Bringing retired characters back

[Dorn]

One of my biggest regrets was getting bored of and suiciding or retiring severl characters i shouldn't have after playing them for a long time.

I used to be hardline 'suck it up and get on with it' and 'variety is the spice of life' but now after retiring about 4 characters i find myself thinking about this from the other angle.

Would it be very hard to allow a player to retire a character, and as long as it was still on the vault, bring him/her back later?

This might be something that could be applied for characters level 8 min or something so as not to be an everyday thing and wouldn't be too hard to have a single DM responsible for it. If a DM/Staffer has the erf then no muling or anything should occur. And of course you couldn't alternate between characters so you're effectively playing 2.

Or is it all too difficult? I'm just aware that players sometimes burn out as well as DMS

[Fionn]

/me feels sorry for the equine carcass

[idoru]

You are only allowed one character in ALFA. This policy would not be worth much if people can switch back and forth with old characters. All the old reasons why we have a one-char policy still apply:

* less risk of cheating through metagaming, muling etc.

* better immersion, since it encourages people to stick with the chars they have... It minimises the number of new characters you see, and maximises the time you see the same chars. Which allows for deeper, more meaningful IC relationships.

* Better roleplaying. I believe rather strongly that you RP a character better after playing him/her for a long time. I'm also quite convinced that your RP focus will be better if you are not switching back and forth between characters. If you think you are capable of RPing many different chars at once you may be better off joining the DM ranks.

This might be something that could be applied for characters level 8 min or something so as not to be an everyday thing and wouldn't be too hard to have a single DM responsible for it.

So not only should we ditch the one-char policy, we should also make it an elitist thing that only high-level players with DM attention can do? High level does not equal good RP. High level does not equal being more deserving than anyone else, in any way.

Poor horse.

[Swift]

This might be something that could be applied for characters level 8 min or something so as not to be an everyday thing and wouldn't be too hard to have a single DM responsible for it.

So not only should we ditch the one-char policy, we should also make it an elitist thing that only high-level players with DM attention can do? High level does not equal good RP. High level does not equal being more deserving than anyone else, in any way.

Poor horse.

Level 8 is elitist? Are you and i both on the same planet here?

Id wager a very good portion of ALFA is near, at or above that level. Now level 15, that would be elitist, but level 8 is a cinch so long as your careful.

[idoru]

Level 8 is a cinch so long as you are careful and have been playing regularly for 6 months or so, at the very least.

You are missing the point, though. The point is that making something dependent on level goes against the fundamental ALFA idea that RP should matter more than XP and levels, and more than having a DM buddy.

[Dorn]

You are only allowed one character in ALFA. This policy would not be worth much if people can switch back and forth with old characters. All the old reasons why we have a one-char policy still apply:

* less risk of cheating through metagaming, muling etc.

Yea fair enough. Just raising a thought.

* better immersion, since it encourages people to stick with the chars they have... It minimises the number of new characters you see, and maximises the time you see the same chars. Which allows for deeper, more meaningful IC relationships.

Yea not so sure about this one, if you're going to kill of a character due to itchy feet thats kinda OOC as the character himself wouldn't wanna die...just the player. But see what you mean.

* Better roleplaying. I believe rather strongly that you RP a character better after playing him/her for a long time. I'm also quite convinced that your RP focus will be better if you are not switching back and forth between characters. If you think you are capable of RPing many different chars at once you may be better off joining the DM ranks.

I agree you RP better after a long time.....until you kill him/her off as you wanna try new things as your not having as much FUN at the moment (surely the point of a game). And i dont think switching back and forth is a good idea. In fact i think i said that in my post.

This might be something that could be applied for characters level 8 min or something so as not to be an everyday thing and wouldn't be too hard to have a single DM responsible for it.

So not only should we ditch the one-char policy, we should also make it an elitist thing that only high-level players with DM attention can do? High level does not equal good RP. High level does not equal being more deserving than anyone else, in any way.
[/quote]

No. Just that level 8 is hard to achieve and generally has taken me close to a year min to reach...about the time i start wondering about another character concept and get itchy, do something and then regret it later. I wasn't giving a 'rule'. Just a thought starter. So no i'm not trying to be elitist...just indicaitn gthat there would have to be some limits on it to avoid any switching back and forth (as you complained about above).

I'd say '12+ months' but it's harder to measure that as far as i know.

Level 8 is a cinch

Then consistency is a bigger problem than i thought. I've always found it a bloody struggle in TLR/WF.

Poor horse.

Meh, i think the whole 'dead horse' idea is silly. As if this community doesn't re-examine things all the time. To do so would be to stagnate.

