Is Magic a broken system?

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Pellandria
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Post by Pellandria »

Aust wrote:Its impossible to get magic, because The Temple lacks BHONA and a teaching room, and Pellandria keeps making it impossible to be a teacher in the academy. Power corrupts in real life too, as you point out, so most mages are arrogant. I don't see a problem there. Right now you joined at he worst possible time, though. Be patient, and you will get a teacher. There have been COUNTLESS students of magic the last few years, the only problem is that most quit after a few months, before they get BHONA. Most of those who have BHONA teach.
Wait a second here I have "never" made anything that keeps people from becoming teachers, heck we have two teachers, who saddly got inactiv *grumbel* after they got their runes, but thats not my problem, I can't force people to play the game, if a teacher drops out because the game is boring for him its not my fault.

The rules to get into a teacher exam, which was a decission from 3 people and not jsut one, is written clearly on our board, but your char never ever wrotte an application or has gone forward and said "Hey I want a mage and a teacher exam" I would even go so far to say that you can do the teacher exam ~without~ mentoring another student first.
We allready tried to go against the lack of teachers anyway, with having the new "mentors" and the "teachers".
A Mentor is able to teach his student any theoretical stuff and then can ask another "teacher" to give his student a rune, but noone seems to use the system except one, so its not really our fault that you do not use existing systems, that we thougth up to go with the new system and lack of teachers aswell.
That you got not teaching room well..thats no suprise, you got no mages who could possible know how to create one.

Tanistan: Not exactly, the teaching of runes ~without~ the rune room aka teaching room lowers the skill of the teached runeschool about i think 1-5% or something, the problem is you jsut can do that when you are allready pretty high in the school itself, so its two blows, first you loose your skill and than you have to regain it jsut to loose it again with the next student.

The real reason behind this was to stop renegade mages to create armys of mages with no teaching room and thus with no controll, you can only give 2 runes per week anyway.
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Post by Damien »

In illarion, things never really work out the way they were planned. The problem is as usual murphy's law : If you leave people a chance to do something terribly wrong, someone will do exactly that, sooner or later.
The magic teaching system is a great example for that, have a small, not complete history recap :

- The new magic system was introduced by a few NPC teachers who primarily taught old mage players who had well known and well played mages in the old system. Teaching was put in with the sense to enhance the roleplay and make players rely on each another, plus making magic a bit more rare. It is quite powerful and intended to be so. That first magic system state was very powerful and strong runes were only intended to be given out to responsibly acting players.
- then, the teaching was handed over to the players. Those first player teachers had to powergame alot because if you taught someone a rune, you lost skill. So the mage players powergamed and some hated it and left the game, some liked and overdid it, some abused the system (a good example for that was a mage who created thousands of edibles and mass-sold huge amounts of magically created meat, cakes, fruits and vegetables for a much cheaper price than every baker or farmer could afford to sell them for). Some mage players taught OC-friends who were not acting responsible with the runes, and other players complained mainly about those uberpowergamed and abusive ones, so the magic system got tweaked, skilling was made much harder for every mage, etc.
- the system got changed and a teaching room got involved so you could teach without the loss of skill. Several places / groups got teaching rooms in the long run. Again, a few mage players powergamed like hell, more teacher players left cause the magic learning sucked and you had to powergame to be able to compete with the powergaming ones, and there were a few bugs in the magic system as well that at some point made it impossible for an almost fully skilled mage to cast some of the middle to higher spells.. and so on. You see, stuff like that drives people (and teachers) away.
Since then, you have different groups of mages that can teach magic :
1. the magic academy. They are kinda neutral to stuff. You need some magic theory texts from their forums to pass their tests, they are the first place to go to usually.
2. the university in varshikar. They are an alternative to the above group, their playing style is a bi different.
3. the evil temple group. They may teach runes much faster than the other groups, but their agressive and kinda "powergamed" playing style plus the fact that they play "evil" or at least "dirty and mean" characters does not make them very well-liked amongst the other players and has given mages in general a very bad image. Most Characters will see a mage and run away by now thinking that he is a cultist... plus, there is a rumor that for getting taught magic by them, you have to sleep with at least one demon, of course after selling your soul to him... ;)
4. Only for elves there may be a possibility to learn runes on Vanima, but their teachers are rare as well, since many elves prefer to stay in other places because Vanima lacks a good infrastructure of NPCs.

