So it's time to talk about the unlocking system in some detail. I've been revising it in my mind and building it up and complexifying it for a while, and I am sure that I'll revise it many times, but I think that I now have a solid base system that I can publish, and that we can begin using. And we MUST begin using it, because people have already unlocked some stuff. So here's how it's gonna work.
At first, I wanted to give groups 1 Epic Point per adventure completed, as a group, with which to unlock the epicest adventures. However, that would make all unlocks group unlocks, so we wouldn't know how to deal with players who jumped between groups, or with brand-new players for that matter: Would they take all their unlocks with them? Would they automatically get all their new group's unlocks? So I decided to go with an individual unlocking system (which is why I recently asked players to start individual player threads). This means that whatever EP rewards and EP costs you see on the adventure selection screens are PER PLAYER. If it says you get X EP for an adventure, that means each player gets X EP. If it says an adventure costs Y EP, it means that every player will have to pay Y EP to participate in the adventure. Players cannot loan around EP, but if a player is lacking the EP to unlock an adventure that all his teammates want to unlock and can afford to unlock, the player can go into EP debt (i.e. negative EP) in order to join them and not hold them back. That said, this can only occur in borderline cases, if one or two players are missing a few EP. If many of them are missing many EP, they can't just pick
Kingmaker or
The Dragonlance Saga and take it off the market from other groups that are saving up to unlock them first. I will make the call when going into negative EP is justified or not, and it will never be possible for the coolest stuff that groups are competing over, it will be only for stuff that no one cares about. We could even remove my judgement from the process by saying that players can go into EP debt only if no other players object to it, but I know most of you are nice people and probably wouldn't object even if you wanted to, so I'll probably have to handle these judgements myself to ensure fairness for everyone. By and large though, groups should do whatever is necessary to ensure they have the required EP before asking to unlock a locked adventure.
Further, I decided that 1 EP per adventure doesn't make much sense when some adventures are 32 pages, and others are 64 or 96, or even more for the deluxe hardback remakes like e.g.
Curse of Strahd that's 224 pages. By the way, these numbers are standard due to the printing process. Something to do with each sheet having four sides, and only being able to order sheets in batches of 16. My dad explained it to me some years ago (he runs a small publishing house); not sure if I am explaining it well now, but you get the point.
So at length, I simply decided to award as many EP as there are pages in the adventure... I know it sounds kooky, but it's actually pretty damn balanced. A Pathfinder campaign is about 600 pages, so gives you about 600 EP, and takes you from level 1 to about level 17-20.
Curse of Strahd is 225 pages (so about half of a PF campaign) and takes you from about level 1 to 10 (which is about half of the levels a PF campaign takes you). So you see that, even across systems and settings, the numbers about match up.
Multi-part adventures like trilogies or Pathfinder's six-part campaigns will have their EP listed as e.g. 6x96. This means that whenever you finish a 96-page book, out of the six the campaign is comprised of, you bank the EP, with each player getting his 96 EP. If you wipe before you finish the book, you get nothing. If the group survives but fails the adventure, it gets nothing too. So you can see that if you're hurting for EP it'd be a better bet to try a smaller adventure; since it has fewer encounters/pages, it's much more likely you will complete it and get the EP, all else being equal (which it might NOT be: you might pick a shorter adventure that's more challenging, despite what levels it proclaims, since adventures are not identically balanced: some are more challenging than others).
Now unlocks come in several varieties. I'll list here the ones I have off the top of my head, and add more later (plus I can revise any of them at any time, and I'll be posting all revisions here).
- First you have the SOURCEBOOKS. Unlocking a sourcebook doesn't generally cost EP (though there may be exceptions): all it takes is your party moving into the general area the sourcebook describes. E.g. D&D1 started the game in Korvosa, so they immediately unlocked the Guide to Korvosa sourcebook. Since this sourcebook however details the entire city, they won't get to read it. It will be posted in each of their players' threads, but only as a cover. Clicking on it won't send them to The Trove PDF. That's how they'll know they aren't supposed to read it. However, they WILL be able to use rules from the book, like new feats or traits and the like, and whatever other information I deem fit to give them at any given point. And as they explore Korvosa, they will be given more and more of the contents of the book, of course, via Fantasy Grounds or the overworld on World Anvil, or both. Other groups however will not be given access to the new material in this book in any way, shape or form, and they won't be able to purchase it with EP either. The only thing they can do, if they want access to the book, is go to Korvosa at some point, and then they'll automatically unlock it the same way D&D1 has. (Note however that they may still be exposed to the contents of the sourcebook by following the other group's Twitch streams, YouTube videos, forum chatlogs and summaries and overworld entries; and that's fine.)
