Celtricia

[LordVreeg]

First off,
I didn't call anything crap.  (this time).  I said the inclusion of certain rules and their continued influence on a game ruined that game for me.

[blockquote=Nomadic]Don't be too eager to call DnD or Oblivion or anything else crap because of metagaming rules. Most players and DMs need things like those to walk them through encounters and if they hadn't been added by the creators they would have had trouble ever reaching anything other than a minor niche market [/blockquote]
Sure.  Morrowind was niche.  Right.

Nomadic, I may not have called it crap, I am calling it what it is.  Metagaming is the opposite of roleplaying.  Encounter levels is a rule designed to create a certain style and fit at the expense of roleplaying...and this is supposedly a roleplaying game.  
I understand a game cannot be all things to all people, and this is certainly not the only rule I take issue with.  But this particular rule assists the newbie at the expense of the heart of the game.  

Better to have a chapter on encounter creation and logical placement vs. encounter difficulty, that recomend using EL, an intermediate ruleset, and a freeform sandbox version, allowing all levels of GM choose the type of game they want to run.  I appreciate your sentiment, and I appreciate you incredibly as a player and advisor.  I just think am not pleased with the direction, personally.

[TheMeanestGuest]

Morrowind was niche in that it was directed towards PC gamers.

In Oblivion, a lot of things were changed in order to make it more palatable to the console gaming audience, which has different ..tastes to PC gamers. Consolisation is really what's ruining PC gaming, and I could go on for awhile, but I won't.  

[Nomadic]

Pretty much what TMG said, as an additional comment I will say that from my personal experience Oblivion was much easier to play. You can call it dumbed down if you like, but it was also much easier to play and follow for newcomers to the genre than morrowind. Whether morrowind or oblivion are superior storywise is of course up to the individual player.

As an aside my comment about calling it crap was more directed at Leetz claim that oblivion is a piece of junk. Anyhow I myself don't find encounter leveling something that breaks roleplay for the reason that I see it as a tool solely of the DM and not something the players should be allowed to know. It's helpful for a newer DM in giving them a handle on how powerful an encounter is and about when they should throw it at the players. As that DM grows they may find themselves ignoring it more in favor of their own intuition. It's there though as a sort of DM training wheel. Of course for celtricia such a thing is largely unimportant, but if someone wants to publish their setting it is something to seriously consider. Not everybody who uses your work will be a skilled DM.

[LordVreeg]

A few random thoughts that do not fit well in other threads.

@Nomadic, there is a difference between guidelines and strictures.  EL as a guideline would be useful, but it is not merely used as a tool in some systems, it is becoming the rule.  And I don't like the effects this has on the roleplaying/immersion part of the game (roleplaying as defined outside the hobby, as the term existed before the hobby and can therefor be qualitatively judged as defined).  I think you are right that is is great for beginning GM's, however, but that point needs to be made more clear.
I was conversing with James Wyatt online recently, and I was actually soft-pedalling for 5e to include alternate rulesets for advanced play that might bring back some of the players they lost during the more recent schism.              
   
And I still don't know about publishing.  It was a goal decades ago, but something I gave up before I joined up here.  I will not lie, however, that the CBG has partially made me wonder.  You are all at times so giving and helpful and brilliant that you give me pause.
But if I did, I'd do the game and world together, maybe with Miston or Steel Isle Town as beginning town modules (remember, character creation is very faction heavy, so I need a location to go with it).  Miston has been the favorite for years, but damned if the online group isn't making me wonder about that area as a starter.  


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On survival rate.
A lot of times we bandy about the issue of survival rate.  And I agree that GS/Celtricia is run at a level that I expect good play; bad play gets you killed often.
And this is kind ogf against the tide the way games are designed in the last decade. Lots of factors spilll into this, but it is true at some level.  
But something I also try to do is to try to reduce the reverse survival rate problem found in many games, whether online or live.  This is the phenomenon in a game where depsite the fact that the monsters get tougher and the treasure can get better, the character's chances of survival go up dramatically as they gain power.  I'm not saying a little of this should not happen, as the tougher they get the less mundane threats can bother them.  But I think in most games this is a little overdone, sometimes very overdone.
Maybe I am a bit of a throwback, but my players seem to like the thrill of danger, of the unknown.

