Community: Increasing Player Interaction

Joined: Jan 11, 2002 Posts: 3054 Location: USA

How can we increase player interaction here?
I want to break down the barriers between groups and encourage interaction between all players.

We've not had very strict spying rules, as it didn't seem to be too prevalent. But in terms of defection rules, its been awkward and mostly ended with the character being executed before any proper play was acoomplished. One thing I want to do is see how we can fix this.

Another thing is in terms of accounts. I'm not going to have strict account rules, especially with the shared user tables. I want this to be an open community, so I'm not going to go through and approve every account. Multiaccounts will just be wasteful and pointless.

That being said, characters will still have to be approved by the MGs. I think it is important that characters have proper names.

This brings us to another thing someone suggested to me, allowing multiple characters? This would allow players to interact in any group they wanted to. Of course, this brings into account situations where players may be playing both sides. Would other players trust multiple account players?

What do you think? Have any ideas, post them

Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 7:41 pm

Multiple characters could be a problem like you said. Unless you have one in the RA/GE then another in HS. They could compliment each other. Or have multiples in each MG, maybe in different sectors doing different things. One in a CAP, one in R&D. Something like that.....

Guest

I think multiple characters is something that should be avoided, mainly to avoid confusion. With as small a group this is for the moment, it's going to be hard to avoid eventual interaction with between all of your characters. Also, unless you keep a ton of written notes, one can easily confuse what one characters know with what another character knows. I'm speaking from first hand experience on this. In the various games I'm currently playing online at the moment, I'm running about 20 characters. Eight of them are just in one game. And yes, I literally keep tons of notes to keep track.

Ultraviolet Joined: Sep 29, 2005 Posts: 353

I know what the bane of character interaction is: People are not together.

People maybe together as a community, but in character that is a lot harder to do. I previously left a game because it's leadership wanted to spread out there troops over there complete sphere of influence. That meant about 1 or 2 people per system/sector and that didn't even mean that both where even active. Now because of that there IC character interaction was very low.

This is something we should avoid at all cost. Now I noticed that there empire was already trying this by limiting the number of sectors and keeping the spread limited. In the alliance this worked as well as everybody seemed to act like a single IC unit.

The d20 system is designed for a few characters working together on a mission. They are all physically together (IC), rather then serve on ships and in large units like it's currently in this game.

Because of our take on it we are stretching the limits of the d20 system and we almost going into an 'epic' d20 system (epic means large scale, meaning you control a unit rather then a single person - the epic d20 was planned but never developed).

Now there can be two options into making this work. One option is by going even smaller scale and having multiple people actually serve on the same ship (which will do away with all the NPC action and create more PC interaction).

The second option would be to change to a more 'epic' system, where people actually control a unit, with it's own unique abilities rather then a single character.

Now in regards to having multiple character. I would definately disallow people having two character in different MGs and even in the same MG would be troublesome. I wouldn't allow it at all, just because people should focus on one character if they have time on another then they aren't spending enough time on one.

I've played two characters in the same game before and I noticed whenever I played that I seemed to prefer one over the other. Since they were in the same unit it went into that I had less interaction with other people with the less prefered character then the prefered. Now that isn't fair to the people who need to interact with your less prefered character.

So I say no multicharacters.

Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2005 5:58 pm

Well, I've recently had a look at the spying rules in sws and if they had been enforced that way, then it didn't seem like a bad concept. You know, the things with the die roll, that determined, whether the information got through, or not.

As for the defection rules, I suggest the following: the MG leader, or the person/branch handling defections in that MG can decide to either let the character go, or to have it RPed out.
If the character may leave, he can't take any assets with him, except for the IC knowledge the character possesses.
If it's RPed out, then a small scenario could be held, much the same way as it was meant to be in sws. The MG, the char is defecting from, sets the environment and a reasonable amount of obstacles and the defector has to overcome these. If not, he'll be either captured or killed in the attempt, depending on what happens during his escape. Optionally, a character from the MG could also take part as a normal player in this scenario and try to stop the defector. Since that character would be an additional obstacle, one of the same DC from the setup should be removed then, to keep the balance.
At first, the defector should take the time and talk to the responsible person in his mastergroup, though.

