Chaotic Everywhere

[DMEntropy]

We have a player displaying this "alignment" trait. Aguirre is trying to play in every game listed on the player boards. While I am encouraged by his enthusiasm, we are running several games to maximize the player participation. Having the same 5 players play all the listed games is contrary to our growth strategy.

The Raging Bear and Opportunity Knocks games run by myself and Emiricol are mutually exclusive. They will combine in the last session and having someone taking part in both will ruin the attempted plot development.

Renfield is running an adventure in the Island Kingdoms right now. Aguirre is trying to enter that adventure while participating in Emiricol's Opportunity Knocks (OK) at the same time. Emiricol's is located in Mittendein and Renfield's is in the Island Kingdom. Clearly he cannot participate in both at the same time for geographic reasons.

How do we politely tell this player to cool his jets a bit? Pick a game a play it. Don't try to play EVERY game.

 

[DMEntropy]

Left Zildrax out of the last post. So there are two players doing this, not just one.

 

[Emiricol]

We simply point out that the same PC can't be signed up for games in two different regions? I dunno. I appreciate their enthusiasm.

 

[DMEntropy]

Their enthusiasm is my point. I don't want to quell that in any way. I also don't want to take on the behavior patterns of "other people" recently asked to go away from this site's message boards. What I do want is to maximize the number of players who can play in our limited number of games running right now.

Perhaps a post to the thread simply stating that Opportunity Knocks and Thieves in the Night are being run in separate kingdoms and thus cannot be participated in concurrently?

 

[Renfield]

I have an opinion loosely based on this,

As far as the guy trying to play in every game that does have to be stopped. I believe that. However I'm not too sure I agree on the geographic region area. Now it could be that particular rule was discussed during one of my many stints trying to endure life on my own, or I quite simply never noticed it, regardless I don't see a point in restricting players to different regions while we're still trying to attract them.

Before I get a bunch of B.S. about balance and the like I'm going to state my case. This rule is painfully reminiscent of some of the anal retentive qualities of Living Web in my mind at least. I understand the need for spreading players out and about the 13 kingdoms but what good is that if we have no players. I feel that it's best to hold off on a rule like that until our player base grows, especially considering there aren't that many games being run to begin with.

I've been in and out of here since it's founding. I joined up while attending college in my home town but after I left and moved to a different city (never mind the why's of that) things sort of slipped. I lost regular acces to the internet and my access to T13K was limited to my visiting the local library. When I recieved internet all I could afford at the time was dial up which still limited my running games as openrpg is hell on a dial up connection. After that I hopped around to three living arrangements numerous jobs and all sorts of wonderful things. Suffice to say while I probably could have focused a little more on T13K I had other priorities. Now I'm relatively settled. I'll have one move to go before I settled as far as living arrangements go and can focus a little more on T13K. However it's somewhat annoying (and hopefully understandably so) finding that my first game will likely be canceled by a rule stating two of three players can't play two characters in the same region. I understand two characters in the same crossover adventure series and two characters in the same kingdom, but regions are relatively broad and chances of it interfeering with games or characters running into one another are very unlikely.

I know this is a long rant, as I said I'm a little annoyed. The previous paragraph was rather chaotic so I'll try to clarify in this one my opinion on the regional rule: I agree with it to an extent. That extent is this; it is a good idea for when we get a nice chunk of players and we want to avoid certain regions getting bogged down and give other regions a chance. However that I believe would be difficult to do if we have a restriction like that on players and DM's. The restriction may be focused on Players however considering (this is looking at the 'questing for adventure' thread) there seem to be about three different games being run (including my own) that sort of narrows down the playing field. Any existing players can't really run a game if it falls into their region. New players sure, but we're still trying to get them in and one can't ride solely on that. Then restrictions such as time windows the games are run in narrows the selection field down considerably.

Suffice to say DM's and Player's alike shouldn't be forced run or play in games that are in a certain region just because their character is already in a game in another kingdom of that region even if that adventure has absolutely nothing to do with the other kingdom. Besides, isn't the fun of a Living Kingdom based on the fact that the actions of your players shape and change the world, considering the taverns are regional it kind of sucks that one can't grin when another character here's of the exploits of their other characters adventuring party two kingdoms away.

Anyway, that's my lovely little frustrated rant, probably should have waited to cool down before I started but ah well. Hope people take it into consideration at the least.

Renfield

 

[Renfield]

Gods the grammer in that post would make an English major turn blue and die.

Oh, sorry, if the "For More than Glory" and the "Arena" Campaign are still running it'd be five games. Regardless, still a small ammount.

 

[DMEntropy]

I agree with you opinion that this is getting into the area of restriction of Living Web. I also agree with you that emulating the behaviors of the people who ran (and are trying to run again) that setting is self-destructive and a strategy proven as a failure.

Given that, we do need to look to the future. Allowing people to play the same character in two different kingdoms at the same time just will lead to troubles. It will also affect balance between the PC's in the same adventure and make the suspension of disbelief that much more difficult. ("Hey, Bob, where did you get that cool sword?" "I got it in the kingdom of Caedmon defeating an evil-wizard and his minions." "What?! We have been stuck here fighting orcs in Lorlynia for the past three months. How did you get to Caedmon and back?")

We also want to attract a greater volume of player traffic at this time. Having a small number of players playing in many games is not our short term goal. It would be more beneficial to have a larger number of players playing in fewer games while our numbers of games are limited. More players means a greater chance of exposing someone to T13K who may also DM. We NEED DM's to join our site and the existing ones to run online games. That is our long term goal.

I did think long and hard about how to approach this situation. The two players involved are obviously very energetic and excited to play in our setting. It would be a mistake to cool their enthusiasm to the point of disinterest. In the long run it would be better to temper their enthusiasm so that a precedent is not set now that will prove problematic in the future.

If these players want to generate a NEW character and have two active characters in different kingdoms that is perfectly fine. We all agreed to allow people to play two active characters at a time in addition to a gladiator character for Ulruz Arena matches.

I appreciate the discussion that we are having about this topic, Renfield. We both appear to feel very strongly in our differing opinions. It is refreshing that an exchange can take place without the degeneration to personal attack that takes place on LW.

 

[DMEntropy]

A bit off topic, but relevant to your last post:

I have seen that players here are waiting until the last minute to sign up for games. Be patient, they will come.

Also, advertise your game on the ENWorld and RPGHost message boards. There are a few new names in the past week on the site that have been attracted by my posts there. Slowly, players are getting the news that our setting exists.

Lastly, I would LOVE to play Ras Famoon in your adventure. I have been holding off to make sure I didn't take a slot that a NEW person would be interested in taking. I will polish up his history and send him to you for "check-in" tonight if I can. You can hold him in reserve to complete a party if a spot remains open.

 

[Emiricol]

There is no rule stating that one player can't have two characters who are both in the same region. I believe the issue, which may have gotten lost along the way, was playing the same PC in two different regions at the same time.

Our only Regions rule, which like everything else is pretty much honor system, is that you can't change Region more than one time in a given season. I stand by that ruling as much now as when we first made it! It does away with the need for Day Units and the associated Fantasy Accounting that goes with it. Anyway, that's off topic though

My solution for a player taking slots in two games is simple - that player will lose out if a new player wants a slot. So far though, that hasn't happened. I still have an open slot for my game.

So, I think the real issue got lost along the way, and I have a simple solution that works for me

 

[DMEntropy]

Thank you Em, I was not clear enough in my original post about this. A Player can have two characters participating in games in different, or the same, kingdoms at once. A Character can only adventure in a single kingdom at a time.