on the assumption that limited advancwment would have the PCs of estabilshed players clustered at high levels, with mainly the PCs of new players who have not played the old low level adventures playing at low levels, a contradiction of your first point. Continuing entry of new players and new characters for old players requires the concentration to remain on the low level PCs, with gradual added support for higher levels. The high level support should be added per plan rather than in response to characters rushing to high level, encouraging creation of new PCs for more play opportunities without any other artificial limitations on advancement. Indications now are that TUs or similar bookkeeping are not going to be used. Tom Bollis
MatteBlack 09-05-07, 08:23 AM	You're not taking into account the cost for joining or maintaining membership in Metaorg's. I don't recall exactly how many, but it was close to 1/3rd of my TU's to advance in the two meta org's I was in this last year, with just one charactor. TU's are a good record keeping device, at the same time I think many Meta org's cost a good deal more TU's then is reasonable, espcially since many meta org's are mostly for role play. I'd be all for there being more TUs available and less tied up into meta-orgs but, I think the concept of TUs is a good one. Exactly how many can definitely be reviewed. I also tend to think that losing the threat to your TUs in a given mod would be removing a meaningful risk to players and their characters. Aside from the player who wants to play just his one character at every possible opportunity, I really don't see how removing TUs would benefit the campaign.
Skerrit 09-05-07, 01:47 PM	I think there needs to be some way to limit advancement, just to make writing mods for 5 or less APLs possible. That said, the one problem with TUs is that they limit play oppurtunity. Sure you can be a member of some org, but only if you don't play as much. Sure you can do the IC RP choice and stay behind with the wounded at the end of the mod, but only if you give up playing other mods. The benefits you gain from these things need to balanced out somehow, but I don't think the answer is to take away play oppurtunities. I think this is the philosophy I have heard from the 4th Ed. guys as well, from what little I have heard concerning item creation and the like.
aljergensen 09-05-07, 04:59 PM	I've always felt that TUs were not necessary. They add complexity and limit play opportunities ... both of which I believe are bad things. Primarily the reason I dislike the TU limit is that it limits my play options. I personally want to focus on 2 or possibly 3 characters (low, medium, high). If I get more I have too many voices in my head! :) I would love to have an epic level PC and I want to do it in less than 7 years. That's not going to happen with TU limits (assuming it takes approximately the same amount of game time to advance a level). The main arguements for TUs and my responses are: 1) Force people who play a lot to have multiple PCs. - If I go to a con and/or game day, I have to have PCs of appropriate level in order to play. In addition, if interesting scenarios are released that are only for lower-level characters, I'll create create characters so that I can play them. - TUs penalize the biggest supporters of the campaign ... if someone can only play on an occasional basis, nothing about the TU limit forces them to have multiple PCs. 2) Add a "cost" to Meta-Orgs. - There are simpler ways. One way would be to have a separate resource for meta-orgs. It could be a hard limit, or if you join more meta-orgs than normally allowed you pay some kind of penalty. Under the TU system, nothing stops me from joining 10 Meta-Orgs. I may not play that character much, but I can go Meta-Org happy. 3) Prison. - Punishment could be easily changed to a gp and/or xp reduction for future mods instead. 4) Limit how quickly PCs can advance. - The maximum PC level is going to be limited by the levels supported by scenarios available. - Some people will have a problem with other people advancing characters more quickly than their character, but this is always going to be an issue. A living campaign is not like a home campaign - each PC exists in their own "reality" that is only loosely connected to other PCs. If I sit down with another player, I doesn't affect me if the person has been playing that PC for 6 months or 6 years. I've only rarely (if ever) heard anyone ask how long a PC has been played. - My PC knows nothing about the "real world" calendar year and IMHO should not be limited by it. Some people will want to limit what their character does in a year, which is great. I don't see a need to force everyone to do the same. 5) Limit crafting. - We don't know how crafting will work in 4e, but it would be simpler to just put a limit on how much can be crafted between adventures. Just my thoughts. Allen.
KoboldChieftain 09-05-07, 05:27 PM	Allen, I agree with some of what you said. I have responded to the issues inline below. 1) Force people who play a lot to have multiple PCs. - If I go to a con and/or game day, I have to have PCs of appropriate level in order to play. In addition, if interesting scenarios are released that are only for lower-level characters, I'll create create characters so that I can play them. - TUs penalize the biggest supporters of the campaign ... if someone can only play on an occasional basis, nothing about the TU limit forces them to have multiple PCs. You know, there are other options than just creating new characters when you run out of TUs. You could always Judge a game or two. Perhaps volunteer to help the convention in non-gaming ways. After all, the success of the campaign depends on both the players and those that allow you to play. ;) 2) Add a "cost" to Meta-Orgs. - There are simpler ways. One way would be to have a separate resource for meta-orgs. It could be a hard limit, or if you join more meta-orgs than normally allowed you pay some kind of penalty. Under the TU system, nothing stops me from joining 10 Meta-Orgs. I may not play that character much, but I can go Meta-Org happy. 3) Prison. - Punishment could be easily changed to a gp and/or xp reduction for future mods instead. 5) Limit crafting. - We don't know how crafting will work in 4e, but it would be simpler to just put a limit on how much can be crafted between adventures. These I agree with. All of these things can be handled in different if not better ways. 4) Limit how quickly PCs can advance. - The maximum PC level is going to be limited by the levels supported by scenarios available. - Some people will have a problem with other people advancing characters more quickly than their character, but this is always going to be an issue. This is where, I think, most people disagree with me (and therefore agree with you). As I see it we can either limit the advancement artifically or we can allow characters to hit a ceiling wherein they run out of scenarios in which they can play. I find the later much more annoying but that is just me. Let me add another angle to this discussion. By limiting the character progression, it is easier to discover and handle rules oddities. Since we are all starting afresh with 4.0 this is bound to happen. Sure, beta testing and such will help out a great deal but somethings need just thousands of tables to figure out. :)
RedKnightofKet 09-05-07, 05:44 PM	I've always felt that TUs were not necessary. They add complexity and limit play opportunities ... both of which I believe are bad things. Primarily the reason I dislike the TU limit is that it limits my play options. I personally want to focus on 2 or possibly 3 characters (low, medium, high). If I get more I have too many voices in my head! :) I would love to have an epic level PC and I want to do it in less than 7 years. That's not going to happen with TU limits (assuming it takes approximately the same amount of game time to advance a level). The main arguements for TUs and my responses are: 1) Force people who play a lot to have multiple PCs. - If I go to a con and/or game day, I have to have PCs of appropriate level in order to play. In addition, if interesting scenarios are released that are only for lower-level characters, I'll create create characters so that I can play them. - TUs penalize the biggest supporters of the campaign ... if someone can only play on an occasional basis, nothing about the TU limit forces them to have multiple PCs. 2) Add a "cost" to Meta-Orgs. - There are simpler ways. One way would be to have a separate resource for meta-orgs. It could be a hard limit, or if you join more meta-orgs than normally allowed you pay some kind of penalty. Under the TU system, nothing stops me from joining 10 Meta-Orgs. I may not play that character much, but I can go Meta-Org happy. 3) Prison. - Punishment could be easily changed to a gp and/or xp reduction for future mods instead. 4) Limit how quickly PCs can advance. - The maximum PC level is going to be limited by the levels supported by scenarios available. - Some people will have a problem with other people advancing characters more quickly than their character, but this is always going to be an issue. A living campaign is not like a home campaign - each PC exists in their own "reality" that is only loosely connected to other PCs. If I sit down with another player, I doesn't affect me if the person has been playing that PC for 6 months or 6 years. I've only rarely (if ever) heard anyone ask how long a PC has been played. - My PC knows nothing about the "real world" calendar year and IMHO should not be limited by it. Some people will want to limit what their character does in a year, which is great. I don't see a need to force everyone to do the same. 5) Limit crafting. - We don't know how crafting will work in 4e, but it would be simpler to just put a limit on how much can be crafted between adventures. Just my thoughts. Allen. 6) To try and add some realism to the character's journey through the year. They may not be tied to the "real-world" calendar, but they should be tied to their own.
GCOLLIOU 09-05-07, 06:06 PM	I agree with you, I play since the beginning to LG, and I can say than some member of Circle actually make more feeback and it's important (Britt -very active in his new position-, Steve, Pieter, Creighton) when they don't reply directly. PS - When I joined the RPGA, your predecessor had just quit the job. . . that was VERY chaotic. You've given us a lot of feedback, and are doing a great job so far IMO![/QUOTE]
aljergensen 09-05-07, 06:07 PM	Allen, You know, there are other options than just creating new characters when you run out of TUs. You could always Judge a game or two. Perhaps volunteer to help the convention in non-gaming ways. After all, the success of the campaign depends on both the players and those that allow you to play. ;) I do judge quite a bit ... did I mention that I game too much? :D As I see it we can either limit the advancement artifically or we can allow characters to hit a ceiling wherein they run out of scenarios in which they can play. I find the later much more annoying but that is just me. This would be an oddity for the first year or two, but after that it won't be as much of an issue. Let me add another angle to this discussion. By limiting the character progression, it is easier to discover and handle rules oddities. Since we are all starting afresh with 4.0 this is bound to happen. Sure, beta testing and such will help out a great deal but somethings need just thousands of tables to figure out. :) Which is why I can envision something like year 1 supporting levels 1-10, year 2 supporting up to 20 and year 3 supporting epic level. Even a game junkie like myself should have plenty of game opportunities. I can see that there could be an issue forming tables if we start stretching characters over 30 levels and keep APL limits as tight as they are currently. I like the APL rules in LG, but I don't think a TU limit is going to alleviate the problem forming tables of similar level PCs. It would just create a bigger "lump" in the average level with the majority of PCs stuck in low-to-mid-level category. In some ways TU limits make forming a table harder, especially at the end of the year because the character that would have been the appropriate level is "on the bench" because they are out of TUs. I dunno. Like I said, I'd like an epic level character someday but I think a lot of people get tired of playing the same character after 2-3 years. It would also be great to have a story arc take a PC from from newbie to epic ... and most story arcs seem to work better if limited to 3 years or less. Allen.
aljergensen 09-05-07, 08:11 PM	6) To try and add some realism to the character's journey through the year. They may not be tied to the "real-world" calendar, but they should be tied to their own. To me, that's a preference. Personally, I don't care if my character crams 2 years of adventuring into 1 "Realms year". It's along the same lines of playing scenarios out of sequence ... my characters frequently bounce around in time. It was a little odd at times to remember which king was currently on the throne, but it never really affected my enjoyment of the mods. In a home campaign, the PCs timeline usually makes a lot more sense ... this is just one of the compromises I think we make when playing a living campaign. Nobody would be stopping you from limiting your own character's amount of adventuring if it's important to you. Allen.
MatteBlack 09-06-07, 12:26 PM	An imprtant distinction here is that the actual restriction of play opportunities caused by TUs is pretty minute. They mostly just limit character use opportunities. They might occasionally take away an opportunity to play in a mod with a level minmum but, the effect they have on populating the lower levels and the DM ranks far offset it. I also think without TUs, you would see players racing through mods to powerlevel much more frequently. Lee
Rerednaw 09-06-07, 12:47 PM	As previously stated, there are other methods of capping advancement. Cap 'goodies'. No more than X wealth by level, no more than Y Meta-orgs per character (or using the aforementioned affiliation system, take penalties for multiple org membership). As far as level or xp, no more than X xp per year. Even if crafting allows you to play a bit more, you are still limited by total wealth on hand. I suppose one could be stricter and simply limit the amount of XP you earn in a year, but I think that it too much bookkeeping. I'd rather see something like set limits on modules played. How you spend your gold and xp is up to you. I'd find it easier to count 10 ARs then to audit each one and see how many 'TU's' each one took. Another consideration, depending how 4E works out, if the emphasis is on the character and not his/her 'toys' than crafting won't be such a power-curve breaker.
aljergensen 09-06-07, 12:59 PM	An imprtant distinction here is that the actual restriction of play opportunities caused by TUs is pretty minute. Maybe it's never affected you, but it has affected me. I would have enjoyed playing RHOD with an LG character, but didn't because I wanted to play my mid-level character for more than a month out of the year. I also think without TUs, you would see players racing through mods to powerlevel much more frequently. I'm not trying to be insulting here or dismiss your opinion. But I don't understand the "race through levels" arguement. D&D is not an MMORPG. There is no "power leveling". I still have to sit down at a game table and play my character. Whether I role-play my heart out or snooze until combat has nothing to do with how often I play a character. IMHO, allowing me to play whatever character I want, when I want (assuming there is an appropriate table) allows me to "get into character" more effectively. If I have to bench a character for months at a time because of TU limits I find it tough to remember where I was going with that character. Allen
cetiken 09-06-07, 01:11 PM	I personally don't have a lot of opinion on time units, but then from my understanding they were created to curb folk from playing one chracter exclusively and skyrocketing up to level <blah> way fast leaving everyone else in the dust and then makeing a ruckus and refusing to play down or somesouch. <Shurg> Personally, I have the opposite problem. Some of my friends call it chracter ADD. I've got a notebook full of first and second level PCs. I'm not sure that its a problem except when i want to play mods that are apl 10+. In anycase its self inflicted and probably not something the rules need to address. In short, I don't care about TUs. LGs system seemed to work well enough, but there was probably room for improvement. I'm looking forward to Mr. Thulch's new system.
MatteBlack 09-06-07, 01:55 PM	Maybe it's never affected you, but it has affected me. I would have enjoyed playing RHOD with an LG character, but didn't because I wanted to play my mid-level character for more than a month out of the year. I'm not trying to be insulting here or dismiss your opinion. But I don't understand the "race through levels" arguement. D&D is not an MMORPG. There is no "power leveling". I still have to sit down at a game table and play my character. Whether I role-play my heart out or snooze until combat has nothing to do with how often I play a character. IMHO, allowing me to play whatever character I want, when I want (assuming there is an appropriate table) allows me to "get into character" more effectively. If I have to bench a character for months at a time because of TU limits I find it tough to remember where I was going with that character. Allen RHoD is a great example that I experienced too. I chalk that more up to a bad application of the TU system. They could have made that series far more manageable to schedule within the existing TU system. Happily, I may be able to play it now that the TUs have been relaxed. However, I believe they had the intention of players setting aside one character just for RHoD and TUs make the multiple character per player model function much more smoothly. I am in total agreement about D&D not being an MMO. Alot of the social dynamics apply though and many players bring their MMO habits to these campaigns. There will also be alot of gamers who'd readily power through every possible xp source. I have seen players looking to cut through mods for the xp, gold and accesses all too ready to throw aside the story and challenge to get to the payoff. You can probably even find some examples posted of the best ways to level up fast. I firmly believe the TU system is one way the campaign gets to put the brakes on and allow players to experience or enjoy the adventures instead of just overcoming them as fast as possible. In short, if you don't want it all to become an MMO, you don't want to allow players to just advance unchecked.
aljergensen 09-06-07, 03:19 PM	I firmly believe the TU system is one way the campaign gets to put the brakes on and allow players to experience or enjoy the adventures instead of just overcoming them as fast as possible. Let's take a hypothetical situation. Bob wants to "power game" his way to high levels. So he finds a judge and 3 other buddies to rush through games ... they do scenarios that would normally take 4 hours in half an hour. Or maybe they don't even play, they just have the judge summarize the plot and sign off on ARs (or the equivalent). That would be cheating. The TU limit system slows it down, but does nothing to stop it. If someone really wants to cheat they could still do it easily by printing out a bunch of old ARs and back dating them. I think there could be simple ways of detecting cheating, but the TU limit is not one of them. Even if someone did cheat (which I don't condone) how much does it really affect other people? What affects me is how the person interacts with the group when we're playing a game session. It may be a cliche, but power gamers would only be cheating themselves out of enjoying the game. Allen.
