Much Ado About Nothing

Discussion on playing Earthdawn. Experiences, stories, and questions related to being a player.
Lys
Posts:177
Joined:Sun Dec 11, 2016 4:00 am
Re: Much Ado About Nothing

Post by Lys » Sun Mar 19, 2017 4:51 am

The Undying wrote:
Tue Mar 14, 2017 5:52 am
I seem to be thinking about things as matters of significance TO AN ADEPT'S LEGEND whereas you seem to be thinking in terms of significance TO THE WORLD.
Actually i'm thinking of things in terms of significance TO THE PLAYERS. You are at the end of the day, playing a game, and while there is a very high degree of mechanical and setting integration in Earthdawn, the fact is that Legend Points do not exist. They are something given to the players to model their character's ability to grow and improve, and also to reward them for their play, but as far as their characters are concerned there is no such thing as Legend Points. A session in which the player's characters do nothing but sit around and talk all day will probably still get two Legend Awards, one for showing up, and one for staying in character and roleplaying.
Telarus wrote:
Wed Mar 15, 2017 3:10 am
Falling into the line of thinking that a "2nd Circle Challenge" is worth a "2nd Circle Legend Award" is a trap in thinking, that was Lys' whole point. That is _specifically not_ how the current edition was designed (but did influence previous editions where a Bog Gob is always worth 100 LP).
Expanding on this a little: Legend Awards have been keyed to the character's Circle since 1st Edition, i even quoted a passage to the effect from ED1. It's just that in earlier editions you got extra LP for defeating monsters, and that LP had a fixed value for each monster. So if you rescued some merchants from a gang of Bog Gobs, you'd get a Legend Award appropriate for your Circle for the rescue, and then recieve 100 LP for each Bog Gob you killed or drove off on top of that. There were also fixed Legend awards for finding treasure, but again those were on top of the Circle-dependent awards for roleplaying and completing goals. Later editions moved away from these fixed awards, since for the most part they were extraneous bookkeeping.

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

Anyway, my thoughts on High Circle play from never having actually engaged in it: The way i see it, you can't really write generic adventures for characters once they've reached Warden level or so. They have had an impact on the setting, made ties with people and places, built up histories, and established their legend. Any time they do something, they're going to be dragging all of that stuff in with them. Which is in turn going to affect any adventure you write in all manner of unpredictable ways. So high circle play usually has to be tailored to the specific group of characters involved, and much of the time it is going to be an outgrowth of actions they have already taken. For example, a group that has made friends and aligned itself with Iopos may wind up being asked to undermine Throal and other enemies of the Denairistas clan. If sufficiently powerful they may even engage in machinations against the Great Dragons.

High Circle play also requires the players to be more proactive about setting and following through on their character's personal goals. The world no longer gets in the way as much, because there's very little that can challenge you. If you just wait around for a problem you size to walk in through the door, you're likely to wind up waiting a long time, because there's very few problems your size in the first place, and many of them know about you and know better than to trouble you if you're not troubling them. So if you want challenges, you're going to have to go looking for them. In universe it's very likely that many adepts stall out at high Journeyman levels simply because they'd rather just keep doing what they've always been doing, instead of seeking out greater tasks to tests themselves against.

Dealing with the consequences of your actions also becomes a bigger thing as you grow more powerful. The greater the impact you can have on the world, the greater the fallout. Like if you decide to wipe out a particular band of Scorchers. It's possible that they had a rival band they were keeping in check, which now feels free to step up its attacks against neighbouring settlements. Or you might clean out the criminal underground in a certain city, only to find out that you've destabilized a delicate balance of power and caused chaos and disorder. You start finding that while you can throw around a lot of power, doing do indiscriminately can lead to unexpected or even disastrous results.

Related to the above is also the matter that you're not the only High Circle adepts around. There's going to be others, and they're going to be invested in the world in one way or another. Many of the things you may want to do or changed are going to be things they don't want done or changed. Which means that they will oppose you. Based on what i've seen of fights between Journeyman adepts, i expect that fights between 10th Circle adepts will tend to be fairly slow going. This usually makes gives you a greater margin for realizing that you're not winning a fight, and should best retreat. Provided both sides are smart about this, an opposing group of High Circle adepts can become a set of recurring antagonists, serving as the main opposition through an adventure, or even multiple adventures.

BRW
Posts:39
Joined:Tue Jan 31, 2017 5:00 pm

Re: Much Ado About Nothing

Post by BRW » Sun Mar 19, 2017 8:01 am

The Undying wrote:
Sun Mar 19, 2017 12:38 am
I could be missing it, but I don't believe anyone has asked "do you think it's good that there is high-level stuff in the books?" From my posts, I've asked how relevant it is. "Good" and "relevant" are very different. More content is pretty much always "good," with the exception that it means that designers are focusing attention on product A rather than product B. "Relevance" is debatable, which is why I started the thread.
I understood that somewhat between the lines of your literal question, there was the actual question: "do we really need high-level stuff in the books"? With the strong suggestion that the answer is "no." I just wanted to chime in to suggest that there are many other reasons why this kind of stuff should stay in books other than frequency of their being used by players.

