Core change to LEW

Bront · Nov 16, 2007

Perhaps a better way to do this would be to add this cavat.

When voting for a new feat, class, god, fluff, etc, judges can opt to include a vote of a GM credit. So feats, classes, fluff, or anything else that judges feel deserve a credit could get them. It takes 3 votes for a credit to get one.

Removes any retroactiveness (It'd be a pain to vote retroactively on it), and allows judges to reward creative players who come up with something that truely adds to LEW, but not reward a simple rule fluff or added extra. it also encourages new things to be fluff focused as well as rules focused.

I'm not fixated on this particular part of my proposal, I'm more interested in getting the # of characters expanded, and possibly using that to remove some of the problems people had with the leadership feat.

Wik · Nov 16, 2007

Yeah, the leadership feat idea is kind of novel. I'd love to play someone's henchman - a tie to another PC is something I'd like to see (I'm trying to set it up so that Galwynn remains in a static "adventuring party").

orsal · Nov 16, 2007

Manzanita said:
I believe the three-PC rule was originally instituted for the sake of fairness. We were concerned there wouldn't be enough DMs to go around if some people had large stables of characters. Keeping it to three was a way to help newer players find games.

I don't believe circumstances have changed since then.

I do understand why some players would want a 4th PC. Sometimes a particurly juicy 1st level adventure will start & we wish we could get in. Or some DMing ideas I have involve starting with a party of 1st level PCs, who were, say, all members of the Monemvasia militia.

This may be a bit whacky, but what if we allowed additional PCs over 3 for a certain number of DM credits. That way, we would reward DMing with more PCs. That has a certain goes-around comes-around ring to it.

Great idea! It establishes the connection between DMing as a service and having extra PCs as a reward; as long as the DM-to-PC ratio is out of balance on the PC side (as it very much is right now), that makes a lot of sense. And, as one who was never entirely happy with DM credits as a way to benefit a PC, I like metagame rewards better.

Trouvere · Nov 16, 2007

Wik said:
Yeah, the leadership feat idea is kind of novel. I'd love to play someone's henchman - a tie to another PC is something I'd like to see (I'm trying to set it up so that Galwynn remains in a static "adventuring party").

Well, Keldar already introduces Galwynn as "my manservant", or "a farmer who followed us on the road for protection." I'm just not sure he wants to waste a precious feat on him.

Anyway. I'm not sure what to make of this new use for DM credits. I'd like to think it would encourage newcomers to run games, but I fear it would just further reward the usual suspects who run games anyway, and risk shutting LEW off into a private club.

Edit: that sounded more negative than I intended. I just mean I'd prefer to see another 30 characters run by 30 people than another 30 run by 10.

Edit 2: I pulled those numbers off the top of my head, but they're not far wrong. Looking down the list of active characters, I see 21 players who have reached the 3 character limit, and 7 or 8 of those are names I recognise as regular DMs.

Manzanita · Nov 16, 2007

I'm with RA that giving DM credits for successful proposals is a bad idea. I suppose Bront's suggestion that it would happen only if three judges voted for it is acceptable. I think we are short on administrative help, and perhaps our world would benefit from rewarding it.

I like the idea of a PC being another's henchman.

Patlin · Nov 16, 2007

It seems to me that if you're playing three characters, you ought to be DMing, too. It just feels... balanced.

I'm inclined to agree with Manzanita that there were sufficient reasons to limit to 3 PCs and that those reasons (even though they predated my involvement here) are still good. While I understand that those willing to do so can 'cheat' by creating another account and play another three characters, I think most people would understand and respect the rule enough not to do that.

Finally, a diversity of players is good to have. If it's just a few of us playing in several games at once, we're open to major disruptions when someone becomes unavailable. I know my posting rate dropped this week due to a cold I still haven't gotten rid of, and the games I DM haven't moved much this week. Wouldn't that be even more irritating if a player who turned up missing was in all of your games, and stalled everything? I think it would.

I vote NO to changing the three character limit.

Rae ArdGaoth · Nov 19, 2007

I like Manzanita's idea, about using DM credits to play a 4th PC. It seems to me that, for the reasons Patlin stated, a player with more than three characters might unintentionally overcommit. Also, the DM to PC ratio would be better in proportion with this plan. Would it be a "pay once" kind of thing? Or a "pay per level" deal? Or perhaps a "You must keep at least this many DM credits per level in reserve" scheme. That way, you can play another character, but you don't have to actually lose DM credits over it. So if you want, you can retire a character and spend those credits on one of your remaining ones.

Players playing henchmen is a fine idea as well, though I don't think that PC henchmen should get any special benefits from being played by another player (not that anybody's suggested this). There might not even need to be a limit to how many henchmen a player can play.

Giving DM credits for proposals would lead to bad things, I'm pretty sure. I'd qualify that, but it seems that's the consensus, so I won't bother.

Boddynock · Nov 19, 2007

Hmm, I would have thought that this community is stable enough now (as opposed to when LEW was first set up

) to be able to deal with players fielding more than three characters. I do think, however, that there ought to be some requirement for running more than three.

I like Manzanita's idea of 'purchasing' an extra character with DM credits, and I like RA's modification to equate number of credits required with number of pre-existing characters. Let's not get too complicated, though - a single payment of credits when the character is approved should be fine. (Certainly not at each level.

)

I don't think that we'd necessarily be severely disenfranchising players by taking this line. In fact, I think it's quite appropriate to express a hope that people who are really enjoying playing on the boards might give something back by DMing the odd game (and let's face it - we're only talking about 3 months as a DM to scrape together the points for a 4th character).

I'm not taken with the idea of offering credits for a successful proposal - the "rules bloat" which could result if we did so is definitely something to avoid.

I'd like a bit more clarity on just how we'd go forward with this before I vote on it.