556 réponses à ce sujet

[Eguintir Eligard]

Shaun the answer is easier than you think. The stone of alarm can be destroyed on your on rest script (or more kindly, ignored).

[The Fred]

Eguintir Eligard wrote...
They are your dungeons, and it's been said do as you wish. That's as self explanatory as it can get.

It's more about the desire to have a consistent front than anything else, as I explained in my last post. Really, I care very much about treasure balancing etc. but that doesn't mean I don't care about the resting system. Yes it becomes clear when you press R, but you generally only do that once you need to rest, and you can't plan your spell/ability management if you don't know in advance - plus, it makes no sense if one dungeon doesn't allow resting, whilst another, more dangerous one, does. This might not be the highest priority but it's a discussion which needs to be had. We could just make it into its own mini-thread on the project boards, however, and get on with bigger issues here.

Treasure balance is another thing I'd like to talk about, though I think we already had some preliminary discussions. I actually get the feeling that a lot of players actually prefer relatively low-magic settings, in terms of treasure at least, so that's probably something we should take into account.

[Eguintir Eligard]

I put up an excel sheet in google docs for people to add what loot they place so everyone can get together and see exactly what is out, what level, etc and plan their loot in response. Nobody emailed to get access to it. This after the comment was made that the last community project had out of control loot floods.

Gotta nail the resting though, right down to the exact placeable we use. Do you see what I am saying now? It's like having an UN meeting to discuss national flowers but nobody talks about food distribution.

[Kaldor Silverwand]

As Mark Twain said, a camel is a horse designed by committee.

[Eguintir Eligard]

The riverboat gambler said that? Whatever the hell was he talking about?

[M. Rieder]

Eguintir Eligard wrote...

The riverboat gambler said that? Whatever the hell was he talking about?

I believe that in Twain's day, most people still believed that camels were mythical beasts, like unicorns and kangaroos.

[dunniteowl]

Matt. Seriously?

Eguintir, IMO (minus the sarcasm) is correct. The consistency between modules is not going to be the independant (and I would argue that it won't be as confusing or disjoint as many seem to think) resting idiosyncrasies all nailed together.

It's going to be dialogue, story and plot tie ins, resolved quests, and consistency of lore, loot and leveling. To my view, these aspects are much harder to pin down and much harder to resolve in playtesting post creation. Resting is easy to adjust and tweak. Combat encounters are easy to adjust and tweak (relatively.) Dialogue, plotlines, consistent information? Those are pretty tough to go back in and fix beyond mere typographical errors.

Resting, Combat and even treasure can all be adjusted during playtesting. Broken quests, inconsistent plot devices, journal entries? Not as easy. I say we focus on those things and, as suggested, let's use a Stock SoZ resting system (with or without Stones of Alarm, I never used 'em, but that doesn't mean they aren't someone's "must have" accessory) and we simply note in the album liner notes that resting in different dungeons will most likely be different from dungeon to dungeon, because they were all made by different people. Diversity in this matter I don't think is going to create too great a divide or break in immersion that it will unseat the riders, be they aback a camel, horse or hippogriff.

[M. Rieder]

dunniteowl wrote...

Matt. Seriously?

Oops!  I meant to stay serious in this thread.  Sorry.  Sadly, that was a made-up fact which *should* be true, but isn't.

[M. Rieder]

Chaos Wielder wrote...

For now, people can just work as if there's the SOZ system in place and, if they so desire, that there are individual resting camps within their own projects. This way, we at least have a guideline early on. I'm willing to call down the proverbial thunder on ideas in general, but I want to keep things open.

Treasure balance is an entirely different thing. That will be a give and take throughout the process(probably take, mostly).

It may be helpful for the modders of the higher level quests to suggest specific item properties which will be useful/appropriate for their parts of the campaign.  For example, if a modder for a 10-th level quest wants to go to a volcano or the plane of fire or fight a red dragon, then they could submit a request that some fire-resistance items be included at lower levels.

Perhaps a each modder should produce a standard list of items included in each modl.  A standardized form would assist the coordinators in sorting things out easily.  Regarding straight gold, there can be a simple formula which the coordinators decide on.  Maybe max 1000 per level of quest.  That is, if a quest is for 2nd to 4th level characters, then there should be a max of 4000 gp available in loose gold.  Gold acquired by selling items could be regulated by limiting the gp value and number of magical items per module.  Same goes for gems.  I would imagine that a spreadsheet would be best suited for this sort of thing as it would allow for tallying of value and such of gold pieces and items.

