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I do believe TUs should be in the game. I just think with new people regularly coming in, and with lower level mods it won't be as bad as some people think.

TUs should be a little more logically numbered as opposed to just one-a-week.
When they figure out exactly how much xp and gold one gets each mod then TUs should be based around a character playing a select number of mods and gaining a select amount of levels.

The system also needs to be more flexible with the removal of home regions (or diminished importance of). Something should encourage the PCs to stay close to home (for storyarc reasons) and start alts abroad for farther away regions.

Or a more realistic approach might work. Mods take up X number of days (which vary depending on the mod and are recorded on each) and have a chart for travel between regions. Which encourages play in neighboring regions instead of bouncing across the globe (I dislike the idea of a character having to always pay 2 TUs for a Core due to travel when their last three mods have been set in the same location).
When the character ticks off his full 365 days (or whatever) they've used all their time.
It would also be flexible so if you go through mods without resting or eating up days you get more play.

Or there could be a "Travel Pool". Adventuring doesn't cost time but traveling between regions does (again, set # between each region). So if you bounce around alot your pool will drop quickly and you'll be stranded in a region. But if you stay local or the immediate area then you get to play more.

With more real villains, slavery should be rarer. Which removes that fate worse than death. So there's less chance of losing TUs for that.
But imprisonment... I've never liked the TU loss for that. With 2 or 3 alts anyway, unless it's a huge number then you don't notice. It'd be better if that character was removed from play for the real-time duration.

Most people posting here on the pro TU side of things seem to say "We should have TUs because I think we should". Where's the justification? The analysis of cost versus benefit? What do TUs buy that we can't get other ways?

We seem to have a core group of people who want to change as little as possible from the way LG worked. The problem is, LFR is probably not going to lose those people as players because of meta-game rules. I would guess that if TUs are eliminated, we will lose very few people that played LG due to eliminating TUs (we may lose them for other reasons). OTOH I know people who didn't play LG or who quit in large part because of the overhead (including TUs).

We should be asking a different question. Not, should we have TUs, but how do we best encourage a significant percentage of people to play a variety of character levels so that we support tables for new people? Do we even need to have a policy?

The biggest issue seems to be the perception that we need to force people to have multiple PCs so that we support low level tables. If you have a small enough group of players in an area, there's very little we can do. Even if you limit how often a person can play a specific PC, the odds of the small group playing new PCs at the same time a new person wants to join are probably small. If it's a good group, they will have multiple PCs so they can at least occasionally bring in new people.

If it's a larger group, there will probably be people who play frequently who write up new characters on a regular basis for a variety of reasons. I see people creating characters to play with friends they're introducing to the campaign, because they want to play intro mods/lower APL games. I personally have a spread of characters because I enjoy playing a variety of characters and because I want to be able to play different APLs.

I think we just need to balance what level adventures are geared to. If 50% of all mods are geared towards Heroic level characters, most people will write up new characters when their favorite character reaches Paragon level.

Allen.

TWG_Prometheus wrote:

Instead, I'll cite the use of TUs as a cost. This shows up in a number of ways.

The problem with TUs as a cost is that they are very uneven. I have characters that are "filler" characters that never run out of TUs. A 30 TU penalty? A 10 TU cost for a meta-org? I don't care. I have other "primary" characters where a 2 TU penalty towards the end of the year means I don't play in a game or two I had scheduled at a con.

A cost that has such dramatically different effects on different characters is fundamentally flawed.

Allen.

I favor Time units. I think they are a great tool to manage in-game benefits and penalties and other investments of in-character time. I also think TUs are a good way to gauge an adventure's length and help create the standard or measuring stick upon which XP and gold can easily be determined.

As noted above, TUs are one of Living Greyhawk's (many) strengths. I vote for keeping them.

The big problem with TUs is the number (52) is just pulled from nowhere (okay, it's the number of weeks in the year, but no less arbitrary). So you can play 52 regional/metaregional if there were that many release or, more likely, 26 Core mods.
And with 20 Core mods a year (40TU), 9 regionals (49TU) and 6 metas (52 + 3TUs) you can almost play everything without an alt anyway, assuming you don't do specials or interactives or belong to meta-orgs.
So the "requiring" or alts just doesn't work because you can play over 90% of mods with a single character.

If TUs are done for LFR you'd have to have far fewer for the argument to work.
At the same time, reducing the number below 50 makes it less flexible and more restrictive. Each reward that costs a TU costs the character the chance "for 15% of a level's worth of xp.
TUs also only restrict play at the end of the year and during the flurry of retirement Cons or GameDays.

A monthly play allotment might be one option. Instead of 52 TUs for a year it might be 5 TUs a month. That way you always have some for the end of the year. But this causes problems during slow months when you might use 1 or 2 compared to con season where you could blow 10 in two weeks.

And, as mentioned earlier, without some kind of "time pool" things like slavery, jail, crafting and travel are less meaningful.

But there should also be some realism in distance between regions ("I join a metaorg in Baldur's Gate when I live in Cormyr and the TU cost is the same" or "it costs the same TUs to play in BG as it does it Akanul when one is just across the sea"). Plus how TU costs don't take into consideration that you're a 15th level wizard who teleports down the street to buy a bagel every morning yet has to spend an extra week traveling to Greyhawk and back with a bunch of lowbies. Access to magic, boats (owning should be an option AND a benefit)