Players building a legacy

[Legacy_wyldhunt1]

               I want to get everyone opinion on this...
We (My PW team) were throwing around ideas and this one seemed like it would probably be one of those things where people would either hate it or love it.
We're trying to decide whether or not to use this idea in our roleplay PW.

The idea is that your character will grow old and die. We're still deciding how often the player would need to make a new character, but estimates of between 6 months and a year (for a human) seem to be the range.

Now, most players would be against the idea if that was the end of the idea. The benny for us is that the world will be less overrun by epic characters. It'll keep a wide range of levels playing. That should make it easier for new players to find people their own level.

So, what does the player get in return for having to make a new character?
Well... Before the character dies, they can choose to start a family. This can be with another player or an NPC (To save any RL marriages out there) or the player can adopt (To allow for different races). A child will be born, which will spawn in the game and begin aging. The player who is wanting to start a new character will be able to do a lot of customizing this child as it grows up. They'll get to choose the childs stats, class, etc. The more time the PC spends with their child, the more xp the child gains as it ages. The max xp that the child can gain will be a percentage of the parents xp. Maybe 5% or so.
When the PC is retired or dies of old age, that child will inherit its parents stuff. If the parent owned a house (Housing will be fairly easy to get here), the child inherits that too. The child will inherit a large percentage of any faction bonuses their parent had. So, if the parent made friends with a group of pirates, those pirates will begin friendly to the child. Any titles earned will be inherited. Dad was a Duke? Well, the child just inherited his dukedom.

That child will then be re-created as a playable character for you. You can play through multiple generations of your lineage. This would allow players to experiment with different classes/races/builds without having to start completely over again while keeping our average character level lower on our server.
Because the kids begining xp is maxed out at a % of the parents, each generation is likely to begin at a higher level and thus become a higher level before they retire... which will enable their child to start with more xp... etc.


So, ideas? Comments? Hate? Love? Only if ___? Maybe if you changed blah for wibble?

Would you want to play on a PW that allowed you to build up a family legacy?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <feeling his age...>

Absolutely! This is tied directly into my pet peeve - death as a resource/advanced playing technique :-P

A lot of what you describe is similar to my planned "Inheritance" on Amethyst. Heirloom items will be mastercrafted items that will, to the right heir (tied to player instead of character), have additional ability/power based on experience gained in that bloodline...

Add in the ability to inherit bloodline feats and the accumulation of age feats (gotta give players a reason to *want* to be old :-P ) and you have a great deal of what I hope to do.

The "Venerable" feat that increases will saves and Lore and a couple other things (no penalties).
The "Old" feat that increases resistance to illusion and diplomacy skills (age penalties).
The "Ancient" feat... you get the idea.
Oh, one more for the Type I immortals - "Vast Experience" feat. Pretty much immune to illusion or other forms of trickery :-)

Nobody wants to start from zero, but Epic gets very Monty Hall, very fast. Give the players motivation and means to change things up without vast penalties and I do believe they will like it :-) I know they have in my PnP campaigns for the last 3 decades.

<..but rarely acting it>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_HipMaestro]

               Not a bad idea but I would limit the race to human for what should be an obvious reason... the vast difference in life spans.  That would mean any class that required elf or dwarf would be prohibited.  You could just ignore gnomes pretty much as it would not affect class limitations.

Or you could just redefine all races into a human-like life span for the sake of  thematic RP reasons.  Not sure how well-received that notion would be though.

Else, embark on a truly historical journey of total racial inbreeding.  Sounds like a carnival atmosphere to me.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_wyldhunt1]

               

HipMaestro wrote...
Else, embark on a truly historical journey of total racial inbreeding.  Sounds like a carnival atmosphere to me.

Hahaha.... Er.... No.... Just, no.
We shall not have any dwarven orcs with an elven grandmother.... Bad images... Bad...

We were actually thinking of adding in a few races that had very short life spans as well as leaving the longer lived races.

The thing is, we use the PRC and a lot of extra custom stuff on top of that. There are soo many choices for both race and class that I can see a lot of players wanting to experiment with them all.
This would give them a chance to play  a goblin (adopted) to see if they're any fun since it'd start you off in the goblin faction (with any reputation adjustments from your parent)... which would be a completely different experience. Or, just play as a human again and choose from one of our nearly limitless classes availabe (again because of the PRC).

That way, players who know for a fact that they want to be an elven wizard can do that and keep that character for a long time. Players who like to experiment can have new characters every few months without losing everything.

