Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

casadechrisso wrote:That's all good and true points Necromantis. I've seen it a lot in the past too, and it requires some effort sometimes to overcome that stale feeling and force oneself to be open again. I have only played here since April but feel that I'm at a tipping point already with quite a few burnout symptoms. I haven't seen it all, surely not, but I also try to stay at the mid levels as long as possible and avoid everything high level, epic, because I love low key characters.
I'd rather roll a new char than crossing the level 20 line...

But then I often feel low key characters are not very appreciated, they don't try to turn the world upside down, don't take part in epic events, aren't the kings and queens of lore, maybe don't appreciate the epic battles DMs set up for events... maybe they're just a little uninteresting, providing only ambient roleplay here and there and seem like they don't have to say much.
OTOH of course, they also don't show that much care and interest in the world-changing, epic things, more in daily life.

What I miss most atm is some true IC adventuring at my levels. Most of it is just killing stuff, as if everyone just does the dirty work of killing Xvarts for hours until the charcter is finally epic enough to be up there with the stars. Or it's just - and I do appreciate the effort at least, tonight it was actually fun - running with or after a high level character who buffed you to the heavens to get quick xp at areas your character would normally not survive. This is of course an opportunity for some roleplay and a nice gesture, but I really miss the meeting of three characters at roughly the same level who go exploring, on real adventures, testing their newly gained feats and skills at something challenging, and all that IC with some appropriate roleplay for flavor. I feel that this is mostly an afterthought, most just want to get to the high levels as fast as possible and then... I don't know... chat at the fireplaces until an epic DM event happens? Anyway, I think it's just the right time to go on a one week vacation, hope it'll cure that stale feeling a bit.

Even when you manage to find people to do adventure RP with, I found people have vastly differing tastes. Once in a blue moon, I find the holy grail due to playing at a weird non-usual time period.

Often I found people opposed to RPing out the travelling between dungeons, as it reduces the amount of XP/hour and as you said - delays their entry to epic levels. It's pretty hard to find groups of 3-4 people around your level (I CAN find people, but they're +-10 levels away from me and either trivialize the adventure or make it impossible) who are also in favor of "slow and methodical" dungeon clearing and travelling. I remember having a group who mostly quit who actually made a campsite when night fell if travelling, held watches and socialized by a campfire in the middle of nowhere before mechanically resting and going on to finish the dungeon. I havn't been able to find that eversince, except for a select few people already level 30.

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CleverUsername123 wrote:

Hoihe wrote:I remember having a group who mostly quit who actually made a campsite when night fell if travelling, held watches and socialized by a campfire in the middle of nowhere before mechanically resting and going on to finish the dungeon.

HOOOOOOLD ON that sounds pretty great. Is this a truth? On BG?

Yep, altho' 2014-ish I think.

Yeah, that does probably not happen much, and when in dungeons I cut my RP to a minimum as well - it'll get me and the group probably killed because the respawn times are so insanely fast. If you stop to type a line in the gnoll caves you can be sure there spawned a bunch of fresh marauders and mages directly on you as soon as you hit enter.
I'm not looking for hardcore Roleplay, I like fine adventures and killing stuff like everyone else, and if you roleplay every lost hitpoint as a dramatic wound I probably get out too... but even with limited RP there's still a difference between some fun adventure and just grinding.

casadechrisso wrote:Yeah, that does probably not happen much, and when in dungeons I cut my RP to a minimum as well - it'll get me and the group probably killed because the respawn times are so insanely fast. If you stop to type a line in the gnoll caves you can be sure there spawned a bunch of fresh marauders and mages directly on you as soon as you hit enter.
I'm not looking for hardcore Roleplay, I like fine adventures and killing stuff like everyone else, and if you roleplay every lost hitpoint as a dramatic wound I probably get out too... but even with limited RP there's still a difference between some fun adventure and just grinding.

I hate the idea of hit point = health.

My stance on HP is to treat it as "fighting spirit" or "stamina". It's the character's ability to turn a lethal wound into a scratch, or to throw themselves off balance, maybe pulling a muscle as they do so, in a panic dodge.

This plays nicely with how real duels occur. Usually someone loses because they had to panic parry, losing their structure and thus become less able to defend themselves afterwards. Due to how exhausting combat is, you only recover from it by getting some proper rest.

To take things further, one can use the Sea Dogs: To Each His Own system, where health exists, but hit points are its shield. You have health matching your hitpoints, and variable amount of hitpoints. At max hitpoints, an incoming hit deals (damage * (1 - current hitpoints/total hitpoints)), meaning at 100% HP, you avoid injury entirely, but the more hitpoints you are missing at the time of being struck, the more severe an injury to health becomes. Getting hit at 50/100 HP for 25 damage with let's say, 76 health, will deal 13 health injury. If hitpoints are reduced to 0, but health > 0, the individual is incapacitated. If health = 0, the individual dies.

One can naturally simplify this system and just go "my 550/550 HP dwarf got hit for 25 damage. He gets slightly winded, but keeps fighting. He gets hit again for 25 damage, and being less than perfectly centered, ends up getting a tiny stinging nick." vs "My 100 HP wizard gets hit for 25 damage. She barely shoves the blade aside with her staff, breaking her structure and pulling a muscle. Another 25 damage hit comes, and with the pulled muscle she cannot stop it entirely, just do her best to avoid dying. In doing so, she blocks a cut aimed at her neck with her shoulders, leaving a nasty wound - but surviving."

Anyhow, off topic.

Regarding respawn times - spell durations are also an issue. If we were realistic, most emotes/dialogue wouldn't take longer than minutes from start to finish. Instead, a few words/unsheathing a word itself takes minutes. With how the server mandates buffing, it discourages interacting with the environment.

chad878262 wrote:There are players that enjoy adventure rp, but in my experience the only way to have it consistently is to form a group and agree to meet on regular days and times. Otherwise it can be difficult to find the d&d type experience you're looking for.

