The Goblin Adventurer's League

[BadgeAddict]

I see your problem chuck, which is why I tried to think outside of that box.

For instance the red rat with magical abilities that ignored defenses, but only did 1 damage.

Games/mobs can easily be weighted so that players are damaged/not damaged new/old. Spiders game is a good example of this.

[Theis2]

Yeah spider had the same problem with an encounter where I/Steals is the goblin with the highest defence and was able to survive what would kill a normal goblin which have also made me somewhat careless though. Unless you aim to make a single tough boss monster, you can always just have multiple enemies which is perfect for negating a high defense without further endangering new characters.

Also screw mosquitoes..

[spiderwrangler]

Oh, you don't know just how much you should hate those mosquitoes yet...

[Theis2]

Oh god.. *Pulls out a monster manual searching for anything with poison*

[spiderwrangler]

Oh god.. *Pulls out a monster manual searching for anything with poison*

They are (unless I subconsciously integrated stuff), an original creation. It also wouldn't be nice of me to be vindictive for what happens to my characters in other games...


Also, I'm putting my wizard's hat in the ring for chucks game... Though I would be interested in reaching a consensus on handling of loots...

[BadgeAddict]

Fresh Idea:

The munchkin (Card Game) approach to loot.

In munchkin, players can only hold 10 cards (perhaps players can only have 10 items on their person at any given time(unless stored)) once a player goes over their limit of 10 cards, they are forced (within the rules of the game) to give "charity" to the weakest player(s). Granted, these charity cards are any of the players 10 cards, not the ones he just picked up.

example: Bob has 10 items, he opens a chest and finds new better stuff. He takes them and now has 12 items. He must give 2 items to the weakest players. The two weakest are Amy and Jane, they each get an item, Bob chooses which item to give to which person.

^this allows players to be selfish while at the same time being generous...you can hoard the good stuff...but eventually, you'll have to give some of it away.

[WearsHats]

I'm leaning towards the common loot pile. Everyone gets a few (3? 5?) items they can keep for themselves. The rest goes into the GAL HQ armory. Which will be littered with +1 weapons and armor and a selection of unique items. So anyone new can armor up with the basics, but if you get something really awesome or that really fits your character, you can keep it. I think that's a good balance between making the game accessible to new players and letting more experienced players feel that they've actually earned something from their quests. It also means that items GMs come up with have a decent chance of staying in circulation.

Like I said, that does leave two questions open:

1. If two or more GAL members want the same thing from the armory, how do you decide who gets what?

2. What happens to equipment when your character dies?

[Aegis J Hyena]

1. If two or more GAL members want the same thing from the armory, how do you decide who gets what?

2. What happens to equipment when your character dies?

1. Random.org, 1d100 on the front page, high roll wins?
2. Poorly locked chest? (Seriously, I'm tempted to say "collect the gear for putting in a "memorial area" so people can get items "with history" or something... 1 item per successful quest?)

[ChuckDaRighteous]

I like the idea of the armory, but rather than just have limits, everyone donate what they are not using, people take what they need. The reason I don't like small limits (3 or 5) on inventory is that makes personal items tricky. Laugh's Beard or my Standard are disadvantageous to keep. You could exempt RP related items, but that's then another thing you need to pay attention to. That also means more situational items become odd to deal with. What if someone found a potion that cured a particular status effect like poison. Well what do you do with that then? Its not RP so it can't be exempt. But no one is going to hang on to it or claim it for later use. Particularly not over something like a +2 item. Again you could make consumables exempt. But some are not consumable. Nolandking has a cloak that is +1 def vs animals. Is he or anyone else going to take that cloak over something that has a flat +1 def? While everyone likes the big +3 items, I think the most personality is derived from situational or stylized items. And if you limit items people would then have to choose between style and power.

And while I do like the idea of a group armory where we can borrow stuff from, why can't we just loan each other the things we're not using. In fact people have been loaning each other stuff. I gave Synch stuff when he first started. And he in turn gave out his axe. I think trying to put a system to it over complicates something we can already do. If we're going to donate stuff, just do it. I might try combo cubing some items (still waiting TL), probably keep one or two and storage, but I'd be happy to donate anything left over to the group loot without some weird point system mucking it up.

