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| Freebie vs Experience Points; Opportunity Cost and Cost Effectiveness | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Sep 4 2015, 11:50 PM (597 Views) | |
| Mouse | Sep 4 2015, 11:50 PM Post #1 |
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I wanted to bring something I noticed to the attention of the forum. Normally during character creation (I say 'normally' to describe VTM rules as written), freebie points need careful consideration because they offer a unique opportunity that otherwise does not exist during play. Traits increased with freebie points are calculated differently, the player needs to both consider (likely in more intrinsic terms) the opportunity cost of any specific increase, as well as the effectiveness of that expenditure. When I say opportunity cost, I mean: What else could be bought with an equal amount of expenditure? When I say cost effective, I mean: Is what I'm spending my points on the most effective way to accomplish what I'm trying to do? As an example, background traits and out of clan disciplines have a great opportunity cost simply because they may not be increased exclusively with experience points, the game's main mechanic of increasing character traits. They both normally require a significantly larger amount of effort than an equal amount of experience points spent on any single other trait, or several other traits. Cost effectiveness can be easily seen in attributes and in some disciplines (read: Celerity). The reason why attributes cost more than abilities is because attributes can typically be used more frequently than any specific skill. Dexterity, as an example, can be expected to be used in dodging, most attack rolls and stealth related rolls, etc. Having dexterity at 4 is significantly more cost effective than just having firearms at 4 because you can do so much more with it. Of course, this isn't a hard and fast rule. Stamina normally has a limited use, though it's increases cost the same as dexterity. Aside from that, some players may not anticipate certain characters to need certain die rolls very frequently (within the players control), so it becomes more cost effective to just increase a specific skill. The reason why I mention this for discussion is because when characters are created exclusively using freebie points, it creates an environment where each dot in a trait has an increasing value. Normally, this value is very limited by certain rules. (Abilities cannot be raised higher than 3 before freebie points, freebies are limited to 22 with 7 points of flaws, etc.) As an example, the smallest amount a starting character can receive is 45. With only 4 points, I can raise an ability trait to 5 (from 3). That would cost 12 experience points, or in more realistic terns as per the forum rules, a couple months of posting (I say this liberally and from my own experience because my most productive month at GBN after almost a year was 8 threads. I can't realistically assume or average how much anyone else would post.), assuming each thread was realistically able to contribute to the same trait. For 14, I can raise a discipline from 3 to 5, rather than spend 35 experience points, or the better part of a year posting. In this environment, it's far more effective to create niche/mary sue characters that are extremely good at small number of things (10 Willpower, 5 intelligence, 5 occult, 5 thaumaturgy.) than it is to create realistic characters that have a whole breadth of experiences to make them functional people because being well rounded can be purchased during play for significantly cheaper time and effort investment. And as it goes, when a system allows one route to be substantially more effective, it also punishes anything else. I suggest that character creation expenditure and post character creation expenditure be normalized so that their impact is the same, regardless of when or how it happens. Edited by Mouse, Sep 4 2015, 11:53 PM.
