Player freedom and DM interactions

[Rhifox]

I will just say immediately also that I am 100% against any and all cases of players playing multiple characters that know and interact with one another. If your character wants something done, don't hide behind an expendable, throwaway NPC with no personality. Work on building your character. This isn't Crusader Kings. It's a role playing game, not some strategy game or a city builder. Sure, there can be aspects of city building in roleplaying games and character development, but focus on the character. Hire other PCs or NPCs to do work for you if you don't want to do it yourself.

As someone who has been playing and developing a single character since 2016, and have played zero other alts, I've been doing nothing but developing my character. I vastly prefer playing my own character and hate playing alts. But one part of developing a character is that character getting to a place where they have the power to delegate tasks to others. Ideally, in a more active environment, with a bigger guild, you could get players for that, but that is not the situation we are in. It is also not a great situation when you have to bog down already overworked DMs even more and wait 2-6 weeks to get a task done with a minor NPC.

When you are unable to use alts for things your character would realistically do, it can get to the point where you are having to break character to do tasks that you would otherwise send a minion on. Or just not do that thing at all, and just, not RP at all. That is not character building. That is character diminishing.

And frankly, DnD has always had support and systems for running organizations and henchmen. In earlier editions it was even expected that high level PCs would come into control of land and territory, with many cohorts and followers to their name. That is, in fact, part of the game.

But access to throwaway, foolproof semi-PCs is a terrible, terrible idea.

It has been done to great effect on many other servers. People often say 'oh you can't do this mechanical thing from pnp because the game isn't pnp!', when it is almost always doable. But 'need a DM for every thing you do'? That is certainly something that falls under the 'this is not pnp and things can't be done 100% how you would do it in pnp' label.

[blazerules]

And frankly, DnD has always had support and systems for running organizations and henchmen. In earlier editions it was even expected that high level PCs would come into control of land and territory, with many cohorts and followers to their name. That is, in fact, part of the game

Even in current editions its a thing!

While these are supplements, just to make a point... Strongholds & Followers, Kingdoms & Warfare, Lords of Waterdeep, Acquisitions Incorporated, The Book of Hordes (A supplement for LARGE scale battles. Think total war), Fief: A Look at Medieval Society from its Lower Rungs (Though not SPECIFICALLY D&D only). Theres tons more. Roleplaying is all about the fantasy of a thing. Be it playing a knight, adventurer, mage, researcher, merchant, noble, ruler etc. You cant get the full noble/ruler/bossman fantasy without the aspects that make that thing the thing it is. Its like playing a greatsword warrior, but you cant use greatswords.

Playing the Dreadlady and having to deliver your own messages certainly destroys the fantasy of playing a dreadlady. Not to mention making no sense from a believablility pov.

"Minor" tangent.
I'd also like to note that Crusader Kings is primarily a roleplaying game. Its focus is both character and dynasty. So Im not sure if its a good example to use as a "this is a roleplaying game, not CK." Id know, I play CK2 and CK3 as purely roleplaying games. City/Settlement/Culture building very much connects with character building. It gives context to things, and gives players more things to bounce off of. Most importantly it creates a more dynamic and interactive world for players to bounce off of. I could very much make the same arguments for having combat or loot in a roleplaying game. And there are roleplaying games with neither. Just depends where the focus is.

At least in a roleplaying context it depends on what aspects are focused on for the mechanic/thing. Settlements? The focus would be the culture of the place. So how its ruled, racial stuff, standard of living, worker protections, how the laws are, the general vibe of the place etc etc etc. Of course these things are strongly supplemented by well... economy, military etc. But that's not the focus.

But I fully get what you mean. This does come from the perspective of someone who will only ever play 1 character

Granted I highly, highly doubt we'd ever get something like that. Nor do I have any hopes for it.

[krighaur]

How to start

First I understand that people playing since year here, and perhaps tired a bit of new players simply staying some weeks or monthes, search a way to continue something they started long ago.

I also know that fresh new players are very rare : most are returning player, or player coming from a closed server.

But if your 'old' PC who have all the power, know all history, have connection with other high PC and NPC and know what DM wants, have also the right to play an alt for the today task ....... ask yourself, what will remain for the very few new players, and also will it make the server grow, or rather will it make shrink more on itself ?

[DM Spartacus]

I like the idea of playing or allowing the playing alts where it might enhance rp not smother it as the many examples of things above like player housing it can close down play but the upside can be a revival for people.

I like and have mooted before the idea of rp led opposition groups with stories and constraints (the detail might be an important thing but not for this post) as mooted above.