[Drizztrocks]

amen to that Lord Vreeg. While i hate to bring a CRGP into this, that is the very reason Morrowind was awesome, and Oblivion was a piece of junk.

 When I realized the dungeons were leveling with me I almost cried.

[LordVreeg]

This setting is almost 26 years old. 35 players, 142 PC's. (edit--make that 37 Players and 144 PCs(re-edit-make that 38 players and 145 PCs))
((re-re-reedit...lots of play lately...Steel Isle and the new Igbarians bring this to 44 players and 154 PCs)

This deserved a repost of it's own.
44 and 154.  that's a lot, to me.

[Lmns Crn]

This deserved a repost of it's own.
44 and 154. that's a lot, to me.

I'm helping!

[LordVreeg]

This deserved a repost of it's own.
44 and 154. that's a lot, to me.

yes, and I am frankly very excited after seeing your early notes.  I'm going to have to step up my play with 4 creative geniuses on board.

[Nomadic]

Wait you recruited a crayon to join us? Well there goes the neighborhood.

[LordVreeg]

Wait you recruited a crayon to join us? Well there goes the neighborhood.

Are you kidding?  Last night IRC included Crayon character building, Llum and TMG plotting to spend loot from  a red dragon that they really don't want to find, and the Igbar group player of Cucino guest starring and generally giving away secrets.
And Vreeg drinking wine.  There was a little stability found therein...

[LordVreeg]

Some 26 years into this thing.  The current rules to-do list reads kind of as follows:

 

 

·        Finish skill list

·        Change format of attribs in skill list

·        Change base ability to attrib based and make it the untrained ability mod

·        Start skill descriptions.

·        Finish racial descriptions, add Ograk, ½ Ograk,

 —¦Maybe the FratreCanis
 

 So lots to do.  

 
As to the game as it is played, we need to get a Miston date set, we have Valentines Day gaming for Igbar, and the online Steel Isle game is zipping along with 6 players.

[Llum]

Maybe the FratreCanis

Change format of attribs in skill list[/quote]

What exactly does that mean?

Also, Ograk and 1/2 Ograk.... aren't they kinda big? I think they might break your weight formula ~~

EDIT: Don't forget spells! You can never have too many spells!

[LordVreeg]

Maybe the FratreCanis

Change format of attribs in skill list

I'm thinking of making the FratreCanis (Dog Brothers) a playable race, but they are pretty rare and don't intermingle much.  There are a few in pretty high positions in the Collgium arcana, due to their extremely high intelligence and pack mentality.  There are a lot more of them serving as priests in the various humanoid tribes (Zyjmanese North, Zyjmanese South, BoneCrusher, Trollone, Silverworth, and a particularly high concentration in the Firehazers.).

As for the skills,  the base is going to become the unskilled normal attrib bonus, and will be in a similar format to all of the atrib over stats.  Lots of work, but hey...
I have to change the format in my access database, so that it can be used for crossreferential stuff.

Ograk and 1/2 ograks need to be done, at least the 1/2s.  They are another partially integrated race; they live in towns and cities in small but growing numbers (Igbar has over a hundred, mainly serving in the Scarlet Pilums and Corobar's Iron Way, though there is a certain 1/2 Ograk bard in Bertrand's Bard School...).  
The weight formula is broken slightly, I'm going to change it today.

And the spells will keep getting added to.  Something that makes the game so internally balanced is the spell selection.  Always fun when we add those on.  Always makes me happy when someone 'discovers' a spell and starts using it.

[Nomadic]

Vreeg do you have that character sheet of Kellik's I sent you awhile back?

[LordVreeg]

Vreeg do you have that character sheet of Kellik's I sent you awhile back?

i just sent back