[Nerre]

From a GM perspective, there are plenty of cool items that GMs have put time into designing, drawing, etc. and it's rather a shame if they get lost completely.

I got an idea for that: How about putting items of dead players into the group pool somebody mentioned earlier? Think of it as the surviving heroes taking the stuff of their fallen allys with them (if accessible), so the equipment would not get lost.
Somebody could make a new char and grab some of his former gear yes, but with the limit of Karma points, he could not just grab all right away, only about half of it.
That way, the new char of the player of the deceases char would have first dips, but could not just claim all of his stuff to get it back.

Sounds good to me.

I also have to thank the inoffical loot pool, cause else my char Remedy would have went into the current quest without anything than a simple +1 ATK metal pole. No armor or anything else. The berserk axe helped me a lot during fights. I kind of forgot who handed it to me, but thanks a lot!
Therefore I support the group pool idea.

[ChuckDaRighteous]

Somehow missed when you said this:

From a GM perspective, there are plenty of cool items that GMs have put time into designing, drawing, etc. and it's rather a shame if they get lost completely.

I did put some time into coming up with interesting items. If someone lost them in death, I'd be fine with it. It was lost in a noble pursuit. I think what would hurt far more is if someone said "that's neat... COMBO CUBE TIME!" Though I understand if people do. Some things just don't work for them.

[thinkslogically]

But then we never lose gear from the group pool and we'll end up with infinity items. The puzzle box doesn't get rid of that much... I'd rather keep it so that dead players lose their gear (except plot important stuff and anything they left in storage) just so we have a chance to remove stuff from the pool.

[Nerre]

How about doing it then like in the awesomesword game? Everybody who dies can give a fix amount to sb else? No hoarding, and at least some would go into the group. I think it was only 1 item back then.

[thinkslogically]

Ok, let's recap where we're at:

The problem:
Chuck's new quest is potentially off-putting because it is ranked as "difficult" & has potentially harsh "missed action" defaults. Since PCs can only increase their stats by equipping items, and since all items carried by a PC on a quest are lost if they die (except plot-important items and anything left in storage at the GAL), this has led to some discussion of how we could restructure how the GAL distributes loot amongst players.

NOTE: This point was raised by Gathers, but so far I've not had any input from other prospective players on whether or not they agree with this sentiment. More opinions are very welcome. If you are available to play but are choosing not to sign up, I would love to know your reasoning just so we know whether there really is an issue here or whether everyone's just on holiday at the moment

Requirements:
THE GAL MUST REMAIN ACCESSIBLE TO NEW PLAYERS AND GMS! Any solution to this issue MUST be fair for both experienced and new players. Ideally, it will be simple and retain game balance (i.e. keeping goblin's stats relatively equal between players) that doesn't require a load of new rules and complicated things to keep track of. More rules = less accessibility for new folk and so I'd like to keep things as simple as possible. Saying that, we do need a way to limit the number of items available to PCs to limit power creep and try and keep the games balanced. The more loot we have, the more uneven PC stats become and the more difficult it becomes to balance combat on a quest.

Suggestions:

1. Don't do anything: players will keep what they win through questing and are free to hoard / donate it as they see fit.
2. Allow players to keep X no. of items as their own. Everything else goes to group loot.
3. Allow players to keep X no. of items as their own. Everything else must be donated to the weakest players.
4. Limit the amount of space players have in their inventories to restrict power creep.
5. Instead of all items being destroyed when a PC dies, they can pay in-game to make an item "ethereal" (i.e. a player's next PC will inherit the item).
6. Instead of all items being destroyed when a PC dies, XX unique items they are carrying may be returned to the GAL in a "broken" state. This could happen at a GMs / group-of-player's request to save a particularly special item. The cost / actions of repairing it would be at the discretion of the GM who created it.
7. Instead of all items being destroyed when a PC dies, their items (all or some) can be looted off their corpse by the other players and returned to the "group loot" at GAL HQ.
8. Use a "karma" system for loot redistribution (you gain points by donating items which can be spent on claiming items)

------------------------------------

Did I miss anything?

Also, no. 6 is a new suggestion I thought up on the way to work this morning. Might be a slightly cooler way of achieving the same thing as no. 5 essentially. There's still an in-game penalty for PC death, but we don't completely lose cool stuff from the game.