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| Roofie | Sep 5 2015, 01:28 PM Post #2 |
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Dat Moderator
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Heyho Mouse! So to cover some of the fundamental concerns you've brought forward; Char creation/expenditure and results – We as Mods spend a reasonable (and sometimes lengthy) amount of time with players after submission discussing their expenditures. We question abilities with no reasonable excuse (e.g. a 500 year old Kindred having more than a 1 or 2 in technology/driving/computer needs explaining), and out of clan discs, and maxed out stats. If the player cannot evidence why these things are, in their bio or in discussion to their RP aims, we typically ask them to be changed or evidenced more appropriately. The points should not just be of mechanical use, but an aspect of your chars personality/history. We basically try to make sure every character that gets through has been thought about, by the player, beyond the numbers on the page. We also do the same for those who seem to be veering into a Niche - Mary-Sue's and Marty-Stu's. We try to discuss the wider aim of their character beyond 'pro at the one thing' because, let's be honest, in a forum environment limiting your character into such a corner can really reduce the amount of players who will join a thread with you. The chances of you coming across characters with similar aims or interests greatly reduces the more wound into that Niche corner you get. So even if one or two Niche-esque characters get through into play, unless the player works with the mods/the others on the board to widen the scope their bio painted, their characters purpose will be hard to fulfil if no other player has a parallel goal (or even an opposing one). Unless, of course, they really enjoy Solo-Play, and then who are we to stop them? So, I disagree with you here. If you make a Niche char, with no wider ability to interact with the board, it's going to be harder for you to earn the xp to get out of that Niche - it will not be more effective to build a character this way. TableTop RP allows for it, as your characters are always actively involved in the story being presented even if they prove to be inept in certain situations. But Forum RP, for me, requires the consideration of other players and whether they would ever approach your char as they are, or whether your char would approach anyone else’s. A heavily studied Mortician who never leaves his morgue will have a very minuscule chance of meeting any other Vampire ever... y'know? And characters who go ALL OUT in skills like Dementation and Dominate or high-frenzy-risk chars have to consider that a lot of players wont want to put their chars into your firing line. You should be aware we're watching for people who go OOC, or imply better skill in an area they have spent little to no points in. We will call them up on it, and perhaps penalise xp earned for exceptionally overt breaches of their chars abilities. Additionally, we feel that our Forum RP is not at all geared towards 'optimization'; your stats should be secondary to the story of your character. Power-Players, indeed, are not welcome. We allow such vast age spans, with larger freebie pools, to acknowledge that Elders can be just as fascinating as a Neonate when in the right hands. Their point allowance acknowledges the experience that is implied with such characters, and then we also expect to see that experience in their Bios before they are even accepted to play. On XP Spending, this is also not going to be done without ST-input. Any increase or new skill earned has to be evidenced in RP. A character who never gets into a fight will not be allowed to buy combat skill increases, someone who never picks up a book nor researches on a computer will fail to increase a knowledge. Everything takes practice, and if we don't see that the character's tried to learn/had experience in-play that could increase a stat - it won't be an active purchase on the board until you do. And then, you cannot buy these increases and activate them 'mid-thread'. Anything you buy with XP only goes into effect on newly opened topics AFTER purchase. We have, in fact, outlined all of these things, to some degree, in the Our World of Darkness: Forum Rules thread. - Roofie |
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| Mouse | Sep 5 2015, 11:58 PM Post #3 |
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Hi, Roofie. I understand that there is some explanation about character creation and experience expenditure that has been mentioned already. The reason why I mention it for discussion is because some points are rather ambiguous and/or not clearly defined. I understand the intent, and I understand purpose, but the actual process itself is rather mysterious. As an example from experience rewards, a completed thread and a word count exceeding 1,000 become 1 experience point. This is easily understood and quantifiable. I can post and predict how much I can expect from my effort. However, things like 'outstanding play' are not easily understood. What is defined as 'outstanding play' that deserves that reward? Is there an example of it, and why it meets that criteria? I'm not looking for answers to those specific questions, I'm using them as an example to parallel what I wanted to discuss.
I can only speak from my personal experience, but my experience was only limited to the disagreement we had about our interpretation of my character's path of enlightenment. I was not privy to the private conversations that took place when my character's other aspects were looked at, or when other characters were submitted. I don't actually know why the 5 dot traits on my character sheet were found to be justified because I definitely didn't write his bio with a character sheet in mind. Regardless, I'm not overly concerned that it's more difficult to justify. That's definitely a reasonable expectation to have and I would be suspicious if it wasn't.
I think our disagreement is the expectation we have about the ease of rounding out a niche character during play. I don't think we should assume that threads start upon the basis of a shared trait on a sheet (although it happens, it's definitely not the norm). It's reasonable to expect that not every character can interact on the basis of their niche, the mortician who spends all of her term locked up to study is, if anything else, still a complete character with all the injected flaws and strengths that we give to her. Every character has a personality, regardless of how they spend their time. I'm not sure how it would limit them to how much experience could be gained. Specifically because, in my experience, the greatest factor that determines a character's propensity to be involved in any given thread is the actual relationship that the players have with one another. That, more than anything else, I think, is going to be what lets players overcome that obstacle to play together. I would really hope that you don't mean to imply that you're expecting that relationship to be soured because of a character sheet. If so, it might be beneficial to hide them from each other.