So you see, there has been quite a past, and there have been quite some abuses by players who were trusted, so things which usually were fun had to be changed in a way to prohibit said abuse. And since those changes had to be "quick and dirty" changes, there has been some fun factor loss in the skilling / teaching system.

I have not teached since the last "attribute"-change with my mage char, so i don't know how the atributes take influence and if he can still teach all runes - i just hope that no rune got connected with non-mage-attributes like strength or constitution *g*. Honestly, the need for continuous powergaming just to bring the skills up to a "useful" level was the thing that kinda discouraged me from playing on, plus the fact that many poorly (means style-lacking) rped, powergamed chars started to dominate the playing field... you see, i am one of those guys who thinks that in a game, you don't need to behave like an asshole to play a char with such an attitude, and who also thinks that "give me all your coins" is not a very good rp excuse for starting an engine fight. It's frickin' flat if you ask me... but so much for that. Illarion can be a lot of fun even though it has some flaws and even if some of our players never understood that "roleplay" does NOT mean "ego-trip all way to hell and back" - but what do you expect from an alpha stage game with the goal to teach some roleplay. At least, it's fully playable, the server is up all around the clock and you can be assured that it will always stay free and that there will be a lot of future development.

So, don't get too annoyed, but trust in the abilities of our staff. In the long run, they will make it fun again - doing so and tweaking it both includes a learning curve - that needs both work and time on the staff side. But they keep it up ! ;)
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Llama
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Post by Llama »

Lots and lots of arguments going on here.

However the staff knows that magic system is about as broken as Cromwell's image, and they are going to fix it. There's not much use in discussing why exactly its broken, because the staff already knows it, and it'll get fixed.
matt wrote:All the magic teachers are roleplayers = No teachers around to teach.
Yes, I personally see no reason whatsoever to stay powergaming just so I can teach. I have better things to do with my time. Some people might like powergaming (*cough matt*) and could afford to do so (*cough marius*)
martin wrote:If we were on the Mars, food would taste better.
False implies anything, so that is infact a very valid statement. Until we do go to mars.
-
So to summerise, yes the system is as broken as anything. Yes its going to get fixed.

Eventually.
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Post by martin »

Hadrian_Abela wrote:
martin wrote:If we were on the Mars, food would taste better.
False implies anything, so that is infact a very valid statement. Until we do go to mars.
While this is true, there is no false statement here. It's not "We are on the mars, therefore food tastes better", it's "if we were...". Applying logic to statements requires them to be read correctly.

Furthermore, for the real world, false implying false does not matter much, as nothing false can happen. Therefore, it cannot be subject to scientific investigation.

Martin
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Post by Damien »

As we all know, even slight changes in sentences can completely change their content from true to false or the other way around.
We all might know from our own experiences that if we are on vacation in another country and eat local food there, then get some of that local food and eat it at home, the food will indeed leave the impression to taste better in the place it came from than it does at our own place. Right ?
So, if we change the above sentence to
"If we were on the Mars, martian food would taste better."
it might actually become a true statement - but we might have to ask this question to an actual martian, since i do not know any human who tried both martian and terrestrian food on earth.
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Pancho
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Post by Pancho »

A little observation I made, when reading through the restrictions teachers of magic have:

You're only allowed to teach a maximum of 3 students 2 runes each, every week. ( = 6 runes total / 2 per person).

That's a technical restriction on how much runes can be teached, but where does that limit yourself or your Rp to only accept three students?

Wouldn't teaching be more effective if you'd accept more students and just keep things evened out so none of your students learns faster than the other and you see into not distributing more than 2 runes each to 3 people a week?

Example:

The teacher accepts 8 students.
In the first week, 3 of them show up towards a lesson, 4 apologize for not making it on shedule, 1 is never heard of again.

The three attending each get their 2 runes.

Second week: 5 students show up, 2 of which were present in the first week, so the other 3 get their 2 runes each after the lesson.
1 Student apologizes for not making it on shedule, 2 are never heard of again.

etc. etc.

