Subj : CITY] Application To : ANDREW TOTH From : HAROLD GROOT Date : Thu Jul 13 2000 05:14 pm -> This could come out a little garbled... It did -> Harold. Given our recent discussions, I'd like to ask you to play in this -> game. Whether you do or you don't, I'd still like your input on what you -> think of the game's progression. Sound goo Your game application actually reduced the specific objections I had a bit - at the cost of opening up an entirely new objection with the very same bit. What I'm referring to here is the creation of brand new 7th-10th level characters, each with magic items chosen by the players. To my mind this sort of giveaway just cheapens the whole game. I play in several different over-the-table groups. In general it takes between 3 and 5 adventure sessions of 4 hours length to go up a level. To bring a new character up to your starting levels of 7th-10th means anywhere from 21 to 50 sessions. If you played once a week, this means between half a year and a full year of effort to reach these levels. The treasure items will all have been fought for. Mages will have had to work hard to find spells to fill their spell books, fighters will have taken their magic armor and weapons from nasty critters who were using those items to try to KILL the fighter. And so on and so on. During the same time that the characters were getting XP and going up levels, the personalities of the characters would be developing. This is not something that is done overnight. One can have a starting point, sure, but the very adventures that they go on will often change a character quite a bit from the original concept. One might expect a simplistic character at 1st level, but not at medium to high levels. The time figures I gave above assumed continuous play. Most groups I know of rotate the DM, rotate the level of play and so on. So it might take 2-3 mundane years to bring a new character up to these levels. And in general, the longer a character has developed the richer the personality. Even when not actively being used, people will often spend a bit of time on their characters developing them. You are not the only person to have done this, but it is still a reason why the game does not appeal to me. I want the character I play to have this richness of development - and I want the risk of loss to be real. If I have a few years invested in bring the character along it is a real loss if the character dies. This intensifies the gaming experience quite a bit. It means that a situation that is scary to the characters should also be scary to the players. If the character is just something whipped up with the Magic Pencil of High Level Character Creation - well, there is just not the same attachment. If the character dies, well, "Easy Come, Easy Go." I not only want my character to be that way, I want the other players and their characters to be that way. It makes for a much greater bonding if each character is significant to each player. They will watch out for your characters and you will watch out for theirs with a much greater intensity if there is something significant on the line - the existence of a long-valued character. It's sort of like the difference between playing poker for chips that are handed out for free and collected at the end of the evening, and playing poker for real money. On the other hand, I mentioned that it did REDUCE my apprehension in one respect. By that I refer to my analogy to "raping" the characters, violating what they have earned, what they can do and so forth. If you actually use these "hand-out" characters, there really isn't that much to violate. They haven't established who they are and what they can do. They haven't risked their lives to gain their magic items. In short, it just doesn't make nearly as traumatic a plot line when the DM "strips the players". You didn't work to get it, so it isn't traumatic when it is taken away. Easy Come, Easy Go again. Not for me. I =want= that high level of importance. I want to see it in the DM and I want to see it in the other players. It's even better where you get to know the other players and their characters over the years, but even pickup games with established characters get much more intense than pickup games with "handout" characters. If I choose to run a game here I will be asking for established characters. Sure, I'll have to set up some guidelines on what reasonable power levels are. Saying something like "500,00 XP max and a dozen magic items max" is within reason - but I want the players to have earned those XP and those items. I don't hand them out like candy at Halloween. So in general, throughout the discussion it has seemed clear to me that our styles of gaming are just too far apart. The things that are important to me do not seem to be important to you. I'll look in on your campaign, just as I looked in on SIGILS, but I'll do my actual gaming elsewhere for now. --- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5 # Origin: Solar Quest Online (1:285/85) * Origin: ConchGate (1:106/357.0) .