Multis is also not something I'd agree to. Remember that one guy I discovered, that had at least 5 characters ? Sure, he could have lead an entire task force, but he couldn't have time or energy to develop every character in the same way. Also, we shouldn't forget, that multiple chars in different MGs can cause a lot of problems with unbalanced/unfair situations, where the player might use his knowledge to win a battle, for example, without actually putting some effort in it.

I'm kind of at a loss, though, on what to suggest for player interaction. It's easier within a mastergroup, sharing the scenarios there and working out, how to do that as a team, but not all things can be translated that easily into a scope for the whole game. Easier things would be for example, talking about your various likes and dislikes (literature, music, movies, …), or for example, to ask others more proficient in a certain area for help with a problem. Basically, anything to have people start talking with each other and keep doing so Rolling Eyes

Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2005 9:40 am

Kinda building on Uliq's defection rules above... There are three MG's, only two of which would be involved in a defection. If an RP scenario was decided upon to allow a character the opportunity to defect, what about having the non-involved MG set up the scenario? That would make it a little more objective in terms of obstacles and resistence (though they'd need input from the defecting character's current MG). It would also allow things like a PC from the defector's current MG to try to stop him/her like Uliq mentioned, and maybe even allow a PC from the defector's wannabe MG to try to help him/her at an appropriate time.

~CC~

Ultraviolet Joined: Mar 17, 2004 Posts: 211

I can't count the number of ways I would like to say 'no' to Multi-accounts. :p

No offense to you young people out there Wink

but to use OOC information is too much of a temptation, no matter how different the roles are. And I really think it's that simple. It would also not be good for character interaction.

Josh, you are right. It is all part of the fight I had with people outside of the RA about how I handled things. My priorities were more towards ensuring a strong In Character enviroment. In my mind, that is why everyone was there in the RA, including myself. I took advantage of the true organization of the Rebel Alliance to the point that you noted. Sadly, none of this stuck after I was removed.

But that is an RA matter, and if anyone particuarly interested there would like that info, I might still have it laying around. Smile

I find also that the problem with character interaction in SWS was the lack of opposing PCs in scenarios. ToD, in its conception, may have meant well. But in my opinion it was handled entirely the wrong way. I'm not sure who is going to be in charge of moderating and all that, but it is my opinion that there needs to be a number of things going on.

1. Take the individual events in ToD, things like ........, ......., ........... (though I thought that was a bit far out). Make those seperate things, similar things.

2. The Empire needs to come out of acting itself out of GNS posts. Get an active campaign against the Alliance going.

3. The Alliance needs to start moving out, do what they are good at.

Posted: Fri Nov 25, 2005 7:57 pm

Quote:

and if anyone particuarly interested there would like that info, I might still have it laying around. Smile

*raises an eyebrow* Hmm ? Did I ever say I wouldn't want to hear suggestions, on how to make things better ?

Btw, I've edited out some parts in 1., since not every imp might know about it yet Rolling Eyes

I've always thought, that they'd want to use the third thing you wrote, to have someone else succeed Charon, IC (!). That is why I would've have done it another way, as I also told you a while ago Cool

As for 3, do you remember what we've been talking about, what I wanted to do, right after ToD ? The thing you had also planned ?
Before we let people decide on whether we'll finish ToD or start with new db-effective scenarios, the IC system has to go back on-line and sure, we're on it Wink

Posted: Sat Nov 26, 2005 2:47 pm

I have no idea what you are talking about Uliq, I was never in ToD. *eyeshifts*

Ultraviolet Joined: Mar 17, 2004 Posts: 211

*blink blinks*

Uliq, right.. uhm.. I dunno maybe we should all have a talk about this sometime :p