RE: CF: Race, Reputation and other suggestions

[dragonm <dragonm@leech.org>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Wedel
To: ''crossfire@ifi.uio.no' '
Sent: 10/30/99 1:13 AM
Subject: Re: CF: Race, Reputation and other suggestions


 While your point of crossfire becoming more social is a hopeful goal, I
then think that we should wait until that happens before adding such races
as the ogre.

 Adding a feature on the hope that future enhancements will better
balance them is just generally a bad idea.  First, you have to wait for
those future enhancements to take place.  Second, when they do take place,
you may have problems in that people see those enhancements as crippling an
otherwise fun race, and thus you get a split on what people think is the
propre way to do something.

-----Begin Response-----
Which came first, the chicken or the egg?  In this case I say neither.  It
was my understanding that breaking apart race and class was of the same
scope as the other three major features I've been basing my arguments on,
and consequently likely to be attempted concurrent with them, since a great
many interactions between them would need to be worked out.
----------

 Taking examples from literature and trying to say that we should do the
same for crossfire probably won't work.  I would tend to venture that many
of the people I actually real life game with would not be all that thrilled
to have some of those extremes in the game.  They may make for good
literature, but they don't necessarily make for good gameplay.  I don't
think anyone will be writing a novel about the crossfire world, and even if
they do, I doubt it would strictly follow what is really legal in crossfire.

-----Begin Response-----
I take examples from literature because that's what newcomers to role
playing games want.  Newcomers show up with "I want to be Frodo" or "I want
to be Drizzt" in droves.  Check UseNet and the various IRC networks.  You
can find 20 variations of people calling themselves "Drizzt Dourden" in
under 10 minutes, usually.  I contend that extremes do make for good
gameplay.  Name any single-player digital FRPG you've ever played.  I
guarantee that when you finish the plot, your character is the biggest bad
boy on the block.  In a nutshell, an extreme.  Admittedly, a multiplayer
game is a somewhat different animal, but it's not so different as all that.
As for your point about the people you real life game with, I'm not sure
whether you're referring to the Society for Creative Anachronism or
paper-and-pencil gaming, but in either case, I throw your own point back at
you.  If slavishly imitating literature is a bad idea for a digital FRPG
(and I conceed it probably is), slavishly imitating SCA or paper-and-pencil
is also a bad idea.  The unwieldy CFRPG acronym (Computer Fantasy Role
Playing Game) is its own animal.  Copying and pasting from other mediums is
rarely effective, and I wasn't proposing that.  I'm just saying that many
players come to CFRPGs from a background of fantasy literature, and catering
to that to a certain extent is a good idea.
----------

 As for maximum stats, perhaps I should be clearer on that:

-----Begin Response-----
And perhaps I should read the code a bit more.  My own characters haven't
been around long enough to be experiencing stat maxing, so I was a bit hazy
on how it works.
----------

 A races maximum natural stat is 20 +/- whatever the starting adjustment
is.  Thus a race that gets a +5 strength and -5 int has a maximum natural
strength of 25, and maximum natural int of 15.

 However, objects (like rings, swords, amulets, helmets, ....) that
adjust those stats go beyond that.  So that same character with a -5 int
could still get a 25 or higher effective int if he can pile enough items
that give him an int bonus.

 In some sense, this sort of balances out - if the ogre has a 25
strength, he doesn't need many items to get it up to 30, so can instead use
those slots for other items.  But it does mean that another race could get
just as high a stat - they just need more items.  Maybe not a big deal.

 I certainly don't want to make the stat maximums any higher than 30.
At one time, they were 25, but with the proliferation of items that give
significant adjustments, it was 'too easy' to get 25's in all the stats.  I
think raising the stats then gave people more room/reason to make stuff more
power - there is actually reason to have +10 to a stat to get that 30 now,
and so even better items show up.

  I really don't know how bad this is, or if it really as throwing
things way out of balance.  I do know that many features have been added for
a long time with no real attempt of keeping the game balanced or play
progression even.

-----Begin Response-----
Agreed, something needs to be done to curtail inflation.  But I think this
conversation, like every other I've seen on the topic so far, is being
conducted at too high a degree of abstraction.  I can't make reasonable,
concrete numeric proposals of the stat modifiers for a new race without
knowing what concrete numeric imbalances exist and how to avoid them.
Evidently, no one can make concrete numeric counterproposals either, since
we all lack the same information.  I think it's time to stop endlessly
rehashing and repeating the same arguments and complaints and get down to
numbers.  Numerically define what constitutes this currently rather nebulous
word "Balance," instrument the server to death, and find out where the
imbalances really are.  That way new proposals can be floated and argued
from a basis that's a little more concrete than the Player's Guide data.

DM
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