More War Plot?

well Time,

I agree to a point that if there was more for the adventurers to Adventure it could be different. But part of that is the plot issue. At least in HQ, we are in a war zone, we are fighting at least 3 different groups of enemies. while we are there it seems expected to at any given time run into trolls, dominion or other enemy troops who are moving through that area. Sure I agree that it would often be nice to Adventure out into the contensted lands more and find new and interesting things, but like you said there are OOG restrictions. Mostly that there are only so many NPCs and that if plot is planning to have a bunch of them com in as a Dominion raiding party, they don't have to time to give you random crunchy trolls out in the woods. same is true with the mods. More mods would be great but once again, you need marshals, NPCs, enough players to go on them, space to hold the mods, and then still have things to entertain the players who aren't or don't want to go on mods. Plot is always looking for suggestions, so if you have idea for mods, even if they are just fishbowls, send them in.
If you want to see more of something, don't wait for someone else, make it happen yourself.
One of my favorite happening from this past even was when a PC, recruited people to come help him with a task, promising payment to those who helped. Everyone that he was an NPC and that this was just a hook for a mod, but it was something he wanted to do, and he got people to help him with it.
 
I dont think that this is something that is on plot to fix or any one other part of the player base. I am not even really shure thats it is broken. Maybe its just what i would like to do more. But to me it would be alot of fun if I could go get mods out in the woods by walking around more. So many times people are oog not wanting to walk out of camp for "nothing" or worse missing it becasue they were gone.

Once this year I went looking for another Pc that i felt could be in danger someother pcs saw me going and jumped in with me. Npcs that just happend to be out saw us going and took a short cut to where we were going and attacked us. They were ramdom damage lizard men but they turned into a mod for 3 pcs and we had a blast. So one life of ramdom damage played by 4 npcs ( my heros btw ) truned into a fish bowl ( me going looking for something/someone ) then turned into a mod ( Npc reacting to the pcs leaving town ).

So maybe some more freedom for the npcs to be able to do more stuff like that without plot saying go stock the pcs. maybe 3 stact cards and a encounter head that can do on the spot apls for high med and low. and 4 npcs. Same amount of damage on the pcs same lootz going out. But more of a feeling of adventurer that we all crave.

Just my thoughts but im not the only person with them.
Tim Gailey

Ps. just to say it agen im not mad at anything just looking to make myself and others happy. :)
 
With the SF chapter just starting, it has been rather interesting seeing how things progress when you DON'T have 30+ people who are level 25+. When there are only 8-10 of you - you decide to try different tactics when dealing with the local bandits instead of just running up and erradicating them. In addition, our plot people are working with some interesting ideas that I haven't seen in other games. For example - random attacks on the town don't happen. Why? Because even the smallest and stupidest monster knows that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of guards and armed people behind those walls. In addition, our land practices cremation so most native characters have never seen a zombie before.

It has been fun playing in a game where I don't have to save everything for the manditory Saturday Night Gank Fest. ;)
 
Ok, I'm gonna keep this short and sweet for now. I don't really have a problem with the war plot. Almost *every* weekend I wander around and find random baddies while I'm off doing something. I take my character out into the woods to do something RP wise and usually run into some undead, or some trolls, or some other NPC's there. I think there is a good balance between being on a warfront and fighting/interacting with the inhabitants be they good or evil. I like the battles we have and I agree with an earlier post saying that most often the "army" style bad guys have a reason to be there and have given us a deadline to perform some task. We work at that task, and prepare for a fight that's coming. Not because we as players say...oh it's 6pm on a Saturday night, but because our characters think we must get this done before they return.
 
I do have to say that just recently I experienced one of the most awesome war storyline situations. While in the long run it may not have been something my character knows all the details about there were good IG reasons why he went for the battle. Other PC's took time friday night to gather much of the town, and especially the new folk in town to explain a planned military action that would end up happening two mornings hence. (Sunday morning wave battle) It involved Spirit walk rituals to go behind main enemy lines and slitting up the town into tougher and newer adventures. My character was intrigued and interested due to both the fact of the nifty rituals getting us there and that he could help destroy a big threat to the peace of the free folk. This was so much so that even during a desperate Saturday night wave battle he specifically saved all his magic for that attack. The split level wave battle for the two different APL's was both spectacular to watch and a blast to fight in. During the high level portion the lower level players sat OOG while the high levels rocked face. Which we would have done even if we had been in the fight because we wouldn't have been so affective. Then the lower level group had our wave battle and fought like hell because it was fair and tough, and we could make a difference.