Constraints yes are for all alts agreed might fall with a max of level 10 if they know or work for the main. This restricts and therefore might eliminate a lot of the maxing stats for spying roles etc.

Without deciding the detail here now constraints on adversary groups fixed to max level 10 might include who picks the theme (for the server really maybe rather than individual to go along side a plot eg - gangs of spice dealers/hunters or elsewhere mage hunters/savers or village militias trying to thwart drow raiders. (the idea here is rp helps individuals but also provides groups to reinforce the plot/bring it to life between events and provide a player focus for the mains playing the plot. The very LARGE emphasis here is these rp options enhance a plot or other dm theme between sessions and is tacked on to some main game theme.

Further constraints here might be led at creation of a particular theme but could include dates allowed to be played/ rules around death /time spent on server tasks while there. Some other rp objectives to better define and force 'speed' rp while in game/preparing for game to keep the rp part high. general duration of theme. (narrowing dates of play against shrinking population allows some fresh play in set weeks/days or even hours if a firm grasp of rp objectives ie to take the spice theme - players come on have to achieve random 3 things from a list of 10 in a set time - these can be group task or individual goals designed by someone (maybe the plot dm) to keep rp a big part of the alt) and these are not for now decisions but understanding constraints used here will guard and empower alt concept?

I think for messenger longer term alts the level 10 rule might cast aside some of the concerns raised. But like player housing there is a very real risk it drives isolationist and 'my game' rp but overall I think well worded it is something to reduce dm workload and enhance their plots between whatever time they have a available.

And to respond to the post that popped in above mine - this is pretty key other people should always be encouraged to have a role for your pc wherever you can make it happen and this first before the other stuff. However as mentioned above their are currently ways round a lot of things and what matters most is player integrity and it may be the player above is investigating a plot and instead of being in conflict with L30 players they might find the odds evened? It is the will and desire to rp that is the aid to dm time the decision on rules less so.

I also empasize for all known to main alt L10 ought to be high enough - any views there?

[Ghost]

Playing the Dreadlady and having to deliver your own messages certainly destroys the fantasy of playing a dreadlady. Not to mention making no sense from a believablility pov.

Lets not pretend this is about sending messages or some other obviously trivial matters. We clearly can do that already over forums. No one is going to complain about you saying an NPC is delivering a message.

This kind of thing specifically allows the participation in events without any trace of your main character. If my orc has a human servant he sends into cities to learn of the plans to attack Uruk Lurra, and there's no reason for those present to think this nobody human has any connection to the orcs, and then I just discard the NPC after I've learned what I've wanted, that is a completely foolproof, entirely expendable information gatherer that offers literally 0 risk for my orc.

This isn't about trivial actions. This is about actions where your main character is under at least some level of risk when performing the action. Not about messages, or bidding on an auction, or watching an open stage at the white mask theatre. This is about intrigue RP.

Having been on the receiving end of metagaming destroying several years of RP, I take metagaming very seriously.

[DaloLorn]

PH touched on an interesting detail, and in light of Krighaur's concerns, I feel like it warranted some more attention.

We used to allow multiple PCs in the same guild, arguably even direct subordinates of each other. His Wyndsoul, Thieves' Guild, and Weavemaster minions are examples... but a more recent one would be Lambert and his endless army of Zau'afin alts. Nobody cared, and if not for the fact that I've just drawn attention to him, I don't think anyone would have batted an eyelash at the Zau'afins. (Not that he seems to play anymore anyway.)

Why did these alts exist? Only their owners could say for sure. But PH's entire first paragraph consists of legitimate reasons to make them and others like them:

Hidden: show

It comes down to trusting your players to take their time and characters seriously on this server. There arent very many players left - to run a full fledged guild without DM support these alts are nearly imperative. Guilds continue to struggle to entice new characters or low level characters to join them when the rest of the guild is high-level, or the heads of guilds have worked their way up in character to a point where a lot of the menial tasks no longer make sense. The Dreadlady wouldnt go deliver a message herself. Jackard wouldnt be out collecting herbs and fishing. The guildmaster of the thieves guild likely wouldnt be running around with a low-level cutpurse. These things are jobs and roles of underlings and characters that are lower in the food chain - characters that simply cant exist with the paltry player numbers the server puts up these days.

I don't believe that anyone in this conversation wants to use minion alts to deprecate new PCs. Rhi and PH certainly seem to be coming from a position of "there aren't enough new PCs to hire/recruit in the first place", rather than "I want anonymous throwaways to protect my main" or "I want to do everything myself, screw the newbies". For my part, I've never gone and done it because I was always afraid they'd spiral out of control, become fully-fledged characters, and inflate my already bloated roster... but I've certainly considered the notion of rolling up some lower-level Selmiyeritars to improve my ability to vacuum up new UDers.

