Why I don't like "Town Battles"

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Exemplar
In many events I see quite often either (A) the town is attacked by a contingent of NPCs that the whole town must defend against, or (B) an enemy is identified and the whole town is either rallied against the enemy or the whole town feels like joining the group attacking this enemy. Now, a "Town Battle" can be done well and it is even possible for it to be done so as to mitigate the issues I outline below. But, more often then not, due to planning errors, NPCs AWOL, PCs surprising Plot with a horde, etc. these problems often crop up.

This is not to say a "Town Battle" cannot be done well, just that most town battles are unable to account for a majority of problems associated with it. I feel this post will help bring to light the many issues revolving around a major "Town Battle" and either they are addressed by the Plot team when planning for the battles, or major "Town Battles" are avoided altogether except for when a lengthy plot line calls for one.

1) Scaling
- Scaling a "Town Battle" requires that plot provide a challenge to both the high level characters with lots of magic items, and the low level characters that can barely afford the equipment they are wearing. This poses a significant challenge for the Plot people because they need to be able to make those same low level players feel effective while making sure the high level players don't roll through like a steam-roller on nitro going over a pack of puppies. At the same time, Plot needs to make sure the challenge they have for low level characters is not taken by the high level characters, and the challenge for the high level characters needs to encompass more than "add resists, immunities, and Body for a 15 minute damage output contest" or "waves of monsters with resists, immunities, and inflated body and/or damage reduction". This is by far the easiest problem for a Plot team to deal with, even though it is a significant challenge in and of itself.

2) Herding Cats i.e. NPCs
- If the big plot for the weekend revolves around a huge "Town Battle" that requires many NPCs, there needs to be many NPCs available. This generally means all other plots around the time of the battle either (a) need to be finished first, which delays the "Town Battle" to be later while waiting for the NPCs to become available; or (b) be suspended until after the battle, which generally means the PCs are tapped after the battle or bored until the battle happens or both. Not only that, but the Plot team needs to ensure that there are enough NPCs at the event (if there aren't Plot needs to get creative while taking into account (1) above) and that those NPCs are awake with enough energy to be coherent in battle.

3) Herding Cats i.e. PCs
- If the big plot for the weekend revolves around a huge "Town Battle", PCs need to be aware of the battle, be awake, and be within range of easy acquisition in order to be involved. The earlier in the evening/day this is done, the easier it is. But, for most "Town Battles" I have seen (with a few exceptions), due to problems inherent in (2a) above, these battles take place later and later in the night. This means as time goes on PCs tend to go to bed. Unless the PCs have a system to be awaken from their slumber and quickly get ready for the battle (once Plot and Monster Camp is ready), these PCs that want to participate are left out of the battle. In addition, some PCs do not want to participate in a "Town Battle" because the player does not consider that fun. What is that/those player(s)/PC(s) left to do while the NPCs get ready for, and run, the "Town Battle"? Plot needs to take that into account and plan accordingly.

4) Safety and playing in the dark
- I know, I know. There is too much concern for safety in this game according to some people. For the most part, I agree, but with regards to "Town Battles", specifically as a result of (2a) above, the battles take place later and later in the evening. And often these battles take place in areas with inadequate illumination. This leads to more problems when people are running (I didn't see that stump/ditch/gopher), when people are swinging (I swung at a mass and connected with your head/groin/boobie), and when people are throwing packets (I threw my spell and accidentally hit you in the eye/groin/boobie). This causes more problems (and potential injuries) and more holds which decreases the immersion of the game. Speaking of holds ...

5) HOLD!
- There are so many people shouting, so many people swinging, and so many people throwing packets of birdseed that it is difficult for everyone to know who is taking what. This results in numerous holds related to "I got you with a Confine! "I got him with a Prison!" "I tagged you with an Magic Eviscerate!" "I struck him for about 200 Earth in increments of 10 by weapon swings!" "I threw a Prison, but I didn't see if it hit you" with the bad guy saying "OK, Bane, Cloak, Resist, Evade on 5 of those weapon swings, and taken on the rest." In big "Town Battles", this tends to happen multiple times. And Holds reduce the immersion.

6) Treasure
- Oh, where to begin? Treasure is quite possibly the worst part about big "Town Battles" in that there are (a) a lot of adventurers slaying things; (b) some, but not all, adventurers looting things; (c) a disparity in loot distribution between characters; (d) ninja/scavenger looting in that characters loot without putting it into the pot for disbursement at the end; (e) characters that demand they get the same share for casting a Flamebolt as the guy that Resurrected; (f) a large number of people with many opinions on how the Treasure should be divided when discussions take place after the battle; and (g) players going to bed after the battle with no knowledge of loot distribution and thus not getting their share. This is probably the biggest reason why I despise town battles because there is no way for plot to control it without having a specific NPC getting involved. All other problems can be mitigated by Plot's careful planning, but this aspect is always in the hands of the players which means it will always be unfair to someone.
 