It'd be a lot nicer on new players if they'd get the chance to study instead of being told from the beginning "Sorry we're full.".
What they make of it (drop out, proove themselves unworthy, or maybe learn and enjoy roleplaying and stick to the game instead of quitting because they couldn't even try to play the character concept they wanted to play) is theirs to decide.

Taking more students raises the chances one of them (or three for the matter) show up on an assigned class, whereas if you restrict yourself to three people from the beginning you are bound to never or hardly ever find times where all are present thus having weeks where no lessons are held and delaying magic training even more than necessary.
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Post by Retlak »

The staff don't really care about the RP side of magic teaching, they're very strict about it technical wise.

I lost my teaching rune 2 years ago, just because I taught a student 4 runes in one session, since i was not able to make it to the teaching room a week before (despite having done the lesson).
So the student was still at the expected amount of runes, yet my methods were "unacceptable".

Upon recently asking if I can have my teaching rune back to help out the newer players such as the ones that create these threads, my reply from the staff is:

"There are too many chars with the teaching rune already."

So, apparently I need to blame the other magic teaching players. I hope you're all happy for not giving up your rune!

-Matt
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Pellandria
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Post by Pellandria »

Pancho, what you described is infact not acurrate anymore, the magic academy tried to get in line with the new attribut system aswell as the lack of teachers, thus the "mentor" was introduced, a Mentor can, depending if he made the teacher exam or is just a mage, take from 1 to 3 students, he can teach them all the theoretical and practical side of magic, but can ask other teachers to teach his student runes, so basicly the system would still run, even half assed, if we got only one teacher who is up to teach all mentored students Runes, sadly noone seems to use the system as such. Furthermore teachers can announce their lessons and other students from other teachers could join and listen to it..and of course get runes aswell, so one student could easily ~switch~ oer to another teacher and still get his lessons there..of course if a teacher holds public lessons.

For the 3 Students per teacher ..well this rule is to reduce the "here dude get your rune, thats what you can do with it, powergame plz kthxbye" teacher, because the teacher should infact hold lessons and take his time, now if you got 3 students and they all want their lessons, than you are in trouble and you will do nothing more than preparing lessons and teaching runes, I personally never make a lessons with two or more students , simply because I do not like the idea of having 3 students. who in the end only getting a third of the "normal" rp done.

As far as I know you can teach anyone runes, to as many people as you like, but just 2 runes per each student.
Giving out runes to everyone on the other side is something I personally wouldn't like to see.
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Pancho
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Post by Pancho »

I'm confused.

First of all I did not describe anything beyond that I read: "Teachers may only teach 2 runes a week to 3 different people (total 6 runes/week)".

Everything after that was a suggestion of mine.

I know perfectly well that the rule was put into place so teachers don't hand out runes like there's no tomorrow, so while I appreciate you explaining it, there was no need to, as I furthermore did not want to question the limit of runes allowed to be taught each week.

I'm furthermore confused because on the first page of this thread you said "We have too less teachers" while now you say "Hey, we've got a system in place that'd ensure everyone who wants to be taught is realy taught (Mentors and what not)".
If that system would be working there'd be no reason for threads like this one to show up, am I wrong?

I do not see a difference in whether you hold a lesson for 3 people or 6 people, apart from the first being enjoyed by 4 and the latter entertaining 7 people with rp, possibly even keeping new players "hooked" to the game even if some might drop out after 1 or 2 lessons. Others that currently loose interrest in the game and quit, may be kept in the game by keeping the promise of the front page
"Druids and magicians will cast mysterious spells with herbs and runes." not "To become a mage you have to prove to some people that you're capable of playing a dull peasant or other character for about 3 months before you can create a mage which will then be at the mercy of said people to be accepted as a student if he's lucky."

The people applying should receive a chance to proove themselves and not being shot down with a "Sorry, all teachers are full, don't even bother."

If it's your personal opinion and the way you manage things to privately tutor each of your students then I'm none to argue against that, but as it is your personal teaching preference, there may be other teachers which I now inspired to take more than three students to raise chances that teacher and three of his students find each other week for week so the bottle-neck in teaching starts to decrease more rapidly.
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Post by AlexRose »

Take the lock off the academy door.

