Proposal: Special Cases for 3 characters

[garyh]

My main concern with 3rd (or even 4th) characters is basically what Joe mentioned - that there won't be enough adventures, and new players get left out. Especially right now, when the number of characters waiting for approval or soon to finish adventures is enough to man 3 or 4 adventures and there aren't those adventures ready and waiting for them. Bad timing at the least is a problem with 3rd characters at the moment.

I have to say, I like garyh's idea for needing DM credits to "activate" a 3rd character. While I realize that doesn't help you at all, dimsdale, the idea has merit - in order to flood the system with yet another PC, you need to provide the system with some adventure slots to keep other PCs busy.

On that note, I should really finish putting together my adventure ... though I can't really start it until August sometime.

Glad you like the DM credit idea.

I'm also not even sure that, however we do it, now is a good time for 3rd PC's. In addition to the adventure/adventurer ratio, I'd like to see the current population level up a bit, so that there's a bit more spread and not dozens of level 1 PC's all clustered together.

We allowed second PC's a little before PHB2 was made legal to help spread the second PC wave out a bit, figuring that while some people would immediately create a second PC, a lot of folks would wait for the PHB2 and thus keep us from getting crushed by a 2nd PC / PHB2 waves at the same time. Maybe we can do the same with PHB3 and 3rd characters. PHB3 releases in March 2010, and would be L4W-legal in June 2010. We could have 3rd PC's allowed (perhaps with my DM credit cost idea) in April 2010.

 

[covaithe]

I do think it's too soon for 3rd characters. I say that with some reluctance, since I've got ideas for more characters, too. So we don't need to make a decision any time soon.

When we do think we're ready, we'll have to consider the relationship between the number of adventures and DMs that are active, and the number of characters around. If there's anything that starves living worlds, it's lack of DMs. So I think it's not unreasonable to suggest a relationship between contributing to the community by running games, and being able to play more characters.

 

[dimsdale]

I don't think there should be any difference between judges/DM's and just plain players making third characters. Not everyone has the urge or skills to be a DM or judge, and we don't want the community to turn into a clique where the handful of judges get extra perks. In fact, I'm strongly against giving judges any extra bonuses not directly related to their judging duties.

I fall into this group.

Even if my skill level of the game (knowing all of the details of each race, class, feat and power) someday matched the level of many of the people in this community, I don't think I'd ever want to DM or judge an adventure. I don't think it is fair to make it a requirement in order to play a third character.

With that said, I know it is way too early for a third character and I wouldn't even have attempted to create one until everyone in the community who wanted a second one had the chance to create one and get it approved for adventuring.

 

[garyh]

Let me re-iterate:

Judges get no perks, bonuses, or preferential treatment. Even our characters don't get reviewed any faster than anyone else's.

The only things Judges get are DM credits for DMing a game where the original DM disappears. The original DM would, of course, have gotten those credits had they stuck around. Getting those credits is a function of being the DM, not being the Judge.

At no point have any of the actual Judges suggested that Judges receive any preferential treatment, for 3rd PC's or anything else.

As for DM's...

DM's getting preferential treatment currently occurs in the form of receiving DM credits to level up their characters. This was agreed upon at the outset of L4W, and a poll was even made to decide how much DM time equaled a level of XP. The strong sentiment was that rewarding DM's would help encourage people to DM, which is always an issue.

The possibility of DM's getting preferential treatment with third PC's is merely being discussed at this point, but is an extension of the above, combined with the idea that if you're going to take three PC's-worth of adventure slots, you should contribute adventures to the community.

 

[Moon_Goddess]

Maybe I should reiterate my opinion,

I really shouldn't have said that I favored DM's and Judges getting special treatment, I really didn't feel that way and only said it becuase I was offended by the idea of people who wern't not judges or dm's getting preferencal treatment, so my first thought was to turn it around and take it to the exetreme.

Now I feel like I should not have done that because my intentions were missunderstood and no it appears the other side will get hurt.

So for the record I'm against 3rd PC being effected by DM status at all, even though I do recognize the character slots vs. adventures existing situation, I'm just uncomfortable with preferencial treatment.

I feel really bad now about getting this thought started.

Personally I feel we're not ready for 3rd characters yet, I am eligiable for a 2nd character but have not created one yet becuase I know I want a Psion, and I don't know if we'll actually allow 3rd characters ever so I'm holding off to get my psion.