- Then you have the RULEBOOKS and ACCESSORIES. These are divided into two types: the generic, and the themed ones.
-Generic rulebooks are stuff like the Advanced Player's Guide, Advanced Class Guide and Advanced Race Guide, or Ultimate Combat, Ultimate Equipment and Ultimate Magic. These cannot be unlocked by completing adventures. The only way for a player to unlock these books and access their rules is to pay the EP cost I have set for them in the "EP Store", and they can do it at any time that they possess the required EP, and immediately all the new rules will be available for them. New classes, races, feats, spells and items, or whatever. If two players walk into a shop that carries items from both the Core Rulebook and Ultimate Equipment, only the player who has unlocked the latter can purchase and USE these items (i.e. he can't purchase an item for a player who hasn't unlocked the required book and give it to him; the other player won't be able to use it, though he can carry it for his teammate if need be).
-Themed rulebooks are stuff like Horror Adventures, Mythic Adventures, Aquatic Adventures, Ultimate Campaign and the like. These at first won't be available in the EP store. The only way to unlock those will be to play the adventures that are specifically tied to them. There may be more than one such adventure per book: e.g. Aquatic Adventures is currently unlocked via the Skull & Shackles and Ruins of Azlant campaigns—and I may add more in the future as I learn more about the various adventures and campaigns that exist. Any of them will give you the rulebook. However, once the first group has unlocked this rulebook, it will also appear in the EP store, with a price attached to it, and any player that pays the price can unlock the book for himself. Or, if it's a book featured in multiple adventures, he can wait until his group plays one of those, and he gets it for free. - Then you have ADVENTURES and CAMPAIGNS. Some of these will be available on the adventure selection screens for free. Others—the epicest or most valuable of them—will have to be bought with EP to be unlocked (and they will also be reservable: e.g. if the players can afford to unlock it, but their current characters are not in the required level- and/or character range, they can pay the EP to unlock for themselves and reserve the adventure until such a time that their group is the required level and/or has the required number of players). Still other adventures might have unlockable prerequisites, which will be noted in their description, and a group can play the adventure only once it has unlocked the prerequisites.
- Finally you have NOVELS, COMIC BOOKS, VIDEOGAMES and miscellaneous stuff like ART BOOKS. These are unlocked by playing adventures, and once a group has unlocked one of them it is available for ALL groups (though it will only appear in the player's threads of the players who unlocked it), and I am recommending that, at that point, those players read/play those works. Everyone else can read and play them too at that point, but I am especially recommending them to those that unlocked them, because they will be in circumstances where those works will enhance their enjoyment of their current adventure and/or location. And it goes without saying that I do not recommend that anyone read/play such works before they have been unlocked by someone on Battlegrounds. If you have done so, please disclose it as soon as possible in the "past D&D experience" thread [ > ] as it may impact not only your personal enjoyment of the game, but also the running of Battlegrounds, as we might have to ban your group from certain adventures (as we did e.g. with dinopoke's group when they wanted to play Rise of the Runelords, which he had played a bit of, so they ended up choosing Curse of the Crimson Throne for this reason), or move you around groups, and so on. As long as you are prompt and honest, there's no issue we can't overcome. The problems only start when people are hiding things, so please don't do that.