Seriously who's idea was that? Oh yeah, let's remove the windows and lock the doors and change the password to something that every English player has to have in a text document somewhere because they'll never remember it. As soon as that council took over saying the system was crap and needed to be reworked the whole thing turned into an epic failure. The magic system was finally taking a turn for the better with more people able to use and teach magic, a good amount of teachers etc. and then suddenly that one act put half the teachers off the idea of teaching, stopped tonnes of students being taught etc. etc.

If that change hadn't occured I alone probably could've taught about 30 more students in that time.
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Avalyon el'Hattarr
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Post by Avalyon el'Hattarr »

Well, the thing is, like it was said before.. you can not just make a new char and go "hey, I'm a mage, teach me please!" then suspect that next day you'll have magic. Roleplay a bit, make your char known and teachers will notice you. What teacher in his right mind would give runes to one that he just met, only to find out later that he left the game or he knows nothing, whatsoever about how to roleplay a mage.

I to admit however.. as it is now, the system is flawed.. it is stagnant. Maybe all teachers should hold open lessons, give tests, choose their apprentices from the stack. That way, the new mage-wannabes won't feel tottaly like changing profesions and teachers would have a greater stack to turn into his personal army :P

I want to thank those that started this thread, kinda reminded me of my own beginning, when all ignored me and it was next to impossible for me to find a teacher (waited like 6 months to get runes, heh). Let us all work togheter and bring the Academy back on track? :)
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Athian
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Post by Athian »

I didn't ignore you ^^

Honestly, i'm still feeling these singular teaching rooms would be better off regulated by GM's rather the player characters with keys or magic passwords that have them basically locked away under they're digression.

The staff is capable of making sure we don't abuse a teaching room by teaching a student 4-5 runes per lesson, and enforcing any punishments were that the case. So then why do we even need these locked up private access teaching area's? Rather I think we need a more open air, 'owned by no single man' teaching location. Those with teaching runes have had them long enough to know the ooc rules to follow. if those rules are broken then they know what they did.
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Post by Kaila Galathil Travinus »

Take the lock off the academy door.
Seriously who's idea was that? Oh yeah, let's remove the windows and lock the doors and change the password to something that every English player has to have in a text document somewhere because they'll never remember it.
Yes, I have that text document.
Athian wrote: Honestly, i'm still feeling these singular teaching rooms would be better off regulated by GM's rather the player characters with keys or magic passwords that have them basically locked away under they're digression.
Great ideas. If possibly inscription wise, I would like to even take away the rooms, or if not possible add more. IMO the Academy and other guilds should be something a char would enjoy joining in order to see and talk to more mages etc. not something they are made to join in order to teach.
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Post by Pellandria »

Pancho wrote: I'm furthermore confused because on the first page of this thread you said "We have too less teachers" while now you say "Hey, we've got a system in place that'd ensure everyone who wants to be taught is realy taught (Mentors and what not)".
If that system would be working there'd be no reason for threads like this one to show up, am I wrong?
The problem here is, noone works with the system we designed, thus everyone goes back to the "teacher takes student and teaches him all the way", but because of that we don't have enough teachers, because basicly almost everyone from the magic academy left, atleast most of the teachers are not currently activ.
I got no solution for that either, because becoming a teacher takes a tremoundus amount of time, time most are not willing to spend.
So in the end..no matter how genius your invention or system is, if noone is using it ..it will ~not~ work..a solution to the immedeat problem..well got no idea..but if you use mentors and an npc teacher, who jsut gives the ruens away, than maybe you gotyourself a solution.

