AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic

If a player goes this route and the quest fails, what if any opportunity will the player have to re-evaluate and try again for the same goal from a different direction, or with maybe the benefit of experience? I mean... I didn't get cheese souffle right on the first try, you know? Letting the success or failure of a request be dependent on a plot rather than exclusively on the quality of the RP opens up the possibility (way further than it already is) of a player's request failing through no fault of their own, despite doing everything excellently and "right" both IC and OOC.

How about requesting quests without there being DC items involved? Not necessarily in the sense of writing up a request in the Requests subforum, but through PM?

For example, I hate grinding exp with a passion, no matter what the game. I want the story, the RP part of the RPG, and sure, some senseless slaughtering of somewhat innocent creatures when I'm feeling it. Questlines like the old (assuming no one runs them anymore) New Beginnings that were run by various DMs, allowed for the grind to be fun and memorable. We got to earn exp from killing monsters, sure, but we also earned some for solving puzzling problems that were holding us back. And not only did it allow us to level up faster while we were running around in these quests, it also made for lasting bonds between a few of our characters, and even spread out those bonds by the aftermath socialising we did. When I was in RedeemerAutumn's New Beginnings, about 4 years ago maybe, my character met her insta-bf, Helena Rios. Through her, she met Saris Talin who ended up being one of her major enemies. It lead to many hours of great RP that I'll not soon forget, and I wouldn't want to have been without it.

So yeah, how about requesting these sorts of things? Should we hold out and hope for it, or is it fine to ask for it and maybe even provide ideas and thoughts?

Im in favour... but ONLY if we get more European dm's. Theres a distinct lack of them. Aka - theres none online our evenings

Actually, we're doing pretty well for European DMs, especially after taking on Amarice and Rigela. There's been one on average each day between the GMT times of 8pm-12am the past month now.

Yep, the hours that need DM'ing are the early to mid afternoon hours in Europe, but that's when most people have work or school, so that's a bit hard to change consistently.

Yossarin wrote:

I suppose in essence what this thread accomplished was about what I hoped it would accomplish: letting you know this is a possibility, one that may be a great relief to many of you whom I feel have been put on the spot when we ask you to provide roleplay and you have to manufacture something that, while it may be well-written and even organic to your character, lacks that sense of accomplishment and risk, and the entitlement that comes along with having truly earned that request.

Have you considered that perhaps it would be more suitable to do it the other way around?

Something tells me that the majority of people will always welcome DM interaction, so when posting a request they'll just ask for a DM quest by default. This might leave you with having to invent a thousand ways to do a simple reskin or forge a better weapon. So why not leave the quest option for DM's alone, to use when they feel a specific, difficult request would ideally require risky, dynamic RP with a chance of failure?

It's something that just came to my mind automatically when reading this.

Then again, i'm someone who's probably not qualified for opinion on DC requests, because i haven't done any. I must be doing something wrong, right? A year+ here, and not a single thing i'm able to afford to request... Bottom line is, i don't really care how requests are handled. I'd be more interested to discuss DC distribution issues. I play in a niche by choice, and it doesn't really matter how much i RP online - there's never any DM around to witness it.

It's not necessarily down to doing it wrong. It's the luck of the draw, so to speak. Being in the right places at the right time, it can be difficult for this to actually happen. I've gone weeks with a lot of RP before with no DC's at all sometimes, but then there have been the odd rare days I've had up to three or four DC's in the same day from seperate DM's though spread through out the day. I don't expect to earn DC's, but it's nice to be awarded them but they can motivate you to further your RP while knowing you're getting a bit of recognition for doing it well enough that someone else enjoys it (since that's what the server is about, enjoying yourself and bringing it to other players too) and sometimes I've found myself being awarded for RP things that seemed so insignificant to me, maybe it was just that me and others kept consistency throughout the time we were being watched, I don't know for sure.

It was I think two years before I made a request and even longer for me to make any that cost DC's iirc. But there are many things that can catch the DM's eyes when you RP, from my experience, consistent RP throughout hunting for example, though admittedly I'm guilty of not always contributing much with RP in a hunt, I'm concentrating that much on keeping myself alive and trying to help the party that I often forget to RP my actions, but I have been rewarded a few times when it's been at a slower pace and I have more time to react between encounters.

