Re: Legends:some question

From: griffith@fx.com (Jim Griffith)

Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1993 00:46:12 +0000

ry@usl.com (Schwark R.) writes:

>>Beg to differ.  The problem is that in the variant games, it is so fast-paced
>>that it is hard for anyone other than the faction senior to get prestige.
>>Depends on the faction to a large extent - the Elven and Overlord factions
>>have enough prestige to ship it out initially.  It's certainly not worth
>>doing for the smaller factions like the Lords of the Abyss or the Celestial
>>Knights (I was the Lords senior for RTI10 for a while).

>No way!  Take a major Title and you have prestige and influence out the
>ying yang.

A major title?  Couldn't do this in RTI10 unless you were a factional senior.
Certainly wasn't a bonus point purchase option.  They changed things after
some of the early games allowed ridiculous influence things.

>I still disagree, depends upon your team.  Somebody else on your team is
>likely to buy a level 5 status that probably afflicts at level 3, therefore
>you can pay for a level 5, or you can hook up with somebody who bought
>a level 5 and get a level 3 free once the game starts.

Your experience here is obviously with the vampyre tree, which does just
this.  Unfortunately, *none* of the other trees support any affliction of
character statuses (the one exception is netherworld, which afflicts the
lowest level, which isn't relevant to this discussion).  I ran through the
list of statuses and their afflictions and verified this (this stuff was
in Strategic Reserve #5, it's public knowledge).  So what you are saying is
only valid for the vampyre tree, and my original article said "don't buy a
vampyre status".  But if you don't want to be a vampyre, then it is worth
buying a high status from any other tree.  And from personal experience, I
*highly* recommend the evil netherworld tree.  I've heard good things about
the good netherworld and good hero trees as well.

>>Marks of Wizardry are worth buying if you're going to be a serious arcanist,
>>but since your faction senior will probably have a better arcanist than you,
>>you probably don't want to go that route.

>As an influence monger I've picked up three marks from characters.  I didn't
>get to pick them, but I didn't have to pay start up points for them either.

Sigh.  Your whole strategy is based on the assumption that the only position
worth playing is an influencer, because if you pull it off you quickly gain
access to every imaginable resource.  This is certainly true for normal games.
But have you actually done this in an RTI variant game?  And if so, which one?
There was no value at all in having an influencer in RTI10 - the factional
seniors all had major influence capability, they already controlled the most
interesting characters, and they influenced the rest on the first two or three
turns.  There was a certain amount of value to trying to influence lair and
ruin monsters with interesting statuses, but not much.

The original question came from someone who was about to play in their first
Realm variant game.  Would you honestly suggest to such a person that they
run an influencer?  I wouldn't even recommend an influencer to someone starting
their first *normal* game, which is *much* slower and much more tolerant of
stupid mistakes.  I'd recommend one of the setups I talked about (which all
provide a reasonable assurance of survivability), and I would recommend
getting in as tight with your factional senior as you can.  That way, you
are likely to have as much fun for as long as possible.

Jim

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Griffith  /--OO--\     | Two great powers are on our side: the power of
griffith@dweeb.fx.com      | Love and the power of Arithmetic.  These two are
BEWARE BATS WITHOUT NOSES! | stronger than anything else in the world.

References

Re: Legends:some question
gilgamesh@csource.oz.au (Benjamin Hurwitz)
Thu, 22 Jul 1993 22:27:38 +0000
Re: Legends:some question
ry@usl.com (Schwark R.)
Fri, 23 Jul 1993 13:00:53 +0000
Re: Legends:some question
griffith@fx.com (Jim Griffith)
Sat, 24 Jul 1993 01:18:45 +0000
Re: Legends:some question
ry@usl.com (Schwark R.)
Mon, 26 Jul 1993 14:44:11 +0000