Now it is true that my character is very streamlined for combat, but he is a Celestial Scholar. So of all classes at this point its probably the worst for doing well in a wave battle. But I actually had more fun in this wave battle than I have had on some mods, it was fantastic. Now I am a dear lover of modules and I have had at least as much fun if not usually more on those in general. So I fully understand why it is hard to always be happy with the sheer number of wave battles that usually are thrown out at a typical weekend. I would also love more random things that you could find in the woods other than APL scaled monsters that usually scare the crap out of low levels.

Has anyone heard of encounter cards? This is a card with a number and a tag that can be ripped out that plot can put in the woods that when you find you put on a white headband and go to NPC camp and inform them you would like to engage this encounter. You can obviously go by these when you don't want to do them and they don't actually use up NPC's while they are waiting to be found. Stuff like this might be really fun. I think it also helps the world be more believable when you have the altitude that adventures in general are FAR more powerful than the average Joe farmer. One thing that might be interesting for plot also to explore is perhaps having adventures deal with helping the economies of countries run smoothly.

And also remember its a game. ;)
 
I guess it all comes down to one word. Balance. There has to be a balance between mods and some war plot and fishbowls etc. I think right now we have a pretty good balance and I'm very happy with the game.
 
The same reason the supervillans keep attacking Gotham and Metropolis, instead of two exits farther down the turnpike.



Actually, in our storyline right now, it could easily be said the other way. The Beastial Vampires were all but unstoppable, so why did the PCs try? The Dominion has been gobbling up territory in a land grab that makes American Westward Expansion look slow... so why haven't the PCs just turned tails and left when facing an army of roughly four hundred thousand troops?

Maybe they're sticking around to fight the unwinnable fight for the same reasons the PCs are......
 
As a player who has been involved with the war plot in HQ, I may have a biased opinion but I try to look at it like this.

If your character is the type to get involved in a war, then GET INVOLVED. Be creative. Use your write ups to see the depth and the different aspects of the war. See the different levels that plot has written out that you would never see in game durring an event becasue its backstory and set up. Yes, in town, durring an event, I would like to see more "backstory" type stuff to, and thats what grade the event posts and post event surveys are for. A great example of this was a few years ago, when we had the couple of events which ended in the seige of Pantlore's keep, I remember being sent out (i only npc'ed hq at that time) a few times as varius army roles, ranging from solder's on leave, to being a permantly dead body draged back into town by his army buddy screaming for a life spell. There are wars to remind players and have interaction that a war is going on, whichout it comming down to a fight.

If your not the kind of charter to get directly involed, there are still other plotline options. I read in the ashbury times that there are scores of refugees comming into fairdale and dara's grace (tho I think perhapes we should see some of them more in town as fishbowls) as a result of bretton's fall. Perhapes charity is your thing, maybe you want to scout out new places for these people to live, or organise supply trains or ofter magical healing to refugee camps. Trades people are in high demand in the aftermath of a battle, where homes and belongings have been lost.

My point is that in a fantasy world, war is going to be an inevitable plotline, but there are so many levels that can be explored durring a war, that I think that it can be something for everyone.

One final thing. your right that it dosent make sence that a competant commander would send wave after wave of his troops to their death unless said commander was a wakjob or evil. Then again, scince the dominon sent their better general to take over, I don't recal any dominon wave battles.........
--bill
Caldaria Staff
Caldaria Rules Marshal
PS: my spelling and grammar suxk, i know.
 
dreadpiratebill said:
One final thing. your right that it dosent make sence that a competant commander would send wave after wave of his troops to their death unless said commander was a wakjob or evil. Then again, scince the dominon sent their better general to take over, I don't recal any dominon wave battles.........
--bill
Caldaria Staff
Caldaria Rules Marshal
PS: my spelling and grammar suxk, i know.
Click to expand...