That's funny, because you say that Scaling is the easiest to deal with and that loot distribution is the hardest issue, meanwhile I feel it is just the opposite.

Scaling is impossible when you bring the entire PC force to bear when there is a difference of literally hundreds of build points between them. During town battles the only thing that the lower levels can do (since the monsters are almost always scaled for the higher levels) is run around and play medic or cannon fodder. If you don't enjoy this, then yer out of luck. I'm not saying that such battles aren't fun but when it comes down to it, you feel more or less useless in them. Just look at the 'sidelines' next time a town battle is going on - the people who find a place to sit or stand away from it because they cannot affect anything that is going on.

Meanwhile loot distribution is the most IG thing to manage. Now, if you want to be Politically Correct about it and make sure everyone gets their fair scaled share of it, then yes it is next to impossible but that's the way things are. My main will almost always loot the fallen, whether it is he who did it or not while my secondary will blow through literally golds worth of production items without any thought or real desire of compensation. If your character's only goal is money, then by all means, stop and loot everything you drop. Or hire one of the lowbies to be your bag man - he does nothing but follow you and loot the bodies that you drop, for which he gets a percentage of the take.

2 and 3 I see more as the fluidity of the world environment. I've missed the slash fest due to other IG issues or that I'm just sleeping - and that is also part of the game - just like I cannot go on every single mod. I've even been nearly the sole person in the town when the horde of NPC's arrive and let me tell you, THAT is an experience in and of itself! Not having the NPC's available is a logistical issue but that shouldn't be a major problem as long as things are planned ahead and moving well.

4 and 5 are really just the nature of the beast of the LARP. Some sites don't offer enough seperation from Monster Camp so you get to see the horde walking with their headbands somewhere and are able to 'instinctively' rally your friends and make sure they're nearby. It is metagaming but if the entire NPC force is going into the town, then they would want the entire PC force ready. And holds are just due to all of the various possible calls and the requirement to whittle your target down to nothingness. That can't be changes in huge town battles, smaller mods or even sometimes one on one engagements.
 
In my opinion, Scaling is fairly easy to deal with. If you're going to have a Big Bad (ala the Dracolich), you throw out some 15-35 body critters swinging 5s that are gassable and bindable with maybe one protective, and now your lower levels have something that they can do that is meaningful (since 5s will breach PAs, golems notwithstanding) and is scaled to their level.

Treasure is, imo, entirely an in-game issue that will never satisfy every player both out-of-game AND in-game, regardless of whether or not you had a town battle or not. Some people like treasure that "makes sense", some people want treasure on everything, and some people want treasure to walk into town and say "Loot me!". You throw out enough variations of those mixes, and you please as many as you can, and encourage the ones that aren't to get out more. The only alternative that some might find "Fair" is that you show up to the event and directly handed the amount of treasure that each character adds to the bucket, but frankly, that assumes everyone is active in the game commiserate with the amount they add to the bucket.

I'm of a mixed opinion on how much of an issue herding NPC or PC cats is endemic to Town Battles. I see similar issues with just straight up mods sucking up NPC resources, so the only thing I can say is "More NPCs, please".

Playing in the dark is a weird cultural thing that has developed in the Alliance world, imo. There is something of a dominant perception that the dark should be danger time, and so players anticipate and plotsters feed into the idea that all the big evil ooky stuff needs to happen at night. I think that if you find it a problem in a chapter you play, you should let those plotsters know. If you find it a problem in a chapter you're plotting, well, you got no one but you to blame. :)

Holds are pretty much the bane of my existence, but are a by-product of such a call-laden system as the Alliance game (but certainly not unique to it). At the same time, I think on the WC, at least, there is a greater habit of calling a hold everytime people don't hear some sort of response from every packet they hit people with. I've seen people jump out of bushes and throw five packets with incants nearly overlapping one another (and as often as not, skipping over the "I" in every incant). Town battles just ramp up an issue with the system because it's every battle you could have all lumped together.

And that, I think, is a more accurate description of my concerns with town battles. Every issue you see in a town battle is already being seen in small ones, you just have them all going on at once that they're bound to stack up on one another.

To be honest, I felt that the National Event's final big battle worked out better than I would have expected. There was stuff for lowbies to mess around with, there were a couple Big Bads for the highbies to beat on, and a good in-game reason to break up what could have easily been a single "everybody hit this until it dies, then move on to the next" fight into a number of smaller conflicts.
 