I just started a new project page that explains our systems a bit better.
http://social.biowar...m/project/7896/
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_WebShaman]

               How do you plan on handling Liches and other Immortal type characters?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_wyldhunt1]

               We are going to have a fairly large list of available races for players to begin playing with.
However, there are going to be a lot of races which will only become an option if the player manages to befriend them in game via our persistent faction system or otherwise prove that they have had significant rp with them in the game world. This will be common with any powerful or unusual races so that the player has a chance to learn about the lore of the race in Adelan.

Immortal races will generally be on that list, so we won't have very many of them.
However, if a PC goes through all of the effort required to become a lich... immortality is the reward. The cost, of course, is that you're not likely to have any offspring either and I doubt any one will be willing to allow a lich to adopt their orphaned child. So, it may become very difficult for the player to make a new character without starting over. They'll have their lich forever, and they will have invested a lot of rp to have earned that.

Keep in mind that we're not trying to find ways to punish or nerf players. If a player doesn't want to lose their characters, they can make an elf or befriend the fey...
The benny for us is fewer epics to worry about, but the main idea is to allow the players to have more fun. Different races can have a huge effect on game play in Adelan. This system allows for the end game of "I am a god. Now I'll sit here." to be replaced with an entire new campaign with an all new perspective on the world, while keeping a lot of your loot and prestige. Your next character may  see your old characters city as a giant epic dungeon.
So, point is, player fun comes first. Since different players enjoy different things, I don't mind having exceptions.

Mostly, I'm curious how many people think they could enjoy the idea of building a legacy through generations of characters. If everyone wants to play an elf all of a sudden, then we just wasted a lot of time setting it up. '>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_WebShaman]

               What about pupils, apprentices, etc?  Couldn't they "substitute" in for offspring?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_wyldhunt1]

               Possibly. But they wouldn't get nearly as much reputation rollover. That's based on the "I knew your father" idea. I suppose people could be intimidated if they heard that your teacher was a lich... If anything, that would just be an intimidation bonus though. And, they couldn't have all of the liches items and land unless the lich was permadead... Which would be difficult to account for.

But, why would someone go through the effort to be a lich and then decide to make a new character?
I suppose if someone ever decides that they are tired of their lich, I could get it to work for them.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par wyldhunt1, 11 décembre 2011 - 08:09 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_jackkel dragon]

               Even without the whole immortality thing, apprentices could help account for new characters of a different race but similar class. For instance, a human fighter taking a half-orc ranger as an apprentice. It's a bit more limited than the adopted offspring idea, but removes the family story hook for characters it wouldn't make sense for.

Though the whole reputation and items bit might be hard to justify... maybe only a portion of the reputation is carried over ("I knew your mentor") and specific items "willed" to the new apprentice character? It's a penalty compared to just adopting a wildly divergant character, but it might encourage roleplaying. I don't know. '>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_wyldhunt1]

               Yeah. I could go with something like that.
One of the largest base ideas that Adelan is founded upon is that your decisions have consequences.
They may be good or bad... Obvious or not at all obvious, but something changes with every choice made. These choices tend to be permanent and can drastically change the world over time.
A choice between children or apprentice could add another layer to that.
Apprentices could be used for races that are extremely different from your own, or any race if you're immortal.
The price is reduced inheritance. I'd still need to figure out a decent way too allow permadead immortal characters in case the player opts for that. I'd rather keep all of the lore on such things tight because it is their new characters backstory, so it needs to make sense.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_HipMaestro]

               How about a simple inheritance dynamic?

For example, grandpa was a warrior who spent a lot of time archiving some of his most memorable paraphernalia in his private vault.  His whole family line knows of its existence but unfortunately for most of them he decided access would only pass to a worthy inheritor that had proved his/her value.  Since he served the church devotely for much of his life, evil offspring would stand little chance to "draw the sword from the stone" so to speak. Once a family member HAS secured access, he/she finds out that there are actually many levels of security and they only had reached the first level of their inheritance.  Other similar caches remain indisclosed until their prereqs have been met.  The access levels could be weighted differently for immediate offspring than apprentices, for example.

In a similar vein, a sage could jot down cryptic magical formulas or incantations in a journal (Finally a use for all those dam books!).  Once certain prerequiisite abilities or skills have been proven, the words in the books would decipher for the reader to gain access to those well-hidden family secrets and be able to more easily take up the gauntlet of their family line.