Pancho wrote: I do not see a difference in whether you hold a lesson for 3 people or 6 people, apart from the first being enjoyed by 4 and the latter entertaining 7 people with rp, possibly even keeping new players "hooked" to the game even if some might drop out after 1 or 2 lessons. Others that currently loose interrest in the game and quit, may be kept in the game by keeping the promise of the front page
"Druids and magicians will cast mysterious spells with herbs and runes." not "To become a mage you have to prove to some people that you're capable of playing a dull peasant or other character for about 3 months before you can create a mage which will then be at the mercy of said people to be accepted as a student if he's lucky."
Seriously, I'm this short to ask the gm to give you a pushed mage teacher, who jsut does this...teahcing, than we want to see how long do you keep talking like this, because it seems you have honestly no idea how much time one student..let alone two or three wastes from you illarion playing time and no allready ~one~ student who drops out is a tremoundus waste of time for the teacher and for what exactly?
You know its not like we gain anything from teaching people, we could all just say "Well f*** you all, we hold the magic now" and then noone will be taught anything anymore, but we make that in our freetime and for char developement or would you take your char, whatever he does currently, support someone with atleast not only time but also equipment and other stuff and than smile, after he leaves you around 2 months in training, with you not even having wasted money, but also your time.


Pancho wrote: The people applying should receive a chance to proove themselves and not being shot down with a "Sorry, all teachers are full, don't even bother."
Uhh as I said..pella has no student since uhm 2 months or longer they are up to proove their worth..sadly most fail in doing so.
Pancho wrote: If it's your personal opinion and the way you manage things to privately tutor each of your students then I'm none to argue against that, but as it is your personal teaching preference, there may be other teachers which I now inspired to take more than three students to raise chances that teacher and three of his students find each other week for week so the bottle-neck in teaching starts to decrease more rapidly.
As I said..the more students you have the less time you have to play the game,teaching can be fun of course, but doyou want to care about 6 people at the same time,with all of them having some kind of problem with one or another thing?



@Alex:We barely changed something, we made a few rules, which should be normal behaviour anyway, changed the locks and the password to make the academy more secure..and you know coming from someone who threatens to kill people, because they look towards caelum...well yeah hypocrite anyone?

Furthermore don't tell me we had sooo much teachers..we had to work really hard to get those 5 council members together and...I will be honest now I rather don't have more of your students running around, seeing how you barely can manage to use magic right, funny enough your students turn out better than you..and that on and off playing yeah.. well thats not the topic anyway.

@ Athian: I personally would dislike a free for all rune buffet, it just doesn't fit, from all we know the mages should be rather thight guild, having their own "city" as such, but currently we got a hundred mages who do not even care for having something as unity but rather go to bash each others heads in, making rune and magic theory free for everyone results in powergamed chars, who never ever heard something from a magic theory and probaply have no idea what the lizards/orcs/dwarves and what not think of magic...
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Post by Athian »

I disagree. Mages are still people. they would be prone to disagree argue and break into factions. There would be no world community of mages. I doubt even in one town they would all see eye to eye. so the concept you speak of doesn't make any sense to me.

Furthermore, everyone has there own theory and concepts of magic and how it is practiced. A singular school or community doesn't fit the mold of multiple methodology, even two or three schools really doesn't in the long run. You can't prioritize what you think is proper teaching over what another teacher does and call it correct.

We have powergamed mages right now (any who have ever taught a single rune have PG'd at one point or another), there isn't going to be some flood of them if the staff is doing it's job, troublemakers will be removed as they always are. I think you have stop trying to troubleshoot all these what if situations and deal with the current ones. As I said before those with Bhona know what they need to be doing for teaching. if they fail to do so then let them be punished for it.

Frankly in the end we all need a place where we can teach or people are not going to be taught at any good pace, as we have now. I don't call a bunch of people all trying to use a single tool (teaching room) a community to begin with. they odn't have any unity other then kissing the a$% of the person with the keys or passwords.
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Post by Retlak »

Let me sum up my thoughts:

Locks and passwords on the magic academy are stupid.

The high council members are stupid.

Scripts that stop you teaching more than 2 runes a week are good. < Just rely on these and open everything up? It's a game for god sakes, Stop worrying about the potential noob pkers of the future, and start thinking about how you nice people are lowering the chances of Illarion gaining new players.


P.S. Apparently some high council members did some ritual so that they can catch intruder mages using their teaching room. Wrong direction to take.

