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4 years ago ::
Aug 29, 2009 - 3:30PM
#41
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Date Joined:
Sep 10, 2004
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But, seriously, to say that they shouldn't play the campaign because of this ... I don't understand it.
I'm not saying they shouldn't play the campaign. I'm saying that it will be difficult to play the campaign properly under those conditions, and they that might be better off with a home-brew campaign.
When something is hard to do properly, you have three choices: you can do your best to do it properly regardless of the difficulty, you can decide to do something else easier instead, or you can just do the original thing improperly without caring too much about it. Only two of those options are acceptable among honorable people.
DCI Level 2 Judge
WPN Advanced TO
RPGA Herald-Level GM
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4 years ago ::
Aug 30, 2009 - 5:27AM
#42
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Date Joined:
Mar 27, 2008
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I saw several folks refer to players who "obviously hadn't played up to X level" or "Didn't know their character sheet." Yes, I'm paraphrasing. I just wanted to point out that a lot of people simply don't memorize this stuff. They don't play the same characters every week, or they only play once a quarter or something. I've got a bi weekly home game at level 11 now in which several of the players still don't remember basics about characters that they've been playing regularly for a year. Why? Cause it simply isn't important to them. They play for the comraderie and RP and could care less about the stats. Likewise, I've played with RPGA peeps who only play RPGA once every 3 months at a game day. They may have gotten to level 6 or 7, but the play is so sporadic that they are effectively relearning the char each and every time. In short, I'd be wary of assuming that clumsy play is always indicative of someone who hasn't leveled up properly. -just a thought.
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4 years ago ::
Aug 30, 2009 - 10:18AM
#43
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In short, I'd be wary of assuming that clumsy play is always indicative of someone who hasn't leveled up properly.
Excellent point. I've got several players in one of my home games (whom I obviously *know* have earned their way through their character levels) whom are "clumsy players"...they aren't terribly familiar with their characters, they play slowly. And, it's not like they don't enjoy playing -- in fact, they're among my most eager players. They just never master the rules, or their characters. That's just the way they are. (And, both of them are at least occasional RPGA players, as well.)
"Of course [Richard] has a knife. He always has a knife. We all have knives. It's 1183, and we're barbarians!" - Eleanor of Aquitaine, "The Lion in Winter"
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4 years ago ::
Aug 30, 2009 - 10:28PM
#44
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Date Joined:
Aug 22, 2007
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Setting aside for a moment the discussion of whether the rules are right or not, the belief that LFR can and will be used only with the rules seems silly in the face of the reality that neither you, nor the campaign staff will ever enter that person's home and review their adherence to the rules. In point of fact, no one is ever going to do that even at the Big Cons, as is clearly evidenced by this discussion even occurring at all. If folks want to bend the rules, they are going to be able to do so.
Yes, enforcement of RPGA rules is almost exclusively through social opprobrium--no one is ever going to come into your house and force you to follow the rules; rather, what keeps most people from ignoring the rules when they're inconvenient is the idea that, on some moral level, that's not what they're "supposed" to be doing. There's a general sense that there are things that "reputable" gaming groups do, and things they don't. These things may or may not have perfect congruence with the rules as written. An obvious example would be slot zeroes: If I order the November WITR event (which will presumably be limited to being run on a certain date at a public event) for a gameday at my LGS and hold a game two days earlier in my living room to help prepare DMs, it's unlikely that anyone is going to bat an eye. If I run that same game outside the context of preparing for an event, a meaningful number of people would say that I've done something wrong. This is despite the fact there are no rules that draw a distinction between those two cases; rather, it's just understood that one is okay and the other is not. If it's okay for a convention with the size and support of Gencon to say, "Well, optimally, everyone at the table should be playing a legal LFR character, but if it comes down to a choice between sending a player away and letting them play an illegal character, we'd rather let them play an illegal character," then that becomes the new social norm. In a campaign where the primary reason campaign rules get followed is because of the mindset that "good gamers" follow the rules even if personally inconvenient, do you see the problem when a convention with substantial WOTC, RPG and LFR campaign staff presence sends the message that breaking what is pretty much the most fundamental rule of a living campaign for reasons of expediency is okay?
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4 years ago ::
Aug 31, 2009 - 1:22AM
#45
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Date Joined:
Nov 10, 2003
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In short, I'd be wary of assuming that clumsy play is always indicative of someone who hasn't leveled up properly.
Excellent point. I've got several players in one of my home games (whom I obviously *know* have earned their way through their character levels) whom are "clumsy players"...they aren't terribly familiar with their characters, they play slowly. And, it's not like they don't enjoy playing -- in fact, they're among my most eager players. They just never master the rules, or their characters. That's just the way they are. (And, both of them are at least occasional RPGA players, as well.)
Even if you play regularly, it can be awkward. I played my first Paragon game recently, and even though each player was a) playing their PC number 1, that they've been playing since GenCon UK last year, b) has played said PC frequently over the past year to get the character up to 11, and c) are very frequent LFR players with multiple characters and a pretty good grasp of the rules and nuances (too good, in some cases...), most of us had difficulty keeping track of our characters. A combination of a couple of months worth of downtime away from the character since we levelled, and the inordianate amount of new stuff you get at level 11 meant that we were often forgetting stuff and having to remind each other, fumbling over what our new powers did, etc. It's only going to get worse, too, as levels and complexity increases. I dread to think of all the things I'll be forgetting my PC can do at level 21 (if I ever make it there).
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4 years ago ::
Aug 31, 2009 - 2:36AM
#46
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Well, if that has you worried, you could try the occassional practice delve 
Note that you can run LFR quite well as a home campaign. If you want to start a new player at a higher level that in itself is not a problem. Only when you start using that character outside of your home game would it become one.
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