Another important matter is coordination of backstories and lore for fleshing out the stories and characters.  Perhaps a standard list of source material to minimalize conflict in the stories about the region and references to the plot?  A copy of the master plot, when it is available, would also help individual modders flesh out the details of their subplots and charachter and location backstories.

[The Fred]

Guys I totally get the point that treasure balance is a bigger thing than certain little details, and OK changing the conversation of a placeable is easy to do afterwards, but resting in general is not. If I bulid a dungeon around completely allowing resting, and suddenly the ability to rest is removed, the difficulty of that dungeon shoots up exponentially with its length. Basically I no have to go back through and COMPLETELY rebalance it - something which is much harder to fix than, say, a broken journal entry. OK, this is a worst-case scenario, but just saying "no resting in dungeons except where builder designated, full stop" fixes that. I know that was the general consensus but having it firmly agreed makes everything clearer.

As for the campfire idea, I was asking if such a thing already exists because if not, one of us can just make one and/or a healing spring or whatever and distribute it to everyone and then it's sorted and we don't need to worry. The thing can even go in the campaign folder so any changes are carried through. No it might not be that big a deal but if we just do that now, it just makes everything easier later on. Yes, there are much more important things to worry about, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't have this discussion and it's better to get it over with sooner, rather than later, that's all.

Treasure balance is something which I'd say is a lot easier to correct during playtesting. Of course, some basic guidelines etc are a good idea. Personally, I'm quite stingy anyway, so just tell me what the limit is and I likely won't have hit it, anyway. ;-)

[Shaun the Crazy One]

dunniteowl wrote...

Matt. Seriously?

Eguintir, IMO (minus the sarcasm) is correct. The consistency between modules is not going to be the independant (and I would argue that it won't be as confusing or disjoint as many seem to think) resting idiosyncrasies all nailed together.

It's going to be dialogue, story and plot tie ins, resolved quests, and consistency of lore, loot and leveling. To my view, these aspects are much harder to pin down and much harder to resolve in playtesting post creation. Resting is easy to adjust and tweak. Combat encounters are easy to adjust and tweak (relatively.) Dialogue, plotlines, consistent information? Those are pretty tough to go back in and fix beyond mere typographical errors.

Resting, Combat and even treasure can all be adjusted during playtesting. Broken quests, inconsistent plot devices, journal entries? Not as easy. I say we focus on those things and, as suggested, let's use a Stock SoZ resting system (with or without Stones of Alarm, I never used 'em, but that doesn't mean they aren't someone's "must have" accessory) and we simply note in the album liner notes that resting in different dungeons will most likely be different from dungeon to dungeon, because they were all made by different people. Diversity in this matter I don't think is going to create too great a divide or break in immersion that it will unseat the riders, be they aback a camel, horse or hippogriff.

Right then, moving on.

I agree with DNO, coordinating quests is going to be the biggest issue.  I think is might be wise to create a "quest table" as a public google doc or similar. Something we can use to track what quests are associated with what area, when the quest should become available, and what quests must first be completed, and about how exp the part gain from the quest. Maybe a flowchart as well. This would really help with coordinating the plot, and creating non-linear variations.

As for treasure, acroding to the 3.5 DMG, Average treasure values per Encounter:
lv 1 ----- 300gp
lv 2 ----- 600gp
lv 3 ----- 900gp
lv 4 ----- 1200gp
lv 5 ----- 1600gp
lv 6 ----- 2000gp
lv 7 ----- 2600gp
lv 8 ----- 3400gp
lv 9 ----- 4500gp
lv 10 --- 5800gp
lv 11 --- 7500gp
lv 12 --- 9800gp
lv 13 --- 13000gp
lv 14 --- 17000gp
lv 15 --- 22000gp
lv 16 --- 28000gp
lv 17 --- 36000gp
lv 18 --- 47000gp
lv 19 --- 61000gp
lv 20 --- 80000gp

I think that's fair guidline for how much loot to use, and we can fine tune it durring play testing.

Modifié par Shaun the Crazy One, 16 mars 2011 - 07:24 .

[manageri]

My random thoughts on loot:

In this kinda sandbox campaign I'd imagine having less loot would be helpful in keeping things balanced. For example if you have two dungeons designed for level 6 characters, but each dungeon gives you a cartload of new loot, then obviously the second dungeon will be a lot easier because you can now afford to spend 200 more potions there than you could in the first dungeon etc, and it might not be much of a challenge for the level 6 party anymore. Also if skipping a few dungeons means you missed out on like 50k gold then people designing the higher level dungeons would have to somehow take that possibility into account. In short, less loot just means less trouble balancing in all ways, especially in a campaign of multiple individual modules.

