Re: [dq-rules]

[Jason Winter <Alarian@harbornet.net>]

Thought I would share my experiences with this.  I've GM'd two long running 
campaigns and I've had vastly different experiences with both.  The first I 
ran while I was in the military and ran for 2 1/2 years with pretty much 
the same group of friends.  We played 5 nights a week (yes, that's 
correct), Monday through Friday from 10:30pm until 6am.  Needless to say 
after 2 1/2 years, all my players were very high level.  We actually had to 
create a fair amount of new rules to handle the situation.  In that 
campaign, there was very little blending of characters and it was one of 
the best campaign experiences I have ever had the pleasure of being 
in.  Sure there was a little blending, but nothing where you ever wondered 
who was the thief in the group, who was the mage, etc.

The second group I ran (still playing with this group, although we started 
the campaign over for reasons I'll list below).  I ran this group for 
somewhere around 8 to 10 years playing every other weekend for the first 
3-5 years, then about once a month or so after that.  This group was quite 
a bit different. EVERYONE in the group was a mage by the time the campaign 
ended.  Which definitely caused a breakdown in the system from my 
perspective.  Having a group of 6 players who are all fairly accomplished 
in one area (ie. fighting, thieving, etc,and then throw on top of that 6 
fairly powerful spell casters and I started having problems.  The one spell 
that I finally had to end up modifying and reducing the power of quite a 
bit was the ability of the party to fly where ever they wanted to do with 
the shadow wings spells.  A shadow mage with this spell at say rank 10-15 
can fly at 40 to 45 mph for hours at a time can make for the ability to go 
long distances.  Try keeping up with a group that can fly all over a 
continent at great speeds whenever they want.  Makes for a nightmare when 
it comes to GM'ing!  When I restarted my campaign, the one rule I put in 
was that only one person in the group could start out as a mage, and I plan 
on making learning a new college for non-mages difficult so the unbalance 
hopefully doesn't happen again.

In the end, I ended up going to a more class-based system I guess.  We call 
still call it DQ and it's core is still very heavy into DQ, but the classes 
are more defined now, though I also added in a skill system, so if a 
fighter wants to have some thieving skills it is easy to do (my skill 
system is based on Role-masters skill system).  Mages, other than how 
damage works are 100% DQ as is combat.

At 11:19 AM 1/24/03, you wrote:
>--- davis john <jrd123@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> i think this is also a weakness of the system in
>> that given enough time
>> every character is pretty much the same..everyone
>> has similar combat, spell,
>> social etc capability give or take a little bit.
>> Guess thats one bad issue
>> of a  'class/order/occupation less' system.
>>
>> John
>
>I wondered that myself when I first looked at the
>system.  However, I never really noticed that
>happening in my groups.  Now, we all diversified a
>bit.  Everyone had some weapons they were good at,
>some skill, and a lot of us were mages.  However,
>everyone also had their specialty and their niche in
>the group.
>
>Part of that, I think, is built in.  The division
>between non-mage and mage tends to stick, since
>someone who starts a fighter tends to give their MA a
>5 and someone who starts a mage is commensurely less
>physically gifted.  Among mages, specialization is
>maintained by the College system.  We were also real
>strict with the "you use to use a skill/spell/weapon
>during the campaign (at least once) to Rank it after"
>rule.  That kept people on the straight and narrow,
>once they had invested Ranks in certain things
>already.
>
>You see much the same thing in D&D 3rd ed.  Most
>people end up taking two or three levels in an
>off-class, but mostly they stick to one class.  As a
>friend of mine found out, being a 5th level Cleric and
>a 5th level Ranger in a 10th level party means your
>really just 5th level.  In a 10th level party.
>
>Everyone in my old DQ group had a pretty distinctive
>character, even as we hit Hero level.  However, I've
>never played in a really "high level" campaign with
>DQ.  I could see the homogenization thing being a more
>serious problem once characters are getting such high
>XP awards.  It would be comparitively easy to increase
>stats, etc.  Does anyone have experience with this
>type of campaign?
>
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Jason Winter
Alarian@harbornet.net
http://www.darkrealms.com/~alarian/