Adventuring vs. Birthright

[reiphil]

I wanted to bring this up because I feel like a lot of us are feeling a bit muddled in the adventuring aspect of the game and also the birthright aspect of the game.

For adventuring, it was nice for David to try and include everyone, however, it seems a bit unfair as well. My character wanted to really just sneak into the labyrinth and do her thing, and, if need be, assassinate others, but not try and include stephen's or micah's characters too. And i’m sure once introduced for Stephen’s character to interact with the fox lady, he would’ve wanted to do that instead of also having to interact with Micah’s character. However, nobody wants to go back to the first session where we had a person sit out for a few hours.

I think it's a really tough balance that we need to make, but the maybe the best option would be to take out adventuring altogether or dumb it down. If we were to dumb it down, I think a lot more prep work would have to be done for it and perhaps include more options based on a person's passive skill. That way it comes down to a more glorified skill challenge, or at least, falls back towards the Birthright aspect in which we're playing pseudo RTS with limited control. The con of doing a dumbed down adventure or removing it altogether is that we don't get to use all the skills/powers we wanted to power game with (Micah ). The thing is, with a dumbed down or predetermined adventure, it makes it way easier to just focus on the birthright side of managing a mini empire.

I really do enjoy adventuring, in general, but it's tough to strike this balance as everyone wants to have a piece of the action too, but that makes it very unfair to have the personalized adventure someone would do. (Like for example, a rogue just wants to sneak by herself and not get herself involved with anything)

For Birthright. People really need to understand the rules, or the DM will need to hold all values in a spreadsheet. For me, I am pretty certain I spent all the RP and GP needed, but since not everyone understood some of the actions, I feel like I may have been cheated as they didn't spend as much or too much RP/GP, and it is even possible that I haven't spent as much or spent too much RP/GP.

Honestly, a spreadsheet, in which the DM can show us our values, or a google map/drawing in which we can see what's going on in zones would make the game much more interactive. It's hard to play this RTS style game without seeing the map. Using a drawing on google drive, we should be able to easily create the political map as well as list the holding in each section (though possibly time consuming).

I really enjoy both aspects of the game, but I find it really dull when we try to combine it. Like, I have my turns planned out for resources, and then we get bogged into adventure, or I want to do an adventure, but we can't because I or a small party would steal the thunder of the entire group.

It's quite possible that this type of game just isn't ready for the tabletop yet. I could see it easily being done as longer drawn out online turns and stuff, IE, everyone puts in their realm actions for a round, DM tells us what's up, plus on the side, we could perform adventures with the DM. But I think if we keep refining and hit a balance the game can be much more suited for the quicker play of tabletop.


docs.google.com/drawings/d/1r6BctRopN0X7S7TlciishJRNnXi6ysDkO65ghtNm94c/edit?usp=sharing << quick map i started just copy and pasting into a drawing document. Using poly line we can quickly recreate the map, or even just drop symbols and numbers for who owns what where.

[kore]

On "doing your own thing": I agree. I was the one who pointed out being the third wheel in Stephen's case. The group dynamic of these parties seem like they will all be markedly different from a typical adventuring party and I think that is because of what each of us as players may be trying to accomplish on the Birthright side of things. That is, our objectives are our own and even good metagaming can't get past the fact that we want to go solo, which is counter to the whole "don't split the party" philosphy of typical adventuring.

On "dumbing down adventures": I like the idea, but if the "danger" of combat, and the variance in individual character ability in combat, is obfuscated then we could all just take skill feats instead of enhancing for combat. That's a choice now and I know Stephen took that approach, but it should still have a balanced cost; if one power games toward skills it will and should be to the detriment of combat. Other aspects would have to be addressed like hit points and healing surges; how do we differentiate characters that are stronger and weaker in such areas.

[David]

Thanks for bringing this up. This has been a pretty ambitious goal from the get-go and I'm thankful that you guys have been willing to experiment. I'm ok with "dumbing down adventures" a bit, but remember that we haven't really completed an adventure round yet. Nothing is meant to be more than two or three encounters (and maybe a skill challenge) before we get back to the city map. You are about to hit the last room of the current delve. On the other hand, I am completely on board with moving some of the game turns online (as long as we can include Mike) and I will take all the help I can get in keeping the game organized. Keeping some of who owns what secret is less important than making most of it easy for everyone to see. Here is my spreadsheet:

www.dropbox.com/s/k5aov13904s7mo3/Birthright.xls

Ideally, I'd like to have all of this information readily accessible on the map for you. I just haven't been able to figure out how to do it.

[reiphil]

The thing is, for adventure turns, I really don't know how to do it where you can keep 2-3 encounters with everyone included, because the story just doesn't really fit that way, in my opinion. For example, I could've simply requested that my rogue tries to sneak in at night, and said f the rest of the party. :X

[kore]

May 1, 2014 18:41:02 GMT -8 reiphil said:

The thing is, for adventure turns, I really don't know how to do it where you can keep 2-3 encounters with everyone included, because the story just doesn't really fit that way, in my opinion. For example, I could've simply requested that my rogue tries to sneak in at night, and said f the rest of the party. :X

Same here. Ideally, I would have liked to have sent my character that does all the wet work, but I metagamed the best way to avail my faction to everyone else.

[David]

May 1, 2014 18:41:02 GMT -8 reiphil said:

The thing is, for adventure turns, I really don't know how to do it where you can keep 2-3 encounters with everyone included, because the story just doesn't really fit that way, in my opinion. For example, I could've simply requested that my rogue tries to sneak in at night, and said f the rest of the party. :X

True enough. (On the other hand, that exact thing is done by like every third rogue in existence). One thing to keep in mind is that just because the characters are all present, it doesn't have to mean they are on the same side. I was actually happy that we had a little intra-party conflict last week, though I'll admit the timing was a bit contrived. (I could always run five separate battles simultaneously : P) .

I'm still adjusting to this point of view, as well, so I apologize if you felt at all railroaded.

[reiphil]

I think the same thing could be said about anything else though, not necessarily just rogues. If my fighter wanted to go defend or do something, he would've wanted to not go with Stephen's faction as he is allied with JP's faction and may not have included Mike or Micah, like there is no real reason for them to be on a mission, etc.