MatteBlack 09-06-07, 03:54 PM	Let's take a hypothetical situation. Bob wants to "power game" his way to high levels. So he finds a judge and 3 other buddies to rush through games ... they do scenarios that would normally take 4 hours in half an hour. Or maybe they don't even play, they just have the judge summarize the plot and sign off on ARs (or the equivalent). That would be cheating. The TU limit system slows it down, but does nothing to stop it. If someone really wants to cheat they could still do it easily by printing out a bunch of old ARs and back dating them. I think there could be simple ways of detecting cheating, but the TU limit is not one of them. Even if someone did cheat (which I don't condone) how much does it really affect other people? What affects me is how the person interacts with the group when we're playing a game session. It may be a cliche, but power gamers would only be cheating themselves out of enjoying the game. Allen. I don't suspect that the system will ever be able to rule out cheating especially with homegames and online play possible with little outward supervision and TUs would do little prevent someone from cheating. My greater concern is the expectation of what is appropriate during play. I have had people in mixed tables upset that we weren't going to try to rush through a mod in order to be able to rush another after it. I also see tons of players focusing overly on build and advancement to the point of overlooking the story unfolding on the table and in the campaign. TU system promotes a playstyle that puts greater value on a limited number of adventures with that character and playing a mod with more properly scaled characters. It makes for a subtle approval of playing to savor the game experience and not it's product. The TU system also has the added benefit of putting forth a meaningful cost for failure or sacrifice without blowing a character of the gold/xp curve. I could even picture loosening how restrictive it is and allowing more games per year but, totally removing it sounds like a huge mistake to me. I guess we'll have to wait and see how LFR develops.
aljergensen 09-06-07, 05:25 PM	I have had people in mixed tables upset that we weren't going to try to rush through a mod in order to be able to rush another after it. I also see tons of players focusing overly on build and advancement to the point of overlooking the story unfolding on the table and in the campaign. TU system promotes a playstyle that puts greater value on a limited number of adventures with that character and playing a mod with more properly scaled characters. No rule is ever going to force people to role play or spend an "appropriate" amount of time on a mod. The people who "rush" probably don't care if they have a dozen different PCs, because it's all about the build mechanics, not the character. A TU limit just delays the inevitable progression, it doesn't stop it. And as you stated ... it's already an issue. IMHO TU limits don't do anything to stop it. Some people would probably argue that it isn't an issue at all, as long as all of the people at the table are in agreement on the style of play. The biggest advantage I've seen of a living campaign is that I get to play with a wide variety of people. It's also the biggest disadvantage. Allen.
tombollis 09-06-07, 06:50 PM	Let's take a hypothetical situation. Bob wants to "power game" his way to high levels. So he finds a judge and 3 other buddies to rush through games ... they do scenarios that would normally take 4 hours in half an hour. Or maybe they don't even play, they just have the judge summarize the plot and sign off on ARs (or the equivalent). Such players basically eat the module, getting the AR and the XP without the play experience. They have taken a major real world penalry for ryshing, with no harm to anyone not at the table. It makes no difference to me if someone jumps ahead levels, missing the game play at lower levels. I don't see it as a contest to see whose character becomes too high to play first. Just don't have the campaign give them special concideration; don't release anything extra for high level characters until it is planned for characters to reach the levels. I'm not in competition with players at other tables. It is my own play experience and that of those I play with that matter to me. If someone wants to create an epic character, skipping lower level play by accumulating ARs without significant play, let him. He has cost himself the play experience for those ARs and will never be able to play them properly in the campaign. Just don't let him force others to loose out on the opportunity to actually play the adventures. This has little to do with TYs, as the players can do the same whether or not there are TUs. In a TU system, a player could assign a year's worth of TUs of unplayed modules to a character to give him maximun advancement at no risk, while playing other adventures with another PC for actual game play. The end result is similar to the no TU situation. It isn't policeable. Tom Bollis
paigeoliver 09-07-07, 07:56 AM	Even with the TUs in Living Greyhawk it was still possible to powerlevel a character to the low teens in a short amount of time. Start a character near the end of the year, run them out of time units, and then do it again as soon as the TUs reset. Result is a 13th level character in just a few months real time. Also, I never really saw the time unit thing curb the "I only want to play one character people". LG had time units for 7 years and I still saw them at every single convention, toting along that one lonely 13th level character they have.
amysrevenge 09-08-07, 06:27 PM	The ONLY time you need to limit character advancement is at the leading edge of the campaign, the first time around. (But you DO need to do it then.) Using LG as an example: In Year 1, we used TU to limit PCs to level 6 or so, so that we could focus the writing on those levels. In Year 2, we used TU to limit PCs to level 10 or so, so that we could focus writing on those levels. With more levels the focus is spread out somewhat, but you can't keep advancement any slower. By Year 5, we had PCs right up to level 17 - our modules covered APLs 2-18. At that point, why do we bother limiting advancement? We already have characters at every level available. Limiting advancement won't help anything now, from a "focus the modules" perspective. In my mind, if the campaign management has the discipline to ignore the cries of the "leading edge" players for more high level content, they can limit advancement all they want by limiting the levels of modules available. "Oh, you have the first level 7 PC in the campaign? Good for you. Enjoy playing him again in a year or so when APL7 mods start coming out." But, once we have APL25 mods released, why should we hold back a new level 1 PC from advancing as quickly as modules will allow? Even if he made it to level 25 in 6 months, he wouldn't be able to go any farther until APL26 mods came out.
mmockus 09-10-07, 01:27 AM	Amysrevenge has a good point. (though I'm not sure which side of he arguement he sits on.) There is no need to use TUs to limit advancement. If year 1 only APL 2-6 adventures exist, then you'll have to set your character aside as soon as he reaches the maximum level to continue to play those adventures. I can see no reason to limit players advancement artificially with TUs. TUs have gotten used for other purposes, such as metaorg costs or legal penalties, but these could just as easily be handled in other ways. 1. Jailed: you cannot play any adventures that have already been released (possibly just regional content) and are removed from play for 3 months. So in 3 months they return to the campaign, and can play new content as it comes out. 2. Metaorgs. The affiliation system, which will be a workable mechanic in 4e, has no requirements for TUs, and if you want to limit advancement, you simply require real time (1 year, etc) at a specific teir before players can advance. my 2 cents. 2.
smerwin29 09-10-07, 07:29 AM	Big Mike does make some good points. There have been many good points in the discussion, and maybe I can add a couple more. People seem to think that TUs (or any sort of character growth limitation) are only in place to keep characters from leveling too fast. While that is certainly one of the main reasons, there are other reasons. And while I would be more than happy to see TUs go away, I also don't want to see the alternatives be more labor-intensive and confusing than TUs already are. Limiting play opportunities limits wealth as much as XP (and levels). Even if you only limit character levels by releasing adventures playable by levels 1-10 in Year 1, you are opening the possibility that a player could find a way to slow down his xp gain (through countless ways and means) while keeping the wealth gain ramped up. Now you have a character who ends the year at 10th level anyway, but has played every adventure available and has the wealth of a character of a much higher level. Adventures sometimes offer extra benefits for characters who take extra time to complete an objective. Those types of choices would no longer become choices. Of course you do the extra mission for the extra wealth and/or xp, because you lose nothing by doing it. The Jailed example above is a painful example of why TUs ARE needed. Let's say I play with a home group. We play once a week, every week. Our characters are 6th level, and I get jailed. With this system, I now have to not play at all for 3 months with my group!? With TUs, you just knock off the extra TUs on the AR and play again next week. If I had another 3 hours to type, I could come up with 3 hours worth of examples. Like everyone else, I want the best and most balanced campaign possible. People need to start thinking in the longer term, and not just of their own wants, if they are going to suggest viable alternatives to TUs.
aljergensen 09-10-07, 12:43 PM	The focus of 4e, we are being told, is to streamline play. Along those same lines I would like to see tracking information for the Living Campaign streamlined. Part of that is eliminating TU limits. People seem to think that TUs (or any sort of character growth limitation) are only in place to keep characters from leveling too fast. While that is certainly one of the main reasons, there are other reasons. ... Limiting play opportunities limits wealth as much as XP (and levels). Even if you only limit character levels by releasing adventures playable by levels 1-10 in Year 1, you are opening the possibility that a player could find a way to slow down his xp gain (through countless ways and means) while keeping the wealth gain ramped up. Now you have a character who ends the year at 10th level anyway, but has played every adventure available and has the wealth of a character of a much higher level. Since XP as a resource is going away, I don't see many ways this is going to be an issue. I have to admit that I can't think of any way this could happen even with the current system. In addition, even if there was a way to gain GP without the corresponding XP gain, TU limits does not address the issue. It just slows it down. Adventures sometimes offer extra benefits for characters who take extra time to complete an objective. Those types of choices would no longer become choices. Of course you do the extra mission for the extra wealth and/or xp, because you lose nothing by doing it. Maybe this happens more to other people, but I've seen it once (maybe twice) that I can remember. IMHO it's such an unusual occurence that it doesn't justify the overhead and penalties that go with a TU system. The Jailed example above is a painful example of why TUs ARE needed. Let's say I play with a home group. We play once a week, every week. Our characters are 6th level, and I get jailed. With this system, I now have to not play at all for 3 months with my group!? With TUs, you just knock off the extra TUs on the AR and play again next week. Unless you are out of TUs because of the jail time. In which case it may be months until you can play with your home group again. Once again, other people may have different experiences but I've never served jail time nor have I seen it. For jail, I would propose that the person can either not play the character for "x" period of time or pay GP to "buy" their way out of jail. I guess my point of view is that TU limits have several negatives. The cases that have such a minimal overall impact (extra TUs for a benefit, jail) do not justify the negatives. Allen.
smerwin29 09-10-07, 01:19 PM	In addition, even if there was a way to gain GP without the corresponding XP gain, TU limits does not address the issue. It just slows it down. It does address the issue. That's the point. TUs give campaign administrators a very easy way to make sure the campaign grows at a controlled pace. Administrators can say, "The most xp and gp you can gain in an adventure is x and y per TU spent." Then they allot the total number of TUs that a character can use. That doesn't just slow it down. It caps it. Maybe this happens more to other people, but I've seen it once (maybe twice) that I can remember. IMHO it's such an unusual occurence that it doesn't justify the overhead and penalties that go with a TU system. And in my experience, it has been a frequent occurrence. Go figure. And the point isn't whether it is frequent or not, the point is planning for the future. If adventure writers or regional triads are going to want to do something like this, it is better to think about it now than try to fix something later. Unless you are out of TUs because of the jail time. In which case it may be months until you can play with your home group again. Once again, other people may have different experiences but I've never served jail time nor have I seen it. And again, I see it all the time. And yes, if you are almost out of TUs, it takes you out of the game for the rest of the year anyway. But one is an "if," and the other is a definite. For jail, I would propose that the person can either not play the character for "x" period of time or pay GP to "buy" their way out of jail. This is all well and good, but now you are adding complications that you were trying to avoid by getting rid of TUs. And you are risking an imbalance between level and wealth (assuming, of course, that matters in 4e). I guess my point of view is that TU limits have several negatives. The cases that have such a minimal overall impact (extra TUs for a benefit, jail) do not justify the negatives. I understand that completely. I am not trying to defend TUs per se. I am saying that if you are going to control and balance the growth of the campaign, you need to have some sort of system that limits things. People seem to be just saying "TUs suck, so let's get rid of them," without thinking about it from any other directions. With a campaign where you might be able to play 100 adventures in a year with the same character (that is just a random number thrown out there), you need to think about it. I too want a more streamlined and simpler system, but I also know players are going to want various "outside the game" options (meta-orgs is just one example). I know that writers are going to want to give options within the adventure, both positive and negative. If you streamline or don't plan ahead enough, you are going to end up with "on the fly" or "after the fact" decisions being made. Maybe having administered more than one RPGA campaign, I have just seen too much. But I know something like the following is going to happen, given the correct circumstances. This involves assumptions about 4e, but despite those you get my meaning. Assume 100 adventures released in a year, and playing 50 gets your PC to 10th level with 10000gp, which is considered balanced in 4e. (Again, I am just using random numbers.) So the LFR admin decide to do away with TUs, and cap progression for the year at 10th level. It won't take long for some joker to realize that he can die every third adventure, play all 100 adventures, still reach 10th level, but have the wealth equivalent of a 15th level character. Now this is just one example. I can think of so many more that I have no time to type. And while we don't know what sorts of things will be added to, or taken from, 4e, some players will always look to exploit things. The point is this. If you want to offer players cool things outside of the adventures, then you have to be prepared to balance those things with a cost. If you have something like TUs, the cost can be figured easily. If you don't, the cost has to be figured some other way, so you are just adding the complications to 100 smaller things at the backend instead of just once at the beginning. Again, this does not mean TUs are great. It just means another system has to work as well as TUs work in doing the job of controlling the campaign without adding complexity elsewhere.
catsclaw 09-10-07, 01:54 PM	The point is this. If you want to offer players cool things outside of the adventures, then you have to be prepared to balance those things with a cost. If you have something like TUs, the cost can be figured easily.Put another way, shared campaigns have a very limited number of resources for your character to manage, the main ones being gold and XP. TUs provide yet another resource -- one not directly tied to character power -- which can be used to reward (these adventures cost X TUs less for members of this metaorganization) or punish (spend X TUs in jail) characters. Remove them, and you've effectively limited your character options, not expanded them.
aljergensen 09-10-07, 03:15 PM	It does address the issue. That's the point. TUs give campaign administrators a very easy way to make sure the campaign grows at a controlled pace. Administrators can say, "The most xp and gp you can gain in an adventure is x and y per TU spent." Then they allot the total number of TUs that a character can use. That doesn't just slow it down. It caps it. It would be easy to control the maximum PC level by controlling the max APL (or equivalent). After the first year or two, controlling maximum PC level is not an issue. If somebody continually dies (on purpose) to maximize gp/level I still don't see how a TU limit stops that. If a judge suspects a player is purposely killing their character they can report it as cheating. I have no clue what cost will be incurred with being raised in 4e, but in LG it probably doesn't gain extra GP to die until you're regularly playing APL 10 or so. Maybe we just need a "death tax" in addition to the cost of being raised at higher levels. Or a character is limited to 10 deaths per career ... after a while the gods just get tired of sending them back. And in my experience, it has been a frequent occurrence. Go figure. And the point isn't whether it is frequent or not, the point is planning for the future. If adventure writers or regional triads are going to want to do something like this, it is better to think about it now than try to fix something later. Maybe it's a regional difference. I've played most mods from year four on and had it affect one of my characters maybe twice. Could just be selective memory though. But I could see it being replaced by a GP cost ... you have the option to travel to city "X" to warn of the impending invasion but it will cost 100 GP because you have to hire special transport. Or something similar. And again, I see it all the time. And yes, if you are almost out of TUs, it takes you out of the game for the rest of the year anyway. But one is an "if," and the other is a definite. Which is why I propose a GP fine instead of TU fine being optional. But for most people, having to pay a significant jail time penalty means they will not be able to play a character at some point ... it's just a matter of when. Another way of looking at it is that if I get jail time on a secondary character (one I don't use all of my TUs for in a given year) jail time is not a penalty at all. A TU jail time penalty can be a very uneven method of punishment. Another option would be to reduce GP AND XP received by "x" percent for the next "n" mods. That would evenly "punish" characters more than anything else I can think of. I understand that completely. I am not trying to defend TUs per se. I am saying that if you are going to control and balance the growth of the campaign, you need to have some sort of system that limits things. ... Assume 100 adventures released in a year, and playing 50 gets your PC to 10th level with 10000gp, which is considered balanced in 4e. (Again, I am just using random numbers.) So the LFR admin decide to do away with TUs, and cap progression for the year at 10th level. It won't take long for some joker to realize that he can die every third adventure, play all 100 adventures, still reach 10th level, but have the wealth equivalent of a 15th level character. With a TU limit system they could do the same thing. It would just take them 2 years instead of 1. IMHO the only way to be fair when penalizing or adding a cost to an activity is to affect GP and/or XP. To some characters a TU cost is huge (just ask my wife who is down to 3 TUs for her cleric). For other characters (like my cleric with 40 TUs left) it's not a cost at all. We may just have to agree to disagree on this. Allen.
jhorred 09-10-07, 05:19 PM	<snip> IMHO the only way to be fair when penalizing or adding a cost to an activity is to affect GP and/or XP. To some characters a TU cost is huge (just ask my wife who is down to 3 TUs for her cleric). For other characters (like my cleric with 40 TUs left) it's not a cost at all. We may just have to agree to disagree on this. Allen. I'll agree that TU cost are different to each character, but at the same time, so is a GP cost. IMHO, GP are more important to a fighter type than a spell caster. I think a fighter type has to have good gear to be effective. My wizard is effective even though he has a large amount of unspent GP. And XP cost would be different to each player as some would welcome the delayed retirement where others would curse the slowed progression. Jeff
MichaelAhlf 09-10-07, 05:33 PM	I'll agree that TU cost are different to each character, but at the same time, so is a GP cost. IMHO, GP are more important to a fighter type than a spell caster. I think a fighter type has to have good gear to be effective. My wizard is effective even though he has a large amount of unspent GP. Very good point - fighters are a function of (a) their feats and (b) their gear. While caster types need certain gear (stat bump items, rods perhaps) they mostly exist on Feats + Spells. The biggest money sinks for casters have been a spellbook, and even that only applies to Wizards. And XP cost would be different to each player as some would welcome the delayed retirement where others would curse the slowed progression. Jeff Wasn't there precisely this problem in 3.0/3.5 with the "multiclassing penalty" that certain people figured out was actually a GP Bonus in the LG system? For that matter, there are still some who complain about the fact that casters were able to shave XP by crafting, compared to non-crafters who just fought until retirement directly.
aljergensen 09-10-07, 06:21 PM	Very good point - fighters are a function of (a) their feats and (b) their gear. While caster types need certain gear (stat bump items, rods perhaps) they mostly exist on Feats + Spells. The biggest money sinks for casters have been a spellbook, and even that only applies to Wizards. Well, I guess I've never had enough money for any of my characters! :D In theory, we're going to be less dependent on equipment (and hence gp) in 4e. We'll see. And with 30 levels before advancement I don't think too many people are going to complain about retiring too quickly. So ... I'd agree there is no perfect cost/penalty. I just think xp/gp penalty is more fair and more likely to cause an equal amount of pain to the majority of people. Allen.
Reneshat 09-11-07, 01:20 AM	Well, I guess I've never had enough money for any of my characters! :D In theory, we're going to be less dependent on equipment (and hence gp) in 4e. We'll see. And with 30 levels before advancement I don't think too many people are going to complain about retiring too quickly. So ... I'd agree there is no perfect cost/penalty. I just think xp/gp penalty is more fair and more likely to cause an equal amount of pain to the majority of people. Allen. It might be more fair, but it I also see it making things more complicated and adding to the accounting reputation that Living Greyhawk already has.
RanielK 09-11-07, 07:45 AM	Wasn't there precisely this problem in 3.0/3.5 with the "multiclassing penalty" that certain people figured out was actually a GP Bonus in the LG system? For that matter, there are still some who complain about the fact that casters were able to shave XP by crafting, compared to non-crafters who just fought until retirement directly. Oh yeah. Burning XP to craft just meant you were slowed down progression wise while still getting in play opportunities where you earned more gold and got more access which was used to craft more items, in essence paying half price AND burning more XP which meant more play opportunities which meant more gold . . . . You get the picture. And I say this as a crafter during the CL +2 period whose character wealth was always at Level + 2 based on the DMG charts if you considered buying everything he had at market value.