Unfortunately this can lead to that cliquish mentality/conception and make others feel unwelcome. I tend to have Rania just walk around and speak to whomever is available, unless of course there's an ic reason for her not to.

Some people seem to get way too bogged down in their own personal preferences for RP, as if it's either perfect or nothing. Try to adapt a bit instead. Follow the flow of the RP rather than trying to dictate how it goes. If you're always frustrated over how other people treat the distances and timescales, for instance, you're bound to practically never enjoy the game. These things would only make sense to RP out in their entirety if all of us were online at all times.

Point is, this isn't a life simulator. It's a role playing game.

I admit, I have my own frustrations and styles I really don't like interacting with. But I'm tolerant and able to enjoy quite a wide spectrum of RP, even if I would prefer the heavier style.

taintedseraphim wrote:

chad878262 wrote:There are players that enjoy adventure rp, but in my experience the only way to have it consistently is to form a group and agree to meet on regular days and times. Otherwise it can be difficult to find the d&d type experience you're looking for.

Unfortunately this can lead to that cliquish mentality/conception and make others feel unwelcome. I tend to have Rania just walk around and speak to whomever is available, unless of course there's an ic reason for her not to.

Not in my experience. When I formed a group that met weekly for 2-3 hours we had several instances where others joined us on an adventure or high level PC's reached out to act as quest givers or just for some RP. Simply put, it is difficult to find players who are in to adventure RP in game because often they are already out adventuring or you run in to a group that is going adventuring, but is not compatible with your level or PC (i.e. you don't want to go adventuring with the Paladin since you're an evil necromancer.)

Cliquish behavior is a player/group issue, not specific to the way in which you set up a group. Being open to things happening organically in game is not in opposition to using forums to try and set up a group of players with similar play times that want to specifically have a certain type of RP/mechanical game experience.

Chad is right on with this: forming a group—adventuring or not themed—is really the best route to having a real RP D&D experience, at least in my opinion.

It is almost always NECESSARY to be in the same Timezone with regular same gaming/online hours. This activity almost always breeds success for the BGTSCC experience.

Now, while being cliquish can and does happen, AND it can also happen in a totally in-character way—which in itself makes sense on so many levels...—it by no means is a default aspect of a group. I'd actually argue that a group brings in more opportunities that trying to solo the experiences and join up with whatever random whatsit.

But let's face it: role-play requires quite a lot of time investment, and for those Community members that utilize BGTSCC for short game time Real Life relief, grinding+looting+drop-in RP is going to be far more rewarding than the deep storyline, show up X times on X time per week/month/year etc. type of role-play.

That said, it is even MORE IMPORTANT then to have a regular group, because then your "drop ins" are more continuous and beneficial to the group, which feeds back to the individual.

Problem with groups is the same issue I have with finding RP as is.

It's OOC organization for IG/IC results. It just feels wrong. For me at least, pre-arranged RP always felt flat and wrong and unnatural.

Hoihe wrote:Problem with groups is the same issue I have with finding RP as is.

It's OOC organization for IG/IC results. It just feels wrong. For me at least, pre-arranged RP always felt flat and wrong and unnatural.

Thats what DG highlighted. You make it sound as if we had to be born into the Faerun in order to be able to have fun. Thank god, that is not the case. So ooc organization is needed, whether to let others know what your timezone is, or when you get off work, or even an idea you can rp about.

Well, yes. There was that in what I said, but mainly what I meant was "be more approachable". Be open to enjoy things that don't conform 100% to your own personal preferences.

A lot of the potential for enjoyment lies in the attitude you have towards it. If you expect not to enjoy something, you're not going to. If you try to rid yourself of the expectation, you may still end up not enjoying it, but there's a very much greater chance that you will enjoy it. The expectation just makes it self-fulfilling.

Try it out. You may just end up evolving your own RP, and at the same time encourage others to be more in-depth about RP, like yourself. Shape the RPers you want to interact with.

Hoihe wrote:Problem with groups is the same issue I have with finding RP as is.

It's OOC organization for IG/IC results. It just feels wrong. For me at least, pre-arranged RP always felt flat and wrong and unnatural.

I'm really not sure exactly what kind of experience it is you're wanting? I mean, you're making an OOC decision to log on, etc- doesn't that count as an OOC decision that directly affects IG/IC outcomes? Every table-top game I ever played was a symphony of OOC organization for IC/IC responses- Dates, times, baby-sitters, who was bringing the mountain dew, who was bringing the cheetoes....

You don't have to script the interactions you have in the act of saying "Hey, we all get together at X time!"

At best. There's 70 odd characters awake in the world at any one time... good luck trying to RP with each and every single one of them at the same time, or even during your course of an hour or two.
It's physically impossible. And even if it were, possible, you wouldn't be adding value to them or yourself. It'll turn into another DM slaughter fest RP experience where 5-7 voices speak louder than others, and the rest sit back with cheetos and coke. Or as some of the lesser 'popular' voices in the community say, a "Look at how important they feel" event.

Groups, and thereby perceived cliques, will always form. Either naturally or forceably.

If you can't find a way into the group, then it wasn't meant to be. Start your own. There are always people seeking other people to hear their story.

Another positive for preorganised groups. It guarantees that you will get along OOCly with the others involved and ensure that you aren't wasting your limited time in game, to ensure you get the valued game time experience you desire. Some of us literally do only have a handful of hours available per week. Sure not going to waste them on players/characters that aren't interested in my story, or I find a PITA to deal with OOCly. Go where you smile.

You make it sound like a popularity contest. If you want to be in the spotlight, you have to work yourself into it.