Open Discussion: Regularizing Players from Elsewhere

[Maiyannah]

So, something that's come up in my discord DMs a couple times now as an initial properly-playable state approaches is this:

How do we want to handle people whom want to continue the story of their characters from other places?

While I don't think it would be a good idea to have a general policy for this for a variety of reasons, most of us here are coming from a place of dissatisfaction with elsewhere and wanting to continue those stories, so I think it would be some thinking as to how we want to handle this. We can't really stop people from remaking characters here and I wouldn't want to try, as long as they're being non-disruptive, so it's best to figure out how to regularize them.

Story-wise, I'm given to say that you can consider anything elsewhere background at best, and its best to only refer to it in the broadest, most general terms. Avoid specific examples or mentions as much as possible. Don't name names (unless they're people also coming here, ie I wouldnt worry about referring to Talis on Em or vice versa for instance).

Mechanically, is a little thornier, and any solution I can think of is imperfect:

1] Tell them to start on the same footing as anyone else, and have to kind of deal with/explain a character losing a lot of power. Or you don't acknowledge it IC, which gets a bit metagamey.

2] Allow them to skip the tutorial areas we're making and start at the level 5 these are aimed to end at. This is something of a compromise: you can start a little higher but miss out on the tutorials explaining our mechanics.

3] Allow some kind of amnesty period for new migrating players whereby we can give them experience to achieve their old level. Mechanically and storywise this is cleanest, but becomes thorny on the side of validating claims, and probably missing out on a lot of content.

What do you guys think?

[Aurelia Haeryn]

It's a tricky thing, somebody pulling out a maxed out on another server character probably wouldn't be the best thing but starting from nothing would suck.

Maybe having them start out with some sort of memento item or buff to get them through the earlier content quicker while not being passable to other characters ingame might be a sort of a fair midpoint of a bunch of those options?

A buff would take more background work I'm guessing so it doesn't get lost on death and only lasts up to a point like a certain character level or something, while an item would probably be more admin stuff and having to work with what info you'd get on their character.

[Maiyannah]

The idea that comes to mind is the "catchup gear" that FF XIV gives its players for new expansions is basically an XP bonus up to a them attaining a certain level. This seems reasonable to me as one option, if it's possible - I'm not 100% sure this is doable.

[Ouroboros]

The server is the server; what happens here is what is relevant and what happens elsewhere will always be less so. If people want to take another swing at essentially the same character on a different server, that's entirely up to them to do so, but characters should always have the same starting roots and be on more or less equal footing relative to one-another.

A significant amount of characters come from other settings, as the baseline expected character is the typical Outlander being a fish out of water, entirely new to the setting within they find themselves, but handling anything beyond what is mechanically achievable at chargen becomes a monumental effort that is frankly not worth pursuing for many reasons. Explaining why the epic-levelled character that previously walked the Multiverse with ease suddenly finds themselves in Ravenloft depowered to be a level 2 and having all of their meta-knowledge forcibly locked away from their mind (examples being all the miscellaneous arcane, occult and planar lore) is narratively difficult at best.

I think the ideal should be that people look to create entirely new concepts on the server rather than retreading old ground, but that choice is a very personal one, which I am not inclined to challenge people on. But all characters should be starting at the same relative point in their career, whatever that beginning point might be. If that's inherently incompatible with people porting across characters from other servers, I think that's the price one has to pay to avoid all the other complications that would otherwise rear their heads.


As to the idea of allowing players to jump-start ahead of the tutorial experiences right out of the gate, or having accelerated progress towards a certain point, I don't see the appeal nor agree with it. The pursuit on a roleplay server should be primarily the roleplay; levelling characters and mechanical progression is largely just 'numbers get bigger' to have demonstrable and measurable effects on your time spent, when what really matters narratively is a character's individual achievements. If you're speeding through earlier content or skipping it entirely, you are putting yourself at a relative disadvantage both in the narrative sense of potentially having less story behind the character, as well as in the knowledge you possess of the server if you've skipped the tutorial without ever having played here previously.

