Would you continue to donate things to chapters...

I've seen it done in the Camarilla, the world-wide White Wolf LARP system. Works pretty well, the local folks pulled in more than a grand in one evening that way.
 
I'm sure that someone better can come up with things better than me but some ideas:

Discounts on game admission
Openings to plot stuff - you make 10 dark riders tabards, the dark riders treat you better than others
Special meals at events provided by staff

I know of one player who is currently happy with the gobble system as it is helping him "speed level his character" (his own words). He is getting an event's worth of gobbies every weekend and still has plenty at his local chapter for blankets and purchasing any magic item he wants.

I wonder how long before there's Chinese gobbie farmers - if you don't already count cheap props made in China :)

I'm half tempted to start a new pc in a chapter that I currently don't have gobs in, do pay for play and pump gobbies from all the other chapters and see in a year how high of a pc I can get without ever stepping onto the field.
 
Marcus : I think the last time we did the math, it was something like level 10 or 12.
 
That's not the point I was trying to make. The point is that I could be that level 12+ character without having to ever have picked up a packet or boffer. That a character in one chapter has become more powerful for donating tunics to another chapter thousands of miles away. That, IMO, is perhaps the biggest issue. I don't think that gobbies in one's home chapter is bad, and in fact works. But why should someone gain in power in a chapter where the contributions for that power doesn't affect the chapter?
 
It's true, but the logic holds for anything, given that we're a national game. Why should a player's interactions with plot out in HQ give them a character with a lot of exp and items that can walk into, say, Southern Minnesota and wipe the floor with the local plot and playerbase? It's just the nature of letting rewards earned in one chapter travel to others.
 
Wraith said:
It's true, but the logic holds for anything, given that we're a national game. Why should a player's interactions with plot out in HQ give them a character with a lot of exp and items that can walk into, say, Southern Minnesota and wipe the floor with the local plot and playerbase? It's just the nature of letting rewards earned in one chapter travel to others.
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Bad choice of an example, SoMN has a rabid local player base, and one of the most restrictive MI policies in existence, although the existing goblin policies were part of what drove us to establish the policies we did.
 
That is why I used us as an example, though. Lowest APL on the alliance just now, and a lack of multi chapter lco item stacks.
 
Wraith said:
It's true, but the logic holds for anything, given that we're a national game. Why should a player's interactions with plot out in HQ give them a character with a lot of exp and items that can walk into, say, Southern Minnesota and wipe the floor with the local plot and playerbase? It's just the nature of letting rewards earned in one chapter travel to others.
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To be honest, I *highly* doubt you'd be able to walk in with just a level 10-15 character and wipe the floor with the local playerbase... Even if you could transfer in some restricted magic items. (Which you can't currently.) Maybe you could make a shot at it with a team of 4-6 level 10-15 characters all stocked with items.

However if a group of players seriously game to a game with the intent just to hardcore 'roll' the local playerbase, or in a more soft version, just try to 'gun' for all the high quality treasure and otherwise **** block the rest of the playerbase I'm pretty sure plot would/should come up with a solution to something like that.

Any in any case I always hear people talking about a hypothetical situation arising like this and in reality I've never actually seen and/or heard of it happening so it seems like a bit of a straw man argument... :wacko:
 
Just to check in - no one has any issues with someone coming in with a high level character and never having ever played in a game (including NPCing) - as long as he pays for it all via gobbies and pay no play.

Wraith said:
It's true, but the logic holds for anything, given that we're a national game. Why should a player's interactions with plot out in HQ give them a character with a lot of exp and items that can walk into, say, Southern Minnesota and wipe the floor with the local plot and playerbase? It's just the nature of letting rewards earned in one chapter travel to others.
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There's a difference between "rewards earned" and "rewards bought" - at least in my book there is. Which sounds more like a cool encounter:

"Oh, don't go mess with that guy. He's been adventuring for 6 years."
or
"Oh, don't go mess with that guy. He donated 5 dozen masks and as many tabards to 7 different chapters."