You want them to stop asking for it? Then go find them a bunch of new players to recruit into their respective organizations. We don't have enough.

[Ghost]

You want them to stop asking for it? Then go find them a bunch of new players to recruit into their respective organizations. We don't have enough.

How about fewer organisations to focus on? A big problem, as I see it, is that everyone wants to be a leader, but few wants to actually lead and certainly not work through hierarchies to become leaders. Just make their own copy of another already existing organisation and become the leader of that instead of rising through ranks.

[DaloLorn]

You want them to stop asking for it? Then go find them a bunch of new players to recruit into their respective organizations. We don't have enough.

How about fewer organisations to focus on? A big problem, as I see it, is that everyone wants to be a leader, but few wants to actually lead and certainly not work through hierarchies to become leaders. Just make their own copy of another already existing organisation and become the leader of that instead of rising through ranks.

As of the time of posting, it is my understanding that we have the following active guilds... using the term "active guild" loosely enough to include lore organizations with at least one member:

• A variety of cults and temples, each of them worshipping entirely different gods/groups of gods (these are all sort-of lore organizations in the sense that each of these gods has an organized religion of some sort, even if the specific cults and temples don't exist... not a lot of redundancy between them, but they'd probably double the size of my list if I enumerated them individually)
• One Black Network
• One Soubarite paramilitary
• One druidic enclave
• One mostly-lay-Vhaeraunite house
• One canonical Lolthite house (barely, only by virtue of trying to rally a bunch of randoms to do her bidding without joining the house)
• One thieves' guild
• Two elven villages
• One Sshamathan school of magic (out of a possible 9-10!)
• One library-fortress
• One Good secret society
• Two trading companies
• One adventuring company
• One band of nation-building mercenaries (I dunno how else to describe Myradon, but they're definitely not merely adventurers)
• One theatre
• Two knightly orders operating under the banners (loosely speaking) of two different governments
• One Thayan enclave

Among these, there is very little redundancy, and some have occasionally been argued to be de-facto satellites of others. The handful of duplicates exist for reasons far beyond merely "everyone wants to be a leader":

• Rocky Creek long predated Honk's initiative of running the Iron Throne as a lore guild, and the Iron Throne happens to be secretly Evil.
• EDE split off from DA on ideological grounds, if memory serves.
• The Everwatch operates almost exclusively in Amn, while the ORH Auxiliary deals primarily with Baldurian affairs.

Historically, yes, we've had a lot of duplicates. I think three concurrent knightly orders at one point, and several noble/pseudo-noble houses in both the Gate and Sshamath. No shortage of adventuring and trading companies, either. But right now, the only real way of condensing our factions would be to start imposing hard limits on what kinds of RP we wanted to support. (We already have plenty of soft limits, between population issues and DM availability, but we don't tell people their RP is invalid just because we need them to meet someone else's faction size quota.)

[InTheFlesh]

but few wants to actually lead and certainly not work through hierarchies to become leaders.

What if you want to abolish hierarchies

[Tantive]

but few wants to actually lead and certainly not work through hierarchies to become leaders.

What if you want to abolish hierarchies

Under which order of importance do you want to start? There's a hierarchy of time if you want something done.

[Rhifox]

Playing the Dreadlady and having to deliver your own messages certainly destroys the fantasy of playing a dreadlady. Not to mention making no sense from a believablility pov.

Lets not pretend this is about sending messages or some other obviously trivial matters. We clearly can do that already over forums. No one is going to complain about you saying an NPC is delivering a message.

This kind of thing specifically allows the participation in events without any trace of your main character. If my orc has a human servant he sends into cities to learn of the plans to attack Uruk Lurra, and there's no reason for those present to think this nobody human has any connection to the orcs, and then I just discard the NPC after I've learned what I've wanted, that is a completely foolproof, entirely expendable information gatherer that offers literally 0 risk for my orc.

This is completely ignoring what I actually said, which is that we can make rules that such a character is required to be overtly tied to the main. No spies allowed.

This isn't about trivial actions. This is about actions where your main character is under at least some level of risk when performing the action. Not about messages, or bidding on an auction, or watching an open stage at the white mask theatre. This is about intrigue RP.

Just because intrigue RP is the only thing you can think of doesn't mean that's what other people care about. For me, it is about trivial actions. I couldn't give a shit about "spy RP". I'm looking for "herald" RP - sending representatives and servants who are openly known as my main's agents. And I know others enjoy doing family RP, background character RP, and so on - characters who push stories forward, or provide interesting fluff and scenes, rather than being used for OOC spying on other people. And ofc back in the day I often RPed my spirits, but that was a bit of a gray area because spirits could be RPed while still also playing the main, through possession or summons.