If that was not your intention, I'm sorry. There is this current tendency in roleplaying games seems to strip down the mechanics so that it makes actual gameplay streamlined. I actually really enjoy the fact that this is not the case with Earthdawn. I have basically seen this thread as an invitation to take off some of the game's charm.

User avatar
Flowswithdrek
Posts:45
Joined:Sun Nov 27, 2016 7:09 pm
Location:Beheaded In Iopos

Re: Much Ado About Nothing

Post by Flowswithdrek » Sun Mar 19, 2017 9:01 am

Lys wrote:
Sun Mar 19, 2017 4:51 am

Anyway, my thoughts on High Circle play from never having actually engaged in it: The way i see it, you can't really write generic adventures for characters once they've reached Warden level or so. They have had an impact on the setting, made ties with people and places, built up histories, and established their legend. Any time they do something, they're going to be dragging all of that stuff in with them. Which is in turn going to affect any adventure you write in all manner of unpredictable ways. So high circle play usually has to be tailored to the specific group of characters involved, and much of the time it is going to be an outgrowth of actions they have already taken. For example, a group that has made friends and aligned itself with Iopos may wind up being asked to undermine Throal and other enemies of the Denairistas clan. If sufficiently powerful they may even engage in machinations against the Great Dragons.
You make some good points. Indeed, the longer any characters interact with the setting the more tailoring it will likely take to prepare an adventure for a group, and the higher circle that group becomes, the less options become available, though, this might not be something unique to Earthdawn. However, I would argue that perhaps "generic and tailoring" complement each other, rather than being opposite forces that your post suggests.

If I write an adventure set in a specific city, where the characters interact with specific NPC's who have goals specific to that city, and in that city some of those NPC's are part of a specific secret society, dedicated to a specific entity "Passion/Horror" with specific goals, then this is a lot more difficult to use.

If I write a generic adventure that can be set in almost any city, with NPC that have non specific goals and are part of A secret society Who have only generic goals that can be dedicated to quite a selection of powerful entities, then surely this is much more easily tailored to an individual campaign?

Of course there is probably a middle ground here. A generic plot, interlaced with selection of new content that the GM can use, and which the NPC's are unlikely to have specifically encountered before.

User avatar
The Undying
Posts:696
Joined:Sun Nov 27, 2016 11:25 pm

Re: Much Ado About Nothing

Post by The Undying » Sun Mar 19, 2017 9:45 am

BRW wrote:
Sun Mar 19, 2017 8:01 am
There is this current tendency in roleplaying games seems to strip down the mechanics so that it makes actual gameplay streamlined. I actually really enjoy the fact that this is not the case with Earthdawn. I have basically seen this thread as an invitation to take off some of the game's charm.
I think we're looking at different problems. I'm not suggesting that Earthdawn should be simplified, or streamlined. I definitely see the trend your talking about, and while I enjoy the roleplay focus of rule-light games, I find the rule-light approach (playbooks) to be almost entirely unfulfilling.

So, I'm in no way saying that ED should be simplified, or streamlined, or reduced in scope. If anything, my suggest is to add greater focus to the area of the game that more people experience (Low and Mid Circle). That doesn't reduce game complexity - the solution could, in fact, add MORE complexity by building out that area of play, but it also doesn't have to.

BRW
Posts:39
Joined:Tue Jan 31, 2017 5:00 pm

Re: Much Ado About Nothing

Post by BRW » Sun Mar 19, 2017 1:00 pm

Ok. Now I think that my posts may look somewhat militant which I had no slightest intention to be the case.

As a matter of fact, I also occasionally enjoy "rule-lite" games. It's just nice that the existence of Earthdawn adds this nice bit of diversity to the ecosystem in that it is so consistently old-school in a very classy way.

But there's apparently no disagreement here and it's definitely off-topic so let me just finish this post with one more apology for this militant feel my posts might had.

User avatar
etherial
Posts:964
Joined:Sun Nov 27, 2016 11:04 pm
Location:Berlin, Massachusetts
Contact:

Re: Much Ado About Nothing

Post by etherial » Sun Mar 19, 2017 2:20 pm

Lys wrote:
Sun Mar 19, 2017 4:51 am
A session in which the player's characters do nothing but sit around and talk all day will probably still get two Legend Awards, one for showing up, and one for staying in character and roleplaying.
That would depend entirely on what they are talking about and who they are talking with. Some of my favorite Earthdawn sessions have been 100% talky-talk and were critical to resolving world-spanning plot.

