CL: Advanced PF books (answer)

[I think rhdennis asked...]
  >> Bring the books to or nearer Puddleby and I will have to say, along
  >> with
  >> PMF that the area presents a suitable filter and ought not be easily
  >> circumvented (i.e. don't go till you're 'ready'). For me this begs the
  >> question that HGM alluded to in another post. Did the Path Finder GM
  >> really intend those books to only accessible by high level exiles? If
  >> so, why?

[...and I said...]
 > I think so, but I can't say why. I'll ask and fwd any public comment.

[PF-GM says]
Yeah. Many reasons (I'm sure I'm forgetting some) including:

IC-1) Within the PF story, OOB fits nicely. Within the overall CL story
development it fits well too. Clearly it could have gone elsewhere but
it's a good fit where it is. Has this story been as well communicated
to players as it might be? I'll concede that point without argument.

[these are more OOC, but still reasons]
1) PF is exploration related. OOB has a lot of explorer stuff in it.
They go together.

2) Anyone can go as long as they have a strong group, that usually
amounts to the same thing (namely that PF folks need to be high level
too) but it's not required, that part is up to the players. I wondered
if players would take lower level PFs there. There seems to be some of
that but not a lot. Anyway, up to the players if they want to take low
level folks there.

3) Anything we use as a reward for expeditions would be kind of silly
if we put the same reward somewhere close to town too. High level PF
tends to be that kind of thing. Adding higher level paths that cut off
part of the run keeps the expedition time to get to the new stuff
relatively constant even though you're going farther out. That works
out nicely.

4) There's quite a bit of PF close to town (2 trainers). Just not the
ones that go above 100 ranks.

5) There are probably other reasons but I'm tired just now and I'm
going to bad :-)

BTW, You can tell players that PF is being tweaked to eliminate the
advantage of doing /sleep to see paths because it's lame that /sleep
helped. /sleep did (slightly) help players to see paths for reasons
having to do with minor side effects of /sleep deep in the server.
Players will be happy to know that seeing paths will be a bit easier
than it used to be to match what was happening when you did /sleep.

[That is: the /sleep advantage is being eliminated. Rather than nurf
/sleep, not-/sleep is being brought to the same advantage, so /sleep
gives no advantage over not-/sleep. Hooray!]

 > --
 > "Do not argue with the forces of nature, for you are small,
 > insignificant, and biodegradable."

--
You have to remove stuff from my e-mail to reply, it's not difficult.
Everything here is my personal opinion, do with it what you will.

"[T]he idea of a game with people nicer than in CL makes me wanna puke."
-Michael<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->

Helpful GM <HelpfulGM@*NO-SPAM*PlayNaked.com> wrote:

 > BTW, You can tell players that PF is being tweaked to eliminate the
 > advantage of doing /sleep to see paths because it's lame that /sleep
 > helped. /sleep did (slightly) help players to see paths for reasons
 > having to do with minor side effects of /sleep deep in the server.
 > Players will be happy to know that seeing paths will be a bit easier
 > than it used to be to match what was happening when you did /sleep.
 >
 > [That is: the /sleep advantage is being eliminated. Rather than nurf
 > /sleep, not-/sleep is being brought to the same advantage, so /sleep
 > gives no advantage over not-/sleep. Hooray!]

Christ, thats 2 for 2 on handling changes the right way, you are on a
roll HGM.

The sleep thing was always really really stupid, so glad to see that
going away. And adjusting PF to make up for its absence is awsome too.

Best of all, you told us about it instead of just doing it. A lot of
people were not sure that sleeping did anything helpful for PF, and now
its good to know that we dont have to waste our time on it.

CL is not like most MMORPGs, most of them document and release all the
changes they make, even critter tweaks. While its sometimes cool to
find out some things on your own, I think changes like this should
always be posted.

Thanks again.

Michael<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->