The national event big night fight was really the best you could hope to have with low and high power characters on the field. It had really nice obvious division of labor, with the dracolich stomping around swinging numbers big enough to keep the low-levels the hell away from it, while the low-level circle guardians were no effect to anyone who hadn't been pulled for the 'lowbie mod' earlier in the day, ensuring that one powerful guy wasn't going to steamroll all the lower-scaled mobs out of hand.

That said, it still broke down entirely once we got the gate open and went after the Raksasha, and turned into the low levels watching Circle Beating Theatre from the sidelines. Not a complaint, I assure you, but it illustrates part of the problem. The best way I've ever seen the dichotomy handled is via a simple plot cop-out. While the high-level teams go off to kill the big bad, hook the lower-level portion of the town to deal with something scaled smaller, yet plot important. To use the example I remember best, back in the day at one point we were dealing with an invading army of dark elves. The game I was at had a strong level split, with many players in the level 25+ bracket and 10 or so in the 5-15 bracket. So, when time came to stop the army, plot split us. The heavy hitters went out after the army's leader, who was scaled to fight the powerhouses. The lower level set of us was given the job of making sure that the army's reinforcements couldn't hit them in the back while they dealt with the leader.

In short, both groups got a fight that was scaled enough to be challenging, without either feeling out of their depth or that they'd been handing something unrelated to plot to get them out of the way. That's how it should be. :)

As far as treasure policy goes, it's a hell of a can of worms, without any real good fix. The best suggestion I've ever heard is simply to remind plot teams to keep putting out treasure on mods, not save it all for the big bad, so that the players who can't effectively be part of that big bad fight don't get hosed for loot like we usually do. ;)
 
town battle diviation of treasure is not done everywhere
because as i said at nationals, that is crazy and insane.
 
jpariury said:
since 5s will breach PAs, golems notwithstanding
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I'm not sure hoe that statement is even remotely accurate.

All of those problems come about to a greater or lesser degree depending on the plotline and the general plan for the encounter.

Everyone has their own idea of what is easier to deal with.

Really the problem is that we need three times as many NPC's.
 
Honestly big all-town battles are one of the things I enjoy most. They give Rogues a real chance to flank things because so many people are fighting so many different things, and the immersion of a fight amongst so many different people is something that can be supper fun.

Sure there are all sorts of problems and difficulties from an IG and OOG perspective but nothing is going to please everyone and town (or wave) battles are just like that as well.
 
At the last OR event I rezzed for the first time. Preface this with I thought it was an awesome way to die, so no complaints. Best event I have ever attended.

I was fighting a dryder swinging for 6 drain. I am an 8 earth templar. Not too scary. Then all of a sudden I hear 36 body! Followed by a friendly shoulder tap with a boffer. Well s*** I am dead.

This was during a huge town battle. The other PCs had to fall back putting the big bad between me and the rest of the PCs. I got turned undead at my 4:30 mark and got mulched a minute later by earth blades. Rad way to go but the scaling was kinda weird on that.
 
I will always take hits to the chest, despite being well-endowed. It's a legal target area.

That said, I very much appreciate the people who recognize that it's real unhappy and try to avoid it.

The biggest thing I hate about town battles is 90% happen at night, and night battles, besides my own personal issues with them, just aren't safe.
 
Alavatar said:
1) Scaling
- Scaling a "Town Battle" requires that plot provide a challenge to both the high level characters with lots of magic items, and the low level characters that can barely afford the equipment they are wearing. This poses a significant challenge for the Plot people because they need to be able to make those same low level players feel effective while making sure the high level players don't roll through like a steam-roller on nitro going over a pack of puppies. At the same time, Plot needs to make sure the challenge they have for low level characters is not taken by the high level characters, and the challenge for the high level characters needs to encompass more than "add resists, immunities, and Body for a 15 minute damage output contest" or "waves of monsters with resists, immunities, and inflated body and/or damage reduction". This is by far the easiest problem for a Plot team to deal with, even though it is a significant challenge in and of itself.
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One of the hardest things to scale against is the un-trackable. The battle magic scrolls, the gasses the MI. All the stuff that isn't really on a card.
 
or the unwillingness of PCs to leave there wards and hot pancakes to kill some bugs walking a round town wile you lay there bleeding out in the doorway of the tavern...

ok, so i am a little bitter a bout that death...
 
I'm not sure how a Golem even comes into that discussion?

Something swinging 5's breaks PA's. That should be the end of your sentence.
 
Originally the sentence mentioned something about thresholds, and since golems are up to the local chapter to card, they could, in theory, have either woogy PAs greater than 4, or thresholds greater than 4. I figured I'd add the caveat and avoid someone jumping up and down going "No, no, golems golems golems!"... now, of course, we've expended three posts on the topic from the other side, though, so I guess my attempt was an utter failure. I think I should go drown my sorrows in chocolate milk served in a dirty glass with a broken straw...
 
