Master's Thesis
Posted: Sun Dec 02, 2012 12:00 pm
I've seen some comments fro other GMs and players that ED at high circles becomes less challenging. My campaign, as it's gotten tohigher Circles, ha slowed down and gotten more challenging. Bottom line, I play through training and advancement, and require the characters to perform a Master's work to achieve 9th Circle, and a Warden's work to achieve 13th Circle (We reversed the terms in our campaign, as Master comes after Journeyman IRL, and the Wardens are the guardians of the Discipline.)
The way this works: the characters have to find someone willing to train them. We don't use a downtime system. Training occurs while the rest of the party is doing other things. Training may run long, or be interrupted, by game events. To make 9th Circle, a character must accomplish something worthy of the title of Master, just like in an apprenticeship system, a journeyman must make a master's piece to prove their skill before being acclaimed as a master of their craft. This has led to some major projects and advancements. For instance, my wife's character, in order to make Master as an Elementalist, constructed a bath house out in the woods by the group's home city, using earth elementals to sculpt a hillside into an elven bathing paradise. He bound elementals to keep the water circulating and clean, and to heat and cool the pools, with hot water at the top of the hill, and cold at the foot, and multiple cascades for showering and such. This took the character several weeks of game time. AT one point, one of his enemies popped by late at night and banished a couple of his elementals, setting him back considerably.
Another character, a wizard, is working on a theory of mana as a wave, with the idea of wave theory being his master's thesis, leading to magical string theory as his warden's thesis. Both of these will advance the workings of magic considerably if he can pull off the necessary roleplaying and dice tests. This is the same character who worked out the gravitational constant a while back, and has been doing significant work in astronomy. His big plan is to build an observatory, using a camera obscura technique, with illusionism to project the star fields onto the inner surface of the building's dome, and memory crystals to store star maps for later perusal. This is taking him a lot of time, coin, and consultation. He's had to hire an architect, get land surveyed, find an Illusionist to drive a major part of the project, and go to Cathay to see a disused and semi-ruined observatory built for a long ago Emperor using similar techniques.
How do you go about providing a challenge in your campaign at high Circles? Advancement alone offers a lot of possibilities.
The way this works: the characters have to find someone willing to train them. We don't use a downtime system. Training occurs while the rest of the party is doing other things. Training may run long, or be interrupted, by game events. To make 9th Circle, a character must accomplish something worthy of the title of Master, just like in an apprenticeship system, a journeyman must make a master's piece to prove their skill before being acclaimed as a master of their craft. This has led to some major projects and advancements. For instance, my wife's character, in order to make Master as an Elementalist, constructed a bath house out in the woods by the group's home city, using earth elementals to sculpt a hillside into an elven bathing paradise. He bound elementals to keep the water circulating and clean, and to heat and cool the pools, with hot water at the top of the hill, and cold at the foot, and multiple cascades for showering and such. This took the character several weeks of game time. AT one point, one of his enemies popped by late at night and banished a couple of his elementals, setting him back considerably.
Another character, a wizard, is working on a theory of mana as a wave, with the idea of wave theory being his master's thesis, leading to magical string theory as his warden's thesis. Both of these will advance the workings of magic considerably if he can pull off the necessary roleplaying and dice tests. This is the same character who worked out the gravitational constant a while back, and has been doing significant work in astronomy. His big plan is to build an observatory, using a camera obscura technique, with illusionism to project the star fields onto the inner surface of the building's dome, and memory crystals to store star maps for later perusal. This is taking him a lot of time, coin, and consultation. He's had to hire an architect, get land surveyed, find an Illusionist to drive a major part of the project, and go to Cathay to see a disused and semi-ruined observatory built for a long ago Emperor using similar techniques.
How do you go about providing a challenge in your campaign at high Circles? Advancement alone offers a lot of possibilities.