MichaelAhlf 09-11-07, 09:50 AM	Well, I guess I've never had enough money for any of my characters! :D In theory, we're going to be less dependent on equipment (and hence gp) in 4e. We'll see. And with 30 levels before advancement I don't think too many people are going to complain about retiring too quickly. See here: http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=921531 I doubt that LFR will reach level 30. I expect that just like 3.5 (especially after they release a few splatbooks, because we know from 8 years' experience that WotC and the idea of playtesting go together about as well as fine foods and syrup of ipecac) the game starts getting unwieldy at 2/3 up the level ladder or so. Perhaps sooner, what with the new "hordes of monsters for encounters" idea they're putting forth as the "ideal" combat scenario.
catsclaw 09-11-07, 11:15 AM	Perhaps sooner, what with the new "hordes of monsters for encounters" idea they're putting forth as the "ideal" combat scenario.Translation: I don't know what 4.0 is going to look like, but I know it's going to suck. Really, do you have any evidence to back up your claim that "hordes of monsters" are harder to balance than "one BBEG"? You'd naturally assume that a single powerful monster is harder to balance than a bunch of smaller less-powerful ones.
MichaelAhlf 09-11-07, 01:16 PM	Translation: I don't know what 4.0 is going to look like, but I know it's going to suck. Since your translation skills are about the lousiest I've ever seen: NO. I'm working with what the designers are putting in Dragon Magazine, in the Design & Development column. That's a pretty good picture from the start. Really, do you have any evidence to back up your claim that "hordes of monsters" are harder to balance than "one BBEG"? You'd naturally assume that a single powerful monster is harder to balance than a bunch of smaller less-powerful ones. Simple mathematics. The more figures you put on the battlefield, the more actions you have to adjudicate. The more actions you have to adjudicate, the more things slow down. Look at the people who complained about druids constantly summoning. Yes, you can have "fun" with low-level critters when there's a horde of them. There's still a time when the players are sitting there watching the DM try to roll 18 d20s at once just to get the monsters' attacks out of the way so the combat can keep smoothly going. Now tell me how it is you think this is going to work when at level 10, there are 8-10 enemies on the field (check the design doc on dungeons (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drdd/20070827a) for their "let's have a lot more monsters at once" idea). Each of these monsters has X possibilities for actions. Each PC has X possibilities for actions, depending on what the monsters (and other players) do. I have seen a number of LG modules where encounters were altered to swap a number of lower-level monsters for a couple larger ones simply because the combat bogged down at high APL. It's simple mathematics, the more things on the board, the harder it is to work with.
catsclaw 09-11-07, 01:45 PM	The more figures you put on the battlefield, the more actions you have to adjudicate. The more actions you have to adjudicate, the more things slow down.Well, see, the administrators have said LG doesn't go beyond level 15 because it becomes too hard to design balanced adventures without specifically knowing the abilities of the PCs. You, of course, have cleverly realized the real reason is that combats just take too long to run. Likewise, when the designers say "We want to speed up and simplify combat to make the game more exciting" and then say "The current game breaks down when you have lots of low level minions. We want a system that supports that" most people think "Ah, they're clearly aware that these goals are somewhat at odds with each other; I'm sure they're making allowances to support both design goals." You see right through the smoke and mirrors: Wizards employs idiots, and therefore 4.0 will suck. Bravo, sir!
MichaelAhlf 09-11-07, 03:36 PM	Well, see, the administrators have said LG doesn't go beyond level 15 because it becomes too hard to design balanced adventures without specifically knowing the abilities of the PCs. You, of course, have cleverly realized the real reason is that combats just take too long to run. It's actually a bit of both. Of course, there's also the problem of the horribly untested splatbook materials to consider. If you ever play a base PHB/MM/DMG campaign without the splatbook stuff, it's much easier to design encounters. What I've seen indicates that "too hard to design balanced encounters" also includes "too hard to write an encounter that most parties should be able to take care of in the time alotted." Likewise, when the designers say "We want to speed up and simplify combat to make the game more exciting" and then say "The current game breaks down when you have lots of low level minions. We want a system that supports that" most people think "Ah, they're clearly aware that these goals are somewhat at odds with each other; I'm sure they're making allowances to support both design goals." You see right through the smoke and mirrors: Wizards employs idiots, and therefore 4.0 will suck. Bravo, sir! Are you being deliberately obtuse, or what? I can hold out hope, but I'm certainly not a WotC shill like you. Something in the design has to give; either the monsters are going to be very toned-down versions with fewer combat options, or putting that many of them on a board is simply going to make combats take longer. And with any system, the more options you have (and D&D is all about adding options as you gain levels, especially with the feats system and the new "weapon skill trees" and such), the longer things will take.
gizmonster 09-11-07, 04:07 PM	It would be easy to control the maximum PC level by controlling the max APL (or equivalent). After the first year or two, controlling maximum PC level is not an issue. But I could see it being replaced by a GP cost ... you have the option to travel to city "X" to warn of the impending invasion but it will cost 100 GP because you have to hire special transport. Or something similar. But for most people, having to pay a significant jail time penalty means they will not be able to play a character at some point ... it's just a matter of when. Allen. That's not true, here is my situation. I have played LG from year 1. Honestly, I have. My character is an APL4 away from 9th level. WOW how can an year 1 character be so low level you ask, we don't play that often. When we play at home...we play home games, we have the LG characters strictly for CONs. I go to maybe 2 year if I am lucky. I did die once, but that's it. I have NEVER used all my TUs...NEVER. I'd be REALLY upset if I couldn't play my character at my second CON in the year because of Jail time!
ankhwearer 09-11-07, 04:14 PM	I can hold out hope, but I'm certainly not a WotC shill like you. Something in the design has to give; either the monsters are going to be very toned-down versions with fewer combat options, or putting that many of them on a board is simply going to make combats take longer. Actually, there is a problem with CR 15 BBEGs too. They only get a single attack (perhaps a sequence if someone stands next to him for a full round) and that's it. In order to threaten characters at that high level, he has to do incredible damage. And then all it takes is that inevitable '20' to kill someone in one blow instead of function as a theat. As the game is currently designed 4 to 6 people get to gang up on a monster that would easily be too tough for any one of them to fight alone. The problem is that the monster still has to single foes out one-by-one, since he only gets one action per round. Thus, he's still too tough for the person he decides to attack that round. Sure, the fighter with the cleric behind him can forestall some of this, but if every BBEG took the tactic of accepting his AOO to ace the wizard, then the cleric, well...TPKs would be much more common with those tactics. Including more actions, with level-appropriate attacks spreads the risk to the entire party, not just to the victim-de-jour. This is more fair, it means the party can spend less mental and preparational effort of avoiding insta-death, and it makes the game more fun. THAT's what the designers have been saying about hordes and about BBEG that have more actions each round.
aljergensen 09-11-07, 04:22 PM	That's not true, here is my situation. I have played LG from year 1. Honestly, I have. My character is an APL4 away from 9th level. WOW how can an year 1 character be so low level you ask, we don't play that often. When we play at home...we play home games, we have the LG characters strictly for CONs. I go to maybe 2 year if I am lucky. I did die once, but that's it. I have NEVER used all my TUs...NEVER. I'd be REALLY upset if I couldn't play my character at my second CON in the year because of Jail time! Which is why I suggest that instead of jail, PCs pay a fine (or at least have the option). But jail time frequently (from what I've heard - I've never seen it) means a pretty hefty TU penalty. But your case actually points out why I don't like TUs as a "resource". There is a significant percentage of PCs where spending TUs is not a cost at all. A resource has to be scarce in order to have value. If a PC never uses all TUs available, TUs essentially have very little or no value for that PC. TUs penalize people who frequently play in living campaign sessions and are virtually meaningless to people who don't (or can't) play frequently. Allen.
MichaelAhlf 09-11-07, 04:28 PM	Actually, there is a problem with CR 15 BBEGs too. They only get a single attack (perhaps a sequence if someone stands next to him for a full round) and that's it. In order to threaten characters at that high level, he has to do incredible damage. And then all it takes is that inevitable '20' to kill someone in one blow instead of function as a theat. Which is something I pointed out a long while back - part of the problem with 3.0/3.5, and a mistake they are making witn 4.0 even worse, is the inflation of numeric values as level/CR goes up. Dragon in 1st ed? ~100 HP. Scary as hell. Dragon in 2nd ed? ~250 HP. Scary. Dragon in 3rd ed? ~500 HP (Adult/Ancient). Scary. Dragon in 4th ed? over 1000 HP. Why? Because they're inflating numbers without care to what it does to making the system work at all levels. Besides, you're forgetting the worse part. Sure, he can kill a fighter/tank on a nat-20 crit. He doesn't need that to kill most of the party members. For anyone but the front-liners, all he has to do is sneeze once in their general direction. As the game is currently designed 4 to 6 people get to gang up on a monster that would easily be too tough for any one of them to fight alone. The problem is that the monster still has to single foes out one-by-one, since he only gets one action per round. Thus, he's still too tough for the person he decides to attack that round. Actually, with many monsters I've seen that had reach and special abilities, a competent DM spreads the damage and effects over as many attacks as possible. Sure, the fighter with the cleric behind him can forestall some of this, but if every BBEG took the tactic of accepting his AOO to ace the wizard, then the cleric, well...TPKs would be much more common with those tactics. Which is again a problem of numeric inflation - the raw fact that the monster has 1d8 + OMGWTFBBQ damage base, due to misdesign in the system. Including more actions, with level-appropriate attacks spreads the risk to the entire party, not just to the victim-de-jour. This is more fair, it means the party can spend less mental and preparational effort of avoiding insta-death, and it makes the game more fun. Great idea. What will it really matter if you have the fighter who can now one-shot these guys, and all the rest of the party has to do is survive for him to get to the one on them? THAT's what the designers have been saying about hordes and about BBEG that have more actions each round. Great thought. But I still say, from the design docs I'm already seeing, that they are making critical mistakes that are going to cause the game not to scale properly. The scary part is, none of them seem to bother doing any math when trying to design a math-based game.
KarmaInferno 09-11-07, 04:37 PM	It's amazing how much you can come up with on how a system sucks, when all your arguments are based on heavy speculation, derived from a bare handful of scraps of information. It reminds me of console fanboys ragging on other game systems with long excruciatingly detailed lists and tirades of how the other system will suck, when the only thing that has been oficially released are vague bits and pieces of info that don't actually show the whole picture.. -karma
catsclaw 09-11-07, 04:49 PM	Are you being deliberately obtuse, or what ... I can hold out hope, but I'm certainly not a WotC shill like youIf you look at my history of posts, you'll see I'm far from a shill. If it seems so to you, it's likely because you seem to always start with the most apocalyptic, Wizards-sucks-and-so-will-4.0 conclusion and work backward from there. I'm just trying to provide some badly needed balance. And if statements like "we know from 8 years' experience that WotC and the idea of playtesting go together about as well as fine foods and syrup of ipecac" is your idea of "holding out hope", you can understand why people question your objectivity.Something in the design has to give; either the monsters are going to be very toned-down versions with fewer combat options, or putting that many of them on a board is simply going to make combats take longer.Yeah, or maybe they're introducing a "minion" mechanic that will simplify the support characters without eliminating the flavor that makes them interesting. And you know what? Having a game system that actually allows my 7th level fighter to wade into a crowd of orcs without it being either a cakewalk or a suicide run sounds like a vast improvement over the current design of the game to me.
catsclaw 09-11-07, 05:01 PM	But your case actually points out why I don't like TUs as a "resource". There is a significant percentage of PCs where spending TUs is not a cost at all. A resource has to be scarce in order to have value. If a PC never uses all TUs available, TUs essentially have very little or no value for that PC.Well, that's largely the point -- you gain an additional resource for PCs to manage. It's not going to worth as much to everyone, but that's just the way it breaks down. In LG, the problem with relying on gold and XP (besides the somewhat distasteful assumption that even in the most Lawful Good society you can buy your way out of jail time) is that gold and XP rewards are absolutely linked. Spend too much money (whether on consumables, or jail time, or whatever else) and you'll permanently fall behind on that curve; everyone else at your level will have more money than you will. The only way to catch up is to kill yourself or drain a few levels, and then you'll likely be far ahead of the gold curve and overpowered for your level. I have no problems with TUs being a scarce resource only for those who play a lot. It's not like the thought of access to some flashy new weapon is a motivating factor for all characters either -- but just being able to offer a different type of motivation is valuable.
RedKnightofKet 09-11-07, 05:23 PM	Which is something I pointed out a long while back - part of the problem with 3.0/3.5, and a mistake they are making witn 4.0 even worse, is the inflation of numeric values as level/CR goes up. Dragon in 1st ed? ~100 HP. Scary as hell. Dragon in 2nd ed? ~250 HP. Scary. Dragon in 3rd ed? ~500 HP (Adult/Ancient). Scary. Dragon in 4th ed? over 1000 HP. Did they say what level the party members facing the dragon were? No? Didn't think so. Maybe they were all 25th level characters, and since you'll need specific monsters at that tier, maybe they changed what level of challenge an ancient dragon is. Makes sense to me. Either way, I'm willing to wait to see what it all means, rather than rattle sabers at Wizards....
MichaelAhlf 09-11-07, 05:28 PM	It's amazing how much you can come up with on how a system sucks, when all your arguments are based on heavy speculation, derived from a bare handful of scraps of information. It reminds me of console fanboys ragging on other game systems with long excruciatingly detailed lists and tirades of how the other system will suck, when the only thing that has been oficially released are vague bits and pieces of info that don't actually show the whole picture.. -karma I work off the documentation we've been given. I did a LONG writeup of the issues from their description of a dragon fight. You want to disagree? Be my guest. But instead of flaming, put forth some thoughts of your own.
KarmaInferno 09-11-07, 06:52 PM	I work off the documentation we've been given. I did a LONG writeup of the issues from their description of a dragon fight. You want to disagree? Be my guest. But instead of flaming, put forth some thoughts of your own. I've read the same dragon fight. We know: 1) Ancient Dragons can have ACs of 49 and 100 hit points, and can have multiple abilities to take extra actions in a round. 2) Fighters can potentially do 500 hit points in a blow. 3) You are still limited to one immediate action a round, just like in 3.5 4) Energy Resistance may not be a "subtract a certain number every round" effect, but rather a set pool that wears away as it absorbs damage. 5) Subtyped creatures don't always take extra damage from an opposing element. 6) There is apparently an divine ability that can heal a party member on damaging an opponent, possibly requiring a critical hit. Anything beyond this is just speculation. We DON'T know what level the party is. We don't know whether the multi-actions the dragon is taking is typical of all similar power monsters, or just unique to that dragon. We don't know what that fighter did to get that damage. We don't know a lot of things. There's an old fable that applies here. A group of blind men are examining an elephant by touch. "It's shaped like a tree!", says the man feeling an elephant leg. "No, it's very definately snake-like.", says the man holding the trunk. "What are you crazy?", says the man grasping an ear. "It's got leathery wings!". "You're all wrong, it's like a great big wall.", says the man leaning against the elephant's side. We know bits and pieces, but we don't know how they fit together as a whole. We certainly don't have enough information to state such things like "none of them seem to bother doing any math when trying to design a math-based game". The problem I see in you, Michael, is that you visibly seem to have it in your head to take any tiny bit of released information and interpret it in the worst possible light. We know you're upset at LG going away. You're angry at WotC and apparently unwilling to to give any of them a fair shake. You display bias before you even start. But please don't take your speculations as having any validity over anyone else's interpretations. The way you write, you act as if all your theorizing is absolute fact. Me? I don't have any such arguments to make, because I know that I DON'T know enough information to legitimately be making any such impassioned and angry judgments and declarations. And quite frankly, neither do you. And with that, I'm putting you back on ignore. I'd taken you off, because from the replies other people were giving you led me to hope you had gotten off your doom & gloom kick, but I see I was mistaken. Good day. -karma
aljergensen 09-11-07, 07:08 PM	I've read the same dragon fight. We know: 2) Fighters can potentially do 500 hit points in a blow. -karma Actually it was pointed out elsewhere (don't remember where exactly) that the 500 hit points of damage was not in a single blow. So even what we think we know may not be correct at this point. I'm taking a wait and see attitude, at this point nothing is set in stone and just about everything is speculation. Allen.
