New Discussion Thread

Dawn Raven · Feb 12, 2009

Are we sure we want to allow second characters soon? We have only just recently gotten some people to second level. Perhaps a way to allow a second character, but a stigma that only one can be technically "active" at a time? I wouldn't want to flood the games and force out the possibility for new players.

KenHood · Feb 12, 2009

And by 'some' you mean 'not Palindrome' which is Ken's character, which is the most important character in the history of characters.

Tell you what: I'm okay if everyone makes second characters if I get to take all the abilities of my second character and apply them to Palindrome.

Phoenix8008 · Feb 12, 2009

I was thinking about the second characters thing myself earlier. I had this thought: What if you can't start another character until your previous character is at 3rd level. This spaces it out some and also prevents a flood of everybody applying for a second character all at once. It also scales nicely for later when/if people want to see about adding a 3rd PC. Tell them their second character has to be at level three before they can add a 3rd PC. This will make it so that the more dedicated players (and DM's using DM points for XP) get the privilege of having their multiple PC's a little earlier.

Of course, you have to have the same restrictions which LEW has about not letting the multiple PC's interact. And only one can be in a given tavern looking for work at one time. But if we get to the point of having that many PC's, we may be able to open a second tavern thread for the Drowned Man on Bacarte'. Then you would be able to have each of them actively searching for work in separate threads.

JoeNotCharles · Feb 12, 2009

JoeNotCharles said:
Every time I try to put a URL in an sblock, the formatting gets screwed up. For example:

[sblock="test"]
This is a test url. It should screw up.
[/sblock]

Hey, that's great. Worked fine. Usually that renders as something like.

[sblock="test"]
This is a[/sblock][sblock="test"]test url. It should screw up.
[/sblock]

(I did that second one by hand, obviously.)

Oh, I forgot to add my question: what's up with that? Anyone know how I can fix it?

Figured out my problem - it was when I was toggling on and off color, I ended up with [ color=orange ] text... [ color=white ] more text... [ /color ] [ /color ]. (Instead of [ color=orange ] text... [ /color ] [ color=white ] more text... [ /color ].) Sometimes when it hit a URL, it would insert its own color tags and decide to close all my open colors and sblocks.

covaithe · Feb 12, 2009

When we do get around to allowing multiple characters, I'm confident we'll have some LEW-style restrictions on interactions between the characters. Not that LEW has ever had a problem with it AFAIK.

IMO, the biggest single obstacle to allowing second characters is a shortage of active DMs. That's starting to ease, and if we were to have a couple of adventure proposals in the bank, I'd start to think that maybe now's the time.

Atanatotatos · Feb 12, 2009

Stonegod seemed to have reasons to go against the idea of a BIG adventure...?

Phoenix8008 · Feb 12, 2009

Atanatotatos said:
Stonegod seemed to have reasons to go against the idea of a BIG adventure...?

Yes, Stonegod does I'm sure. And others of us that dealt with the LEW Mega-adventure could say much of the same. First let me define: you said BIG adventure. Any one adventure is the same as any other, no big problem. The Mega-adventure was a monster of an undertaking that involved (I think) 6 separate adventures all thematically tied together into one over-arcing plot. If I remember right, each mission was looking for a piece of a dracolich's phylactery. It was hell right from the beginning.

The huge starter thread where all PC's wanting to be involved went to the same place and did stuff IC to be briefed on the mega-plot and then hash out who was going where took forever in and of itself. Then we finally got things started in each separate adventure and most of them ended up grounding to a halt quickly. Mostly DM's dropping out due to lack of time suddenly. But since most of the 6 adventures were being run by the same few DM's it all bogged down. I'll let Stonegod fill in other details that he wants, but it was a good sounding idea that didn't work out so well in application.

IF something of the sort were ever going to be tried again I would offer the following advice:
1- Don't link the various adventures thematically from the beginning. Let them evolve into being a linked set of happenings. Run the adventure and have the result from its conclusion show up as a piece to the puzzle of the mega-plot. I mean the designers of the mega-plot can see how they all fit together in the beginning, but don't hold a mass conference telling the whole city what the goal is and then try to hash out who is going where.

2- Don't have only one or two DM's running the whole show and all the various adventures. I understand it was for secrecy's sake so that the big plot wouldn't be known to as many, but with all the pressure on just a couple people its easy to push them right out of having time to play at all.

That's all I can think of this early in the morning. And my memory might be a little fuzzy on some things, so correct me if I was wrong on any facts, by all means. Again I loved (and still love) the IDEA of a mega adventure, but pulling it off must be a VERY tough job to do.

covaithe · Feb 12, 2009

There were at least eight linked adventures, IIRC. One for each of the seven shards, and one related adventure. I think there were plans for more related ones, but the players weren't there.

Anyway, the problem was just too many eggs in one basket. One person running six concurrent games, including probably half the active characters in the living world. Inevitably, he burned out and disappeared, leaving a huge mess that we're still cleaning up.

Atanatotatos · Feb 12, 2009

I see. But, I'd say that those two you outlined, phoenix, are huge mistakes in a pbp livin' world. I don't mean to criticize you who participated, but I don't think we'd ever trust a single DM with six adventures, expecially since there is your past experience with LEW.... would we?