Dreamingfurther said:
To be honest, I *highly* doubt you'd be able to walk in with just a level 10-15 character and wipe the floor with the local playerbase... Even if you could transfer in some restricted magic items. (Which you can't currently.) Maybe you could make a shot at it with a team of 4-6 level 10-15 characters all stocked with items.

However if a group of players seriously game to a game with the intent just to hardcore 'roll' the local playerbase, or in a more soft version, just try to 'gun' for all the high quality treasure and otherwise **** block the rest of the playerbase I'm pretty sure plot would/should come up with a solution to something like that.

Any in any case I always hear people talking about a hypothetical situation arising like this and in reality I've never actually seen and/or heard of it happening so it seems like a bit of a straw man argument... :wacko:
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I have witnessed a group of 3 high level characters walk into a relatively new chapter and basically mop the place from PC's to NPC's. It was done in game, according to the rules and plot really didn't have enough time (or experience) to deal with it by coming up with on the spot IG ways to deal with it. They had something in place for the next game but it didn't remove the fact that the previous one had taken place.

I should also note that the players who did this were not being malicious but were playing their characters as they had always played them. Just that this time when the local heroes began to give them some gruff, they had the power to shut them up - with a fair number heading off to the circle due to it (myself included - multiple times).

In fact, now that I think of this, I have to revise my opinion that it is near impossible to PD in Alliance. Just play a beginning level character who is a town guard that has to deal with PC's 20 levels higher and have absolutely no compunction about PvP.

I've seen the straw man - he is scrawny but scary.
 
A few followup questions:

1. How long ago was that?

2. Did the plot team put an "insurance policy" in place to deal with this sort of thing? Alliance CT is a high level/high power game... and even CT has a set of town NPCs who are statted appropriately to "handle" that sort of situation in game. If they didn't... then it seems like this was the lesson they needed to make sure that won't happen again.

I have been playing for 8 years now... I have never witnessed this type of behavior in our players.
 
Furthermore, even if something like this happens... once to a chapter, is that really a reason to consider it when sculpting magic item and goblin stamp policy?

It seems like if you do use chapter wiping PC's in that context you are going to be hampering something a great deal of people love, to avoid a very rare and uncommon situation that almost never comes up anyways... :mer:
 
The event I described happened a while ago - I want to say around 6-8 years and 'in the other system' but I'll be damned if I know exactly when. There was no 'insurance policy' in place as it wasn't thought that such a thing would ever occur. However, with all of the PC's playing their characters, internal strife reached a point where normally violence would be called for and instead of doing the 'oh, it's okey if I'm a Dark Elf and someone says that my family enjoys carnal relations with rancid kobolds - as long as that person is a PC.' They responded with what they felt was appropriate for their characters. And once one character was attacked, his friends joined to the defense at which point escalations occurred and viola - near entire town wipe.

Afterwards, yes, they put into place such characters that would definitely stop such a massacre from happening again unfortunately, when such an encounter begins, by the time plot gets the appropriate costuming, monster cards and such and get back into the game, the fight would have been long over. And truthfully the "power PC's", when brought to trial were found innocent as they defended themselves from other's attacks and never initiated the attack - just ended it. They also didn't stop anyone from healing people however when the healed characters then attacked them a second time, they (rightfully so IMO) stood over the bodies until they did rez since to allow someone to continually get back up and attack you is, again IMO, stupid.

I believe that some leeway should be taken into consideration in such encounters when PC's are involved however if said PC's are stooopid (note that it's with 3 o's) such as in the case to keep on attacking someone who is dropping them in two swings/castings, then they deserve the fate.

I'm not suggesting that this one, lone event should be the reason for sculpting policy - heck no one event should be. I am just responding to the comment that this has never happened before. It has.
 
back to topic, yes I would continue to donate...but typically, I am giving time more than money (example, recently did 12 or so animal ears. out of pocket expense to me was something like $40 and time spent was around 20 hours. If this was a pay for time done, I would have made somewhere around $100 from the chapter (being very kind considering minimum wage here is $8 & something)).