I think we should just said for another year here, and say when your first and second characters levels total 6 you can have a third.

Once again, I appologize for putting a option out there that I don't support.

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

DMs, by virtue of having DM credits, are more likely to have two characters totaling 6 levels (or whatever similar barometer is used) before a non DM anyway. Therefore that kind of criteria would in fact favor DMs.

Anyway, the only real criteria should be how many active DMs there are relative to active PCs. Simple math tells me that more PCs per player requires a higher % of DM amongst the player population. If that % doesn't increase, I don't see how the number of PCs per Player can keep increasing.

I.E : 50 active player (20% are DM) with 50 active PC. With each DM keeping on average 5 PC busy, this is almost a perfect fit. In fact, that's too few PCs because DMs are usually going to have to wait for players.

50 active players (20% are DM) with 100 active PCs, still 10 active DM. Uh, oh. There is the start of a problem.

50 active players (20% are DM) with 150 active PCs... You'd need 20 to 25 DM which would require about 40 to 50% of all players to also be DMs otherwise you can be sure some PCs would wait months between adventures. As long as each player has at least 1 player on an adventure it is still bearable but you have to wonder what would be the point of having as much 50% of all PCs sitting with their thumbs up their...

I am not sure it will ever be mathematically feasible to maintain 3 PCs per player. Even bringing more blood to L4W wouldn't change that fact unless it brings a flood of pure DMs with no PCs.

How did it work out with Living 3e? I wasn't active so I can't say.

 

[JoeNotCharles]

I do think it's too soon for 3rd characters. I say that with some reluctance, since I've got ideas for more characters, too. So we don't need to make a decision any time soon.

For anyone else with more character ideas than they know what to do with, I would like to point out that 4E Living Eberron is kicking off, and there's also the Playing the Game forum for one-shot games.

 

[ukingsken]

I was just thinking the same thing Joe. I've been watching 4E Living Eberron, just waiting myself! And I recently branched out and joined a game on playing the game because I got tired of waiting to make my 2nd character here hahaha.

That all being said I think the general sentiment that no matter which way we go it's too early for third characters is true. We need to give it all time to make sure that once everyone has a 2nd character that we don't hit another dm shortage. Mal's simple math is very poignant because ideally I would love to see 150 active players in L4W, and if we all had 2 characters at that landmark... The number of adventures running concurrently to keep us all busy would be staggering (quick basic math tells me we'd need to consistentely have approximately 60 adventures running?? 50 if every adventure ran a 6 man party I guess).

It just seems that right now what we should focus on is encouraging more people to try running adventures. I used to fall into the same group as Dimsdale a few years ago (I say a few but it may have been like..8?). But especially with the advent of 4E its become so easy to DM, and its a great venue to show off "Characters" that you create.

Anyway enough of my pro DM rant. Summary = too soon for third characters, and when its time I'm in favor of a total experience level (although maybe higher then the randomly selected 6) because this encourages committment to the community either in the form of long term play or creating adventures. There is no need for preferential treatment to DM's, the dm credit system covers that already and as an extension they will be higher level first etc, but I dont necessarily think thats bad. so yeah /rant

 

[covaithe]

50 active players (20% are DM) with 100 active PCs, still 10 active DM. Uh, oh. There is the start of a problem.

[...]

I am not sure it will ever be mathematically feasible to maintain 3 PCs per player. Even bringing more blood to L4W wouldn't change that fact unless it brings a flood of pure DMs with no PCs.

How did it work out with Living 3e? I wasn't active so I can't say.

Very good points, Mal. That's a way of thinking about the problem that I hadn't thought of before.

In practice it's often the case that one DM can keep more than 5 other players busy, either by running more than one game at once, or running games for larger numbers of PCs. And, of course, PbP games have high attrition rates: people just disappear over time. But that happens to both players and DMs, so that's a wash. But the basic idea of this is still sound, I think.

As for 3e, the living world there is dying from a) lack of DMs, and b) nobody wants to be the cleric. But mostly a). Everyone can make 3 PCs right out of the gate, and I think much fewer than 1 in 5 players is a DM.

 

[ukingsken]

Would you wanna be the cleric in a game where your sole duty was "yup don't worry I'll heal that... Come on!! Someone else get hurt!!!... Please?"