M. Rieder wrote...

It may be helpful for the modders of the higher level quests to suggest specific item properties which will be useful/appropriate for their parts of the campaign. For example, if a modder for a 10-th level quest wants to go to a volcano or the plane of fire or fight a red dragon, then they could submit a request that some fire-resistance items be included at lower levels.

I agree, though I'd be more worried about the opposite. Maybe you don't want ample fire resistance items in order to keep this fight challenging (and you can always provide such items in that same dungeon if you really want to, no need for earlier dungeons to provide them).

[Eguintir Eligard]

And why would anyone remove your unlimited resting Fred, when it has been said time and again its YOUR decision?

[The Fred]

Eguintir Eligard wrote...
And why would anyone remove your unlimited resting Fred, when it has been said time and again its YOUR decision?

I was actually replying to DNO's comment that sorting resting ex post facto is easier than fixing quests - personally, I don't believe this to be the case. I wasn't saying anyone would remove my hypothetical unlimited resting, but rather that if they did, it would be a lot more work than some journal or conversation tweak. In actuality, though, part of the issue I'm trying to raise is that I don't think it should be my decision - IMO, inconsistancy looks far worse from a polish perspective than unbalanced loot. Yeah, unbalanced loot might be really annoying and cause gameplay issues, but it's not necessarily unrealistic - in fact, depending on the situation, it might be more realistic. However, random resting restrictions and settings which vary wildly from area to area make the whole game seem like a hotchpotch. All I was saying was that it's worth talking over, that's all. I'll put this on the Citadel boards, though (unless anyone thinks otherwise) so we can get on with discussions about loot and things.

Speaking of which, I don't have the DMG, but it seems like that's a good guide to go off, give or take.

manageri wrote...
In this kinda sandbox campaign I'd imagine having less loot would be helpful in keeping things balanced.

I would actually agree with this, though it depends on how many areas we have per level. I think the idea is to keep the level progression saturated, but only just, i.e. you should end up doing most things to be able to get the XP and items to progress, though you can always farm the OM etc. Therefore, where we have multiple areas per level, they will likely mostly be two short ones, for example. Thus they'll be giving you only half the XP needed to level up, and so they'll probably end up only giving you half the items as well. Roughly speaking.

I'd say that saying XXXX gp per level probably needs to be done in terms of the total gain across that level, which can be split up roughly proportional to XP across each project. After all, encounters of different lengths are going to give different amounts of loot, regardless of what level they're pitched at.

[Kaldor Silverwand]

dunniteowl wrote...
Resting, Combat and even treasure can all be adjusted during playtesting. Broken quests, inconsistent plot devices, journal entries? Not as easy. I say we focus on those things and, as suggested, let's use a Stock SoZ resting system (with or without Stones of Alarm, I never used 'em, but that doesn't mean they aren't someone's "must have" accessory) and we simply note in the album liner notes that resting in different dungeons will most likely be different from dungeon to dungeon, because they were all made by different people. Diversity in this matter I don't think is going to create too great a divide or break in immersion that it will unseat the riders, be they aback a camel, horse or hippogriff.

Hey, I'm with you, dno.  But what's an album?

[Kaldor Silverwand]

manageri wrote...
Also if skipping a few dungeons means you missed out on like 50k gold then people designing the higher level dungeons would have to somehow take that possibility into account.

Why?  If someone skip's content then they are choosing to make things more challenging for themselves. I don't see why that should alter anything for the designers.

Regards

Modifié par Kaldor Silverwand, 17 mars 2011 - 12:26 .

[manageri]

Kaldor Silverwand wrote...

Why?  If someone skip's content then they are choosing to make things more challenging for themselves. I don't see why that should alter anything for the designers.

Yeah, if you intend everything to be mandatory content.

[Eguintir Eligard]

I was also keeping a more enhanced dungeon list.

So when someone puts up an area, they also have to include the % of level xp it gives.

Level 6 - EE's Mansion 40%, Kaldor's House of Boobies 25%

seems a little more helpful than a dump of just how many. Shows where there is room, shows where there is not.

[The Fred]

Keeping the loot level relatively restrained would mean that people could afford to skip one or two levels without taking a massive difficulty hike - otherwise it's like having Easy and Very Hard difficulties, but no middle ground. Of course, it's not that big a deal, but it probably allows for a smoother gain curve.

