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| Peon Battles; Do you like them or not? | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: January 3, 2015, 1:32 pm (227 Views) | |
| NTNP | January 3, 2015, 1:32 pm Post #1 |
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Admin
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One new aspect that we have recently been trying out is the peon battles, like those found in Veil of Chaos. The basic idea of a peon battle is that the RPer characters are given absolute control over these creatures with the sole purpose of defeating them. Most of the time peons are exceptionally weak and pose little to no danger to the RPer's characters. But my question is, do you want to see battles like this appear in future RPs as well? Now likely any future uses would likely use them as only one aspect of combat (combined with narrated conflicts with regular enemies, challenging battles with NPCs and Bosses and Player versus Player conflicts) but would you like this to appear as well as part of the regular rotation? |
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| Sin | January 3, 2015, 1:38 pm Post #2 |
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Slow and steady...
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I personally started it as a tool to let the players be as badass or vulnerable as they wanted. Obviously, everyone has to start somewhere and people won't be mowing through hordes upon hordes of enemies for a while, but it's there as a character building element for the most part. Also, it's not something we've done before, at least that I can recollect so it keeps to my tendency to try new things with you guys. But as a character building aspect, it puts forth the ability for your characters to be battle field titans or someone more reserved and simply there to help. If you want to make a big brawler like Feng and have him chew through bunches of enemies, go to it. If your character is more along the lines of Mercury who hangs back and supports from afar, there's that too. It also helps in cases like Lee where the character isn't necessarily inclined to kill but does so anyway as he more or less ends up forced in to it. Characters will be however impactful or passive the player wants. Some will end up more useful than others, but that's just how it goes. Not everyone made battlefield capable characters as they'd rather explore another side instead, which again, works perfectly in my eyes. It'd be boring if everyone did the same thing. I didn't want to do another dungeon crawler RP so I shot for something different with big battlefields and strategic elements instead. Naturally, I like the peon thing or else I wouldn't have done it in the first place. >__< |
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| Onime No Ryu | January 3, 2015, 1:40 pm Post #3 |
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I'll be your Undertaker this evening
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I like how it's been done in Sin's RP for the most part, but there are a few issues we've run into: Disagreement over whether a character is powerful enough to do what they do, such as taking out multiple enemies for a "single turn's worth" of stamina. This is probably the big kicker because if it's not handled right people get angry. Disagreement over how smart/powerful the peons themselves are, how "humanized" they are or should be, and other things. However, this is related not only to how people choose to write them (which is what creates most of the inconsistencies) but also to how much knowledge of them we have in-universe. Tedium and monotony. I'll be honest, I'm glad we're at the end of this battlefield after only two "Fight>Camp>Fight>Camp" cycles, because it does get a little stale after a bit. Now, I personally am an impatient sort, that's just me, so by no means should this be taken wholesale. But I think an improvement might be to let us know, overall, how many enemies there are? Like, if we'd started out knowing that there are 200 enemies total on the field, people could kill more enemies and deduct more stamina within reason--for instance, I had Lee take on, what, I think six one time, and deducted more stamina than usual just because I thought I should? More people could do that, and when we got to the end of 200, we'd be able to know for ourselves and say "Okay my character is moving into this next area now." In other words, having more in-universe and out-of-universe knowledge (as long as the meta isn't being abused) about the field and the peons is probably a good idea for these kinds of things. |
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| Sin | January 3, 2015, 1:54 pm Post #4 |
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Slow and steady...
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The first battle was meant to let folks get the hang of things for the most part and things'll be a bit different in the future just because it won't be you guys bowling through noobs every time. The boundaries thing was something I juggled in my head for a while before I settled on what you see now. I know that I personally can't stand a lot of imposed limits on what I can and can't do within an RP. I left a lot of what you can do and what the enemies can do ambiguous because again, it leaves room for the characters to grow and even for the RPers themselves to try something new and learn. The overlying rule for the most part is simply "keep it within reason". The characters returning from VotM would be capable of doing more because they're veterans from the first RP, so to speak. So Darion, Eduardo and anyone else would be stronger than the others and capable of doing more in a fight. So, once that aspect is established, it comes down to what the CHARACTER is capable of doing. I'll compare Darion and Eduardo for this since Dawn and Nicolas are MIA. Darion is a short-range combat mage (correct me if I'm wrong), meaning he gets up in front of enemies and fights them with ice and his fists. Eduardo is a long range support sniper (again, correct me if I'm wrong; just going on what I've seen), meaning he sits back and takes pot shots at enemies with his crossbow. Right off the bat, it's obvious that Darion is going to be able to kill more enemies in the run of a post than Eduardo is so if they both go up against six opponents, Darion killing them all makes sense. Eduardo killing them all does not since reloading his weapon takes time. Repositioning to stay out of attack range takes time. Aiming takes time. So that'd be a circumstance where the "within reason" rule comes in. It is within reason for Darion to kill all six opponents in one post (I interpret the duration of a post as being roughly thirty seconds). It is not within reason for Eduardo to kill all six opponents and probably falls closer to two or three as all of the variables I listed above would have to be realistically taken in to account. For the most part, we're all adults here and can act as such, hence why I don't put so many hard boundaries and rules in place to try and control what occurs. We're writers telling a story and if your character kills all the bad guys, never gets hurt, never makes mistakes and gets everything done the first try, it's boring to read. It comes down to whether or not we want to tell a compelling story or to just get your jollies off for the most part. And, for the record, Darion is my favorite character in the RP at the moment. You're doing far beyond amazing, Matt! Keep it up!
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| Person A | January 3, 2015, 2:13 pm Post #5 |
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Best to sleep on it.
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Sorta! It works out as a way to tell a story, like Sin said, and we can make them as strong or weak as needed. But more importantly, it streamlines some battles much more than just playing ping pong with the GM controlling NPCs. You want to get to the point, just mow through them. The GM thinks the battle should take longer? Maybe a bigger guy who the GM doesn't think should be knocked out so easily? Then have the ping pong battle. I'd say it establishes a good idea when the GM is telling you, "hey! This guy! Stronger than the others!" in a flashing neon sign. I might add more later, out of time now. Edited by Person A, January 3, 2015, 2:15 pm.
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5:53 PM Jul 10