Let's give some concrete examples of the above based on what has already been unlocked, so you can see how things will work. I'll take D&D1 as an example. Right off the bat they had the PFRPG
Core Rulebook unlocked, plus the
Gazetteer sourcebook, because everyone starting on Pathfinder gets these by default (and I'll be adding them to every player's individual thread soon). Once they chose
Curse of the Crimson Throne as their campaign, they immediately unlocked the
Guide to Korvosa sourcebook. Once they played their first session and got to the harrow reading section, they unlocked the
Harrow Deck accessory, and immediately they also unlocked
The Harrowing standalone adventure, since, unbeknown to anyone, I had set the
Harrow Deck acquisition as the trigger to it. So you can now see this new adventure having popped up on the main Pathfinder adventure selection map, but stating in its description that it can only be played by players who've unlocked the
Harrow Deck, which currently means only the D&D1 players. Btw, I placed that adventure in that map, instead of on the Inner Sea Region map, because it can be triggered from ANY location in the main continent of Avistan. The group tells me they want to play it, and I trigger it for them wherever in Avistan they may be. Very few adventures can be triggered like this. Most require you to be in or travel to a specific region.
So how does another group trigger this adventure, if they don't have the
Harrow Deck unlocked? Let's take the example of group D&D2 that's currently in Sandpoint. In Sandpoint, there is a fortune teller. I know the exact house on the map that she is in, and the players can find it. recoil's character, being local, already knows it. I think some others are locals too. But none of them have the
Harrow Deck accessory unlocked. So even if they know where the fortune teller is, I will not allow them to go there. If they type the command in the chatlog, I will ignore it. However, I will put the accessory on the EP Store—it will be the first item there—and I will price it at 32 EP—the reward from a relatively short adventure. So the moment one of them decides to purchase the accessory, he will be able to visit the fortune teller (only he, not the entire group, unless everyone in the group purchases the accessory too), and he will also be able to participate in
The Harrowing adventure if his group chooses it (or join another group for it). Currently, none of the D&D2 players possess any EP, but if they finish the first part of
Rise of the Runelords—
Burnt Offerings—, they'll get 96 EP, at which point they'll only have to spend a third of it to unlock the
Harrow Deck. And they might want to do this not just because this way they'll get access to a new adventure, but also because harrow readings can be very useful things. They can foreshadow the future, and thus help you prepare for it. On the other hand, perhaps the players prefer to save their EP to unlock something like the generic rulebook
Ultimate Equipment, which can also be very useful. It is their choice to make, and it will be a very interesting choice as you can imagine, and as the universe expands there will be more and more of these interesting decisions available.
So that's what I have for now. A few notes:
- EP values given at the TOP of adventure descriptions are what it COSTS to unlock them, if they are locked. EP values given at the BOTTOM are what you GAIN, if you complete them.
- Only the adventures/campaigns screenshoted above have been updated on the site to the latest version of the unlockable system. I'll be updating more of them over the coming days and weeks, but it will take a while to fully update them.
- Since many of the unlockables will be costly, players can't be expected to choose between them sight unseen. They will want at least a little preview of the contents, and I am now trying to figure the best way to give it to them. No one has EP to spend yet, so it's not an issue until a group finishes an adventure, which is at least a month or two in the future. I'll have this figured out by then.
- I haven't yet decided if I want to differentiate between PLAYING an adventure and FINISHING it, for the purposes of unlocking. One idea is to give you the unlocks merely for playing its associated adventure. Another idea is to do this but TAKE THE UNLOCKS AWAY if you FAIL the adventure. The second choice sounds cooler and more hardcore, but I am not sure how fun and balanced it will be. I'll keep thinking about it, and quite possibly I will experiment with both options to see which works better.
- shock therapy suggested we tie unlocks to bloodlines, as opposed to players. So that when your last descendant of a bloodline dies, you lose all your unlocks and start from scratch.
CULT|shock therapy wrote:That's one of the great things about your system
I was thinking, if we can keep bloodlines going on for years there may actually come a time where a player can be the last of their bloodline being hunted by an opposing (maybe evil) party, and it will have all been set up by the new mechanics
Then when that bloodline is gone, all those source books and accumulated bonuses go with it
That's an incredibly hardcore suggestion that had never occurred to me. Unfortunately, I doubt it would be playable, as I suspect bloodlines will be hard to start up and fragile once they've been started, and I am not sure I will be able to balance EP gain with EP costs so that, in the long run, all the material will be unlockable by all players no matter how many bloodlines of theirs get wiped. Moreover, there is already a penalty for losing a bloodline: you lose all the city-building and 4X holdings it has acquired, and that's a very steep penalty. After all, the whole reason for the bloodline mechanics is precisely these holdings. So I don't see the reason for MORE of a penalty above that: wiping all the player's unlocks to boot.