(Discussion) General Part VI

Creamsteak · Apr 4, 2004

The latest thread for general discussion of Living EN World related news, ideas, problems, proposals, games, and such.

If you have a question, this is the place to ask it.

Sparky · Apr 4, 2004

I have to agree with dpdx here. We're all more than creative enough to put interesting spins on a core rule world with characters and adventures to match. LEW doesn't have a strong guiding vision and it seems that in a very short time the waters have become exceedingly muddied. Or soon will be.

The longer these discussions go on the more I'm leaning away from my moderate stance of 'sure OGL content is fine' towards a 'core books only' stance. The reason being that folks are bogged down in discussions of what can/should/will/won't be included and are spending their time arguing in the forums rather than creating content.

We're suffering from 'feature creep' - you've seen it on wholly indecipherable VCRs and remotes, in muddled user interface and 'deep' gameplay of many games - and let me tell you all, it needs to be nipped in the bud - brutally - not maliciously - brutally, fully and CLEARLY.

Homebrew content is fine. But I am in favor Core book only adventures and characters from now on. Choice is attractive, but it is most certainly not the best thing for a project of this nature.

In my opinion, LEW needs to be easy for anyone to jump into at any time. To create a character or run an adventure (as 'easy' as that can be in any case). And to me that means Core Rules/SRD and homebrew content only.

My $0.02

Creamsteak · Apr 4, 2004

Minor point, I think that a lot of people don't realize just how little of the stuff that gets proposed has actually been accepted. Technically, we have 2 Prestige classes and a lot of deities. I'm not sure what else has really been approved.

Edit:

And the most debated points seem to be things that don't necessarily work from the core rules (Item Creation, Resurrection, Penalty for death of a character, and most recently ECL races). We don't see too much fighting about proposed content, because most of the stuff either gets overlooked by the judges or is in a state of constant "what can we do to improve it."

Sparky · Apr 4, 2004

Right. My point is that we're bogged down in discussions about what to include or not include rather than creating content for a clearly defined set of rules.

I think we should 'grandfather' in any non-Core characters, feats, etc. and back off of OGL content.

Jack Haggerty · Apr 4, 2004

Regarding ECL races...

I'd have to agree with dpdx (though, perhaps not quite so vehemently

). Think that our current racial guideline is fine:

Your Guide to Enworld said:
Q: Can I play a (insert name of monster here)?

A: At this point we are only allowing the races listed in the PHB and the varients of these races that do not have a ECL. So, for example, Deep Dwarves are allowed, since they have no ECL, but Drow are not, since they have an ECL.

I don't see any reason why this guideline can't provide enough variety alongside any proposals (like the mountain goblins) we might come up with.

Creamsteak · Apr 4, 2004

I'm probably being really annoying when I say this, but Macbeth should probably have said LA instead of ECL. We are not allowing races with any sort of Level Adjustment or creatures with monster hit dice. ECL does refer to either, but "characters with an ECL" includes humans with fighter levels (They have an Equivelent Character Level to a X level character).

Now, I want to say that I think that we probably should make an adjustment to that specifically for humanoid LA +1 races and maybe stretch it to include 2 hit dice humanoids (Lizardfolk/Gnolls). I think that since we have introduced Drow as a character race they should be playable. A simple way to deal with this would be to say, "Creating a Drow character, you start with the Hit Dice, BAB, and Saves of the character class you choose to advance into first, but none of the abilities. You do not gain those abilities for the 1st level in the class until you gain a gain one level to equal the level adjustment of the class."

Personally I'm not too concerned with monster races. I'm more concerned with how we are to deal with certain core bits. I think I've explained it 30 times, but "crafting items by the books is extremely difficult because its hard to decide how we measure what a weeks worth of item crafting should equal in character for a single person." Do we measure that time in days, or do we just use a points system (which is what I'm for). Do we use real time to equate to game time, "If your character sits out for a week, you finish one week worth of item crafting." Or maybe a function of real time "for every day you spend crafting in real time, your character accomplishes x days of item crafting in character time."

The other core bit that has me is, "Do we let them 'roll up' a new character when they die?" At one level lower? Also, a side bit of this is "How difficult is it to have raise dead brought to a character?"

