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Dungeons and Dragons Ashes of Creation
So last stream as i am sure a lot of people noticed he suggested having a in house D&D game designed by Steven himself built in and around the world/lore of Ashes of Creation. He would offer developers on his team at intrepid cash bonus prizes to participate. This has weighed on my mind a long time.
I really strongly back this idea for us the community I feel its a great opportunity to get to see more lore/story/world information second hand. When we the community of Ashes of Creation are so hungry for information this would really give us all a chance in a fun way to see the true ideas in play early sneak peak wise.
Secondly, I really think Steven should offer a "seat" at the table via stream or something to a community member via random drawing from donations for a cheritable organization. i.e. something like community members drop 20 USD into a pot for a charitable organization of his choosing and one at random gets to play at the table and see the would of Ashes of Creation first hand in Stevens Dungeon Mastered dream.
Comments
That aside, I can see the benefit of a Skype/Discord/Twitch or whatever type of digital seat at their table.
I think this would have to be after release though, during beta at the earliest maybe, due to the desire of IS to keep the lore as hush-hush as possible as long as possible.
As for tracking damage in D&D, I think the need is different since at the table top you have to determine the damage you do and relay that to someone else. In a video game you don't have to add it up every round and then plug it in.
Almost all MMO's follow the same basic principle. If a sword in a game says it does (as an example) 67 - 102 damage, a D&D mind could look at that as 66+(1d36) damage.
This means that if that 1d36 rolled a 1, then the damage would be 67, and if it rolled a 36, the damage would be 102. Each and every value in between has an equal chance of being rolled. This perfectly mimics the damage calculations of all MMO's I've played.
Some games display weapon and ability values after taking in to account your current stats, but some don't (str bonus and such). The calculation for this varies greatly between games, but is never hard to figure out, and is available via google for anyone that wants it.
From there though, the encounter has it's own stats. It could be mitigation (which would remove a percentage of the damage), or it could be damage reduction (which reduces a flat amount of damage). Just to make things fun, some MMO's have negative values of these two stats on some encounters, and debuffs on encounters also modify it greatly.
Very few MMO's outright provide players with the stats of encounters, and because of this, many players don't even consider it as a factor.
If an encounter has 10% mitigation, and you rolled a 1 on your 1d36 from above, when you think you should do no less than 67 damage based on your weapon stats, you instead do 67-10%, which rounded means that attack now does 60 damage - a value outside of your listed weapon damage.
On the other hand, if you have someone in your group that adds a negative damage reduction to your target (say, adds 20 damage on all melee hits), if you rolled 36 on your 1d36, rather than doing 102 damage- the maximum listed for your weapon, you would do 122 damage.
Most casual players don't look enough in to the games they play to have much of an understanding of these things, and just think the numbers on weapons and abilities are essentially meaningless outside of comparing one to another. They don't take in to account what else may affect their damage, even though MMORPG's are literally the most complex games ever made.
When you look in to it though, it all works basically as above - in basically every MMO.
I am a casual player, and I have never looked that deep into the damage/stats of encounters in the very few MMO's I have played. I am also a D&D player, and have looked greatly into those stats in every single player game I own. For me the difference is I haven't found an MMO that really deserves that much effort.
There isn't one.
In my opinion there is no better experience than a well crafted paper and pencil RPG session with a group of friends...….
The main point of my post was simply to point out that the systems used in MMO's are not that far removed from D&D, the main difference is that an MMO has far more variables, and no Monster Manual to look them all up in.
I guess for me I would hope for a double edged sword with Ashes. A game I could invest that many hours into but not invoke me into memorizing stats (even if just through checking the same boss monsters stats a few times on a wiki).
Part of my immersion is not thinking monsters have hit points and what not.
It resulted in deformed features granting both bonuses and penalties though. So in a 'heroes' game I would argue for penalties only.