EE, I definately agree about putting up rough lengths of encounters, and I did so on my project, though they were very bad estimates since I haven't got very far with the building yet. Certainly a number of projects is fairly meaningless if they could be anywhere from a 100-XP cave to a seven-level dungeon adventure. I would also detail any loot of note, unusual stuff (e.g. someone could theoretically give a player character a feat or an ability increase etc, I wouldn't recommend it but it could be done so long as it's noted) etc. that is being added.

[Eguintir Eligard]

I dont know how skipping dungeons because of low loot makes things easier. If there are only 1 or 2 magic items for that level range and character and they miss their only chance... boned.

But I dont see how thats a concern anyway. The point of the campaign is to seek out encounter areas and power up. If they want to purposely walk on the roads and avoid it all they are basically avoiding the game.

[Kaldor Silverwand]

My reading of the initial proposal was that this is a sandbox with a big boss. The plot is loosely defined, allowing players maximum flexibility. I didn't think there would be any mandatory content. If that is the case then let people decide for themselves how to power up and what to do in what order. For that matter since the SoZ party system will be in play there is nothing stopping anyone from importing characters from other games they have played and that will undoubtedly be done. I would worry about balancing only within an area, not across areas. If the hostile encounters on the overland map serve as a valid indicator for the difficulty of the locale then people will naturally gravitate to the easier or harder areas as they wish. Whoever is coordinating the OM should place things with difficulty in mind.

Just my 2 cents.

Regards

[nicethugbert]

You guys seem adverse to putting much thought into a rest system. It is possible to rationalize differences in rest restrictions if you do so systematically. If the area has patrols then you can interrupt rest, instead of just outright prohibiting it. You can disrupt the patrols to gain a window of rest opportunity. You can use skills or class to factor into getting caught resting, or being tracked by patrols. Survival skill can mitigate the need to bring camping equipment. Etc.

Search skill can be used to find an old abandoned tunnel to rest in.  Hide or survival can be used to camoflage it.

Allowing everyone to follow their own inclinations can be as unsatisfying as the Dev supplied rest systems. I'm not such a fan of the Dev supplied or HCR rest systems because they do not take into account class or skill when it appears reasonable to me to take those factors into account in a rest system.

Modifié par nicethugbert, 18 mars 2011 - 12:28 .

[The Fred]

I actually had the idea myself of, say, having places where only people with a certain amount of Survival could make camp, etc. but the problem with this example, at least, is that it's very unbalancing around a threshold Survival level - people with that much get to rest, gaining almost twice as much "endurance", whereas people with one point less get nothing. Obviously in a big long dungeon, it might mean the difference between, say, four places to rest and five, so it's not as big a deal (especially if high-search characters can find an extra location, and high-spellcraft characters can tap a healing spring to refresh their party, etc) but you'd really have to get creative to make it work.

Anyway, I started a new thread on the Citadel boards all about resting, so that people can discuss it to their hearts' content without taking over this thread.

EE, I guess in terms of individual magical items, everything's relative, so whatever you miss out on will always be the same fraction of the overall treasure, no matter how much it's scaled. That said, I think there is also the point that a high gold level can mean more disposables such as healing potions, so having more gold per dungeon could mean that missing a dungeon leaves you less able to keep going in later dungeons (because the fraction of your own individual power that you missed goes up even when the fraction of the overall item power doesn't, if you see what I mean). It shouldn't make that much of a difference anyway, though, I wouldn't have thought, especially if we pitch at a relatively low treasure level.

[manageri]

The problem with resting has never been how to make it realistic. The problem is making it realistic AND not a crappy system from a gameplay perpective. I can make up a realistic rest limitation right now: You have one month to complete the game before Mr. T has devoured everything and you fail your quest. Then you can add in the kinda stuff NTB just talked about if you want and you're done (without a hard limit they mean absolutely nothing because I can just run outta the dungeon back to nearest inn).

So what's the problem? Well it's not a lotta fun to have to load a game from way back because you realize when you have two days left that you'd need a few more weeks with your current pace. Other hard restrictions have similar issues. This is why I think about gameplay first, and whether the system makes any difference and whether that difference does more harm than good. If the game sucks then I don't care about how realistic it is because I won't be playing it.

Regarding the loot issue, the point about less loot mattering is that loot isn't the only variable, the characters' innate power is the second one. The more rods of thunder and lightning I have, the less it matters how many chain lightnings my wizard can memorize, and the more room for error there is in balancing a fight for say a level 10 party.

Modifié par manageri, 18 mars 2011 - 02:07 .