Lys
Posts:177
Joined:Sun Dec 11, 2016 4:00 am

Re: Much Ado About Nothing

Post by Lys » Sun Mar 19, 2017 9:49 pm

etherial wrote:
Sun Mar 19, 2017 2:20 pm
That would depend entirely on what they are talking about and who they are talking with. Some of my favorite Earthdawn sessions have been 100% talky-talk and were critical to resolving world-spanning plot.
Yeah i meant more in a shooting the breeze sense. You could very well have an an entire session consisting of tense negotiations around building the alliance that will kick the Therans out of Barsaive once and for all. In that case you'd get Legend Awards for completing important goals too.

User avatar
The Undying
Posts:696
Joined:Sun Nov 27, 2016 11:25 pm

Re: Much Ado About Nothing

Post by The Undying » Sun Mar 19, 2017 10:36 pm

BRW wrote:
Sun Mar 19, 2017 1:00 pm
But there's apparently no disagreement here and it's definitely off-topic so let me just finish this post with one more apology for this militant feel my posts might had.
No apologies necessary. I definitely didn't get that vibe. You actually stated your thought pretty clearly and succinctly. I was just verbose in my response as it seemed like we were on different tracks, which is sometimes cause by word choice, & I just used more words to try to avoid that.

As for your thought, I do still think it's valid. Rules-light or rules-reinterpretation versions with different systems have come and gone over the years. Whether ED could use a new one or not is an interesting discussion (there was whatever that other new thing was, Age of Legend? Looked at it, wasn't my thing). HOWEVER, I appreciate you curtailing the off-topic. Things were starting to progressing on-topic and then got yanked back into LP land again lol, is definitely frustrating. We have the power to use many threads for different discussion, we should use it! :D

ragbasti
Posts:118
Joined:Sat Jan 21, 2017 5:09 pm

Re: Much Ado About Nothing

Post by ragbasti » Mon Mar 20, 2017 1:03 pm

The Undying wrote:
Sun Mar 19, 2017 12:38 am
Thanks for the lengthy input, ragbasti. I'm curious - was there a primary motivation behind restarting at Circle 1 with new characters for ED4 versus doing a conversion to ED4? There is some weirdness as Talents appear/disappear, Talents increase/decrease in relevance/value with rule/text changes, etc, but it was workable. It just seems like kind of an interesting point if the edition change served as a 'good excuse' to start from the beginning with a new set of Adepts versus continuing pressing towards High-Circle content where the simplicity and availability dries up. At least for our GM, much of our content is old published stuff with smatterings of original content, but that seems to only work for Low- to Mid-Circle.
We simply wanted a fresh start. The characters had been through 6 years of adventures and we achieved a lot for the circle we were at. We went through Barsaive at War and even infiltrated Thera for an adventure and when the Cathay books came out we took a trip to Cathay and spent at least one year ingame time there. As I said, to me it felt like anything reasonable can pretty much be achieved below circle ten without actually bending the system too much.

The other reason for the fresh stat was that we wanted Barsaive to be a clean slate again. Too much had happened and our characters, at the point when we retired the group, had just done too much. (also our GM gave out a few Thread items that were quite frankly breaking the power levels in the group but that wasn't much of a deciding factor for the restart)
My weaponsmith even went as far as having laid the foundation for a second trade empire within barsaive that had direct ties to Catchay due to our adventure there.

To be fair, based on what we achieved our total LP should've probably been much higher than what they were but we never felt starved for LP.
Lond story short, we had achieved everything our characters had aspired to and it just felt right to restart with the new edition at the horizon.

Our previous group was:
1 Dwarf Swordmaster
1 Dwarf Warrior
1 Elven Archer
1 Troll Weaponsmith (Previously played Troll Beastmaster but with his Skeorx getting the broken animal companion boni from 2nd edition and the gruop goals no longer aligning with his, we subbed in the weaponsmith)

The group didn't have any magicians and magic was always our biggest threat, the Weaponsmith somewhat helped with that but ultimately it was always the archers job to kill magician quick, which he did...

User avatar
The Undying
Posts:696
Joined:Sun Nov 27, 2016 11:25 pm

Re: Much Ado About Nothing

Post by The Undying » Mon Mar 20, 2017 11:37 pm

ragbasti wrote:
Mon Mar 20, 2017 1:03 pm
The other reason for the fresh stat was that we wanted Barsaive to be a clean slate again. Too much had happened and our characters, at the point when we retired the group, had just done too much. (also our GM gave out a few Thread items that were quite frankly breaking the power levels in the group but that wasn't much of a deciding factor for the restart)
I think this is an incredible observation, thank you for making it. I can totally see how a GM can put together a grand plot arc, something that takes years (both in game and play-time) to complete, and at the end of it, things are just in a state where a fresh start provides more opportunity for a better story versus building on that arc's end state.

Post Reply