Some of us, do, in fact, want to be able to create associated alts for mundane reasons.

To use an example of the kind of thing I have wanted to do: at last ducal court, I wanted to submit a diplomatic immunity request to BG (as we had done last year) to get permission to send an envoy of Darkhold. It was explicitly needing to be someone other than Tarina because of the fact that Darkhold would not send someone of importance so long as BG remains diplomatically hostile. Tarina going was simply not possible. And other current player members of Darkhold are not ICly 'out' as agents so they couldn't serve that purpose either. It had nothing to do with 'muh safety', and everything to do with sending a political message. As my DM request asking permission for that was functionally rejected, that meant I didn't go at all. No RP created for anyone.

If spy RP is really an issue, then you ban spy alts specifically. Not all player NPCs period.



... But, let me go on a tangent here.

I don't even know if I agree that spy RP is bad. I certainly don't give a shit about metagaming, because I'm here to RP, not do OOC PvP. Who cares if people OOCly know what I'm doing? Their characters ICly wouldn't, and if they're even half a decent RPer they'd respect that and maintain IC/OOC separation. But back to spy RP... again, who cares if they know IC? I've recently been spied upon by a former member, who shared a bunch of stuff about our activities with our enemies. Oh no! Anyway. I didn't even remove the spy from our private discord channels until recently because I was lazy. In fact I think they still have access to our forums. Me and that player are still cool with each other OOC, even if our characters hate each other's guts.

People knowing things, IC or OOC, about characters' fictional adventures and schemes, doesn't matter. I don't care if people know, for example, that Tarina showed up at the Iron Throne ball in disguise, doing information gathering/influence building. Gasp! The secret is out, my RP is ruined, what will I do! My IC character in a quasi-secretive organization is doing IC secret stuff, who would have thunk? Oh, but she was there as a simulacrum (with DM permission), so... I guess that's "0 risk"? Of course, she probably wouldn't have attended at all if I couldn't do that, which would reduce potential RP for myself and others, and reduce the possibility of my own exposure (rather than protect it). By disallowing characters to perform intelligent risk management you are hampering RP, not creating it. A character that wouldn't personally go to the city wouldn't suddenly start doing that if they couldn't use a spy. They'd just mask all their RP, avoid interacting with others in any way that could risk exposure, and hide their scry statuses. A spy is part of the RP, while a player who stacks Hide/MS to stay perma invisible and never meets with anyone in public ever isn't. Of the two, the former is the more interesting to RP with. Perma invis sneaks who just sit on top of you AFK never saying or emoting a thing and listen to you RP are far worse than any spy alt, while being entirely legal.

Intrigue RP on this server has always been handled awfully, because everyone who plays it goes into it trying to one-up each other. No intrigue RP should ever be done that isn't done with the expectation that it is eventually revealed. Intrigue RP, like all RP, should be done for the purpose of providing RP to other players, and telling an interesting story. Your "enemy" is your partner, not your opponent. Let them spy on you while you spy on them. Emote when you're spying on someone to add that zest of player OOCly knowing something while the character doesn't know IC. Coordinate with each other OOC when necessary. Share enough crumbs to create excitement and give them a lead to follow, while hiding just enough to create suspense and surprise. Metagaming doesn't ruin RP, because this is fiction, your character's goals are not your goals. Metagaming is only a problem for the fact that it spoils what could have been an interesting story. If people stopped treating intrigue RP as a competition, then maybe they'd stop wanting to metagame in the first place.

But, whatever, my take on this is always a spicy one on BG. So, we go back to my original suggestion: Just ban spy alts, and require all associate alts to have a publicly declared and known connection to the main character.

[blazerules]

[*]One band of nation-building mercenaries (I dunno how else to describe Myradon, but they're definitely not merely adventurers)

Yeah "Mercenary/Adventurer" is just an easy shorthand for what we are. Its hard to really put a label since we really do neither.

You did hit the nail on the head.

The reason Myradon Vindicators exists is because no other organization really hits the short nor long term goals of the characters or players. Or even the fantasy the org provides.

And the way I see it, that's likely the case for other organizations. Less a case of everyone wants to be boss man and more yeah this hits the fantasy of what we want to do quite well so lets do that. Not to say the bossman thing isnt true. Id much rather not be the boss but it certainly makes things a lot easier for doing the things we actually want to do. No other group did anything remotely close (I guess maybe Rocky Creek? But its very easy to see why that doesnt fit).