Personally, I'm happy to add some sort of way to keep cool things in the game after player death on the proviso that it doesn't happen for absolutely everything. I am also happy to use whatever system you guys want for group loot / sharing as long as it doesn't involve a enormous amount of work for anyone.

If we do opt for a group loot system, then I would envisage that claiming items from the stock could be done on an initiative-type basis where everyone takes turns to claim one item (to some maximum so we don't send everything out on one quest and leave nothing for anyone else). Anything extra the players think they'll need could be purchased from a merchant specifically for that quest (to be sold on or go back into group loot after the quest). THere are a bunch of details to work out for this that aren't completely trivial (e.g. how do we decide the maximum no. items for a quest; who gets the money from any loot sales etc.). If most people are happy with the current goodwill-based system of sharing and donating items to each other then that's certainly the simplest option!

Anyway, if we can get a set of options that make sense I'll happily make a poll and put it all to a vote.

[Nerre]

While I highly appreciate your very well done summary, Thinks,
I don't like the broken item idea. New chars would not have the money to repair items until we hand out a "starter package" or allow the players to keep all of the former char's money/stuff at the inn.
Thinking about how long quests take currently, I think it is no solution for the inital problem to force somebody to play a full adventure to have enough money to repair items. This would be almost the same as putting a cooldown of 1-2 quests on the item.
This is simply a money drain*. Or an item drain.
*

► Show Spoiler

(A term I learned in MMORPGs - there had to be things that cost and have to be used regulary while playing, so players do not end up with infinite ingame currency and everybody being rich, as this would kill ingame markets.)

We want to balance out the chars, and personally I prefer a solution that is based on shifting power within the group rather than taking it away. A broken item is a "take it away" solution, since whoever gets to use the item in the end, somebody within the group would have to pay for it's repair. And on top, it is a half-hearted take away solution. As a roleplayer, I either prefer items being fully gone or having them stay within the rest of the group.


Actually, I like the idea of a starter package. There are still a lot of chars who have only very few slots filled with items (and some of them even do not grant any boni, they are only flavour equipment), while others are almost full. GMs could decide on the starter package depending on their quest difficulty, so nobody would be below the minimum. Those item do not even have to be permanent, so they would be gone again after the adventure.

In my current game Foray Carnage I set up starting items for the players and let them pick them, similar to the idea of a starter package. They talked about it and decided on who gets what wihtout any gm intervention quit fine, no argument and the group acts very harmonic so far.

[thinkslogically]

Well, I wasn't so much thinking that it would cost gold to repair it, so much as it might require a quest to find someone who is able to repair the item. Or maybe the item can't be repaired at all. But regardless, it's just a suggestion and it can be taken or left as you guys like.

And you're totally right - taking stuff away from dead players IS an item drain. So is the combo-cube and the bar is a money drain. We need it to keep the power-levels of PCs in balance to stop power creep. If you think about it, having a goblin start life with 1 ATT / 1 DEF / 5 HP and 20 GP (or however much it is) IS your starter pack. If we allow new players to increase those stats for free, then we end up having to make quest rewards better so that players feel like they've actually earned something, and then have to make the starter kits better again to help the newbies keep up. The higher we allow the maximum stats to get, the greater the difference can potentially be between the weakest and strongest players and that is a total nightmare for designing game balance. What is much easier is to keep the "naked" goblin stats as our baseline and restrict the maximum stats the players can reach. It's not working perfectly at the moment, hence this discussion, but I would definitely rather take things away than end up with so much inflation we can't run quests effectively any more.

[BadgeAddict]

If we do opt for a group loot system, then I would envisage that claiming items from the stock could be done on an initiative-type basis where everyone takes turns to claim one item (to some maximum so we don't send everything out on one quest and leave nothing for anyone else). Anything extra the players think they'll need could be purchased from a merchant specifically for that quest (to be sold on or go back into group loot after the quest). THere are a bunch of details to work out for this that aren't completely trivial (e.g. how do we decide the maximum no. items for a quest; who gets the money from any loot sales etc.). If most people are happy with the current goodwill-based system of sharing and donating items to each other then that's certainly the simplest option!