Anyway, seems i've been told.[/quote]

[Vendrin]

I'm for it, if they are level 5 or 6, and they have to be retired for 3 months before switching back. And if you retire again before another 3 months that retirement is permanant.

And Idoru... I don't see how this would risk any greater meta then what we have now.

[Baalster]

Dead-horse discussion again is it ?

We have perma death, we have one character per PC. If we have had the centralized authentication we used to have, this wouldn't even have been brought up.

Don't kill off your baby if you think you still love it...

B.

[Ludo]

I haven't been around long enough to experience Dorn's itchy feet syndrome, but I'm already thinking of getting Wynna to think up a good death for Elm. I made mistakes building her that I can't rectify any time soon. However, I will really miss her character background. It's fun and I haven't exploited it as much as I want to yet. If it weren't for that dex of 8 and other bad choices...

Elm is getting a 'friend of all the world' reputation with certain important folks in Silverymoon. She's also getting a rep for getting in trouble. By the time this campaign is over she may have so many ties to other characters that I won't want to DMicide her until all those characters are dead.

The question, though, is whether I should be allowed to retire her and bring her back later. Offhand, I don't think I'd want to. By the time I brought her back later her friends would probably be dead. If not, though, and if their players wanted Elm back, I'd be tempted by the possibility.

I know this can't be handled on a case-by-case basis because people would cry 'favoritism.' I think it would be hard to set up a fair and unexploitable set of rules for coming out of retirement, and perhaps hard to enforce them. However, I for one wouldn't object if such a rule existed, and if it did I'd never DMicide a character.

OTOH, I wouldn't object if the rule stays as it is. There's something attractive about the finality of virtual death. Just sharing my thoughts, not beating the horse - taking tissue samples because I wasn't there when it died.

[idoru]

And Idoru... I don't see how this would risk any greater meta then what we have now.

As it is now, if the logs show a player logging on with char A, then with char B, and then with char A again, you can easily get them for violating the multiple character rule. There's no need to show that the multiple chars were used for illegal purposes (which is exceedingly difficult to prove).

With this rule, a player can suddenly legimitately do this... So you would now have to prove that the player has, for example, been muling gold.

As for metagaming, the obvious example goes something like this: char A is a LG paladin, who is temporarily retired in favour of char B, a CE sharran who proceeds to join a local group that the char A pally has sought to infiltrate. Once char B has gained sufficient info, he is retired and char A comes back to clear out the evil-doers.

Call me cynical, but I've seen far shadier things than that in AR investigations.

Sure, people can metagame as it is now by using info from their previous chars to their new char's advantage... But in order to do so now they would have to lose their current char, which is some kind of deterrent, at least.

[illialid]

We are talking about NWN2, right? I admit I'm a little out of the loop since I'm not sure what role I will have in the new system. But looking at this thread I have a few questions:

Has it has been established that PCs from NWN1 will be ported over to NWN2?

Based on the expected tech requirements to even play NWN2 have "we" looked at the loss to the player base? I'm beginning to think ALFA NWN1 might be around for a while just because the new game will require major upgrades in hardware.

Why not allow a "1-time" offer to bring back a retired PC and then wipe the vaults?

[fluffmonster]

PCs from NWN1 will not be "ported" to NWN2. Every NWN2 PC will start at level 1.

[Swift]

With this rule, a player can suddenly legimitately do this... So you would now have to prove that the player has, for example, been muling gold.

Except if this were ever to be allowed, you can bet your ass it would carry a certain time restriction, to prevent exactly that, so it still wouldn't be hard to catch someone doing it and hitting them with playing more than 1 character.

As for metagaming, the obvious example goes something like this: char A is a LG paladin, who is temporarily retired in favour of char B, a CE sharran who proceeds to join a local group that the char A pally has sought to infiltrate. Once char B has gained sufficient info, he is retired and char A comes back to clear out the evil-doers.

So make the rules exactly like the DM player rules. Cant play the second where the first is mainly based. This would allow no more meta than letting DMs play. DMs playing provides a huge potential for meta, but that potential hasn't really caused any major problems.

While this will never happen anyway, you are making it sound far worse to ALFA than it really would be idoru, kinda like the people that said letting DMs play would be the end of ALFA.

[illialid]

PCs from NWN1 will not be "ported" to NWN2. Every NWN2 PC will start at level 1.

This is what I thought. So this thread is to establish the guidelines before NWN2 launches? Got it. Sorry for the distraction.

[MShady]

The one thing I never liked about this policy is its absolutely unforgiving of mistakes. Why can't we do that in a presumably friendly community? Someone retires, doesn't work out, give them a set period of time to decide if they can get into a new PC or not. Doesn't strike me as logistically challenging.

Mike