Kahuna Burger · Apr 5, 2004

I don't see why 'diving into' LEW should have to be any easier or harder than the person joining wants it to be. The existance of or acceptance of LA+ races doesn't obligate anyone to use them, any more than the existance of non core base classes does. The whole point of discussion and approval of such things is to make sure that they aren't intrinsicly 'better' options - just more. (Past comments about monty haul or munchkinism aside, balance isn't a factor in this world anyway, as more and less powerful PCs were made a feature the moment older characters leveled and new ones were declared to always start at 1st.)

I perfer to see a forum where people can use the play style they enjoy. The addition of vetted options shouldn't stop anyone from playing core rules. If one person is runing a 1st level asimar bucanaeer, and another is running a 1st level dwarf heavy fighter, why worry, as long as both new players are enjoying their characters? And except for a good faith effort for fairness sake, why worry about power level if they can be accompanied on their first mission by a third level rogue with ten times the equiptment?

I guess what I'm asking is, in terms of ease of use, if the answer to the FAQ queston of "can I play an LA+ race" was either "yes, but they still begin as the equivelent of a first level character to avoid imbalance, see this link" or "LA+ characters can only be made through the retirement of a higher level character" How would that be any harder on the people who want to play an elf or a gnome or whatever than the way it reads now? Enough of the world has been fleshed out that a new DM is going to have to check out the map anyway before declaring the location of a new plot, and if they want to balance the encounter they'll have to read every character sheet to see what the last DMs of a higher level character let them have in power enhancing loot; so is it harder to jump on in if you read that this PC has an inherent bonus to survival as opposed to this one having picked up boots and cloak of elvenkind? Why enshrine one preference when it isn't damaged by allowing another?

Kahuna Burger

orsal · Apr 5, 2004

Kahuna Burger said:
I don't see why 'diving into' LEW should have to be any easier or harder than the person joining wants it to be. The existance of or acceptance of LA+ races doesn't obligate anyone to use them, any more than the existance of non core base classes does.

Well, I'd be much less interested in a game if I walked my first character into the tavern and found it full of critters I'd never heard of but, judging by the way everyone around is treating them, seem to be commonplace in the game world. It would mean I'd expect my character to be familiar with them, and I couldn't roleplay unless I familiarized myself with them too.

I guess I'm all for homebrew if I can reasonably expect it would be used sparingly, but less enthusiastic (not necessarily opposed) if I thought it would become the rule rather than the exception. Unfortunately I don't see a way to control the usage level once we make the decision to allow it.

dpdx · Apr 5, 2004

So at present, I still count two for, and four against, eloquent "discussion" notwithstanding. If we're only counting Judges (and I hope we're not), the ratio (2:1, against) holds: Jack and I against, CS for.

But since we're attempting to change people's minds, lemme just add:

This wasn't ever advertised as, or supposed to be Monte Haul, Play-Whatever-I-Want Munchkinland. If we're stifling anybody's creativity because they don't get to play an Incorporeal Tiefling Learner with the celestial half-dragon template straight out the box, the regular PbP forum link is at the top of the page. Go start one, and don't let us stand in your way to ultimate roleplay, nor the Back button hit you in your browser on the way out.

Once again, in case anybody failed to understand me clearly enough: nothing's preventing anyone from starting a game where anything goes, everything changes, and the DM has lots of books.

But this is not that Forum.

In a cooperative, persistent world such as this one, in order to make it work, we need guidelines, boundaries and limits that don't change at the latest whim, and in fact, before I even got here, and ever since, you've already set them -- SRD only sounded like a good one at the time, so you went with it. People built, adventured, and DMed under that guideline in good faith that it wouldn't change and now people want to break it.

That's not fair, and it never will be. Repeat after me: people who've been here from the beginning deserve the respect that comes from newbs not overpowering their original PCs on the very first day.

And btw, the reason not much is getting approved is because the things that are being submitted (or for that matter, being asked for) are not what the world needs. LEW doesn't need core classes, ECL+ races, or for that matter, even PrCs. It needs geographical details. It needs a map, and city descriptions. It needs adventures, and for those, it needs plot hooks and NPCs of all kinds.

Good night now.