[Zar'shalee]

DMs here are only compensation for lack things one can do on BGTSCC. And if you are player who do not get into DM plots or dislike DM plots. You have basically nothing to do here - easy. Ok I will correct myself, you can create alt, level them to max level and then to make another one and repeat (that is the current "end-game" loop)

So I will just take a freedom of this 2012 construct of a forum and kindly express what I would want to see on BG:

1) permanent player selling stalls
1.5) permanent but destroyable placables
2) player housing with customizable furnishing that you would place in-game
3) crafting - resource gathering - enchanting - blessings

crafting - from furniture and equipment into your houses to weapons and armors to ships and siege equipment. Make a unique crafting system which is not tied to in game "crafting" skills.

resource gathering - make resource gathering skills non dependant on in game skills. AKA: everyone start with gathering herbs: 1. But more you
gather, your skill permanently increases in game in a real time. Place resources into different parts of a world, force people to travel, to
actually use the whole BG map span. Use gathered resources in crafting or enchanting or selling them to players in your player owned
permanent shops.

enchanting - ability to enchant weapons and armors with properties of your choice (including elemental damage, abilities and EB) if you own a
recipe. Recipes for enchantments added into loot.

blessings - extension to faith system. Faith points - you would gain by making rituals/prayers/sermons to your deity. Gain access to unique
blessing buffs for faith points. Usage of reagents for those rituals. Include other players into those sacred rituals, gain party-wide blessings.
Make blessings into another layer of game and current faith mechanics. (Yes I know it is not part of 3e or DnD, but I dont care because it's cool idea)

4) raise age rating for BGTSCC to 18+ (It would certainly help with luring new people to BG) Only old people still play this game anyway.
5) Allow slavery of PCs
6) Settlement system AKA Arelith - Gather resources for your settlement, make it grow, make it prosper. Trade with other settlements, gather wealth, improve infrastructure, make decisions, assign roles, which comes with unique powers to other people, become a true leader of your community make an impact on a world.


All things mentioned supports RP and make reasons for people to bring some actual stakes, something what matters, so players are motivated to seek and meet with one another to intrigue to plot, to play their characters and be immersed.

[renshouj]

1) permanent player selling stalls
1.5) permanent but destroyable placables
2) player housing with customizable furnishing that you would place in-game
3) crafting - resource gathering - enchanting - blessings
4) raise age rating for BGTSCC to 18+ (It would certainly help with luring new people to BG) Only old people still play this game anyway.
5) Allow slavery of PCs
6) Settlement system AKA Arelith - Gather resources for your settlement, make it grow, make it prosper. Trade with other settlements, gather wealth, improve infrastructure, make decisions, assign roles, which comes with unique powers to other people, become a true leader of your community make an impact on a world.

1, 2, 3 and 6 have nothing to do with DM interaction, theyre straight up devwork to implement that kind of thing (6 being arguably a combination of both). No one here would deny that it'd be cool to have furniture, crafting and the likes, but BG isn't sporting many devs that can do that type of work, and I'm pretty sure that's also not the point of this post.

for 4, I ask you, what do you actually want when you say to raise its age rating? What does the current teen rating impede that an 18+ would allow and that you want to RP?

and as for 5, that is such a niche thing and more specific to the underdark, though I personally wouldnt mind slavery either, though I raise another question, slave NPCs are possible but rarely if ever persued, why do you feel the need for slave PCs, specifically? And the need for the specific distinction between a Slave and a Servant (as a player/guild can most certainly have another PC as a servant, bodyguard and the likes)?

[selhan]

Idk somethings appear to be drifting off topic in my view, so again..

1, I really think to help DM workload, establish registered "support players." , Players that can help push out plots and some rumors. It helps those have something else to do as well by giving other reasons for players to log in. Incentive always helps with activity. And again I will mention some players really dont use the forums at all.

2, Allow guilds, establishment more freedom to make an alt to utilize as a guild guard or Messengers maybe? Disallowing spying etc. And limit to one npc. Could help from having to keep bugging DMs to play out their NPC's, leaving DM use for NPC for the more serious or important stuff. Also having a football team worth of alts in a guild is definite no no.

3, Lastly I cant think of anything else. lol Other than hope someone creates an idea great enough that its offers more Rp and incentive to get more active players. I know we recently had an influx of players migrating over to BGTSCC, but at the same time, we do want them to really have fun and keep them interested to play and invite their friends.

The stuff like adding new stuff like crafting and slaves/servants/ farmable resources I think is off topic and should be addressed in its own thread.