This gave me an idea that could help determine group looting.

Before starting a game, a "Loot Roll" is performed which gives all characters a number based on how many players. Let's say 6 people are playing, a roll is made to determine status of each player, numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6. Whenever any player finds loot, the person who rolled 1 is given first chance at it, if they pass it goes to the next person down the list. The person who takes the loot is then moved to the bottom of the list.

Example:
Bob - 1, Jane -2, Amy - 3, william - 4, bill - 5, charles - 6

William finds a chest with some loot in it. bob, being number one has dibs on it, but he chooses to pass, jane however chooses to take the item. The new loot list is:
Bob - 1, Amy - 2, william - 3, bill - 4, charles - 5, Jane -6,


Another additional suggestion outside of the above is as follows:
Instead of giving out weapons, armors, and baubles, players only find gold or trophies in a quest. These may then be spent on items at the GAL. Gold will be split evenly among all players, on top of what the reward for the quest is. All items are kept by the person who owns it, because they spent their money on it. Every now and again, a trader could come along with extra rare items which would cost a bit more...these items could be created (thought up) by GM's who would have otherwise given them away within their games.

[spiderwrangler]

I think the idea of broken items (I had a similar thought, but hadn't fleshed it out) is not intended to make new people pay for fixing broken stuff, but to give veterans who die a chance to get back stuff that would otherwise be lost, but at the expense of selling other items or limiting other purchases to pay for repairs.

I rather like it, though at current Ralf is the only craftsman we have...

[thinkslogically]

@Spider: yes, that's exactly what I was aiming for, I just didn't explain it well!

@ badge: I dunno - I think the idea of having dungeons that only contain gold is a lot less fun than finding secret, unique or rare items that have been "lost for ages" YOur way does have the benefit of effectively giving me full control of the items entering the GAL, but also has the disadvantage of giving me full control of the items entering the GAL! Personally, I'd like loot to be a thing you can find on quests because it's cool and more exciting. If you don't know what that really dangerous to get to chest contains, doesn't it encourage you to try to find out? What if it's the Awesomesword? If I know it's "only" gold (albeit potentially a lot of gold) I'd probably be less willing to risk life and limb to get to it. That might just be me though...

[ChuckDaRighteous]

Suggestions:

1. Don't do anything: players will keep what they win through questing and are free to hoard / donate it as they see fit.
2. Allow players to keep X no. of items as their own. Everything else goes to group loot.
3. Allow players to keep X no. of items as their own. Everything else must be donated to the weakest players.
4. Limit the amount of space players have in their inventories to restrict power creep.
5. Instead of all items being destroyed when a PC dies, they can pay in-game to make an item "ethereal" (i.e. a player's next PC will inherit the item).
6. Instead of all items being destroyed when a PC dies, XX unique items they are carrying may be returned to the GAL in a "broken" state. This could happen at a GMs / group-of-player's request to save a particularly special item. The cost / actions of repairing it would be at the discretion of the GM who created it.
7. Instead of all items being destroyed when a PC dies, their items (all or some) can be looted off their corpse by the other players and returned to the "group loot" at GAL HQ.
8. Use a "karma" system for loot redistribution (you gain points by donating items which can be spent on claiming items)

I'd be fine with 1 or 6. I think 6 is a better version of 5. It would allow players less fear about item destruction while not making it so death is no big thing.

I don't like a loot roll. Loot isn't that simple. Occasionally you open a chest and "oh look its armor, Bob is the only one without any, here take this leather jerkin we just found, its not much but its a start" well that went against the system, but that's just once. Another chest opened, oh look a +1 shield, well bob is next but he already has one, skip the system again. Another chest opened: well its a mere lesser healing potion. Ok, I'll take that, system works. Next chest: the only +3 item in the quest. Well you just got screwed bob. Its no better than the status quo.

Also, designing new and interesting loot was a lot of fun for me. I don't want to give that up in favor of a gold only system.

[BadgeAddict]

I don't want the gold route either, it was a suggestion i don't prefer to do..