Funny that... :)
 
Actually the “endless” wave after wave of soldiers, peasants, heck...people…is easily demonstrated in IRL histories as well. I know it seems staggering to look at the weekend after weekend "slaughter" as you will and go "Hey, someone should have a brain and probably stop this War crap...or at least the complete sacrifice of people as fodder" but the reality and the epic storyline IRL and IG is that people only realize it in hindsight and definitely not when they have an objective to reach.

Look at the crusades. There were nine of them just into the "holy lands" then there were the northern crusades and the crusades against the Tatars...etc. (believe me, i could continue). Generally most people would agree that the insane amounts of causalities and maiming was beyond comprehension. The Muslims thought the Europeans were utterly barbaric for the continued massacre of civilians, their own peoples, and the slew of broken promises and treatise. (don't get mad about the perspective - both sides saw the other as the villian)

Here is the reality, from the 11th to 13th centuries this continued. Yes, art and the finer things were a bit swallowed up, but they did not cease. There were massive expansions in trade, politics, arts, mathematics, as well as cultural fractioning, diversity, condensing and even mingling...all of this and the reality of any war is that some form of "progress" is made regardless of the body count, that the bright shining moments of peace bring intense bursts of regeneration in arts, theatre, expression. That peace has always been very short and generally spotted between moments of bloodied fields and loss of life. The peace is something we celebrate and see as our salvation from death and a period of great growth. But we wouldn’t understand those hallowed seconds of peace if we didn’t feel the reality of conflict…somehow it all happens and we either condemn or congratulate ourselves in the end.

War is a part of reality and the fantasy we play, the world that we enter on weekends is filled with a miniscule portion of that reality -- i find the promise of epic "play" war to be an escape. In a world where I can't be the hero - I can't save my friends and family from the monsters at home and abroad (not saying other people can’t be heroes IRL) -- I can enter this fantasy battle and fight for my family, my ideals, my loved ones and ACTUALLY feel like I accomplished something that cannot be taken away, no matter how many other battles need to be fought.

So, rock on War plot – it does have a purpose, yay peaceful RP, and keep bringing those mods that make mine and my char's brain go "Huh?" hehehe.
 
I did some quick math. Across a normal weekend (Vampire Apocolypse was not normal), monster desk sends out ~1500-2000 unique lives of monsters (remember to thank your NPCs, that is a LOT of work they are doing). Including the 2 free deaths, a creature should die an average of 3.8 times before perming. So, approximately 400-500 NPCs perm per weekend.

In his initial post, Tim was complaining that the wars didn't seem that difficult since NPCs were perming left and right and PCs were barely even taking deaths. I guess we could go out of our way to perm 400-500 PCs per event, but I think there might just be some mild logistical problems with that (not to mention costumer service problems). :o

Short version: Yeah realism may be taking a bit of a slap in the face, but the other choices seem even more problematic.

-MS
 
mikestrauss said:
I did some quick math. Across a normal weekend (Vampire Apocolypse was not normal), monster desk sends out ~1500-2000 unique lives of monsters (remember to thank your NPCs, that is a LOT of work they are doing). Including the 2 free deaths, a creature should die an average of 3.8 times before perming. So, approximately 400-500 NPCs perm per weekend.

In his initial post, Tim was complaining that the wars didn't seem that difficult since NPCs were perming left and right and PCs were barely even taking deaths. I guess we could go out of our way to perm 400-500 PCs per event, but I think there might just be some mild logistical problems with that (not to mention costumer service problems). :o

Short version: Yeah realism may be taking a bit of a slap in the face, but the other choices seem even more problematic.

-MS
Click to expand...


"I guess we could go out of our way to perm 400-500 PCs per event" As long as there is 1500-2000 unique lives of PCs, but since there is about 3% of that it would be more like 12-15 per weekend (about 3%). I know you are probably joking Mike (at least I hope so), but you know some one was going to point it out hehehe.
 
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