MichaelAhlf 09-11-07, 08:39 PM	I've read the same dragon fight. We know: 1) Ancient Dragons can have ACs of 49 and 100 hit points, and can have multiple abilities to take extra actions in a round. Yes. 2) Fighters can potentially do 500 hit points in a blow. Reread. This is obviously a bit into the fight: the dragon is "finally" below 500 HP and it's "been getting angry at" the wizard. We're coming in at the middle of the fight, not the beginning. 3) You are still limited to one immediate action a round, just like in 3.5 That's nice. The definition of a "free" action is still fast and loose, showing that the designers haven't paid all that much attention to them (look at all the combat actions that are "free"). 4) Energy Resistance may not be a "subtract a certain number every round" effect, but rather a set pool that wears away as it absorbs damage. Maybe. Or maybe it's just that the dragon's breath already beat his 30 points "per round" this round? 5) Subtyped creatures don't always take extra damage from an opposing element. Monster writers are free to overwrite template/subtype traits now, what's your point? 6) There is apparently an divine ability that can heal a party member on damaging an opponent, possibly requiring a critical hit. Either that or it's his gear. Not sure which. Anything beyond this is just speculation. If you want to call it that. We DON'T know what level the party is. We know they're high enough to take on an "Ancient" dragon. We can extrapolate that this is likely more than halfway to the level cap. We don't know whether the multi-actions the dragon is taking is typical of all similar power monsters, or just unique to that dragon.They seem to imply "all" dragons are supposed to have lots of varietal abilities. Reread the first paragraph about having "different" attacks. We don't know what that fighter did to get that damage. Apparently, physical damage to the dragon. We don't know a lot of things.No, we don't. But it's not that hard to take what we do know, and draw reasonably certain inferences about how the system is working (or not). There's an old fable that applies here. A group of blind men are examining an elephant by touch. "It's shaped like a tree!", says the man feeling an elephant leg. "No, it's very definately snake-like.", says the man holding the trunk. "What are you crazy?", says the man grasping an ear. "It's got leathery wings!". "You're all wrong, it's like a great big wall.", says the man leaning against the elephant's side. We know bits and pieces, but we don't know how they fit together as a whole. We certainly don't have enough information to state such things like "none of them seem to bother doing any math when trying to design a math-based game". The problem I see in you, Michael, is that you visibly seem to have it in your head to take any tiny bit of released information and interpret it in the worst possible light. We know you're upset at LG going away. You're angry at WotC and apparently unwilling to to give any of them a fair shake. You display bias before you even start. But please don't take your speculations as having any validity over anyone else's interpretations. The way you write, you act as if all your theorizing is absolute fact. Me? I don't have any such arguments to make, because I know that I DON'T know enough information to legitimately be making any such impassioned and angry judgments and declarations. And quite frankly, neither do you. -karma[/QUOTE]
MichaelAhlf 09-11-07, 08:42 PM	The problem I see in you, Michael, is that you visibly seem to have it in your head to take any tiny bit of released information and interpret it in the worst possible light. Years of horribly written "product", nonediting, things obviously not remotely playtested or even run by someone else before they were included in books... We know you're upset at LG going away. You're angry at WotC and apparently unwilling to to give any of them a fair shake. You display bias before you even start. If you want to call it that, go ahead. But please don't take your speculations as having any validity over anyone else's interpretations. The way you write, you act as if all your theorizing is absolute fact. No, but until someone bothers to write up a reasonable alternative, I'm going with my instinct and with what the pattern of design is from these designers in years past. Me? I don't have any such arguments to make, because I know that I DON'T know enough information to legitimately be making any such impassioned and angry judgments and declarations. And quite frankly, neither do you. I beg to differ.
amysrevenge 09-12-07, 11:42 AM	Amysrevenge has a good point. (though I'm not sure which side of he arguement he sits on.) (Ignoring "4E will suck" vs. "Who knows what 4E will bring" argument.) Basically, I'm thinking that some sort of system of TUs to limit level advancement by limiting adventures-per-PC-per-year in the first few years of the campaign (basically until people start reaching whatever level cap we end up instituting) would be appropriate. After that point, we could do away with this TU system, as it holds no real purpose beyond allowing for jail time to limit play opportunity (we can't talk about crafting yet, as we don't know the mechanics - if crafting still takes up a fixed amount of time, then a TU system could also have purpose in limiting that as well). Jail time is a whole other can of worms, that doesn't have a simple answer. Currently: If you don't use all your TUs in a year, then jail time is no punishment at all. If you do use all your TUs in a year, then your actual penalty varies based on how early in the year you use the last one. Might end up with a PC unplayable for 11 months, might end up with a PC unplayable for 11 days. Some sort of RL calendar based system for jail time is, if nothing else, a far more consistent way of handling punishment. EVERYONE has the same level of penalty. Regardless, I don't think that jailtime is a sufficient reason for a TU system, and once the campaign has PCs in it apporaching the highest possible level, jailtime becomes the only real reaosn to still have TUs. Mike
aljergensen 09-12-07, 12:49 PM	(Ignoring "4E will suck" vs. "Who knows what 4E will bring" argument.) Probably the best idea I've heard for a while! Basically, I'm thinking that some sort of system of TUs to limit level advancement ... I agree with pretty much everything you say except for this. An easier option would be to say that for year 1 we don't support PCs higher than level 10, with the disclaimer that the level limit will be raised next year. Jail time is a whole other can of worms, that doesn't have a simple answer. Currently: If you don't use all your TUs in a year, then jail time is no punishment at all. If you do use all your TUs in a year, then your actual penalty varies based on how early in the year you use the last one. Might end up with a PC unplayable for 11 months, might end up with a PC unplayable for 11 days. Which has been my point. In addition, I would guess that half of all primary (or frequently played secondary) PCs in play have TUs left over at the end of the year. So unless the TU cost is significant it has no impact. For the person who "dislikes" GP expenditure to get out of jail, I don't disagree. But incarceration for crimes is a very recent development from a historical perspective. Traditionally punishment has been fines, banishment or physical (torture/execution). Prisons were simply too expensive for all but nobility. Maybe there is some other resource we can add to the system I'm not thinking about. Allen.
UMiskatonic 09-12-07, 02:26 PM	Jail could operate in real time. I saw this happen in a few LG mods (Siege, for one), and it was both appropriate, and a penalty. "Sam the Necromancer, you are found guilty of raising the dead". You are hearby unplayable for three months real time. Of course, this means jail is much more onerous to those people who play often. If you only play at Gen Con, then you won't care. But, it's a thought. Personally, I favor fines. Putting people below the gold curve HURTS. And that's what Jail should be. Miserable.
MatteBlack 09-12-07, 04:29 PM	Maybe there is some other resource we can add to the system I'm not thinking about. When you consider what resources there are, it's very few. There is gold and items and XP. TUs were added to make another resource to manipulate the characters and player activities. Any other resource would have to be added as well. The only possible one I could imagine adding would be some sort of social standing rating. Whether limiting advancement or getting the players to follow the fake laws their characters are expected to be used to respecting, they are very much a behavioral tool of the campaign's. They happen to be very effective at it when used with some forethought and really aren't so difficult to track. Most of the opposition to them is not to how they function but to what they cause us to do. Players want to play more, as much as possible, so the TUs get blamed for doing what they are designed to do. Some players hate having a meaningful consequence for their character's actions again the TU's get blamed. I think if boil down all the posted opposition it boils down to whether players want to be limited by the campaign. We could certainly argue whether the campaign should limit the amount and style of play but, most people seem to agree with limiting advancement and getting characters to respect the laws of the land. Lets not blame the TUs for functioning as designed and make it seem like they are a broken mechanic.
MatteBlack 09-12-07, 04:32 PM	Jail could operate in real time. I saw this happen in a few LG mods (Siege, for one), and it was both appropriate, and a penalty. "Sam the Necromancer, you are found guilty of raising the dead". You are hearby unplayable for three months real time. Of course, this means jail is much more onerous to those people who play often. If you only play at Gen Con, then you won't care. But, it's a thought. Personally, I favor fines. Putting people below the gold curve HURTS. And that's what Jail should be. Miserable. Realtime penalties would be very hard to work around for some home games. They could potentially shut down a regular party from playing until the one character got out of jail if the table was on the edge of being viable.
mark1978 09-12-07, 04:51 PM	The restriction of Time Units will suck even more with LFR given that all regions will be open for module play. These need to be increased or eliminated all together. There are plenty of ways to restrict a game engine, but saying you can only play so much in a year is nonsense, and detracts from the comfortability of a game engine. I am sick and tired of worrying about how many TUs my LG characters have left for the year, and because of that feeling, I have always had ill feelings towards LG for such a stupid and non-inclusive gaming restriction. I also find it to be nonsense when after playing a two-round core adventure that just cost me 4 TUs, that the module took two game-days to complete. 4 TUs = 4 weeks = 28 game-days, and two game-days plus a weeks travel to and from the core region = 14 + 2 = 16 game-days, where did my other 12 game-days go, I could have paid one TU less!!! Mark
RedKnightofKet 09-12-07, 05:03 PM	I like TUs, or something similar, because the idea of a "Living" campaign is that our year is tied to a year in the gaming world. Sure, a home game can have characters go from levels 1 to 20 in a matter of months, but game time should likely take a couple of years. I play in a few home games where we get back to the big city, and after "a couple of weeks" of downtime, we're out again. Or, in one gaming session, we are adventuring for a few weeks. Time is a factor, and should be - otherwise some of that realism of the game is gone. Now, before anyone gets on the whole realism thing, I think that there needs to be some suspension of disbelief (obviously, since we're talking about elves and dwarves and dragons), but that doesn't mean that a little bit of realistic credibility isn't needed. If anything, I think it enhances the game experience.
aljergensen 09-12-07, 05:56 PM	I like TUs, or something similar, because the idea of a "Living" campaign is that our year is tied to a year in the gaming world. Sure, a home game can have characters go from levels 1 to 20 in a matter of months, but game time should likely take a couple of years. I play in a few home games where we get back to the big city, and after "a couple of weeks" of downtime, we're out again. Or, in one gaming session, we are adventuring for a few weeks. Time is a factor, and should be - otherwise some of that realism of the game is gone. In a home campaign years can pass in 1 real world day. So if you and your buddies want to spend a ton of time playing and 10 campaign years pass in a month's worth of real world play time and you level up to 20, you can. We don't have that luxury in a living campaign. If keeping your character limited to what you think could be accomplished in an LFR year is important to you, feel free. I've decided that for my characters it doesn't matter. It's just one of the compromises I make when choosing a living campaign over a home campaign. Allen.
jhorred 09-12-07, 06:23 PM	Jail could operate in real time. I saw this happen in a few LG mods (Siege, for one), and it was both appropriate, and a penalty. "Sam the Necromancer, you are found guilty of raising the dead". You are hearby unplayable for three months real time. Of course, this means jail is much more onerous to those people who play often. If you only play at Gen Con, then you won't care. But, it's a thought. Personally, I favor fines. Putting people below the gold curve HURTS. And that's what Jail should be. Miserable. There is a mjor problem with this too though. Say you have that player who only plays at Gencon and gets the 3 month real time jail sentence in his first game. What do you do now? You've wrecked his play experience for the con. I think that limits play more than a TU jail time.
amysrevenge 09-12-07, 08:02 PM	Well, jail time *should* be bad. Of course, if it is truly bad, then hopefully it would be used sparingly, for characters that actually commit crimes. It would be in bad taste to have modules incarcerate PCs for committing reasonable acts - only PCs who deliberately and knowingly commit crimes should be removed from play in this manner (ie surprise screw jobs are bad). Regardless, I suppose that campaign rules should be written for the "average" player foremost. Say, a person who plays 3 modules a month or so (a single gameday). We can have rules to account for much more frequent play, and we can have rules to account for much more infrequent play, but the base rules should be some sort of middle ground. Mike
KarmaInferno 09-12-07, 10:57 PM	Well, what are time units? They represent, really, XP and treasure and play opportunity. Well, ideally we don't want to touch play opportunity, as that hits the PLAYER, not the character. So why not have penalties that used to be represented by TU loss just translate into XP and/or gold penalties? Something like, "earn lower XP+Gold for your next X adventures." Thoughts? -karma
amysrevenge 09-13-07, 12:14 AM	Not a bad idea karma - it avoids the issue of fines ( which is dropping irrevocably behind in the gp/XP curve) by delaying both att he same time, yet it doesn't reduce play opportunities. It is a real penalty (who want to earh 50% XP for 3 or 4 mods?), that is of the same magnitude to anyone (whether you play 3 mods a week or 3 mods a year, the penalty is identical). I like it. Mike
gizmonster 09-13-07, 11:27 AM	Realtime penalties would be very hard to work around for some home games. They could potentially shut down a regular party from playing until the one character got out of jail if the table was on the edge of being viable. Oh it's worse than that, I have never been to GenCon. I would love to go, but I'd have to travel halfway across the country. If I got a penalty that took me out of play when I sit down for the first session, I would be LIVID! I'd hire my buddy Rocco to cap a few knees in the RPGA!
aljergensen 09-13-07, 02:38 PM	Something like, "earn lower XP+Gold for your next X adventures." Thoughts? -karma I agree too ... a 50% penalty on GP and XP for the next "x" mods would be fair and simple. Allen.
catsclaw 09-13-07, 03:01 PM	I agree too ... a 50% penalty on GP and XP for the next "x" mods would be fair and simple.But that's not a penalty, for the character or the player. For the character, it's an out-of-game limitation completely unjustified by an in-game explanation. For the player, it just slows your progression -- which some people will dislike, but many people prefer as it helps stave off retirement. I can easily imagine 13th level characters killing a random guard at the beginning of adventures just to keep that penalty intact.
aljergensen 09-13-07, 03:49 PM	I agree too ... a 50% penalty on GP and XP for the next "x" mods would be fair and simple. Allen. But that's not a penalty, for the character or the player. For the character, it's an out-of-game limitation completely unjustified by an in-game explanation. For the player, it just slows your progression -- which some people will dislike, but many people prefer as it helps stave off retirement. I can easily imagine 13th level characters killing a random guard at the beginning of adventures just to keep that penalty intact. That would be cheating. And we have other rules to handle that. Allen.
catsclaw 09-13-07, 04:52 PM	That would be cheating. And we have other rules to handle that.That's not the point. You've proposed a penalty which, for most of the player base, isn't a penalty. That's the problem.
ankhwearer 09-13-07, 05:30 PM	Well, what are time units? They represent, really, XP and treasure and play opportunity. Well, ideally we don't want to touch play opportunity, as that hits the PLAYER, not the character. So why not have penalties that used to be represented by TU loss just translate into XP and/or gold penalties? Something like, "earn lower XP+Gold for your next X adventures." Thoughts? -karma Actually, I think the biggest benefit of TUs is for moderating things like jail time or time commitment to non-adventuring activities. If your character commits a crime and gets caught, having both the player and the character lose some time in action (represented by losing TUs) is an oppropriate penalty in a campaign centered on heroic characters. It, however, would not be appropriate to put any penalty on the player when the campaign encourages skirting the law or outright opposition. (Which makes getting caught by slavers problematic, I would think.) Also, lets remember that this "penalty" is easily circumvented by just having more than one character; something that almost everyone does to have some flexibility in mustering at tables. Only by banning a player from events, or by putting all mods above the players APL reach, can play opportunities actually be removed. TUs just require hardcore players to spread their play opportunities across multiple characters. It doesn't actually limit the play opportunities.
jhorred 09-13-07, 07:38 PM	That's not the point. You've proposed a penalty which, for most of the player base, isn't a penalty. That's the problem. I concur. Some people would go out of their way to have that penalty imposed on their character. Actually, I think the biggest benefit of TUs is for moderating things like jail time or time commitment to non-adventuring activities. If your character commits a crime and gets caught, having both the player and the character lose some time in action (represented by losing TUs) is an oppropriate penalty in a campaign centered on heroic characters. It, however, would not be appropriate to put any penalty on the player when the campaign encourages skirting the law or outright opposition. (Which makes getting caught by slavers problematic, I would think.) Also, lets remember that this "penalty" is easily circumvented by just having more than one character; something that almost everyone does to have some flexibility in mustering at tables. Only by banning a player from events, or by putting all mods above the players APL reach, can play opportunities actually be removed. TUs just require hardcore players to spread their play opportunities across multiple characters. It doesn't actually limit the play opportunities. This is why I see no problems with the whole TU concept. (Of course it is one of the reasons why I have 5 LG characters, but also it is so I can cover a wide APL spread.)
amysrevenge 09-13-07, 11:02 PM	But that's not a penalty, for the character or the player. For the character, it's an out-of-game limitation completely unjustified by an in-game explanation. For the player, it just slows your progression -- which some people will dislike, but many people prefer as it helps stave off retirement. I can easily imagine 13th level characters killing a random guard at the beginning of adventures just to keep that penalty intact. You must play with an entirely different crowd than I do. I (and everyone I know) would be suitably chastised by this. I like gaining levels and loot. Anything that delays this is a penalty. Anything that prevents this entirely (such as being removed from play) could be seen as an unreasonable penalty. Big Mike
MatteBlack 09-14-07, 12:06 PM	You must play with an entirely different crowd than I do. I (and everyone I know) would be suitably chastised by this. I am for keeping TUs but, I can't imagine a player limiting his character by that method either when they could just as easily not play it and leave the option open. I like gaining levels and loot. Anything that delays this is a penalty. Anything that prevents this entirely (such as being removed from play) could be seen as an unreasonable penalty. Big Mike I play for enjoyment not, character reward so, having a better game at the expense of delaying the uber character build is not a big deal to me. I tend to think that shifting the focus from character advancement to an enjoyable game will prove better for the game as a whole. Anyone who can only view such a system as an "unreasonable penalty" is probably being a touch selfish.