Nah. Serve it in a mason jar.

The standard golems, which is what are on the scroll, are supposed to be that. Standard. If a plot team wants to create whacked out golems thats fine ( i know we have), but they are not on the scroll, and if you tried to store into one, well then that plot team gets to deal with their own creation, which is really plot mojo, and tha is a little outside of the general conversation.

I was just at a place that sells blown glass straws. I will make sure to get you one for your broken straw needs.
 
Town battles are where level spread tends to rear it's ugly head the most. It's gotten nearly impossible to scale a fight that'll keep both higher and lower level players engaged unless you split them up to begin with, because mixing is inevitable.

The best one I saw was actually remarkably simple, though exhausting on the NPC's. A whole lot of grunts (an orc army, in this case). The first waves were mostly generic, and the plot guys would throw in special NPC's/more powerful ones as they got a grip on "who was where" as the lines stabilized and NPC's came back to recycle. So the lower-level players would keep getting "orc, orc, orc, orc shaman, orc" and the higher-level ones would see "orc, orc, orc shaman, BIGNASTY TROLL, BIG ORC, orc, orc...", sending then specifically at where the bigger characters were.

For more chaotic situations, it's more a matter of education. Unless you literally want to use low-level characters as cannon fodder, you teach them not to anchor a line in a town battle.

You hand them bows, and gases, and polearms. You send them to flank or backstab the line (the most fun as a newbie rogue- getting told to sneak around and bonk people from behind!)- but you don't put them in front to get hammered on. Higher-level characters are the anchor and shield so the lower-level ones can do what they can without getting insta-tooled.

It always makes me cringe in a big fight when I see a bunch of newbie rogues and warriors and such trying to deal with random big monster or two, getting bashed down while some nice healer is frantically trying to come up with enough cures to keep them from dying every 30 seconds or so...while Team Highbie is clustered together in a tight knot tooling something random, working well with each other but not really part of the rest of the fight at all.
 
Talen said:
Town battles are where level spread tends to rear it's ugly head the most. It's gotten nearly impossible to scale a fight that'll keep both higher and lower level players engaged unless you split them up to begin with, because mixing is inevitable.

The best one I saw was actually remarkably simple, though exhausting on the NPC's. A whole lot of grunts (an orc army, in this case). The first waves were mostly generic, and the plot guys would throw in special NPC's/more powerful ones as they got a grip on "who was where" as the lines stabilized and NPC's came back to recycle. So the lower-level players would keep getting "orc, orc, orc, orc shaman, orc" and the higher-level ones would see "orc, orc, orc shaman, BIGNASTY TROLL, BIG ORC, orc, orc...", sending then specifically at where the bigger characters were.

For more chaotic situations, it's more a matter of education. Unless you literally want to use low-level characters as cannon fodder, you teach them not to anchor a line in a town battle.

You hand them bows, and gases, and polearms. You send them to flank or backstab the line (the most fun as a newbie rogue- getting told to sneak around and bonk people from behind!)- but you don't put them in front to get hammered on. Higher-level characters are the anchor and shield so the lower-level ones can do what they can without getting insta-tooled.

It always makes me cringe in a big fight when I see a bunch of newbie rogues and warriors and such trying to deal with random big monster or two, getting bashed down while some nice healer is frantically trying to come up with enough cures to keep them from dying every 30 seconds or so...while Team Highbie is clustered together in a tight knot tooling something random, working well with each other but not really part of the rest of the fight at all.
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Or sitting in a CoP playing dragon poker
 
jpariury said:
I see similar issues with just straight up mods sucking up NPC resources, so the only thing I can say is "More NPCs, please".
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Yep, everything is better with more NPCs. The game's greatest resource (NPCs) is all too often in short supply.
 
I hate Town Battles, when they are badly done -- but that is a tautology in the making.

I also hate town battles where everyone is conscripted .. and so does my MWE character (because he is truly a freedom loving MWE). Sometimes Ondreij just does not participate because he sees no reason for the battle, and he excercises free will and just goes elsewhere .. which is a role play which I sometimes do not like to exercise, but I play my MWE -- or should I say that my MWE tells me how to play him -- and while I would like to go throw stuff (I'm an earth caster and master scroll maker, and carry a heavy crossbow - among other things) my MWE will not allow me to go play because the character just won't go there.

Town Battles create a heavy responsibility for PLOT and the NPCs - and is a true test which shows when a plot team is great.

All the rest of what was said in the original post is just opportunities for role play.
 
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