It did cross my mind in the first place, Aeqvinox. It's just that then it wouldn't be optional.

Lizzie wrote:

If a player goes this route and the quest fails, what if any opportunity will the player have to re-evaluate and try again for the same goal from a different direction, or with maybe the benefit of experience? I mean... I didn't get cheese souffle right on the first try, you know? Letting the success or failure of a request be dependent on a plot rather than exclusively on the quality of the RP opens up the possibility (way further than it already is) of a player's request failing through no fault of their own, despite doing everything excellently and "right" both IC and OOC.

I don't actually have an answer for that, tbh. It seems to depend upon the nature of the request, really. If it is set up as a "if you had...one shot...", like your request is dependant upon catching Halley's Comet with a magical butterfly net, well, that would be beyond the scope of a repeat performance. But there are plenty of requests I can imagine where repeat attempts would not be out of the question.

Though it does beg a lot of other questions. Like, what if the nature of the request would be somehow inherently changed the second time around? Would we expect the player to roll with that kind of a punch?

Say if we didn't have exact item stats (or even items) in mind.

Say for instance that I said to you:

Hey these are my characters classes and stats, if you click on the link following this you'll find my character story thread to give you an idea of my character, his favorite weapon is the Scimitar, I don't mind what item or custom spell or custom feat ability I get as long as it's fitting for the character and won't cost me more than 25 DC's.

Is that putting to much on the DM's at this point?

MoshingChris wrote:

Hey these are my characters classes and stats, if you click on the link following this you'll find my character story thread to give you an idea of my character, his favorite weapon is the Scimitar, I don't mind what item or custom spell or custom feat ability I get as long as it's fitting for the character and won't cost me more than 25 DC's.

Is that putting to much on the DM's at this point?

neat idea, and I like it because its more random (the key thing I like about events being no idea what I might find when I loot the dead) but sadly would not work for a shifter in most cases, eveyone else would be fine.

I'm against the open ended part personally. Only certain dc gear fits with certain builds etc. And there are very few dms left who know crap-poo about balance. Look at any request thread, always I'm fine if balance folks are fime... Sune is our only balance folk really, so everyones custom equipmentx abilities and the likes comes down on him and the select few who can do balance. Takes so much originality and creatively awesomeness from the player. Abilities and such, custom feats, spells all at least need to be be player created. Equipment can be dm "invented" so to speak, but I'm still loosely against it.

Many of you Here understand gear setting and that at a certain point even certain gear is superfluous for a well set character, etc.

Nothing wrong with a stop gap on optimization.

Anyway, I prefer Mosh's minimal style myself, but the beauty of the system is that it is optional both ways. If a DM doesn't feel they have enough information to be comfortable servicing the request, then they just say so.

Dakotaen wrote:

Yep, the hours that need DM'ing are the early to mid afternoon hours in Europe, but that's when most people have work or school, so that's a bit hard to change consistently.

Increase the DC"s gained during those hours? Maybe that's a good carrot.

It doesn't change the fact that:

1) European DMs have jobs to work at that time.

2) There tends to be at max 20 players online at that time, and the heavy majority of which are usually hunting anyway.

Aeqvinox wrote:

I play in a niche by choice, and it doesn't really matter how much i RP online - there's never any DM around to witness it.

This is what the DC wand is for. I've used it on people I was RPing with that I thought really warrented a DC, and quite often a DM has shown up and awarded said DC. It's not up to the DM's to pry on every little thing going on in the server, especially niche one on one interactions. There are too many of those niche interactions to keep an eye on all of them.

However, you've been given a tool to let the DM's know "Hey there's something awesome going on here, I think you should look." That doesn't mean folks will get a DC, but it often gets the attention of the power's that be.

I usually pull out my wand when I see someone creating or enabling RP for others.

Speaking of the dm wand...
Can't we just give it a 20-30 min cooldown instead of 1/use @reset.

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