aljergensen 09-14-07, 12:27 PM	I understand that some people like the TU system. You've made that clear. The question is, why? What does it buy? If I point out a flaw, is there a way to fix it? It has been pointed out that "TU cost as punishment" doesn't work very well. A punishment should be appropriate to the infraction and ideally cause the same amount of pain/inconvenience to all affected parties. A TU penalty does not affect all characters evenly. A 52 TU penalty may take a character out of play or 11 months or 11 hours depending on when it happens. A lesser (ie 20 TU) penalty will have no affect whatsoever on some characters while removing other characters from play for months. Let's take an example. Jim and Bob are at a New Years Con. There's a game on the Dec 31st and a "midnight madness" to ring in the new year. Jim commits a crime in the first game and receives 52 TUs of prison. He doesn't care, because TUs are resetting in a few minutes. The clock strikes midnight. A new year! New TUs! Bob commits a crime in the next slot - now in the new year and receives a 52 TU penalty. He can't play his character for the rest of the year. Did Jim and Bob receive equal punishment? Heck no. Is it fair? I don't think so. This is the best we can come up with for punishment? Or take another example. Tom and Susie are at GenCon. Tom is excited because he doesn't get to play much. He did get into an adaptable mod and while it took up 35 TUs, he has enough TUs to play the con. Susie is playing a secondary character that still has 40 TUs. Her character usually has 20+ TUs left over at the end of the year. They are playing at the same game and the mod doesn't go well. They get caught by slavers and have to spend 20 TUs getting free. Tom is livid - he can't play his character for the rest of the year and GenCon is a waste. Susie is unaffected since her character never runs out of TUs anyway. Did Tom and Susie get equal punishment? Heck no. The sole argument against a TU/XP penalty seems to be that some people might purposely seek jail time in order to slow down advancement. First of all, it has been indicated that we are probably going to be advancing to 30th level. That should be long enough for most people. But, if a person is deliberately seeking jail time, how would they do it? Start murdering innocent bystanders on the street? That would qualify as an evil act. If a person does end in jail and it seemed at all intentional to the DM, the DM should review the character history. If there's a pattern of excessive jail time, he can report cheating for unsportsmanlike conduct. This isn't much different from a person dying on purpose, and there are already rules in place to handle it. Allen. Who should probably stop posting to this thread as it seems to be quickly heading down the same path as The Great Katana Debate.
smerwin29 09-14-07, 01:00 PM	Let's try this again. People would not seek "jail time" to slow advancement of their character. People who skirt the rules would seek to somehow slow down their character advancement in terms of XP in order to gain other benefits. That is why LG saw PCs dying on purpose, casting spells that cost XP unneccesarily, taking as much xp penalty as possible through multiclassing: mostly this allows PCs to gain much more wealth than another character of their same level. That is why merely saying "just don't make adventures for anything above APL x" does not offer a complete solution. It is not just the XP/level that a campaign needs to control: it is also wealth and other "out-of-game play" opportunities that need to be controlled. I can easily take a character, play every single adventure put out in a year with that character, die every third adventure, still gain the treasure for all those adventures but never level. Time units do prevent that unequal balance of XP to wealth. I've seen a lot of strawmen and a lot of irrelevant arguments. I think the main questions that need to be discussed are as follows: 1) Does the campaign need to control the growth of PCs? If the answer is yes, then a system has to be in place to do that. TUs are just one of many ways to do that. I'm not against other methods, but those methods have to make sense. 2) What about PC growth needs to be controlled? Well, to be honest, until we know more about 4e, that is tough to say. The biggest one that is problematic in 3.x is level versus wealth. Others we have seen in 3.x are access to magic items, access to new rules items (prestige classes, feats, spells, etc.), and rewards/penalties/consequences for actions. Any DM who has run a campaign is painfully aware of how important it is to keep tabs on access. 3) Is it important to have verisimilitude in the amount of "opportunities" a PC can have in a calendar year? Is it reasonable to allow a character to be played as much as the player can play, join metaorgs, (possibly) craft magic and non-magical goods, and do anything else that would take real in-game time for the character? Or is it better to limit the CHARACTER (not the player) to some sort of realistic limit on what could be done in a year? Now that does not mean the player is limited, because she can start new characters as often as she wants and play all the adventures she wants. I can certainly understand some people wanting to do away with TUs, although I think they blame TUs for the overall concept of a controlled campaign advancement. People who don't want that have a whole different argument to make. But as far as TUs being overly complicated, I think that is silly. People can be experts on the completely Byzantine rules of 3.5, but then claim that subtracting a one-digit number from a two-digit number is too complicated?! :-D
catsclaw 09-14-07, 01:48 PM	People can be experts on the completely Byzantine rules of 3.5, but then claim that subtracting a one-digit number from a two-digit number is too complicated?!To be fair, I proposed counting TUs from 365, so you'd be generally subtracting a two-digit number from a three-digit number. So maybe that was the issue. The game still expects you to regularly sum dice and then add a constantly varying number of modifiers to them, so some familiarly with basic math doesn't exactly seem unreasonable.
smerwin29 09-14-07, 02:15 PM	I'm not a big fan of Day Units. They (or a rough equivalent) were used in Living Kingdoms of Kalamar, and the campaign staff found them too unwieldly to work with. I know that writing adventures in such a system gets far too complicated and problematic. You are forced to start setting limits on certain activities which vary from PC party to PC party (they have to travel 300 miles in this adventure, but do they have horses, how fast can they move, can they teleport?). Living Kalamar did the smart thing and removed the limit on play opportunities but limited outside-of-play actions. It was smart for them because the number of adventure they offer is very limited compared to other Living Campaigns, so campaign growth was already limited by adventure availability. Here is another reason why I don't like Day Units in a large Living campaign, even though they do mirror reality a bit better: they are too difficult to deal with in doing the job of controlling PC advancement. Here is just one quick example. I play in Region A, and they have adventures that each take place in one day. Region B has adventures that all take place over the course of a month. Players who play in all Region B adventures has used roughly 30 times the DUs than players in Region A adventures. This can be corrected by close interaction and communication between the Triads, but that is another level of coordination and complication that could be avoided. The point of TUs, again, is to give campaign administration an easy mechanism for creating a balanced play experience without too much complication and with at least a small degree of verisimilitude. There has to be a reasonable balance between too complicated a system that can vary too much or get abused too easily (which I consider Day Units) and a system that can vary too much and get too easily abused because there are no rules.
aljergensen 09-14-07, 02:31 PM	Let's try this again. People would not seek "jail time" to slow advancement of their character. People who skirt the rules would seek to somehow slow down their character advancement in terms of XP in order to gain other benefits. That is why LG saw PCs dying on purpose, casting spells that cost XP unneccesarily, taking as much xp penalty as possible through multiclassing: mostly this allows PCs to gain much more wealth than another character of their same level. Dying on purpose to delay leveling is already in the LG RPGA rules and considered cheating. We could also limit a character to 10 deaths per career. If someone is just really unlucky they could petition for an exemption. XP will not be a resource for spell casting in 4th ed. Dying on purpose to delay advancement may also be a moot point in 4e. That is why merely saying "just don't make adventures for anything above APL x" does not offer a complete solution. It is not just the XP/level that a campaign needs to control: it is also wealth and other "out-of-game play" opportunities that need to be controlled. I can easily take a character, play every single adventure put out in a year with that character, die every third adventure, still gain the treasure for all those adventures but never level. Time units do prevent that unequal balance of XP to wealth. I've seen a lot of strawmen and a lot of irrelevant arguments. I think the main questions that need to be discussed are as follows: 1) Does the campaign need to control the growth of PCs? If the answer is yes, then a system has to be in place to do that. TUs are just one of many ways to do that. I'm not against other methods, but those methods have to make sense. Max PC level should only be an issue for the first year or so. Limiting max APL or just simply limiting max character level should take care of that. After high level games are available, I don't think limiting how quickly a character advances is necessary. Let's say I run an Living Campaign in Podunk. I've got a group I regularly run, but we don't go to cons. Does it hurt anyone if everybody has only one character? Or lets say I already have a bunch of characters at various levels and I come up with a new character concept that I really like. Who does it hurt if I want to play that character a ton? 2) What about PC growth needs to be controlled? Well, to be honest, until we know more about 4e, that is tough to say. The biggest one that is problematic in 3.x is level versus wealth. Others we have seen in 3.x are access to magic items, access to new rules items (prestige classes, feats, spells, etc.), and rewards/penalties/consequences for actions. Any DM who has run a campaign is painfully aware of how important it is to keep tabs on access. I agree that crafting and Meta-Orgs (assuming similarity to 3.5) needs to be limited, it's just a question of how. Somebody else suggested gaining Non-Adventure Activity Points. You start out with a few, and gain more as you play scenarios. It would have to be balanced but it seems like a pretty elegant and simple solution. 3) Is it important to have verisimilitude in the amount of "opportunities" a PC can have in a calendar year? Is it reasonable to allow a character to be played as much as the player can play, join metaorgs, (possibly) craft magic and non-magical goods, and do anything else that would take real in-game time for the character? Or is it better to limit the CHARACTER (not the player) to some sort of realistic limit on what could be done in a year? Now that does not mean the player is limited, because she can start new characters as often as she wants and play all the adventures she wants. IMHO, Whether or not versimilitude is important from a "how quickly does time pass" standpoint is a personal choice. I can certainly understand some people wanting to do away with TUs, although I think they blame TUs for the overall concept of a controlled campaign advancement. People who don't want that have a whole different argument to make. But as far as TUs being overly complicated, I think that is silly. People can be experts on the completely Byzantine rules of 3.5, but then claim that subtracting a one-digit number from a two-digit number is too complicated?! :-D I don't blame TUs for a controlled campaign. I just question why it is necessary to limit my game opportunities for a PC I'm having fun playing. Game balance is very important, but limiting non adventure activities seems to be the biggest issue. Non-Adventure Activity Points could handle that. Gamers that go to cons/game days where they regularly have to muster into semi-random tables will almost always have multiple characters. I'd just like to focus on 2-4 characters at a time. Allen
gizmonster 09-14-07, 02:51 PM	I don't blame TUs for a controlled campaign. I just question why it is necessary to limit my game opportunities for a PC I'm having fun playing. Game balance is very important, but limiting non adventure activities seems to be the biggest issue. Non-Adventure Activity Points could handle that. Allen If that is the case, how about letting characters play for free after their TUs run out? No XP, No Gold, No access, but you can have fun playing? Problem solved, All limits are in place, xp, gold, and access regulated, no cap on fun.
catsclaw 09-14-07, 02:57 PM	I'm not a big fan of Day Units ... You are forced to start setting limits on certain activities which vary from PC party to PC party (they have to travel 300 miles in this adventure, but do they have horses, how fast can they move, can they teleport?).I'm not suggesting a strict tracking of days-spent-to-TUs in the adventure; more like each adventure has at most one or two simple choices which affect the TU cost (Spend a couple days to research the bad guys before setting off, +2 TUs. Convince the wizard to teleport you to the temple, -5 TUs).This can be corrected by close interaction and communication between the Triads, but that is another level of coordination and complication that could be avoided.You could just require every six adventures a region publishes must cost 60 TUs (divided however they wanted) or even specify a given set of TU costs for the next 6 adventures (3, 5, 7, 10, 16, 20). I agree that a finer level of detail for TUs has a lot of resistance on these boards, so I doubt it'll ever see the light of day, but I think it would add a lot to the game.
MatteBlack 09-14-07, 03:36 PM	If that is the case, how about letting characters play for free after their TUs run out? No XP, No Gold, No access, but you can have fun playing? Problem solved, All limits are in place, xp, gold, and access regulated, no cap on fun. My guess is that most of the folks against TUs because they limit character play opportunities hold gold and XP very highly and would see play without reward as essentially the same cap.
MatteBlack 09-14-07, 03:42 PM	In general, I could agree that the TU system could be loosened up with more available TUs and smaller penalties for capture and legal issues but, I think the concept as is in LG is a sound one. The effects it has on the campaign have largely been positive save for the occasional missed mod with an APL minimum.
aljergensen 09-14-07, 04:11 PM	If that is the case, how about letting characters play for free after their TUs run out? No XP, No Gold, No access, but you can have fun playing? Problem solved, All limits are in place, xp, gold, and access regulated, no cap on fun. I personally value gaming/roleplaying more than advancement, but yeah I have to admit that I would look at 0 xp/gp for a game as a hefty penalty. And it still comes back to the question ... what exactly are TU limits buying us that people should be penalized for having fun playing a character? Allen.
jhorred 09-14-07, 05:01 PM	In general, I could agree that the TU system could be loosened up with more available TUs and smaller penalties for capture and legal issues but, I think the concept as is in LG is a sound one. The effects it has on the campaign have largely been positive save for the occasional missed mod with an APL minimum. For one thing I thought that the TU concept fit the LG campaign structure. Xendrick, etc needed no TU concept as there was a more limited number of mods and there was the whole level bump thing. With a campaign like LG, where there are many, many adventures available and the fact that there was the distinct time/year system built into the campaign. Time does limit what one can do, whether it's a PC on a piece of paper or the player at the table. There should be a limit to what a PC can do in a year. I don't think that the TU system is a bad way to do it. (Granted there is maybe a percentage approaching zero that actually could afford to travel to play nearly everything due the regional nature of LG.) For the whole jail TU cost thing, I think that perhaps the best solution is to present the penalty with a couple different options so the player doesn't get punished for his characters actions, but if the PC did something wrong, the PC should be punished. The whole TU jail sentence being thrown out if the PC pays a certain fine is a viable way to do that. The PC either pays a TU cost or pays a fine that doesn't exceed the amount of gold he would receive from the mod. That way any PC could take the gold option if he didn't want to pay the TU fine. The PC may be a little poorer than he expected but he could continue to adventure.
RanielK 09-14-07, 05:31 PM	I understand that some people like the TU system. You've made that clear. The question is, why? What does it buy? If I point out a flaw, is there a way to fix it? You've pointed out what you feel to be a flaw. Not everyone agrees. It has been pointed out that "TU cost as punishment" doesn't work very well. This is only true if TU's are only used for such punishments and not also tied to play opportunities. A TU penalty does not affect all characters evenly. A 52 TU penalty may take a character out of play or 11 months hours depending on when it happens. A lesser (ie 20 TU) penalty will have no affect whatsoever on some characters while removing other characters from play for months. True a guy who gets maybe 10 - 20 TUs worth of play on average for a character isn't as discomfited by that. At the same time as long as he got that much play, and only that much play per year as a choice, there's not much that would really punish him. Whereas another player would freak at a 1 tu, 1xp, 1gp penalty because their play style is every single xp/gp counts. Let's take an example. Jim and Bob are at a New Years Con. There's a game on the Dec 31st and a "midnight madness" to ring in the new year. Jim commits a crime in the first game and receives 52 TUs of prison. He doesn't care, because TUs are resetting in a few minutes. The clock strikes midnight. A new year! New TUs! Bob commits a crime in the next slot - now in the new year and receives a 52 TU penalty. He can't play his character for the rest of the year. As TUs stand now, they would both be equally inconvenienced based on how many TU's Jim had at the end of the year. IIRC, TU penalties from such things as jail time and they unexpected costs of a mod "roll over" into the new year. There is no "get out of jail because it's the new year" card. Or take another example. Tom and Susie are at GenCon. Tom is excited because he doesn't get to play much. He did get into an adaptable mod and while it took up 35 TUs, he has enough TUs to play the con. Susie is playing a secondary character that still has 40 TUs. Her character usually has 20+ TUs left over at the end of the year. They are playing at the same game and the mod doesn't go well. They get caught by slavers and have to spend 20 TUs getting free. Tom is livid - he can't play his character for the rest of the year and GenCon is a waste. Susie is unaffected since her character never runs out of TUs anyway. This is about play styles. This, I would say, is the only legitimate grip in the post. It is unfortunate that Tom's only character is taken out by slavers. At the same time, would you argue there should be no deaths at all (especially the dreaded TPK)? Tom's play opportunities would be just as harmed by an unrecoverable death as they are from the loss of TU's at the beginning of a Con, but Tom chose to only have one character. Now, I realize there are a number of us who have 0 internet access (so no online games) and the only games are the once a year con we save up for and the once every four months, five hour car trip game we play with the four other guys who are any where near us who can barely make a legal table. However, this fringe case aside, most folks I've talked to choose to only have one character. They choose to back one pony and it is partly their fault that any type of penalty hurts their play opportunities as bad as it does. The sole argument against a TU/XP penalty seems to be that some people might purposely seek jail time in order to slow down advancement. First of all, it has been indicated that we are probably going to be advancing to 30th level. That should be long enough for most people. But for some, enough is never enough. There are those who want to be able to say "You're at 12th, I'm already retired at 30th! Yeah, one year baby!" There are equally those who want to point at the 5873 AR's it took them to get to 12th and show how unbelievably intricate their attachment to every plotline is. Now, if that is your play style, fine. I would argue that going 1-30th in 1 year is either monumentally epic or mind shatteringly unbelievable. And the guy with 18 deaths/res'es and 10 years in jail time? I'd say let go the blanket Linus. But, if a person is deliberately seeking jail time, how would they do it? Start murdering innocent bystanders on the street? That would qualify as an evil act. If a person does end in jail and it seemed at all intentional to the DM, the DM should review the character history. If there's a pattern of excessive jail time, he can report cheating for unsportsmanlike conduct. As with any form of cheating, done right and its hard to catch. It requires the judge do an audit and I've never seen one done. There would have to be rules along the lines of mandatory audits after every death and every jail sentence to catch a person determined to use these loopholes. Then you'ld have to show it was deliberately done to slow down advancement. Though if they're still 8th level in the 5th year of the campaign and have 175 AR's, there's something up. Miles
amysrevenge 09-14-07, 07:09 PM	1) Does the campaign need to control the growth of PCs? If the answer is yes, then a system has to be in place to do that. TUs are just one of many ways to do that. I'm not against other methods, but those methods have to make sense. I say: if we assume that writers are a limited resource, then we need to limit the rate at which the leading edge PCs advance, yes. From a purely module-writing standpoint, it would be optimal if all PCs were exactly the same level. Obviously this is not possible or desirable (if you think it is, play in Xendrik lol). A balance must be struck to use writer resources most efficiently. If we limit the rate of the leading edge PC leveling, then we at least have some upper cap on where we need to spread our writers. However, once the leading edge reach the ultimate campaign cap (ostensibly level 30, I'll believe it when I see it), this is no longer an issue. We are already spreading our writers as thinly as they will ever need to go - limiting advancement does not help this problem any more. I think that some sort of limit needs to be there. Perhaps something as simple as an annually escalating hard level cap (max level 6 in year 1, 12 in year 2, 18 in year 3, 24 in year 4, no limit in year 5 and beyond) would do the trick. 2) What about PC growth needs to be controlled? Well, to be honest, until we know more about 4e, that is tough to say. I agree - it is too hard to judge how tightly things need balancing until we learn more about 4E. In 3.X I think we were all surprised at how small of a window there was for gp/XP ratios that were appropriate. Earlier editions did not lead us to suspect that this would be an issue. I'd wager that the difficulties for 4E will be different in an unanticipated way. 3) Is it important to have verisimilitude in the amount of "opportunities" a PC can have in a calendar year? Absolutely not. We already have one time pardox (playing modules out of order) that nobody cares about. The notion of limiting time available in a year simply for the sake of verisimilitude is less important (from a logic point of view) than requiring folks to only play sequential modules in order. Since the second will never happen, I don't think we should force the first. But as far as TUs being overly complicated, I think that is silly. People can be experts on the completely Byzantine rules of 3.5, but then claim that subtracting a one-digit number from a two-digit number is too complicated?! :-D You said it brother. Big Mike
aljergensen 09-14-07, 10:06 PM	A TU penalty does not affect all characters evenly. A 52 TU penalty may take a character out of play or 11 months or 11 hours depending on when it happens. A lesser (ie 20 TU) penalty will have no affect whatsoever on some characters while removing other characters from play for months. True a guy who gets maybe 10 - 20 TUs worth of play on average for a character isn't as discomfited by that. At the same time as long as he got that much play, and only that much play per year as a choice, there's not much that would really punish him. Whereas another player would freak at a 1 tu, 1xp, 1gp penalty because their play style is every single xp/gp counts. So let me get this straight. You agree that a TU penalty doesn't penalize everyone, but you still like the TU penalty because somebody might get upset by a XP/GP penalty? What about the guy that gets upset by the TU penalty? :confused: That's ... interesting logic. Or am I just missing something? As TUs stand now, they would both be equally inconvenienced based on how many TU's Jim had at the end of the year. IIRC, TU penalties from such things as jail time and they unexpected costs of a mod "roll over" into the new year. There is no "get out of jail because it's the new year" card. I don't remember any rule that says you "borrow" TUs from the following year other than RHOD. AFAIK TUs reset at the first of the year. Maybe I missed it. I've never experienced jail, nor do I personally know of anyone who has. But even if the TU penalties carry over, someone who gets jailed at the end of the year effectively gets their sentence reduced by the leftover TUs they were not going to use anyway. Not quite as drastic, but still unfair. As with any form of cheating, done right and its hard to catch. It requires the judge do an audit and I've never seen one done. There would have to be rules along the lines of mandatory audits after every death and every jail sentence to catch a person determined to use these loopholes. Then you'ld have to show it was deliberately done to slow down advancement. Though if they're still 8th level in the 5th year of the campaign and have 175 AR's, there's something up. Miles So we make it a rule that if somebody ends up in jail their last 10-20 ARs are audited. It would only take a minute. Making it clear that landing in jail on purpose will be considered cheating and possibly result in forfeit of the character and possible expulsion from a con would be enough to stop the vast majority of people who would consider it. Then again, I've never seen anyone spend a single TU in jail time. To me it seems like a pretty minor issue with a reasonable (but admittedly not perfect) solution. There is no perfect solution. Allen.