Again, I understand the intent and purpose, and I do not have personal experience with the actual process of how you translate a character's bio to their sheet so I cannot comment on that. For all I know, you're a secret cabal of mods that keep everything hidden to benefit yourselves. Obviously, my application to join your forum came with the implicit consent that I was okay with that possibility.
I'll use my character and one of yours as an example. I'm a soldier and have a little experience by nature of the profession with unarmed fighting, and I don't personally feel that either Mouse or Danior justify having Brawling at 5. However, if I had known how experience points were going to work, however, I would have sucked it up and taken 2 freebie points from animal ken and used them to bring brawling to 5, because now I'm looking at spending a significantly longer time working towards what would have been the same cost during character creation. Again, I don't know the specifics about how you evaluate what warrants a trait increase, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like it's safe to assume that it takes more evidence from RP to bring Brawling from 4 to 5 than it does to bring Animal Ken from 1 to 2, and even then, I feel like it's a lot easier to talk to the mods about how to justify starting Brawling at 5 than it is to do either. To reiterate, I understand what you're trying to do with character creation and I understand the point of why. The specific concern I have is that it's possible to stretch freebie points further than their value might initially indicate, and the only mitigation in place is rather ambiguous and fallible. When I suggest normalization as an improvement, I do not mean to take away from a character's relationship between it's sheet and it's bio, I mean to unify them with post character creation advancement so that they have the same value and certain purchases are not incentivized over others. ![]() Using the rules as written, as an example, would largely alleviate that issue because expensive trait purchases are not significantly cheaper at any point during the character's life-span and their impact and value remain the same, equalizing trait advancements. I feel like it's a lot more fair than player ostracism or popularity as a mitigation tool, especially in instances where cliques develop. Edited by Mouse, Sep 6 2015, 12:04 AM.
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| Roofie | Sep 6 2015, 04:21 PM Post #4 |
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Dat Moderator
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Yoohoo chuck, Just as a note, being specific is a big help to me. So, if something needs rewording/defining better, point a big arrow at it and say 'this'. I have to read in context, and without the ability to do so I can incite limited positive change. Onward! On average, in an IRL game a player may earn 4xp-ish, a session. On our board you could easily outstrip that with a single thread. Some players will outstrip others with what they earn simply due to activity. They then have to weigh buying some easy ability dots against saving up for attributes and discs. Something everyone who has ever played VTM has had to do, and we have no intention of minimising that quandary. It's a part of the game! In fact a great deal of your later argument regarding where to spend freebies and then xp, is most certainly a huge part of the leveling mechanics. You make a char, discover the weaknesses in it as you play, and work on balancing it out. Hindsight works like that, and I don’t see how changing the creation system is going to alter that pattern of behaviour. If you get into the game and suddenly realise you should have done something different you're just like everyone else who has ever played VTM. (Also, other than the outstanding RP reward, which will remain ill-defined, I don’t see how the outlined xp earning system is unclear?) Moving on to your thoughts on how we accepted your char/others via their bio and char sheet; Mouse was a drug dealer who went into the military to avoid jail time, came back and lived on the streets, was embraced as a shovel head, survived all the violence that implies and became part of a Sabbat Pack. Most physical stats can be pretty high with that sort of background, with zero need to question. You may not have written his bio with the sheet in mind, but you still justified aspects of it. If you had not, we would have asked questions. Danior, similarly, has spent more than half of his life and unlife fighting, initially with no training, and then professionally with a great deal of it (and he in fact still brawls) – his dots are justified. (To sway any concern here, Mods do not approve their own sheet. They submit and are judged by other mods and then have to make changes if something is not working. My own chars, Jack, Jiba, Danior and Non were reworked after submission, or justified, just as other characters have been). I'm afraid we will disagree here with regards to how certain aspects of forum play are the 'norm'. From my own experience, I have witnessed niche characters be horribly under utilized because no one knew how to get their characters into play with them. I have witnessed one set of behaviour and you, apparently, another. That's fine, it just means we're going to rub until I see something different. However, I will draw attention to the fact I did say that players should contact mods/others on the board to start up threads and discuss possible ideas to get them interacting. I absolutely agree that the community behind an RP forum is what makes the place breathe, and not the collection of character sheets you can find in the approved section. For new and old players alike, though, the first thing they will go and see is your