L4W Discussion Thread III

[Lord Sessadore]

Oh, right ... Ata was just about to start taking it over, and it seems he's disappeared (hopefully temporarily). I'll forward you the proposal email, unless the other judges object, but I, for one, welcome the help ren

 

[renau1g]

I've posted the latest update to Fire & Ice.

 

[nerdytenor]

Sweet! Thanks for taking the reigns

 

[garyh]

Thanks for helping out, ren!

In other news, I'll be going camping the next few days. I'll be back home Thursday night, but may not get online until Friday night. See ya in a bit! (though I'll be about for a while longer tonight )

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

Hey, is there an incitative for DM to fulfill characters Hook/Kickers?

For some reason I was under the impression that it gave bonus DM credit but based on the charter, it doesn't seem so.

 

[Dunamin]

Hey, is there an incitative for DM to fulfill characters Hook/Kickers?

For some reason I was under the impression that it gave bonus DM credit but based on the charter, it doesn't seem so.

Its always nice when DMs employ PC backgrounds in their game, as in the case of allowing them a chance to "fulfill" a Hook/Kicker/Whathaveyou. However, I don't see a fair way to connect this with the DM credit system.

Here's a few off-hand reasons why:

• A hook/kicker does not necessarily constitute a goal that can be resolved. "Grew up in orphanage" is just as valid a hook as "Seeking to rebuild burned down orphanage".
  
• Hooks/kickers that can be resolved may vary drastically in challenge. A personal quest to acquire goblin-skin shoes is probably easier to accomplish than a quest to retake your occupied home city from ogres.
  
• Most hooks/kickers are some the DM can have resolved at a whim. If a PC has a hook to "Avenge mysterious murderer of her parents", the DM can essentially just drop the villain at her feet - who turns out to be a kobold called Frail that currently is old, crippled, drunk, and disarmed.

Hypothetically, you might even have PCs submitting hooks like "On a Quest for Lemonade" or "On a Quest to Get Drunk", for the sake of giving DMs easily attainable credits.

In my opinion, DMs should be encouraged to incorporate PC backgrounds because it usually makes personal motives more clear, adds interconnectivity to the game (which is a what a living world is about), and all around makes their games more fulfilling and meaningful for everyone involved.

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

Fair enough.

But where the hell did I get the notion that resolving hooks was tied to DM credit? Has it been part of the charter at some point and then removed?

Come on! I need to know I am not going senile!

 

[stonegod]

I'll be posting this to LEB as well.

Heads Up: Looks like Morrus is changing the wiki software from MediaWiki (what we now use) to Vault Wiki. You can already see the (incomplete) new wiki here; it is also linked from the top Wiki button.

The transition is incomplete, and someone (Morrus) is attempting to port over templates and such. I have no idea when it will be done, so I'd just make sure that folks should continue to use the old wiki (the one linked from our fora) until Morrus has shaken out all the issue. But this is something that we'll have to keep our eye on as it will require a major change at some point in the future.

 

[covaithe]

That's.... a bit frightening. I went to the VaultWiki site, looking to poke around the documentation a bit and see what you can do with their templates, and if there were any other cool features. There isn't really a long story to make short; I couldn't find any documentation, just a list of features which, as far as I can tell, may or may not be vaporware. The whole site strikes me as fairly unprofessional. (e.g., check out the blog.) I would hesitate to source software from these guys in my day job. Hopefully it will turn out not to be too awful, but maybe we should look a bit harder for an offsite mediawiki host.

 

[TwoHeadsBarking]

Fair enough.

But where the hell did I get the notion that resolving hooks was tied to DM credit? Has it been part of the charter at some point and then removed?

Come on! I need to know I am not going senile!

From the character creation guide maybe? It mentions the possibility of credit in an off-handed way.

4.9 Choose Kickers, Hooks, and (optional)
You may also optionally choose hooks and a kicker. While there was discussion about rewarding DMs for including people's kickers in play there is currently no system (and may never be a system). But a kicker and/or hooks -do- give DMs an easy way of thinking about how to incorporate your character in a story and an idea about what sort of game you'd like to play, so consider including them.