cetiken 09-15-07, 12:46 AM	My guess is that most of the folks against TUs because they limit character play opportunities hold gold and XP very highly and would see play without reward as essentially the same cap. Actually I've never run out of TUs on any character. I simply question the necessity of an extra layer of complexity on administrating the campaign. I don't object to using TUs for off-camera activities (Item creation, profession skills, meta-orgs) since that seems to be a valid reasoning. I have a job that normally keeps me very busy (and other interests that occupy my free time) so I'm lucky if I can make more than two cons a year.
Mithreinmaethor 09-15-07, 05:56 AM	We have to limit a single characters per year play time otherwise within a year you could go from 1st to 15th or 20th or something. Think about it 12 Regions with each region putting out 6 to 8 modules a year. Thats 72 to 96 modules you can play. They have stated ther will be core modules so lets say 8 to 14 of those to bring the total to 80 to 110 modules per year you can play.
tombollis 09-15-07, 06:35 AM	We have to limit a single characters per year play time otherwise within a year you could go from 1st to 15th or 20th or something. Think about it 12 Regions with each region putting out 6 to 8 modules a year. Thats 72 to 96 modules you can play. They have stated ther will be core modules so lets say 8 to 14 of those to bring the total to 80 to 110 modules per year you can play. Why shouldn't a player be able to get a PC to a high level in a year of intensive play, if there are adventures available at eah level? he is also rushing the character to unsupported levels, where he will have to be set aside for a supported lower level PC. In order to play everything, you will need to devote a lot of real world time, and will eventually require additional PCs even without TUs. Tom Bollis
amysrevenge 09-15-07, 11:25 AM	We have to limit a single characters per year play time otherwise within a year you could go from 1st to 15th or 20th or something. Why is that something to avoid? As I've said eariler in the thread, it might be undesirable from a module level allocation point of view in the infancy of the campaign, but later, there is no reason why this should be halted. As an example: who would it have hurt if someone in LG went from intro mods to level 15 over the course of 2006? The modules were all there and available. Nobody else had to do anything differently. Now, in 2001 it would have been a different story. Nobody had adventures that would accomodate PCs above level 8 or so in all of year 1. The "unlimited play" PC would have reached this level, and found himself *allowed* to play more, but not finding any adventures he could play. This would lead to loud complaining, arguments, and possibly (if the fellow and his very few high level companions were loud or annoying enough) an allocation of some higher level modules that would see very limited play.
KoboldChieftain 09-15-07, 12:07 PM	Why is that something to avoid? As I've said eariler in the thread, it might be undesirable from a module level allocation point of view in the infancy of the campaign, but later, there is no reason why this should be halted. As an example: who would it have hurt if someone in LG went from intro mods to level 15 over the course of 2006? The modules were all there and available. Nobody else had to do anything differently. Now, in 2001 it would have been a different story. Nobody had adventures that would accomodate PCs above level 8 or so in all of year 1. The "unlimited play" PC would have reached this level, and found himself *allowed* to play more, but not finding any adventures he could play. This would lead to loud complaining, arguments, and possibly (if the fellow and his very few high level companions were loud or annoying enough) an allocation of some higher level modules that would see very limited play. There is another thing to consider. What about the brand new, fresh out of the box, never rolled a die, what's a DC type player? Who do they get to play with? If they managed to start within a few months of launch, no problem, they get to join the herd and move forward. But what if they join in year three? All the established players are already well beyond their level. The only people they get to play with are people who are alos "new". If the influx of new gamers was steady and significant this would not be a problem. It isn't so it is a problem. The only way to have a significant number of new characters is to have established players make new ones. But why would they want to do that? They are, supposedly, enjoying playing the character they have. What could we possibly come up with to make them put down the established character and make a brand new one? Hmmmm..... :) Lowering the barrier of entry is VERY important to HQ. It should also be important to EVERYONE as it helps keep the game going. Not being able to play your uberkin as much as you would like is a nice trade for being able to play at all (Ok, over dramatic but still).
amysrevenge 09-15-07, 06:37 PM	Lowering the barrier of entry is VERY important to HQ. It should also be important to EVERYONE as it helps keep the game going. Not being able to play your uberkin as much as you would like is a nice trade for being able to play at all (Ok, over dramatic but still). So the trick then is to find the balance betwen: Highest barrier of entry: No player EVER rolls up a secondary PC. They play at level 1 exactly once - when their first and only PC is at level 1. New players later on in the game will only be able to play if they find other new players. Lowest barrier of entry: Every player rolls up a new 1st level PC every time he plays. They play at level 1 all the time. New players can jump right in to any table at any event. Obviously both of the above are ridiculous extremes. However, they do represent a continuum into which we need to locate our compromise. I personally place my compromise closer to the first than the second. In the two communities that I've been a part of (Seattle and Calgary) there have always been enough people out there with plenty of low level PC who are happy to play them without a ruleset that forces them to do so (in MMOs I've see this called "alt-itis") that generally newbies can find a place to play. It's easier for newbies at the home game/local gameday level to get tables, harder at the regional/national level. At small events people are more likely to change their own plans to accomodate someone else; at a big show it is easier to hold your ground and hope for someone else to bend. :P Big Mike
smerwin29 09-15-07, 07:15 PM	Why is that something to avoid? Just a couple or reasons, off the top of my head. --Believe it or not, more than a few LG players only played one character. They took that character from 1st level to 18th level as fast as they could. When they got to 18th level, they just quit LG. Now this certainly wasn't a majority of players, but it was enough to give pause. If even a small percentage of players do that, it behooves the campaign to slow down advancement enough so that those players will remain active in the campaign for as long as possible. --Believe it or not, more than a few players will not play in a campaign if there are higher level characters already active in the campaign. They feel like getting into a campaign at first level when there are other more powerful characters in the campaign is a waste of time. If even a small percentage of players do that, it behooves the campaign to slow down advancement just enough so that these types of players won't feel left behind so early. (Obviously at some point there is no helping it.) What I am seeing is a lot of "this is what I like, so it must be right" opinions flying around, on all sides of all issues. Whoever is chosen to lead the campaign must take into account more than just personal opinions; they must look at the goals of the campaign as a whole and then implement rules to meet those goals. Sometimes those rules and those goals will coincide with an individual's wants and needs, sometimes they won't.
tombollis 09-15-07, 07:36 PM	Just a couple or reasons, off the top of my head. --Believe it or not, more than a few LG players only played one character. They took that character from 1st level to 18th level as fast as they could. When they got to 18th level, they just quit LG. Now this certainly wasn't a majority of players, but it was enough to give pause. If even a small percentage of players do that, it behooves the campaign to slow down advancement enough so that those players will remain active in the campaign for as long as possible. I disagree. They got what they wanted out of the campaign and left, leaving those who wanted to play at lower levels. Slowing advancement whould probably have bored them into leaving anyway. A minorty of such plsyers need have little impact on the campaign, --Believe it or not, more than a few players will not play in a campaign if there are higher level characters already active in the campaign. They feel like getting into a campaign at first level when there are other more powerful characters in the campaign is a waste of time. If even a small percentage of players do that, it behooves the campaign to slow down advancement just enough so that these types of players won't feel left behind so early. (Obviously at some point there is no helping it.) The expectation that they can never catch up (due to leveling limitations, as from TUs) probably contributes to dicouraging such players. Slowing advancement WILL NOT encourage them to join. Tom Bollis
aljergensen 09-15-07, 08:23 PM	Just a couple or reasons, off the top of my head. --Believe it or not, more than a few LG players only played one character. They took that character from 1st level to 18th level as fast as they could. When they got to 18th level, they just quit LG. ... --Believe it or not, more than a few players will not play in a campaign if there are higher level characters already active in the campaign. ... they must look at the goals of the campaign as a whole and then implement rules to meet those goals. I don't see any reason TU limits will affect either one of your issues. The first group of people are probably going to play their 30 or so adventures and quit. Hope they have fun while they are with us. The latter group is going to be low-man on the totem pole after, what 3 or 4 adventures? What's your point? I don't see this as an issue in the gaming groups I belong to. But what goals are you talking about that can't be handled in a simple, straight-foward fashion (without TUs)? I see the following: Encourage a reasonable percentage of the gaming community to have multiple levels. Limit level progression until mod writers understand the system well enough to write appropriate mods. (only an issue for the first year or two) Limit non-adventure activities for game balance purposes. Have appropriate punishment for PC behavior (ie jail). Encourage people to judge. Minimize unnecessary paperwork and overhead. Set up a system where the largest number of people have the most fun playing so that they get excited and tell all their friends to come join them in an awesome campaign. I think TUs do a poor job of encouraging/enforcing 1-4. Eliminating TUs helps with 6 & 7. Is there anything else you can add to the list that justifies TUs that I haven't listed? Allen.
smerwin29 09-15-07, 10:00 PM	I think I have said everything I need to say. At this point, people who are against controlled character advancement do not want to hear reason; they just want to dismiss any points that are made with a simple "No." If things don't affect them or do not apply to them, they are either unwilling to or incapable of understanding that other people are affected by things. In the end, with control or without, with TUs or without, I am going to enjoy the campaign. I just hope others do as well.
cetiken 09-15-07, 10:34 PM	There is another thing to consider. What about the brand new, fresh out of the box, never rolled a die, what's a DC type player? Who do they get to play with? Me. I (and I'm not alone) love intro mods. I've always got a level 1 guy on hand to play. On a few of 'm actually make it higher than 2nd.
MatteBlack 09-16-07, 02:16 AM	I think I have said everything I need to say. At this point, people who are against controlled character advancement do not want to hear reason; they just want to dismiss any points that are made with a simple "No." If things don't affect them or do not apply to them, they are either unwilling to or incapable of understanding that other people are affected by things. In the end, with control or without, with TUs or without, I am going to enjoy the campaign. I just hope others do as well. Sadly, that is why I have largely backed out of this discussion. I hope the TUs make it to LFR. I know alot of folks who really enjoy the structure of how LG is played and TUs are a factor in much of what they like about it.
jhorred 09-16-07, 02:43 AM	Sadly, that is why I have largely backed out of this discussion. I hope the TUs make it to LFR. I know alot of folks who really enjoy the structure of how LG is played and TUs are a factor in much of what they like about it. +1 (I agree) My one last thought on this one, in response to those who ask why should we limit character advancement: What does the campaign (not individual players) gain from unlimited advancement? I think that the campaign gains more (Though individual players may "suffer") if there is a game mechanic to limit advancement.
tombollis 09-16-07, 06:28 AM	+1 (I agree) My one last thought on this one, in response to those who ask why should we limit character advancement: What does the campaign (not individual players) gain from unlimited advancement? You have it backward. The default is core rules, no TUs. What does the campaign gain or lose by adding TUs? The campaign lwould limit player choice, losing potential members as LG has by arbitrary limitations. It would gain more control of the game experience, which is a plus to some, but a minus to others. TUs aren't necessary for limiting supported character levels, nor is it clear that they encourage multiple PCs or increase the likelyhood of either new players joining or old players staying. Their clear benfits relate to regulating out of adventure activities, which may or may not be signficant in LFR. TUs for adventures don't reasonably model game world time for adventures nor travel between adventures. Tom Bollis
Sieylianna 09-16-07, 11:21 AM	Sadly, that is why I have largely backed out of this discussion. I hope the TUs make it to LFR. I know alot of folks who really enjoy the structure of how LG is played and TUs are a factor in much of what they like about it. I also agree. The preliminary info says magic items will be less important in 4th edition, but we don't know whether this will be part of the final rules. If magic items are still an important part of the game, you have to have some sort of TU mechanism to keep item crafters from dominating play. Ed
aljergensen 09-16-07, 11:32 AM	My one last thought on this one, in response to those who ask why should we limit character advancement: What does the campaign (not individual players) gain from unlimited advancement? I think that the campaign gains more (Though individual players may "suffer") if there is a game mechanic to limit advancement. People having fun and enjoying the campaign is a good thing. Limiting paperwork is a good thing. I know I'm not alone in my dislike of TUs. My wife doesn't like them either. I know at least one person that quit playing (in part) because of TU limits. I would guess that most people don't care much one way or the other. The people who like TUs are going to continue playing as long as the majority of issues TUs are supposed to address get handled in some fashion. People who don't like a limitation on playing their character of choice are more likely to stay. People who dislike paperwork are more likely to stay. The more people stay, the better it is for the campaign. Allen.
RedKnightofKet 09-16-07, 11:39 AM	You have it backward. The default is core rules, no TUs. What does the campaign gain or lose by adding TUs? The campaign lwould limit player choice, losing potential members as LG has by arbitrary limitations. It would gain more control of the game experience, which is a plus to some, but a minus to others. TUs aren't necessary for limiting supported character levels, nor is it clear that they encourage multiple PCs or increase the likelyhood of either new players joining or old players staying. Their clear benfits relate to regulating out of adventure activities, which may or may not be signficant in LFR. TUs for adventures don't reasonably model game world time for adventures nor travel between adventures. Tom Bollis Of course TUs don't exist in the Core rules: in a home game, time moves on along with the party. When you have thousands of adventurers traveling around the same time, there needs to be some sort of mechanism to limit the amount of time spent. While TUs aren't perfect for this, they would seem to be better than giving each module the specific game time it takes to play it. TUs are an average for the cost of adventures, and I think they work just fine. If each year in the campaign is tied to a real-world year, then there needs to be some sort of limit. Mind you, this is my opinion on the matter, and the last I'll say on the subject. And for the record, I have used up all the TUs on my main character in the two years I have been in the campaign, plus dozens more on secondary characters.