bio and the picture it paints, the stats they are going up against – it is the fundamental impression of your char. They are there to help players find characters with common ground or those that are of interest to them. A niche char may be exactly what a person is looking for, for specific story ideas. A player, rather than prioritising playing with a friend (or anyone available), might want to play with chars for whom it makes sense that their own chars to interact. Playing here isn’t about earning xp to the exclusion of sense, it's about telling a story. You can indeed write fan fiction about your morgue and RP with the rare person that goes there, rather than jumping into scenes where you feel you don't belong. If that's the kind of play that makes you happy, go nuts! So long as it is understood that it is a self-inflicted limitation we as Mods aren't here to help with beyond offering ideas. We won't be hiding bios at all, as they are also there for players to make informed decisions about the risks they are putting their characters under - all vampires are dangerous to one another. Their characters may not know how much, but the player always should. Some will not take the risk, others will. Informed consent is important. A relationship 'soured' though, is a little extreme, the character could be very well liked, but not of interest to another player RP-wise. Moving on to the system you have presented, Mod Feathers gave it a go; built one of her characters in exactly the same way, but with the xp band suggested instead of freebies. It honestly, made little to no visible difference to the dots. The math, though, became an absolute ass. As rather than using the simplified calculations we've outlined on the board she had to do the xp purchase system for every single upgrade bought at creation. I want to point out that though this system is suggested by the company, it is aimed at small 3-5 player campaigns with no regular newcomers. Not a Forum based system that already has 11 player characters, several pending, and remains open to more. Mod Feathers and I do not have the time nor do we wish to complicate the creation process to such a degree for ourselves. A player may be happy to do that math, but they would only have to do it the once. We would have to check every single sheet submitted. Indeed, we would need to see two different versions of a char sheet, a completed one – and then one which highlights where xp upgrades were bought, and by how many dots. Then, also consider that we will have to rework all that math if a stat gets changed during discussion with the player. It quickly becomes impractical for us. One may also note that the effort to do such maths is especially too much in a game where sheets are meant to mainly be used as "reference", and where most scenes will hopefully be freeform and not about your prowess at picking the correct stat. Additionally, have you considered that we would have to convert every approved character already on the board to this system? That all the players currently in-game would have to do so too? Then someone else down the line could arrive and ask why we don't implement the Elysium rules, the Age background, or whatever else he likes because he believes those to be superior. Would we then have to do this all over again? I would rather stick to the system we as mods brought to the table, discussed, reworked and came to an agreement on before opening the board. A system we are comfortable working with. - Roofie |
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| Mouse | Sep 7 2015, 01:28 PM Post #5 |
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I think that you may have misunderstood what I was trying to communicate because I'm not sure why else you would say that. I am not expressing any distress in how I've allotted freebie points for my character; I've used Mouse several times before, and already knew how I intended to build the character before I submitted it. I could not bring this up sooner because you revealed how experience gain would be managed sometime after you looked at the character. That that knowledge would have influenced how I approached my predetermined path is incidental. Again, I am not distressed. I realized that my question about experience gain had not been answered before I posted, and in doing so, I accepted the possibility that it may be drastically different than how I anticipated. And to be honest, the character sheet isn't an important factor to me. The reason why I mentioned it was specifically because I can not produce another verifiable instance that the system in place would influence trait allocation other than my own personal experience. I was not involved with the creation of any character except for mine and I cannot objectively comment on what I do not know.
To illuminate so that you can see, By creating two character sheets, only rearranging the Talents and Skills traits that are used to start with, I calculate what it takes to equal them out again. One requires 16 experience points, the other requires 24. None of the traits have been raised higher than 4, I've only eliminated most traits that were at 1 or 2. It's a marginal amount, only 8 experience points. What makes this significant is how small the sample size is. This is a character with the bare minimum freebie point allotment, and by only moving 6 freebie points, I saved myself 8 experience points and a productive month of actual play. What I'm trying to express is that if I can do this with such a small number, I can do it with a much larger number and further increase that disparity. Just like a game that allows elder characters, because the opportunity exists, I suspect that it will be taken and it it will influence how characters are represented on their sheet at character creation.