-Matt
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Post by Avalyon el'Hattarr »

Apparently some high council members did some ritual so that they can catch intruder mages using their teaching room. Wrong direction to take.
Um.. what? lol

Well, i think that this is not about potential mage PK's, but more about the fear of losing the mage concept, since less and less mages know less and less theory, which is a big part of mage roleplay, not to mention the whole way of acting as a mage, not as a numbass tossing spells arround like pebbles. :)
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Athian
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Post by Athian »

Avalyon el'Hattarr wrote:
Apparently some high council members did some ritual so that they can catch intruder mages using their teaching room. Wrong direction to take.
Um.. what? lol

Well, i think that this is not about potential mage PK's, but more about the fear of losing the mage concept, since less and less mages know less and less theory, which is a big part of mage roleplay, not to mention the whole way of acting as a mage, not as a numbass tossing spells arround like pebbles. :)
that has to do with the teacher not that school they are in. even with the schools we still had stupid people throwing around spells all day long. Regulation should be on the Bhona rune. The people that have it know by now the rules and to RP teaching as well as teach technically.Not every student must get the teaching rune.
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Estralis Seborian
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Post by Estralis Seborian »

The good old (m)tragic system. How much I love this topic. I think Damien summarized the history quite good, it was a nice idea to let players teach other players and it simply did not work out the way it was intended. What we have now is not what was intended back then and thus, we need to pave a new road.

Out of the posters, one made a very good proposal how to change the way how magic is taught, elsewhere. But as a matter of fact, our scripters and developers are overburdened with other issues than reinventing the wheel the fourth time. In special, they won't make up a complete set of e.g. NPCs with their dialogues.

NPCs can teach runes, as you can review here: http://illarion.org/development/us_scripts_comm.php

So, everyone can help as soon as there is a concept. We can discuss about a good concept on the proposal board, but a concept is more than an idea. "Let NPCs teach runes" is not a concept. "NPC A teaches rune B upon delivering item C" is a crude concept element, a first start, nothing more. So - help Illarion with your ideas, Illarion is one of the few games where you can change things you don't like on your own!
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Post by Fooser »

Retlak wrote:Let me sum up my thoughts:

Locks and passwords on the magic academy are stupid.

The high council members are stupid.

Scripts that stop you teaching more than 2 runes a week are good. < Just rely on these and open everything up? It's a game for god sakes, Stop worrying about the potential noob pkers of the future, and start thinking about how you nice people are lowering the chances of Illarion gaining new players.


P.S. Apparently some high council members did some ritual so that they can catch intruder mages using their teaching room. Wrong direction to take.

-Matt
teach me magic plx
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Orioli
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Post by Orioli »

I personally think this whole thread was greatly enhanced by that last post. *New Fooser fan!!*

signed
The Worthless and Ignored aka *all players not worthy of magic*
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Post by 1d20 »

Hey,

I'm one of the so-called "inactive" mage teachers (currently inactive due to being temporarily banned, but to be honest I didn't play much before that either) and I'll let you know my personal reason why I taught less and less even though I haven't read the thread.

Well, the thing is that mages need a certain amount of % of skill to be able to teach students certain runes which to be honest is absolute bullshit. I really HATE having to spend __ hours of my day killing monsters to be able to teach a rune to someone else. I really enjoy the teaching roleplaying but the powergaming part before it ruins it.

I'd probably teach MUCH MUCH more often if I could actually teach all runes without having to powergamine to reach a certain skill.

So yeah.
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Post by 1d20 »

@ Orioli

From an OOC point of view I would totally have nothing against you learning magic, ICly though, Blake doesn't like Orioli, that's why it wouldn't/didn't happen.

Just saying. :p
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Post by Djironnyma »

MoonDust wrote: I'm one of the so-called "inactive" mage teachers (currently inactive due to being temporarily banned, but to be honest I didn't play much before that either)
What the big problem of the teaching system shows, the plan was to let good old players teach which proof that they are able to deal with a such a charge .... but well ...
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Athian
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Post by Athian »

Orioli wrote:I personally think this whole thread was greatly enhanced by that last post. *New Fooser fan!!*

signed
The Worthless and Ignored aka *all players not worthy of magic*
Personally when a character comes up to me with a bland boring introduction teachers are not impressed

I can only speak for my case but Athian almost immediately turned down a student after the following

Athian: why do you want to learn magic
Potential student: I want to learn magic to help people

Not only is the answer vague and boring and 99.9% untrue, but its almost always the basic answer of every would be mage/battlemage (bet you a huge amount of applicants have this in they're reasons section.) On the OOC side any newbie who hasn't put thought into his/her character or there development can spout this nonsense, why should it impress. I think that mostly the students themselves have stopped trying to impress the teachers and just expect to build a character as they go with the perk of having magic.