Genghis Cohen 09-16-07, 12:46 PM	Why shouldn't a player be able to get a PC to a high level in a year of intensive play, if there are adventures available at eah level?We are told that LFR will be a living campaign that will allow the PCs to influence FR canon. If LFR offers the same leeway to do this as LG, interesting things will happen. This type of mass collaboration and participation is the beauty of a living campaign. An excessive number of high level PCs has much greater potential to tilt FR canon in a very noticeable way. If this happens just once, you can be absolutely guaranteed that the FR novel writers will have some type of veto power that will clamp down on this fast. At that point LFR won't really be a living campaign anymore. It will just be a D&D style campaign without the auto-leveling. As I see it, the bottom line with TUs are that they work. They might not be the most elegant solution possible, but no one has offered a better one. LG - with a TU system - managed to become the most successful living campaign ever, and it was still growing as of this past GenCon. Dropping TUs because a very small, but vocal minority demands it, is not good enough. Higher level characters require higher APLs to be supported. I have yet to hear of a single person in favor of rapid advancement volunteer to forfeit playing opportunities to be an author that will help to support these higher APLs. I've already gone through over 200s this year. If one of my characters suffered a permanent death, I wouldn't like it, but I could keep playing at a wide range of APLs. If someone only played a single PC and suffered a permanent death at a high APL, it would be devastating. Seeing as no one has offered a clearly superior alternative to manage campaign needs, I believe that TUs should stay.
tombollis 09-16-07, 03:19 PM	As I see it, the bottom line with TUs are that they work. They might not be the most elegant solution possible, but no one has offered a better one. It is not an established fact that they work for the pirposes mentioned. Alternatives have been offered, but proponents of TUs don't address their merits or defects. For most players of LG, TUs have been unnecessary bookkeeping, having little effecton level advancement or how often they pkay individual PCs. I believe only a small minority have PCs that regularly approch TU limits. I have met people who have refused to play LC because of the TU system. A TU system of some sort may be appropriate for LFR under 4e rules, but not sticking to the LG model. We should learn from the experience, but not blindly stuck to it. Tom Bollis
aljergensen 09-16-07, 07:36 PM	Why shouldn't a player be able to get a PC to a high level in a year of intensive play, if there are adventures available at eah level? We are told that LFR will be a living campaign that will allow the PCs to influence FR canon. If LFR offers the same leeway to do this as LG, interesting things will happen. This type of mass collaboration and participation is the beauty of a living campaign. An excessive number of high level PCs has much greater potential to tilt FR canon in a very noticeable way. Huh? First of all, there will be high level PCs in LFR. It's just a question of when. Second, it doesn't matter if a mod is written and 6 people play it or 600. The results from a mod (if PC actions matter) are averaged out. As I see it, the bottom line with TUs are that they work. They might not be the most elegant solution possible, but no one has offered a better one. No, you are ignoring what has been said. See below. LG - with a TU system - managed to become the most successful living campaign ever, and it was still growing as of this past GenCon. Dropping TUs because a very small, but vocal minority demands it, is not good enough. Higher level characters require higher APLs to be supported. I have yet to hear of a single person in favor of rapid advancement volunteer to forfeit playing opportunities to be an author that will help to support these higher APLs. I, and several other people have stated repeatedly that we need to limit max PC level for the first year or two. But if a volunteer is needed to write higher level games, sign me up ... once we understand the rules. Seeing as no one has offered a clearly superior alternative to manage campaign needs, I believe that TUs should stay. I think pretty clear and simple solutions have been offered. For the Meta-Game issues that affect a living campaign and the suggested resolution: Encourage a reasonable percentage of the gaming community to have multiple levels. We can encourage people to have multiple levels by offering mods at multiple levels. Offer interesting intro mods or adventure arcs (ala Ruins of Greyhawk) that start out at a low level. Nothing in the TU system encourages a variety of levels. It just forces multiple PCs. Those PCs can all be the same level. Personally I see a problem with not enough high level PCs. I enjoy playing my (soon to retire) 15th level Paladin, but only rarely get to play him. IMHO removing TUs will lead to a smoother overall distribution, not the other way around. I enjoy playing, and will continue to play characters of all levels. Limit level progression until mod writers understand the system well enough to write appropriate mods. (only an issue for the first year or two) For the first year or two, don't support higher levels until mod writers are ready. Limit non-adventure activities for game balance purposes. Have a limited number Non Adventure Action Points that can be spent on crafting/meta-orgs. Have appropriate punishment for PC behavior (ie jail). Use a GP and/or XP penalty. If someone purposely lands in jail (or dies for that matter) to slow down their progression it's considered cheating. Encourage people to judge. TU limits (or lack therein) don't really affect this. Minimize unnecessary paperwork and overhead. One of the reason to get rid of TUs Set up a system where the largest number of people have the most fun playing so that they get excited and tell all their friends to come join them in an awesome campaign. The main reason to get rid of TUs. As far as some people getting upset if a favored character permanently dies ... well there is only so much we can do with meta-game rules. I can't guarantee that someone somewhere won't get upset by whatever rule we come up with. As far as being a small minority opposed to TUs, even the guy who created TUs doesn't think they are necessary. :) Hi! My name is Troy Daniels and if you check way way way way (yes, I mean WAY) back, you will see that my name is on the article that introduced Time Units way way back in the days of Living City. Yep, that's me. Robert Wiese and I invented time units. ... Does Living Forgotten Realms need a time unit system? Probably not. And now I've gone and posted on this silly topic again. If you have a specific issue you don't see addressed in my list, let me know. I for one would be happy to discuss the issue. If it's just repeating stuff over and over ... well I'm trying hard to ignore it from now on. Allen.
Reneshat 09-16-07, 10:01 PM	I, and several other people have stated repeatedly that we need to limit max PC level for the first year or two. I think pretty clear and simple solutions have been offered. For the Meta-Game issues that affect a living campaign and the suggested resolution: Encourage a reasonable percentage of the gaming community to have multiple levels. We can encourage people to have multiple levels by offering mods at multiple levels. Offer interesting intro mods or adventure arcs (ala Ruins of Greyhawk) that start out at a low level. Nothing in the TU system encourages a variety of levels. It just forces multiple PCs. Those PCs can all be the same level. Personally I see a problem with not enough high level PCs. I enjoy playing my (soon to retire) 15th level Paladin, but only rarely get to play him. IMHO removing TUs will lead to a smoother overall distribution, not the other way around. I enjoy playing, and will continue to play characters of all levels. Limit level progression until mod writers understand the system well enough to write appropriate mods. (only an issue for the first year or two) For the first year or two, don't support higher levels until mod writers are ready. Limit non-adventure activities for game balance purposes. Have a limited number Non Adventure Action Points that can be spent on crafting/meta-orgs. Have appropriate punishment for PC behavior (ie jail). Use a GP and/or XP penalty. If someone purposely lands in jail (or dies for that matter) to slow down their progression it's considered cheating. Encourage people to judge. TU limits (or lack therein) don't really affect this. Minimize unnecessary paperwork and overhead. One of the reason to get rid of TUs Set up a system where the largest number of people have the most fun playing so that they get excited and tell all their friends to come join them in an awesome campaign. The main reason to get rid of TUs. As far as some people getting upset if a favored character permanently dies ... well there is only so much we can do with meta-game rules. I can't guarantee that someone somewhere won't get upset by whatever rule we come up with. I fail to see how replacing one system with multiple is a simple solution. I have seen the xp/gold penalty discussed before (I don't even remember which thread now) so it's not like that one has been ignored. Hard limits that increase annually would work on the getting to know the rules side, certainly. Writing adventures at different APLs offers a completely different problem. What do we do? Have 3 different SLs going at once for each region at different APL options? This means that if a region only produces 9 modules a year, only 3 would be for each APL arc. That would effectively limit your high level options rather than the reverse. If we are talking about a 30 level spread, to push for characters at different levels we would probably need more than 3 different story arcs. That isn't even feasible on a regional scale, not if they want a regional story line at least. This would effectively require regions to make bids on what APLs they want to write for, to make sure all APLs are provided for. If different regions provide modules for different APLs, I see this as a problem. Maybe you don't, but I do. Out of Adventure time constraints work fine. I see this as yet another example of the taking one system that does multiple things, and replacing it with 3 or 4 thing and calling it more simple thing again. I just disagree with this. I would rather have just one system. As far as people not wanting to play because of TUs are concerned, I will just have to take your word for it. I however, know many people that like TUs and ARs and play because of it. These people outnumber all the people I have met that have problems with the TUs (including individuals talking about it on this board.) My experience is probably skewed however, as is yours. My guess is it might not be 50/50, but it's probably close. In short, I don't think your ideas are better than TUs. However, I am still open to hearing more ideas, and maybe we can come up with something that works better, and almost everyone will be happy with (as you said, someone is going to be unhappy whatever we do.)
mmockus 09-17-07, 12:50 AM	When you consider what resources there are, it's very few. There is gold and items and XP. TUs were added to make another resource to manipulate the characters and player activities. Any other resource would have to be added as well. The only possible one I could imagine adding would be some sort of social standing rating. But how important will the resources be in 4th edition? Chris has already noted that TUs will likely be gone. The design staff has mentions that they are doing away with XP as a resource. No more XP = Craft mechanic. That leaves access. If you take the MIC as an example, does access need to be something you tightly guard any longer? Every item categoried into "appropriate for x level...". So if they carry forward this to 4e, would it not be simply to say, 1st level characters may buy 1st level appropriate equipment? etc. etc. Also the design staff has stated in 4e, the reliance at higher levels on equipment will be going away. Your character will no longer be driven by what he has, but by the character's advancement mechanic. A 10th level fighter isn't cool because of the sword he bought. he is cool because of what he can do with that sword. So that leaves one real resource. The almight gold piece. I can't see anything happening to this, characters like loot. But even that isn't sacred. Look at the Eberron campaigns. They basically have done away with the claiming of wealth. Your character has an Equipment Value (EV), and all your stuff cannot exceed that amount. So if all this is gone, what does it leave us? The story, what the game is about. Making choices, defeating foes, and saving nations; Crawling through dungeons and slaying Dragons... my 2 cents
Reneshat 09-17-07, 01:18 AM	But how important will the resources be in 4th edition? Chris has already noted that TUs will likely be gone. The design staff has mentions that they are doing away with XP as a resource. No more XP = Craft mechanic. That leaves access. If you take the MIC as an example, does access need to be something you tightly guard any longer? Every item categoried into "appropriate for x level...". So if they carry forward this to 4e, would it not be simply to say, 1st level characters may buy 1st level appropriate equipment? etc. etc. Also the design staff has stated in 4e, the reliance at higher levels on equipment will be going away. Your character will no longer be driven by what he has, but by the character's advancement mechanic. A 10th level fighter isn't cool because of the sword he bought. he is cool because of what he can do with that sword. So that leaves one real resource. The almight gold piece. I can't see anything happening to this, characters like loot. But even that isn't sacred. Look at the Eberron campaigns. They basically have done away with the claiming of wealth. Your character has an Equipment Value (EV), and all your stuff cannot exceed that amount. So if all this is gone, what does it leave us? The story, what the game is about. Making choices, defeating foes, and saving nations; Crawling through dungeons and slaying Dragons... my 2 cents Good point. It is foolish to discuss these things until we have a better understanding of the situation we will be working with a year from now.
gomeztoo 09-17-07, 10:01 AM	My suggestion would be to entirely ditch magic item crafting. It simply does NOT work in a living campaign.
aljergensen 09-17-07, 12:00 PM	Hard limits that increase annually would work on the getting to know the rules side, certainly. I think limiting people for the first year or two is more just a matter of setting expectations, and letting people know that there may not be any high level or epic mods out for a while. Making it official lets mod authors say "The campaign doesn't support that level of play yet." when people ask. Writing adventures at different APLs offers a completely different problem. What do we do? Have 3 different SLs going at once for each region at different APL options? This means that if a region only produces 9 modules a year, only 3 would be for each APL arc. That would effectively limit your high level options rather than the reverse. Supporting all levels will be an issue, it's just a matter of when. Will it be 6 months before we have adventures for epic level players or 6 years? Will we need 3 story arcs to support low, high and epic level adventurers? Maybe. I kind of find it hard to imagine scaling a mod from fighting orcs to fighting Orcus making sense. But a story arc with low level characters fighting scouts for an orcish army, high level taking out power centers and epic level fighting the orc king in the same war might work. That, however is a discussion for another thread ... and one that we probably don't have enough info to have right now. My suggestion would be to entirely ditch magic item crafting. It simply does NOT work in a living campaign. There's also a possibility adventurers won't be crafting magical items any more. I could see a division between combat casters (adventurers) and ritual magic experts who actually create all the cool items. As far as mundane crafting ... if I write up a nephew for Tankard Strongbrew (my Raven's Bluff character) he'll probably have some skill in brewing just like his uncle. But it could just be a role-playing thing that doesn't have any game effect. After all, he will be an adventurer, not a brewer. So we may just need to control Meta-Org access. If there are Meta-Orgs. :) Allen.
MatteBlack 09-17-07, 12:42 PM	My suggestion would be to entirely ditch magic item crafting. It simply does NOT work in a living campaign. I would agree. Seems like it is one of the biggest sources of character imbalance in LG.
tombollis 09-17-07, 01:15 PM	My suggestion would be to entirely ditch magic item crafting. It simply does NOT work in a living campaign. The problem wasn't crafting per se, but access and making a profit, while slowing advancement. Easily remedied - no access to standard items required from ACs; PCs craft for full value, same as purchasing; no xp cost. If everyone has access to purchase standard items, the crafting would just be for story purposes and customizing. No game balance issues or complex rules. Tom Bollis
gomeztoo 09-17-07, 01:25 PM	The problem wasn't crafting per se, but access and making a profit, while slowing advancement. Easily remedied - no access to standard items required from ACs; PCs craft for full value, same as purchasing; no xp cost. This was suggested at the time, but it didn't work as we were not allowed to change the core rules (craft feats) in that way.
tombollis 09-17-07, 01:44 PM	This was suggested at the time, but it didn't work as we were not allowed to change the core rules (craft feats) in that way. Thus, it depends on the new core crafting rules, and on the leeway given to the campaign administration. Tom Bollis
aljergensen 09-17-07, 01:48 PM	Or you could just say "disposable items" (scrolls, staves, wands) only. In LG my spellcasters burn through scrolls and wands on a pretty regular basis. If 4e has them, or if they are needed. Allen.
tombollis 09-17-07, 03:06 PM	Or you could just say "disposable items" (scrolls, staves, wands) only. In LG my spellcasters burn through scrolls and wands on a pretty regular basis. If 4e has them, or if they are needed. Allen. Items are changing in 4e. It seems that wizardsm at least, will use orb, tome, staff, and wand as foci for different types of spells, boosting their performance, with some similarity to how magic weapons boost a fighter's attack. There may no longer be wands of magic missile, wands of fireball, or the like, but +2 wands, etc. Wondrous items may be the leasat changed magic items. Tom Bollis
Randall Montgomery 09-18-07, 01:54 PM	My suggestion would be to entirely ditch magic item crafting. It simply does NOT work in a living campaign. I disagree. The problem is that a caster can only craft items for himself, which is completely against the basic premise of crafting. Personally, I hope they open crafting up so that crafters can craft items for other players, especially if XP is no longer a factor. Just make it so a crafter is allowed to craft 1 item per adventure (or maybe 1 item per player per adventure, so we don't have arguements over who gets to hire them for the mod), using a form similar to the item creation form currently used in LG, but with a section specifically for crafting for another player. The crafter crafts the item as normal, but all GP costs and any time costs (TUs or their equivilent) are paid by the purchaser, and the crafter either shouldn't get anything from the transaction or some relatively small reward like 1% of the item cost or something; regardless, the gain to the crafter should be clearly spelled out in the campaing standards and non-negotiable. Then the crafter, the purchaser, and the DM sign the form, which goes to the purchaser. This way, everyone can benifit from the crafter's skills, and the gap b/w crafters and non-crafters is closed significantly.
MatteBlack 09-18-07, 02:14 PM	I disagree. The problem is that a caster can only craft items for himself, which is completely against the basic premise of crafting. Personally, I hope they open crafting up so that crafters can craft items for other players, especially if XP is no longer a factor. Just make it so a crafter is allowed to craft 1 item per adventure (or maybe 1 item per player per adventure, so we don't have arguements over who gets to hire them for the mod), using a form similar to the item creation form currently used in LG, but with a section specifically for crafting for another player. The crafter crafts the item as normal, but all GP costs and any time costs (TUs or their equivilent) are paid by the purchaser, and the crafter either shouldn't get anything from the transaction or some relatively small reward like 1% of the item cost or something; regardless, the gain to the crafter should be clearly spelled out in the campaing standards and non-negotiable. Then the crafter, the purchaser, and the DM sign the form, which goes to the purchaser. This way, everyone can benifit from the crafter's skills, and the gap b/w crafters and non-crafters is closed significantly. The problem here is whether it can be abused by alternate characters trading the crafted items back to a main character either directly or indirectly. Allowing crafting opens alot of potential pitfalls for abuse to occur in. it might be able to be made abuse-free through alot of restrictions but, I can't say that most people I know would be that broken up if they could not play a crafter but, I feel for those who would. I just think that ignoring crafting would help keep things balanced and on the up and up as well as focusing players on more adventuresome builds than support ones. D&D should be more about the adventure than the lootz.
cetiken 09-18-07, 11:15 PM	I'm not sure but am pretty certin that this whole crafting subthread is pretty pointless. Some facts as they are currently known about 4E. Fact: Magic Item Creation will NOT require the expenditure of XP. And probably won't require a feat. Source (http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=204373) What we will have are the other things that people will want to do for very little total effect on their gp totals. Using tradeskills, professions, perform, slight of hand to earn coin and possibly create mundane items. This alone will require some sort of nonadventuring time (though perhaps once per adventure would work) add to that whatever form magic item crafting will take and metaorgs (a fairly unique phenomenon to rpga) and people will want to tack how much time they spend between adventures. In any case lets try to stay on topic and realize that we dont know enough to discuss whatever from MIC will take right now.