Yes, it's not supposed to make a difference unless you specifically try to build a character that would take advantage of freebie point builds.
It's more difficult to backwards engineer a character that used experience points. What helped me was to have players make annotations of how they spent experience points so that all I had to do was check the expenditure record for errors. I can show you how to simplify it.
What is the 'forum based system?' How is having 11 players, several pending, and open to more impacted building characters with experience points?
There are a lot of reasons that players may want to use sheet for a specific occurrence or in general, and we each value them differently. I can't speak for everyone, but I know at least 3 people that do not mind building characters this way in order to support their preferences.
I have considered that you may not want to, but I definitely wouldn't say that you have to in order to facilitate it. As we both already have seen, it doesn't make a large impact unless it is intentional. Without having looked at every character on the forum, I feel like it's safe to assume that it has not occurred yet based upon what I know of the players.
Do you, homie.
Again, it's not really important to what I wanted to talk about, and I feel like it's a rabbit hole of an irrelevant side track. That and I'm not sure it really makes a difference that I explicitly state what is unclear if it will remain ill-defined anyway.
Thank you for making that visible. There is definitely a difference in how we interpret the rules, but it's not a big deal.
I can't comment again. I wasn't involved and don't have anything to contribute.
I was not making a serious suggestion! My humor is a little dry sometimes. |
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| Featherstone | Sep 7 2015, 03:03 PM Post #6 |
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Interventionist Mod
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Hey Mouse! Let's see if we can clarify some points...
Well, the difference is in the effort that it takes, not so much to build a sheet, but to correct it, especially when, during the process of character creation, it could be re-engineered a few times. Why a "forum" is different for this purpose lies in the fact it doesn't have 4-5 players, whose sheets are all verified -before- the game starts and no new characters are expected to enter play. On the contrary, here the game is open to virtually any number of players, whose sheets will be discussed, reviewed, modified and checked again, whilst we're also thinking to plot hooks, overviewing RP, and all the activities that (hopefully more than efficient maths), makes a game enjoyable. The impact it has on a person playing a char will be minimal, the impact it will have on our acceptance process will not be. Put simply, we do not have the time, nor want to make it for this system.
We're not undervaluing sheets, otherwise we wouldn't have them. Indeed, one needs to check what they can have before writing certain aspects of the story. What we mean is that the system is a tool and the success of one's RP is not determined by how well they can optimize their sheet or how fast, nor how much they can kick other characters' asses with their impressive dice pools. Can our system be abused by minmaxer? Yes; if one really cared about it, they could get their beloved 'optimized sheet'. But then, if one wanted to increase sheer power they may as well create an older character, or multiple characters that support each other (both options being available in this game). And the reason why they're available is that you won't "win" the game by packing more and more disruptive power, but by having one or more characters that are enjoyable for you to write. Thus, if you sacrifice a more interesting concept in order to have someone with Occult 5 and 20 thaum paths, who uses them from a fish tank because they won't survive outside of it, you are basically punishing yourself. And if you indeed enjoy that concept... great for you! You're not taking over the world, though. How well built your char is mathematically will not change how we are looking for good RP above anything else; an optimized char is of no concern to us, but whether you can RP them is. So, on the system; we would really like to stick to the simplest option and reserve our energies for something more creative than rewriting the creation mechanics again and again.
Not going down the rabbit hole but yeah, it's ill-defined because it's a quite remote eventuality; in case someone writes a scene so superb or advances the plots so awesomely that they should deserve a special reward. But mostly, if you want a reliable measure of what you get as an outcome of your efforts, I think all the other rules are quite straightforward. Overall, though, there's a matter of consistency we as Mods must maintain. At any time someone could point out they don't like a specific rule, that they know one that is more balanced, that a certain aspect is too vague and would require a stricter regulation, that this or that aspect of the canon is not as it should be... which are all legitimate concerns. However, it will not be fair to change the system every time someone brings a new idea to the table. In the end someone should establish what goes on in this specific 'verse, on our specific forum. And that someone is us, the Mods. We're not willing to change with every whim brought forward from another board. Edited by Featherstone, Sep 7 2015, 04:33 PM.
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