So my counter question would be, what is going to cost an Alliance Chapter less...paying out at minimum wages for time people contribute & buying their own items out of pocket or 100 GS?
Overall, GS are more fiscally responsible.
 
markusdark said:
That's not the point I was trying to make. The point is that I could be that level 12+ character without having to ever have picked up a packet or boffer. That a character in one chapter has become more powerful for donating tunics to another chapter thousands of miles away. That, IMO, is perhaps the biggest issue. I don't think that gobbies in one's home chapter is bad, and in fact works. But why should someone gain in power in a chapter where the contributions for that power doesn't affect the chapter?
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Maybe it's more of an issue on the East Coast, where there's a higher chapter:player ratio, but what would you rather see? Most of the donations I make are for my home chapter - but I donated a bunch of stuff for HQ last time I went there. Should I use the gobbies from that for my main? Create a secondary who is local to HQ and blanket that character? If I then do the same at Catskills and NH, do I end up with a backlog of new characters homed in different chapters that I've never played?

I think the concept of spell-crafted LCO items, temporary LCO "funky powers", and things like that go a long way for eating up gobbies for normal folks. With the 100 gobbie limit for production, that's not even close to unbalancing. I can see where blanketting can be a *little* disruptive, if someone takes it to an extreme (which, I understand, some people do) - but in order to do that, they need to contribute to the game. Not just a single chapter, but several chapters, which benefits the game as a whole. If someone's willing to make tabards for 4 chapters, give masks to 2 other chapters, and write plot for a 7th chapter, and all of it is high quality stuff? I don't mind if they walk out 15th level, having never PCed before. It makes more sense to see some "new folks" that aren't just first-level cannon fodder, and it might make some folks pause before they decide to play "let's gank the newbie."
 
That 15th level is cannon fodder to the people spending their GS on MIs anyway, but it still doesn't sit well that characters can reach mid to high level, and set up with their chives of items, all without ever risking a death.
 
Wraith said:
That 15th level is cannon fodder to the people spending their GS on MIs anyway, but it still doesn't sit well that characters can reach mid to high level, and set up with their chives of items, all without ever risking a death.
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I've always wondered if we should have the 'free deaths' expire after level 10, 15, 20, 405...whatever, but I'm waiting for my flame retardant suit to be repaired before suggesting such a thing.
 
Wraith said:
That 15th level is cannon fodder to the people spending their GS on MIs anyway, but it still doesn't sit well that characters can reach mid to high level, and set up with their chives of items, all without ever risking a death.
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But that same person still needs to give time and effort/money to the game to make that happen. 15th level characters with magic items don't just appear. Also if this same person has never played and comes finally comes on stage with a fully loaded 15th level character I am willing to bet that their lifespan and that of a player who played from 1-15 is much shorter. Either that or their learning curve better be really really fast.

I guess I am just really having a hard time following where you are headed with this.
 
Lurin said:
I've always wondered if we should have the 'free deaths' expire after level 10, 15, 20, 405...whatever, but I'm waiting for my flame retardant suit to be repaired before suggesting such a thing.
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I'd be down with it too but there should be a mechanic put into place like free deaths will count against your resurrection chances as a whole. For example, at level 4, I take a death, and it's a freebie. I manage to stay alive until I reach - lets say level 10, and no more free deaths. If I take another death, I get 2 black beads put into the bag of chance, not just one.

I am suggesting this to avoid the temptation of "I'm level 9 and haven't taken a death yet. What stupid things can I do to use up my freebies before I crack 10."
 
let them have their stupid moment before they hit 10. They can only do it twice. If it's something that's going to make them enjoy the game and have that one story to share with friends, IMO, it enhances the game.

Also, If somebody is willing to put forward the cash to just walk in with a level 15 character, I say let them. That chapter is going to have a hell of a lot more free spending money to improve that years worth of events making it better for everybody. And if I'm not mistaken, don't the low level chapters have level caps to prevent floor wiping by high level characters?
 
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