dorettas@iddic.UUCP (Doretta Schrock) (10/04/85)
[no preamble here] A few years ago in one of the gaming magazines (maybe "The Space Gamer"?), there was an article regarding the standardization of campaigns by rating each one with an [AD&D] alignment-like system. Thus a campaign might be realistic (natural laws as you'd expect them), lawful (natural laws, though you may not know completely how they operate) or chaotic (you never know when things will change on you); good (white hats), neutral (give a monster/ an adventurer an even break), or evil (your vampires will have more fun than your paladins); complete (many towns have names and customs, NPCs, etc), sketchy (there is a town/kingdom, but mainly you're underground), or limited (there is a 10-level dungeon and a magic shop outside); etcetera... Question: whatever became of this idea? It would seem to be a good safeguard when thinking about playing with a new group or moving to a new city. Have any of the gamers organizations picked up on this? Is it a feasible idea? Surely with a net-full of gamers we could come up with a suitable system along these lines, no? Has anyone tried this? Is anyone out there? (All I hear are mumblings from net.philosophy and screams from net.flame...) My address is changing momentarily, so posting to the net is probably best... livens up the discussion, too! High Fives to all. Mike Sellers
req@warwick.UUCP (Russell Quin) (10/14/85)
In article <2218@iddic.UUCP> dorettas@iddic.UUCP (Mike Sellers) wrote about standardising campaigns using > an [AD&D] alignment-like system. I haven't seen the magazine article he mentions, but the idea seems to me to be flawed. What is it that one wants to say about a campaign? In order to describe something to someone who hasn't seen it, but who has seen other similar things, one typically mentions the *differences*. In other words, if I am describing a campaign to someone, I rarely want them to classify it into a box and say `Ah, you are running a realistic-quasi-medieval type 13B campaign. How unoriginal'. Rather, I want to describe to people what it is that makes that particular campaign special -- *why* it is not *just* a quasi-medieval type 13B campaign. (There isn't really a "Type 13B", of course. So no use mailing me for the details of the classification system I'm not using! :-) ) I suspect that the people for whom a classification system would be most useful are those who have seen relatively few campaigns in progress. But these people would also benefit the most from a more detailed explanation. > Question: whatever became of this idea? It would seem to be a good safeguard > when thinking about playing with a new group or moving to a new city. > Have any of the gamers organizations picked up on this? Is it a feasible idea? One of the problems would be that people would have to classify their *own* campaigns in this case. "We run a magic-weak realistic AD&D campaign ... after all, in Joe's campaign the 1st level party killed THREE red dragons, whilst our 3rd level party only have 8 magic items each and can only cope with *two* dragons at a time..." "Magic rich SF campaign .... (*any* magic is magic-rich in SF, so our party of seasoned adventurers are doing really well with high POW and three spells between them..." The difficulty here is that the ideas of Magic Rich/Weak, Realistic/Sketchy... are very relative. If you restrict yourself to the Magic-Overful [:-)] world of AD&D, you can make definitions based on magic/level or something, but in a rule-less campaign (yes, they *do* exist!) this becomes meaningless. Perhaps the best that could be done would be to produce a list of salient features of different styles of game. But would that be of any use to anyone? Sorry to seem s defeatist. > High Fives to all. > Mike Sellers I don't have any five sided dice. Sorry. Where do you get them? - Russell -- ... mcvax!ukc!warwick!req (req@warwick.UUCP) ... mcvax!ukc!warwick!frplist (frplist@warwick.UUCP) "Even from the brother there is no comfort in the bad hour in the dark at the foot of the wall"
cc100jr@gitpyr.UUCP (Joel M. Rives) (10/17/85)
I must agree with Russell in his discouragement towards FRP cataloging.
However, it does seem to me that some sort of accepted standard could be
reached. Should someone be encouraged to take the time to draw up a format
for catagorizing various aspects of the game into workable partitions, then
perhaps, a system for LOOSE (let me reemphasise LOOSE) comparative analysis
would be available.
For instance, one such catagory could refer to the use of magic (personal
magic that is - magic items should probably be a seperate catagory). A
possible partition for magic uses/availability might be the following:
A) None
B) Highly restricted (only certain characters can use magic and
only after much expended effort)
C) Low availability (magic exists but finding it or some one to teach
it is extremely difficult)
D) Costly (magic casting is very draining on the character)
E) Uncertain (the results of spell casting is uncertain at best)
F) Restricted (only certain characters can use magic)
G) Available (magic of all forms is around though it may take some
effort on the part of the character to find it)
H) Open (spell casting is available to all characters)
I) Easily obtained (magic is in abundance and for the asking)
J) Low cost (casting of spells is easy and does not require much
expenditure of energy on the part of the character)
K) Range (list of representative spells by level):
Level Spell Example
----- -------------
1 cure wounds, increase blade damage, increase stats
2 demoralize foes, summon aide, etc...
The prohibitiveness of such a system is easily appearant. What GM is
going to want to sit down and write out a ten page synopsis on his/her
campaign? Even so, it could be done ! Anybody out there willing to
take on the challenge? Anybody else willing to let this person take
the responsibility ?? Questions, Questions everywhere and nary a
Data Base to consult !!!
Joel Rives
gitpyr!cc100jr
skippin' o'er th' timelines ag'in req@warwick.UUCP (Russell Quin) (10/21/85)
In article <882@gitpyr.UUCP> cc100jr@gitpyr.UUCP (Joel M. Rives) writes: > I must agree with Russell in his discouragement towards FRP cataloging. I'm not trying to discourage people from doing this; I just suspect that it won't encourage imaginative campaigns... and probably won't help people to select a campaign very much. > [...] For instance, one [...] catagory could refer to the use of magic [...] [description elided...] > The prohibitiveness of such a system is easily appearant. What GM is going > to want to sit down and write out a ten page synopsis on his/her campaign? > Even so, it could be done! Anybody out there willing to take on the > challenge? Anybody else willing to let this person take the responsibility? > [...] > Joel Rives > gitpyr!cc100jr A while ago, I asked who-runs-what and collected reams of mail. Then I posted a summary of (1) mods to AD&D (so people knew who to ask for dogs' experience point tables...:-)), (2) other commercial games, and (3) `homebrew' systems. There were many people who said that they ran their own system that was too complex too explain. There were others who weren't prepared to discuss their rules because they had players who read net.games.frp (this was one reason why I started FRPList, so that they could use a mailing list to discuss that sort of thing). Some of the most interesting (to me) campaigns have the least rules accessible to the players. So a good description would probably not be in terms of rules. I think that any `Campaign Information Sheet' would in any event have to contain a GM-written `why is this campaign special' section. So are all the other details simply trappings? What could be better than `Please describe your campaign in the box provided. Mention the inspiration and atmosphere if these are relevant, and the rule system, if any is used.' ? What do you want to know about a campaign before playing? How do you find out at the moment? How would a CampaignInformationSheet help? (I'm not saying that it wouldn't; I am asking how it would, out of a desire to know.) - Russell -- ... mcvax!ukc!warwick!req (req@warwick.UUCP) ... mcvax!ukc!warwick!frplist (frplist@warwick.UUCP) "Even from the brother there is no comfort in the bad hour in the dark at the foot of the wall"