Not to mention the issues arising from level disparities caused by the previously mentioned skip-ahead/progress boosting; characters will be disincentivized from cooperating if they're too far apart in level.

[Maiyannah]

The server is the server; what happens here is what is relevant and what happens elsewhere will always be less so. If people want to take another swing at essentially the same character on a different server, that's entirely up to them to do so, but characters should always have the same starting roots and be on more or less equal footing relative to one-another.

Yeah one of the things I am basically vetoing is them getting to start at their original or an elevated level; except insofar as maybe being able to skip the tutorial areas we'll be making (mini-spoiler: I'll be trying to have a few variations for different origins, as we get going)

A significant amount of characters come from other settings, as the baseline expected character is the typical Outlander being a fish out of water, entirely new to the setting within they find themselves, but handling anything beyond what is mechanically achievable at chargen becomes a monumental effort that is frankly not worth pursuing for many reasons. Explaining why the epic-levelled character that previously walked the Multiverse with ease suddenly finds themselves in Ravenloft depowered to be a level 2 and having all of their meta-knowledge forcibly locked away from their mind (examples being all the miscellaneous arcane, occult and planar lore) is narratively difficult at best.

Yes, de-powered characters are always awkward to explain at the best of times and it would do us few favours to allow that. I'm not going to make a hard-fast rule as other places have, because there are some circumstances where it can work narratively, but in general it doesn't work out that great.

I think the ideal should be that people look to create entirely new concepts on the server rather than retreading old ground, but that choice is a very personal one, which I am not inclined to challenge people on. But all characters should be starting at the same relative point in their career, whatever that beginning point might be. If that's inherently incompatible with people porting across characters from other servers, I think that's the price one has to pay to avoid all the other complications that would otherwise rear their heads.

I'm somewhat in disagreement here; there's ways that can work out narratively as well. For instance some old veteran soldier well past his prime that has to get back into shape, is one general concept that can do that well.

But moreover, both for myself and for those coming from elsewhere, let's not beat around the bush, we build this place to be better than certain other servers, or at least that's what they're trying to do, and there's stories that were incomplete there that people want to complete. There's some caution to be had there - things shouldn't really come up that aren't canon-canon (or our own server canon) - but I trust the people we do have here to approach this in a mature fashion. As we grow that might become more of a concern, and that's kind of why I'd somewhat consider it more of an amnesty-period thing than something to do continually/in general, but I do think extending a proverbial olive branch of sorts to those disenfranchised from elsewhere whom want to continue those stories here is a worthwhile gesture of good will, so long as we ensure people are not abusing said good will.

As to the idea of allowing players to jump-start ahead of the tutorial experiences right out of the gate, or having accelerated progress towards a certain point, I don't see the appeal nor agree with it. The pursuit on a roleplay server should be primarily the roleplay; levelling characters and mechanical progression is largely just 'numbers get bigger' to have demonstrable and measurable effects on your time spent, when what really matters narratively is a character's individual achievements. If you're speeding through earlier content or skipping it entirely, you are putting yourself at a relative disadvantage both in the narrative sense of potentially having less story behind the character, as well as in the knowledge you possess of the server if you've skipped the tutorial without ever having played here previously.

Not to mention the issues arising from level disparities caused by the previously mentioned skip-ahead/progress boosting; characters will be disincentivized from cooperating if they're too far apart in level.

So far as "skipping the tutorial" goes, or an item to give a boost to a certain level, this I would make a take it or leave it thing for everyone; so it's choice if they want to fast track that or not. One common complaint on other PW's is that it can take considerable time to get back up to speed when you do closure, and that disincentivises people from wanting to. I think offering that kind of thing is a good idea that will help less stories stay around past their prime. Of course, we don't want to go too far the other direction as well; we don't want people going 1 to 10 in a day or something either. We would need to be reasonable.