Subj : City]
To   : YL112@CORNELL.EDU
From : HAROLD GROOT
Date : Mon Jul 17 2000 04:36 pm

 | <wry g>  In all the live campaigns I've played in, I have *never* gained 
 | level (AD&D) or rank (Legend of the Five Rings).  And you know what? 
 | Nobody really cares.  The level tells us what our characters are roughly 
 | capable of, and we wing it from there. 
 
I haven't participated in LARP, so I can't comment on the difficulties of 
gaining level/rank.  Your statements suggest to me that even with OTT games 
you might be happiest with "diceless" RPGs. 
 
 
  | a rock that could change into 
  | a bird (roc?  but it was pretty small, say large crow-size) 
 
Sounds like your rock could change into a rook, not a roc. 
 
 
  | I feel a go set that will "autoplay" against you is much more fun than 
  | whatever weapon nemuranai (L5R-speak for "magical"). 
 
Well, I guess that might depend on the situations you find yourself in. 
Recently I took a "Thief 6/Mage 5" character into a game.  My character 
didn't have any magic weapons, and we were facing some really nasty 
undead-variant that required magical weapons to hit.  The autoplay go set 
would not have been much comfort. 
 
(It did have a successful ending, however, and I now have a "Thief 7 / Mage 
6" with a +1 dagger.  I don't claim that this character is typical in the 
amount of magic, just that being TOTALLY without certain types of weaponry 
is risky business.) 
 
 
   | Tabletop play around here, 
   | OTOH, tends to be on the good-humored side, and has this frustrating 
   | tendency to degenerate into battle after battle. 
<snip> 
   | But sitting around and rolling dice and saying "I hit, I 
   | missed"--blah. 
 
Well, Sunday's AD&D session here lasted 7 hours.  There was a small battle 
at the beginning to get things started and a much larger battle at the end 
for the climax.  In between we had about 5 straight hours of 
roleplaying.  This is not at all unusual for the groups I am in. 
Friday's Champions game, for example, was about 30 minutes of combat 
in 3 hours of play. 
 
As for my style in PBEM games, there is only one person in this newsgroup 
that could comment (if she's currently around).  Diane Hutton and I were both 
around for the last 50 or so chapters of the BLOODSTONE campaign, where 
I was playing a full elf "Druid 7 / Mage 6" named Firethorn. (Come to 
think of it, she was also on the low end of the spectrum for magic. 
She came into that game with no magic weapons and just 2 misc. magic 
items - and left with the same total.)  Anyway - Diane could tell you 
that I did NOT skimp on the rollplaying aspects during the game itself. 
I often typed as much as the rest of the group put together.  Because 
she was an already-existing character she had a very full personality. 
But she had been changed quite a bit by the adventures she had been on - 
she was quite different from the "brand new 0 XP" version. 
 
 
.... Beat me!  Whip me!!  Make me read my mail online!!! 
___ Viper v2.0 [unknown] 
--- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5
 # Origin: Solar Quest Online (1:285/85)
 * Origin: ConchGate (1:106/357.0)

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