Just brain-storming a bit.  An interesting topic that I had never considered before but should yield some fruit.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par HipMaestro, 11 décembre 2011 - 09:34 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_wyldhunt1]

               That would be interesting. But keep in mind that grandpa was also a PC. Unless grandpa roleplayed out doing that, it didn't happen. It might be fun to allow oddball things like that though.
If two PC's decide to have a kid(We'll have a system where both players have to choose the same options to ensure consent), the system will ask which parent to link the child to. If they decide this kid will be dads next character, mom could still have some say about what the kid gets and how. Both parents may well live in the same house and their next kid (moms next character) may want the house for herself. It would be interesting if they could set up some kind of challenge/puzzle to determine who got to keep the house.
Of course, there's no reason why the brother and sister couldn't live in the house as a family estate. We're trying to make sure that the system can handle as many different options as we can think up though.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_WebShaman]

               I think the whole "apprentice" thing is being downplayed here - obviously, if the persona here that is the Master is well known, the apprentice (or apprentices, as the case may be) will obviously be able to capitalize on the name here.

"I am the apprentice to X!"

*eyes the greenhorn* I knew your Master...you say you are his/her apprentice?" *raises eyebrow*

"Yes, I served under Master X for X years...until his untimely death.  I now carry out his ways, as he would have them" *eyes the <insert custom token here> with a level gaze*

*gaze wavers, then looks away*  "You have his/her ways, aye.  What can I do for ye, good sire?"
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <lighting a fire...>

An inheritance/legacy/bloodline system is, IMHO, a very good thing to have. Something that is automatic and self-fulfilling and doesn't require intervention by DMs...

But taking each "passing of the torch" individually, and placing the players firmly *in* the world, investing them in a place, not just geographically (a home base) but filially (family support), politically (greater NPC/DM to report to/do things for, lesser NPCs to work for them) and economically (give them a fiefdom with some "Hammurabi"-style farms/businesses to run and taxes/tithes to pay) will be far more effective in making that world a favorite destination

*How* the legacy passes on may be by offspring, or sibling, or adoption or apprenticeship... Does that part matter so much to the mechanics?  I envision something a bit less specific, more genereal purpose, that lets the player write his own backstory and fit the legacy into the world.  When a PC dies or is "retired" (converted to NPC?), the player "designates"an heir.  That character is created as normal... and *then* receives the bequest... XP, items, reputation, and the player-oriented home-base and position and obligations...

HipMaestro wrote...
Else, embark on a truly historical journey of total racial inbreeding.  Sounds like a carnival atmosphere to me.

As a matter of fact... On Amethyst, the 6 primary player races *are* cross-fertile. The three Elder Races (Humen, Elven, Dwarven) came to my world about a 100K years ago.  Sometime around Moonfall (-50K years) was the first mention of the halflings (half-breeds) that now make up the Younger Races (Sylven, Orccen, Hobben).

Surely Amethyst is not the first world that noticed how closely related Hobben are to Dwarven (live underground, very tough) and Elven (love nature, very nimble and mischievous)? And how else are half-elves (Sylven) bred, save by the tryst of elf & man? =)

Inheritance *does* work better for related races, IMO. More a menage' than a carnival, though ;-)

<...in the kitchen hearth>
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Rolo Kipp, 11 décembre 2011 - 10:51 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_wyldhunt1]

               All good points. I'm not sure if I want any PC to be able to pass everything on to any new character though. I don't know that I trust players to come up with a good reason why their new kobold character inherited the throne from the human king without walking all over the worlds lore. No matter what they write in to their backstory, the background systems that track everything that actually happens may disagree. Our factions and faction relations are entirely automated and dynamic. If your backstory says that you did something for the king that never happened, then that faction won't treat you like it happened without DM intervention. A kobold seeking an audience with the king would alter the faction relationships between humans and kobolds.
If your character is a king and you adopt a kobold from the nearby kobold clan that you've befriended, then the system will be constantly updating the entire time that the kobold is growing up. The kobold can follow you around as a henchmen and learn. I want the player to feel like they've worked at their new character. If you adopt a kobold and log out for a few weeks and log back in when he should be grown up, he's not going to have any bonus xp because he sat at home and played video games all through his childhood. You have to spend time with them.
Apprentice could work in that system, but an apprentice can't inherit titles or land. It's just not the way the laws are set up.
I could give bonuses that would make it much easier to re-claim the titles, but other players will likely be vying for the open position... Everyone can't be a duke after all... There's only so many dukedoms.
Losing your title would create a political mess that could be fun to watch.