12-29-2013, 01:07 PM
(12-28-2013, 01:58 PM)Harmonic Wrote: Mechanics are about all we've got to go on. My point remains that if we are realistic about this, it shouldn't be out of the realm of logic to kill a dragon, drake, or whelp. Problem is--- we need to have a feeling of empowerment. Everything can die, part of the fun of RP is the progression to getting to do something like that.
I feel like I don't really have all that much left to say, here, without repeating what I've said elsewhere, which is something I try not to do.
The "tone from the top" here on CotH is that fighting anything, from a bandit to a guard to a dragon to another player, is to be weighed by its full implications to the world. To that end, there's a lot of rules and regulations around combat (including but not limited to slaying dragons). And perhaps that's a good thing--the GMs+, in this thread, have already given plenty of scenarios in which less regulation or oversight would lead to gross violations of world verisimilitude.
The end result is that it becomes significantly more difficult for us, the people behind our characters, to set up big fights and challenges--the kind of challenges that, when accomplished, give one the sense of "empowerment" and "progression" of having ascended from two-bit swordhand to Hero of the Homeland--the sense that one has climbed a slope (there, I said it).
We need a GM present to regulate power levels and to oversee global implications. We need a sufficient number people online and available for RP in the first place to accomplish the task (you planned on taking down a dragon with 10 people but only 5 showed up? gg), and those people have to all be willing to potentially lose their characters in the fight or its persistent aftermath. We need sufficient RP backstory for the planning, training, and gearing up.
Can it be done? Yes. Is it extremely difficult to pull off? Yes. People don't join CotH expecting ye olde Tuesday raide nights for 15-man "Slay the Big Bad X" RP. Necessitating that the event be large-scale and highly formalized (as described in the previous paragraph) makes the event effectually difficult to organize--maybe even prohibitively so. Given how small our community is, it may even take a concerted effort from practically all of us--which, of course, isn't something that can happen too often.
Is this system preferable to the alternative (that is, less regulation, more freedom, and with it less verisimilitude)? Perhaps. The GMs certainly think so. Either way, this question is, in my opinion, the very core of the debate in this thread. And whatever path we collectively decide upon as a community, we have to accept and work within the drawbacks that come along with it.