Vamroc 09-19-07, 01:59 AM	I'm not sure but am pretty certin that this whole crafting subthread is pretty pointless. Some facts as they are currently known about 4E. Fact: Magic Item Creation will NOT require the expenditure of XP. And probably won't require a feat. Source (http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=204373) What we will have are the other things that people will want to do for very little total effect on their gp totals. Using tradeskills, professions, perform, slight of hand to earn coin and possibly create mundane items. This alone will require some sort of nonadventuring time (though perhaps once per adventure would work) add to that whatever form magic item crafting will take and metaorgs (a fairly unique phenomenon to rpga) and people will want to tack how much time they spend between adventures. In any case lets try to stay on topic and realize that we dont know enough to discuss whatever from MIC will take right now. From what I'm gathering everything will use the feat tree system so MIC will be no different. In my opinion a player should have craft weapon smithing and armor smithing before they can take the feat Craft Magical Arms and Armor. Let's say I want to craft a magic sword. I would need craft weapon smithing and armor smithing. Then I can take Craft Magical Arms and Armor I would then need to pick what kind of sword I wanted Long, Bastard, short, or great. Along this feat progression I would be able to make a magical great sword at the cost of two feats. One being Craft Magical Arms and Armor and the other being the sword type. Third feat in line would be choosing a the Special Ability Feat this would allow me to pick a magical ability from a list. Only one power per weapon crafted
cetiken 09-19-07, 09:25 AM	From what I'm gathering everything will use the feat tree system so MIC will be no different. In my opinion a player should have craft weapon smithing and armor smithing before they can take the feat Craft Magical Arms and Armor. Let's say I want to craft a magic sword. I would need craft weapon smithing and armor smithing. Then I can take Craft Magical Arms and Armor I would then need to pick what kind of sword I wanted Long, Bastard, short, or great. Along this feat progression I would be able to make a magical great sword at the cost of two feats. One being Craft Magical Arms and Armor and the other being the sword type. Third feat in line would be choosing a the Special Ability Feat this would allow me to pick a magical ability from a list. Only one power per weapon crafted Okay. I cited my source. Please return the courtesy.
MatteBlack 09-19-07, 09:45 AM	Okay. I cited my source. Please return the courtesy. I actually appreciated the fact that you linked your source. In his defense, he did say "from what he is gathering" but, I haven't seen any info that would lead me to believe that item creation will be feat-based in the new system. I suspect there will more class abilities that imbue items with maagical power.
Vamroc 09-19-07, 12:54 PM	Okay. I cited my source. Please return the courtesy. I was simply trying to provide means to create weapons that didn't use XP also remember 4.0 will be a thirty level system so a player will get more feats. I know people who went to Gen Con they came back told us about the new system. Further more there will be no threat ranges on weapons and no need to confirm critical hits. A nat twenty will be all it takes to critically hit for good or bad that's straight from WOTC.
KarmaInferno 09-19-07, 01:24 PM	Unless it's backed by an official or confirmable source, all that sounds nice, but it's just hearsay and rumor. -karma
Randall Montgomery 09-19-07, 02:32 PM	The problem here is whether it can be abused by alternate characters trading the crafted items back to a main character either directly or indirectly. I agree this is definitely a bad thing, but I think this could easily be solved by disallowing crafting or trading between characters who are not playing at the table at the time it takes place. Allowing crafting opens alot of potential pitfalls for abuse to occur in. it might be able to be made abuse-free through alot of restrictions but, I can't say that most people I know would be that broken up if they could not play a crafter but, I feel for those who would. I just think that ignoring crafting would help keep things balanced and on the up and up as well as focusing players on more adventuresome builds than support ones. While this is true, it all goes back to the general argument of either keeping things simple or making them more interesting, which is a key point in weither or not TUs should be used (indeed, it's a major issue behind all of 4e). Personally, I think crafting is an excellent idea that had some problems in 3e, and even more in LG. As the player of a crafting character, I always found it so annoying that I could only make things for myself, and I know the people I played with would've loved it if I could have used my skills to their benifit as well. I really think crafting can be regulated easily so that it benifits everyone in the campaing (especially if the 4e changes mentioned so far stick), and it would be a shame to lose it.
MatteBlack 09-19-07, 04:26 PM	Unless it's backed by an official or confirmable source, all that sounds nice, but it's just hearsay and rumor. -karma Karma, you have over 500 posts here. Haven't you figured out that confirmable sources are pretty much a rarity in these forums especially when it deals with unreleased products and campaigns. Until we get back to the rules out of the printed books, hearsay and rumor are pretty much this forums stock and trade.
MatteBlack 09-19-07, 04:38 PM	I agree this is definitely a bad thing, but I think this could easily be solved by disallowing crafting or trading between characters who are not playing at the table at the time it takes place. While this is true, it all goes back to the general argument of either keeping things simple or making them more interesting, which is a key point in weither or not TUs should be used (indeed, it's a major issue behind all of 4e). Personally, I think crafting is an excellent idea that had some problems in 3e, and even more in LG. As the player of a crafting character, I always found it so annoying that I could only make things for myself, and I know the people I played with would've loved it if I could have used my skills to their benifit as well. I really think crafting can be regulated easily so that it benifits everyone in the campaing (especially if the 4e changes mentioned so far stick), and it would be a shame to lose it. One of the flaws of these organized campaigns is that they need to be safeguarded against the worst possible abusers. I'd rather have more options available to me, including crafting, but, until we can rule out all the abuses we can think of (and some we haven't), the rlues need to be set to the lowest common denominator. Gifting items to an alt or to another character to an alt is a very common metagame abuse of crafted items in any largescale campaign setting. As long as items can unbalance the efficacy between characters, crafting is a small fringe element of D&D that I could easily do with out in the name of fairplay and balance. My hope is that there will be more abilities that imbue items with power that would effectively act as a prolonged buff while that character remains with the party. Item buffs that lasted days would be a better alternative than true crafting because it ties the power of the item much closer to the characters on the table who provided it.
tombollis 09-19-07, 05:59 PM	One of the flaws of these organized campaigns is that they need to be safeguarded against the worst possible abusers. I'd rather have more options available to me, including crafting, but, until we can rule out all the abuses we can think of (and some we haven't), the rlues need to be set to the lowest common denominator. That is an impossible goal. The campaign can servive a few abusers more easily than stifled players. Players could black ball offensive abusers, making them known and refusing to play with those thery believe will ruin the fun for them; no official "safeguards" (arbitrary limitation beyonf the rules) are required for the campaign to function. Gifting items to an alt or to another character to an alt is a very common metagame abuse of crafted items in any largescale campaign setting. As long as items can unbalance the efficacy between characters, crafting is a small fringe element of D&D that I could easily do with out in the name of fairplay and balance. Such balance issues would more easily be addressed by crafting for full price, selling for full price, and trading for equal value only. No change of net worth due to buying, crafting, selling, or trading. Tom Bollis
MatteBlack 09-20-07, 10:23 AM	That is an impossible goal. The campaign can servive a few abusers more easily than stifled players. Players could black ball offensive abusers, making them known and refusing to play with those thery believe will ruin the fun for them; no official "safeguards" (arbitrary limitation beyonf the rules) are required for the campaign to function. We don't need to eliminate everything we can't completely regulate but, we should have a very good idea of how the level of abuse can be controlled and dealt with. Blackballing really doesn't effectively fix the issues it only creates bad blood and pushes the problem off on other people within the campaign. I'd be more in favor of clearly defined rules than any sort of pseudo-rule which puts players at odds with one another. Such balance issues would more easily be addressed by crafting for full price, selling for full price, and trading for equal value only. No change of net worth due to buying, crafting, selling, or trading. Demanding that all creation and trades are made at fair value is a good way to start but, I wonder if people would really be interested in crafting at that point since, the only benefit might be expanded item customization.
RanielK 09-24-07, 09:37 AM	So let me get this straight. You agree that a TU penalty doesn't penalize everyone, but you still like the TU penalty because somebody might get upset by a XP/GP penalty? What about the guy that gets upset by the TU penalty? :confused: That's ... interesting logic. Or am I just missing something? Maybe. My first point with TU's were that for most, limiting play opportunities is a fair and balances penalty. There will be those who by choice or circumstance already limit themselves play wise (distance to games, no internet for online, only goes to the big game) and so a TU penalty can't touch them. My second is that Real World time penalties are more likely to be damaging to most as they are likely to disrupt all but the small subset of home game folks who are less than honest. That small subset would just back date the one AR and push forward the date of subsequent ARs to get around such things. My third point only applies to 3.x right now (gp/xp penalties) as there is no 4e to really base it off of. GP/XP penalties combined are more or less ok. Separated, gp only penalties are a death sentence in the long game as the character's wealth slipps further and further behind what it should be. An XP only penalty is just begging for someone to exploit minor infractions to slow down character advancement. Lastly, there will be a subset of players that whinge about any type of penalty. They want to be able to rape the mayor's daughter and murder the mayor with "good rp in game reasons for keeping their LG alignment" (heh, yeah right) and not be penalized in anyway for their "RP choices." I don't remember any rule that says you "borrow" TUs from the following year other than RHOD. AFAIK TUs reset at the first of the year. Maybe I missed it. I've never experienced jail, nor do I personally know of anyone who has. But even if the TU penalties carry over, someone who gets jailed at the end of the year effectively gets their sentence reduced by the leftover TUs they were not going to use anyway. Not quite as drastic, but still unfair. Jail time isn't "borrowing" your TU's from next year. It is a penalty applied to the TU's you have. Like any such penalty, it is applied until that penalty is 'used up.' So if you get a 52 tu penalty and only have 48 to give up, you don't then have a 48 tu penalty. You lose 4 tus from next year to satisfy that penalty. "Borrowing" tus comes from playing mods. Only RHoD allows you to "borrow" TUs to satisfy the play opportunity involved. If you're wanting to play a two round Core and have only 3 TUs, you are out of luck as you can't "borrow" 1 TU from next year to satisfy that requirement to play. So we make it a rule that if somebody ends up in jail their last 10-20 ARs are audited. It would only take a minute. Making it clear that landing in jail on purpose will be considered cheating and possibly result in forfeit of the character and possible expulsion from a con would be enough to stop the vast majority of people who would consider it. Works for me. I'm just saying that making a rule that says "naughty player! No more character for you!" won't stop someone who sees a XP penalty as a chance to slow down advancement. After all, people only cheat because they think they won't get caught. If they thought they would get caught and effectively penalized (i.e. loss of play either through loss of character or banning from play), they wouldn't cheat. Then again, I've never seen anyone spend a single TU in jail time. To me it seems like a pretty minor issue with a reasonable (but admittedly not perfect) solution. There is no perfect solution. Allen. I've seen the possibility on AR's and in the Judge's notes for a Mod. I've never seen them have to be used. In the one interactive where the character was to be taken out of play for two months until the following convention's interactive took place (taken by a slaver party), most of the players took heroic efforts to free their fallen comrades and the judges softballed (most of them missed the whole "slavers will do subdual to get themselves some new stock" part of the combat description and softballed so they wouldn't kill or TPK). Real shame. The follow on interactive had some sweet bonuses for those captured along with their own track in the interactive.
RanielK 09-24-07, 09:49 AM	Jail could operate in real time. I saw this happen in a few LG mods (Siege, for one), and it was both appropriate, and a penalty. "Sam the Necromancer, you are found guilty of raising the dead". You are hearby unplayable for three months real time. Of course, this means jail is much more onerous to those people who play often. If you only play at Gen Con, then you won't care. But, it's a thought. Personally, I favor fines. Putting people below the gold curve HURTS. And that's what Jail should be. Miserable. Ignore. Someone beat me to it.
RanielK 09-24-07, 09:59 AM	Why is that something to avoid? As I've said eariler in the thread, it might be undesirable from a module level allocation point of view in the infancy of the campaign, but later, there is no reason why this should be halted. As an example: who would it have hurt if someone in LG went from intro mods to level 15 over the course of 2006? The modules were all there and available. Nobody else had to do anything differently. Now, in 2001 it would have been a different story. Nobody had adventures that would accomodate PCs above level 8 or so in all of year 1. The "unlimited play" PC would have reached this level, and found himself *allowed* to play more, but not finding any adventures he could play. This would lead to loud complaining, arguments, and possibly (if the fellow and his very few high level companions were loud or annoying enough) an allocation of some higher level modules that would see very limited play. Well I'd worry about the guys in the infancy of LFR crying, whinging and *****in' for "Higher! Higher!!! HIGHER!!!!" To be followed by "More! More!!! MORE MODS!!!!" when the campaign does finally put out mods for the 30 level crowd. "Your piddly 6 mods per region, and 20 per Core are not enough get us MORE!!!!!" Now, a vocal minority can only be ignored for so long. It can be far more draining to deal with them, the more obnoxious they get in trying to make sure their case is heard. After all if they're spamming the inbox of every Regional Admin, how are the admins supposed to see the legitimate requests from more reasoned folks? I mean after all, we've already learned that play limit per year and 6 per plus 20 cores is "hardwired" into LFR and already there is a call for "More and Higher."
Keith53 09-24-07, 07:51 PM	I mean after all, we've already learned that play limit per year and 6 per plus 20 cores is "hardwired" into LFR and already there is a call for "More and Higher." From where did you learn the alleged hardwired limit? While lots of gamers are speculating about numbers, or postulating for a particular demonstration of some point, I am not aware of any such statement from Chris Tulach. I would be surprised if Chris had decided that before the Global Admins are on board. Keith
RanielK 09-24-07, 09:29 PM	From where did you learn the alleged hardwired limit? While lots of gamers are speculating about numbers, or postulating for a particular demonstration of some point, I am not aware of any such statement from Chris Tulach. I would be surprised if Chris had decided that before the Global Admins are on board. Keith IIRC Chris Tulach said he was considering using TU's or some similar play opportunity limiter. This is a basic campaign decision. If the first decision the Global Admins make is to get rid of limits, I'd be floored to say the least. If they think they're up to creating a volunteer base to churn out mods at any level before 4e is even out, more power to them. I'm glad I didn't volunteer if this is what will be expected of the Global Admins. I know I'm not up to such a task. Edit: Ok, Chris said in Post 2 that he was working out the "play opportunity mechanics." On a second read, that could mean anything. TU's, level caps, pay per play, must kick a kitten before play. . . oh, no wait, this is Chris, not Britt. Chris is nice to small animals and children. It's Britt that's always accused of harming small animals when he's not editing killer mods. Anyway, I took "play opportunity mechanics" to mean there would be some limiter set in place as a matter of course. What you get out of it is between you and your Britt, er, god.
Aravar 09-25-07, 11:57 AM	I personally enjoyed time units, I think they gave a sense of time passing and it helped everyone stay "around" the same power level. Now maybe just giving X number of time units, 52 is the popular number so use that as an example. And instead of using the LG where you add additional time units depending on regions, each game is 1 unit. Now you add in downtime activites, meta-orgs, item creations, and whatever else, and have a set number for each of those. 1 unit for misc downtime activites, 2 units for meta-orgs, 1 for item creations. So even if my character is a part of 2 meta-orgs(4 units), creates some useful items for my party(5 units), has some things that happen in a module that i choose to take cost me some additional downtime(5 units). That still leaves me 38 units, so I still got to play 38 modules that year for that character. And personally I'd be happy with that, cause the 'average' person doesn't play every week and every month. Now there was some talk of level caps, well that's something I don't think should be enforced, but there are some options. Since 4th Edition will have 30 levels, I would like to see two year story arcs that follow each other. After the first year a 6th level adventure happens at one of the Conventions to tie up a part of the arc and then that arc ends the second year with a 11th level adventure. Then the 3rd year kicks off with a 9th level module giving those non-hardcore people a chance to close the gap on level while the 12th - 13th level people gain a little bit of experience and still gain lots of loot/power by continuing the arc.
Evil_Mouse 10-03-07, 07:16 PM	Chris, are we going to see a system for Time Units in LFR that is similar to the LG system? I came into the fold with the start of XE, and am not familiar with some of the particulars of Living Campaigns. How will this work for LFR? Kevin PS - When I joined the RPGA, your predecessor had just quit the job. . . that was VERY chaotic. You've given us a lot of feedback, and are doing a great job so far IMO! Time Units were a badd idea in the first place. I think we should only pay for service ussed. expamle (stay at the in for 1 night 5 gold, refill arrows 1 gold, spell compounts depeneds on the lvl of spell compount
thorinXXX 10-04-07, 12:05 PM	Time Units were a badd idea in the first place. I think we should only pay for service ussed. expamle (stay at the in for 1 night 5 gold, refill arrows 1 gold, spell compounts depeneds on the lvl of spell compount And I suppose you want to track copper pieces as well. Most people don't want the extra tedium and accounting of doing that. And that abstraction can be done completely independantly of time units.
aljergensen 10-04-07, 12:26 PM	Most people don't want the extra tedium and accounting of doing that. And that abstraction can be done completely independantly of time units. I agree. I don't mind paying a standard upkeep rate for mods. But could we make the amount divisible by 10 (or even by 5) next time? Allen.
cetiken 10-04-07, 09:41 PM	I agree. I don't mind paying a standard upkeep rate for mods. But could we make the amount divisible by 10 (or even by 5) next time? Good Idea. Math is Hard. Lets go shopping!:D
WotC_Tulach 10-10-07, 03:46 AM	Good Idea. Math is Hard. Lets go shopping!:D I agree. Keep your money for shopping instead of paying out room and board "off-screen".
PCI_StatMonkey 10-10-07, 02:56 PM	I agree. I don't mind paying a standard upkeep rate for mods. But could we make the amount divisible by 10 (or even by 5) next time? Allen. OMG please... yes yes yes
TWG_Prometheus 10-18-07, 02:51 PM	Time Units were a great addition to the Living Greyhawk campaign for a number of reasons. The biggest one, to me, is that it created another expendable resource. Many modules provided advantages that you could gain via spending Time Units on it. The same was true of Regional organizations, imprisonment penalties and other such costs. The choice of obtaining those advantages or foregoing them in favor of additional play opportunities as well as the risks of losing your TU resource due to capture or misbehavior creates a great tension from a design perspective.