As to your talk of sharing loot...thats all well and fine in theory, but from what I've seen it doesn't actually happen that way. In the old goblin games before GAL, people helped each other out with loot distribution, because if they didn't everyone would die. Now people tend to think about themselves more. I know only a few cases where someone freely shared (not lending) out items because someone else didn't have something...and that was Spider in the 2nd to last quest i did, the one with the mountain and a certain piece of armor.

[WearsHats]

I've seen loot sharing a few times. And in GAL 1 we were very careful at the end to distribute the loot in a way that everyone found equitable. I think it took longer than the quest itself.

But then in the current quest, the party was endangered when someone (using a nice but borrowed weapon) rushed ahead to stake a claim on a new weapon, which turned out to be a trap. Because in a different quest the party was, I'm told, more selfish and grabby.

I don't know how to address that, or if we even should. People need to be free to RP the way they like. I suspect that, even if a GAL charter was desirable, pounding one out would be nigh impossible. Not unless Thinks wanted to take the reins, and I'm pretty sure she doesn't.

Which means that we can't rely on the kindness of strangers. Not without a way to set up an atmosphere where that's the norm.

I think I'm kind of rambling in circles. Sorry. Didn't get much sleep.

I think I would like to set up an armory, but it sounds like it needs to be voluntary. If you've got more stuff than you need, you can donate it to GAL HQ and anyone who needs can use it. Which would effectively make that starter kit Nerre was talking about. If we got enough people willing to do so. (We tried setting up a similar system in SCH, but I ended up being the only one who donated to the pool.) It does still leave the same issues of item creep and giant inventories. Unless we put limits on the armory or dump things in the combiner box when the armory's inventory becomes unwieldy.

Eh, IDK. Conflicting priorities, and I'm not awake enough to sort through them. Also, I need to leave for a doctor's appointment. I'll think about it.

[thinkslogically]

We don't have to treat those options as either/or choices eithers - many could (maybe should) work in combination.

I don't have a PC in any of this, so I can't really speak to how much people are willing to share their stuff, but I did notice a certain... reluctance last time around. There's also an issue if we have people leaving the GAL / who aren't online so much who end up with items "stuck" in their inventories. That would be solved with group loot.

I'd rather leave it to the players to sort out who gets what loot while they're actually on quests - everyone's an adult and should be able to sort themselves out in that regard. Or at least - if a GM wants to implement that sort of system for a quest, I'd rather it be their individual choice rather that a "GAL" rule as such (the fewer of those we have, the better I think!).

A voluntary "armoury" could work quite well I think. I don't think we're going to see enough PC deaths for the system to get to a state where people will self-police it (e.g. punishing "greedy" players or rewarding "generous" ones), but we could just ask players to put anything they don't have equipped into the store. It won't completely solve the issues with power creep, but I think it'll be a decent start.

If you guys are also ok with applying the "broken item" rule for keeping unique items with particular meaning, then I think we have a potential new system. "Broken Items" would be repaired by some method at the creator-GMs discretion, but there would be nothing stopping e.g. the surviving party members fixing an item and gifting it to the original owner's new PC as an heirloom or what have you. There wouldn't necessarily need to be any cooldown at all on restoring an item, although that will obviously depend completely on the GM in question

[ChuckDaRighteous]

I've seen more sharing than fighting over loot personally. And at the end of quests people have then have made efforts to make up for any discrepancies in looting. In that regard I think the short quest format works very well as it creates points where people stop and balance things out. I think as people get lots of loot, they can be more generous. The cube has sorta curbed that, but as we get more unique items, I'm inclined to throw the unique items that I don't want anymore into the pool as someone should be able to make use of the unique properties. I already gave away a couple before my first character was killed. I've also seen Synch and Spider give away items. And since I only pay half attention to quests I'm not in, I'm sure there are some I've missed. I've always seen the GAL as a casual game. I see no reason to convolute it with looting systems that make it a structured machine. There isn't a perfect balance between all the characters, but its not horrible in my opinion. That said if starts to get more and more so, I'd be more willing to consider this but as things stand now I don't see a problem.

As for protecting items, I have no problem with broken items, but I think that's as far as I'd like to see item permanence go. (I might even ask for it to be applied retroactively to a certain RP item)

[BadgeAddict]

personally, i think we've harangued about this long enough...who's ready to die on a quest. *rubs hands together*