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General Tabletop Discussion
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The role of organizations in RPGs
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7048354" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>I always thought that 'Prestige Classes' where the single worst idea in 3.X. But, I understood where Monte was coming from when he created them, and I think that his goal was noble however flawed the implementation was.</p><p></p><p>The core idea of the Prestige Class was that they were supposed to encourage a very large and active role for organizations (particularly secret societies) in the campaign. You can see how they were used that way in his original Ptolus campaign. The reason that they were in the DMG is that they were supposed to be secrets that could be collected much less treasure, after finding and winning membership in secret societies. The DM was supposed to be the balancing factor here, as well as the RP obligations imposed on the PC by the society he joined. Viewed this way, the player focused view of PrC's as a toolkit to mix and match (usually by frontloading) to achieve the desired synergy and phenomenal game breaking power goes away. Instead, the idea is the DM rewards the player for engaging in his campaign world, and dangles these rewards as encouragement for other players to do so.</p><p></p><p>That core idea of organizations bring some tangible reward to the player that he can put his finger on and once granted not be something he can lose based on DM whim alone is really cool. Unfortunately, as PrC's proliferated they got further and further from that core idea and began to address more and more different issues with the rules - always badly IMO.</p><p></p><p>But occasionally I think about how things might have been had that strict 'secret society' structure been adhered to, or what different way you might go about achieving a similar effect that Monte seemed to originally intend.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7048354, member: 4937"] I always thought that 'Prestige Classes' where the single worst idea in 3.X. But, I understood where Monte was coming from when he created them, and I think that his goal was noble however flawed the implementation was. The core idea of the Prestige Class was that they were supposed to encourage a very large and active role for organizations (particularly secret societies) in the campaign. You can see how they were used that way in his original Ptolus campaign. The reason that they were in the DMG is that they were supposed to be secrets that could be collected much less treasure, after finding and winning membership in secret societies. The DM was supposed to be the balancing factor here, as well as the RP obligations imposed on the PC by the society he joined. Viewed this way, the player focused view of PrC's as a toolkit to mix and match (usually by frontloading) to achieve the desired synergy and phenomenal game breaking power goes away. Instead, the idea is the DM rewards the player for engaging in his campaign world, and dangles these rewards as encouragement for other players to do so. That core idea of organizations bring some tangible reward to the player that he can put his finger on and once granted not be something he can lose based on DM whim alone is really cool. Unfortunately, as PrC's proliferated they got further and further from that core idea and began to address more and more different issues with the rules - always badly IMO. But occasionally I think about how things might have been had that strict 'secret society' structure been adhered to, or what different way you might go about achieving a similar effect that Monte seemed to originally intend. [/QUOTE]
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