As such i'm more likely to teach a student who will sit down and tell me a story about why he wants to learn magic, though something that doesn't fall into the "Well my parents were mages and...(insert tragic history)". Hell I'd rather teach someone who told me they were going to use there magic for evil purposes, as Athian does like honesty over sucking up.

Summary: Potential students need to stop being so vague and or boring. Doesn't mean all are but a good large amount have been
Last edited by Athian on Tue Sep 01, 2009 11:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Orioli
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Post by Orioli »

*Orioli snickers*

Now I can say I was quoted by Athian.
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AlexRose
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Post by AlexRose »

What a privilege. You'll go down in history for that.
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Post by Orioli »

Kind of what I was thinking. :shock:
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Concepts/Suggestions

Post by nowitzjt »

Estralis Seborian, the GM brought up a very good point; if anyone has any good ideas or concepts we should let them fly.

Everyone knows that there is a variety of problems with the magic system even though some would rather not talk about it or compromise it.

So we know there's a problem; what do we do about it?

I have a few suggestions.

On my way from college to work I was thinking about a few possibilities, and then a thought occured to me. How cool would it be if you had to take trials to earn your runes? For example, to earn the fire rune you'de have to goto the bottom of a volcano with a fire guardian, or the earth rune, the middle of a desert with giant antlions, the poison rune, the middle of a swamp with poison spitting creatures, and you'de see a giant stone with the rune on it.

Pellandria had a complaint that he'de rather not see mages degrade into numbskulls tossing around spells that didn't know how to RP and didn't know about Magic Theory

This is a two part problem, as far as them being good at RPing a mage, that would really depend on the person judging them, how to RP a mage is different to everyone. And I don't think the GMs have time to micromanage that, "oh that person is acting more like a fighter than a mage" and the only solution would be to ban the person acting un-magelike (I know that's not a word) which is very subjective in itself.

So enforcing RP is unrealistic in a way, but enforcing knowing Magic Theory? That can easily be done with a system.

Let's say you've braved the volcano with your travelling partners (which would be fun, and an opportunity to RP) and you finally made it to the rune stone (big red glowing stone with a big pic of the rune on it) past all the dangerous fire based creatures, you would start "The Trial of Fire", you would be required to answer 5 questions relating to Magic Theory and Fire Magic (or whatever the corresponding rune is Earth/Poison etc...), if you answer them all right you get the rune! If you fail 3 times in a row, you have to wait a week as punishment, and that would give you another opportunity to study again. This would enforce knowledge and a system where you have to earn your magic, you would still only be able to do 2 trials a week, and you could pay a teacher to learn magic/or them just take an interest to you (money or interest being the incentive/less risky for the student) and still have to answer 5 questions (same criteria), or go on the trial (which is a lot more risky/chance of death with guardians) with some other friends to help out.

And as far as the teaching rune BHONA, once someone has 28 runes, he could apply with a GM for BHONA so it would be GM regulated and not player regulated. Whether you would get the teaching rune or not would be based on if you were a good player (RPd well) and didn't abuse the rules (mindless player killing). And if a teacher becomes one and abuses it, the GM can giveth and the GM can taketh.

As far as learning improving upon the ancient language, I think you should be able to learn this from books, walls in ancient ruins or teachers. And as far as Commotio, Decisio and the magic skills based on the spells you cast, improving them would be based on casting spells of that type (makes sense).

This would make it so there would still be a teacher based system (which can be good for RP in certain circumstances/or the teacher's pocketbook) and a Trial system which would definately be fun and good for RP because it would probably take some friends to survive the trial (pretty tough for a frail mage to brave the dangerous creatures all by himself)

Just some suggestions =)

Josh (Rymar Tarken/Sakumo Hatake)
Retlak
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Post by Retlak »

I read all of that and it sounded REALLY good, the best idea yet. I like the way you took everything into consideration like the 2 runes a week thing. Excellent proposal.

-Matt
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