Alkalin3
Knight
Hi all. In interest of giving you an insight into my thoughts on how we design our game I'm going to post a few points that you'll find interesting or help you understand why things are the way they should be. Also, it'd be great to help make the forums a more active place.
These few points are exclusively mine thoughts. Chad and Travis may feel different about some of these points.
Fun is the ultimate goal. Our world has rules and lives and breathes, so while things might happen to players in it that aren't fun (death, negative plot consequences, players put against each other) these only exist to highlight the fun. A game without challenge will never be fun. That being said, we are willing to throw away any work we've prepped if the players do something we hadn't expected. We have no intention of railroading people, if you don't want to be involved with the weekend plot and want to take the town to do something else we think that's awesome. Also, good job being proactive. We've already done this a few times. The ash mods people seem to enjoy rose out of this situation.
Nothing should take away your 5 minute count. Truthfully, I don't even like that players can crumble. I've seen a lot of games where big bad guys just rift dead players out, or in my youth I was guilty of using the circle rez a lot. These things aren't fun. They make everyone involved except the npc feel powerless. Which is the last thing we want. In our world you guys are super heroes(or villains). Sometimes things can challenge your power but, a lot of times it's pretty easy for players to tower over the rest of the world. Being put in a position where you have to just sit there and watch friends die sucks. Especially since in most cases you've beaten all the other guys around down. I find thrown obliterate especially guilty of this. It requires you to have magic items or dodges or you get punished hard for it. That's something you'll never see in our game.
Packet thrown rituals. I don't have a huge problem with these personally besides the fact that for a while when I played is seemed like "Why would anyone even cast a ritual, just get your friend to do it instantly". Our Npcs aren't all super powerful, so they'll be doing rituals and give the players chances to muck the rituals up in cases. I think this adds more flavor. And with obliterate taken out of the mix, there's not much reason to throw rituals. On top of all that, our npcs play by the same rules the players do. They have to cast rituals, gather resources, and wait the 5 minutes just like everyone else.
Anyways, I'll keep this shorter. I hope it helps you understand why I make some of the choices I do.
These few points are exclusively mine thoughts. Chad and Travis may feel different about some of these points.
Fun is the ultimate goal. Our world has rules and lives and breathes, so while things might happen to players in it that aren't fun (death, negative plot consequences, players put against each other) these only exist to highlight the fun. A game without challenge will never be fun. That being said, we are willing to throw away any work we've prepped if the players do something we hadn't expected. We have no intention of railroading people, if you don't want to be involved with the weekend plot and want to take the town to do something else we think that's awesome. Also, good job being proactive. We've already done this a few times. The ash mods people seem to enjoy rose out of this situation.
Nothing should take away your 5 minute count. Truthfully, I don't even like that players can crumble. I've seen a lot of games where big bad guys just rift dead players out, or in my youth I was guilty of using the circle rez a lot. These things aren't fun. They make everyone involved except the npc feel powerless. Which is the last thing we want. In our world you guys are super heroes(or villains). Sometimes things can challenge your power but, a lot of times it's pretty easy for players to tower over the rest of the world. Being put in a position where you have to just sit there and watch friends die sucks. Especially since in most cases you've beaten all the other guys around down. I find thrown obliterate especially guilty of this. It requires you to have magic items or dodges or you get punished hard for it. That's something you'll never see in our game.
Packet thrown rituals. I don't have a huge problem with these personally besides the fact that for a while when I played is seemed like "Why would anyone even cast a ritual, just get your friend to do it instantly". Our Npcs aren't all super powerful, so they'll be doing rituals and give the players chances to muck the rituals up in cases. I think this adds more flavor. And with obliterate taken out of the mix, there's not much reason to throw rituals. On top of all that, our npcs play by the same rules the players do. They have to cast rituals, gather resources, and wait the 5 minutes just like everyone else.
Anyways, I'll keep this shorter. I hope it helps you understand why I make some of the choices I do.