FinalHavenLarp.com

Its interesting to observe that something that we see as so commonplace in in FH and a few other larps such as "magic items" are actually an incredibly unique and broken aspect to the genre.

for instance most games that give you what you would consider to be magic items are short term small group or solo games. such as board games, pen and paper games, and even virtual games. these items are rarely balanced well because the fact is they don't have to be (wishes in 3.5, c'mon) most of these games are not meant to last very long, and in the case of the solo game the designer could care less if you are overpowered, leaving how the player interacts with the game and what they find fun up to them.

now when you consider the virtual = to larp being mmo's and really think about it, there is no such thing as the magic items we find in final haven. for obvious reasons there is no item that can only drop once, or only one version that is available to the players. everything can be obtained by everyone in the grand scheme of things. the final haven equivalent to this would be potions, crafted items such as armor, weapons, and exotic items. spells and scrolls don't fit into this category because they are currently a work in progress and might fit into the "magic item" description rather then being available to everyone.

I usually harp on this kind of stuff because while I like feeling special im also an advocate of fairness and equality as base design concepts while allowing people to be awesome and special through role playing and clever character design.

magic items at their core are simply power. they grant your character additional power based on what they do in the same way your skills grant you power. though one is quite fair and the other is not. I will now point out how and why, as well as what final haven and other games have done to attempt to convert magic items more into skills, and where I personally think they should go.


-magic items are not fair at a conceptual level, they are not designed to be. they are unique, powerful, and concealable. all very bad things from a balance perspective. unique is fun, its is SOOOO much fun to have something nobody else does, especially if they don't know you have it, and helps to make you feel unique and powerful. powerful is obvious as most magic items grant anything from simply copying an existing skill in item form to granting a unique and power effect, and most are poorly balanced usually having no downside. and concealable, both from other players as magic items are not listed anywhere outside of their tag for public scrutiny and policing, and often times from staff or GM's who really have no clue who has what item no matter how hard they try.

-compared to potions, or crafted normal / exotic items. these are all found in the final haven rulebook, are more fair then magic items due to the scrutiny and policing they receive from players and GM's simply by being listed in the rule book. and while some are as poorly balanced as magic items simply adding more power at no downside the effects are fairly minor in the grand scheme of things and mitigated by the fact that everyone has access to them.

-skills are the most balanced thing in this game, as everyone has access to the same ones (baring hidden disciplines that I wont comment on)


final haven has attempted to try and mitigate some of the problems of magic items by adding attunement. this effectively limits how much power you get in game and one of the most gaping black holes of a balance issue with magic items, they could all be hoarded without limit. however if we are trying to turn them into skills at a balance level why not just make them skills? my suggestion would be to remove any and all items in the game that do not exist in the rule book. convert those that can be into potions, crafted normal / exotic items, spells, and skills. and possibly give players more skill points to compensate for the loss of power that comes with their removal.

its balanced, and fair, at its core design.

Although I find your point of view interesting, I do have some disagreements.

I would really not want to compare the LARP to an MMO. By far, I wouldn't consider the player base of FH or WH "massively multiplayer" - using them because they are what I'm familiar with - by any term. If we get to 500+ players.. well, that's another ball game. But really what we are comparing is the way we obtain magic items and the uniqueness of the magic items in either game.

From the MMOs I have played, high level magic items are obtained from killed high level/difficult NPCs or "raid bosses." When the NPC is killed, there is a loot of some sort. If a magic item drops, most guilds/raid groups have some method of asking who would be interested in the loot and having some form of way to give it to one of those people in a method they see as fair - /roll or using DKP. If you are one of the unfortunate people who did not win the item you wanted, you simply wait for the NPC to respawn or the dungeon to reset or the next raid on that NPC

In our LARP, the loot is still dropped from a high level NPC (maybe.. sometimes someone like a little girl has it) or a raid boss. When loot is dropped in the larp, we don't have the same method we see as "fairly" distributing it. Loot is often rewarded to what would be considered a "ninja looter" in an MMO. The first person to find or grab the loot is the one that is rewarded with it. Often other players don't know what was looted, or even that something was indeed looted. Furthermore, you can't wait for the NPC to respawn so that you can kill it again in hopes of getting that cool item you wanted. Once an NPC is dead and his stuff is taken, that's the end. A MMO wouldn't be able to survive if ran under the same principles.

Ninja looting - Odd now to think that something that is discouraged in MMOs and will usually ban you from future raids would be so accepted at FH.

Magic items as power - Absolutely! Most people want to advance their characters in some fashion. In many games, the most advertised and most rewarding method to advance your character is to become more powerful. Rare is it that someone wants to advance their character by seeking out a rare drop of a green hat that offers no stat bonuses.. and they only want it because the player thinks the graphic looks good on their character (I'm looking at you Heidi.. but in game, I could see Aurora doing this). Most players want to be rewarded with items that increase their stats or offer them use of a skill they wouldn't otherwise have available to them. The magic items are in a way, a reward for a player's deed's and accomplishments. I honestly don't see this as an issue. So perhaps the issue again is the limited number of magic items distributed from these raid battles VS ninja looters and the lack of how they are "fairly" distributed among the players?

Player made magic items - Should players be able to craft magic items? In many games players are capable of doing this. In my experience, player made (crafted) magic items are almost never as powerful as items that would be looted from an NPC. For purposes of the LARP, I would consider exotic items as these player made magic items.

How would we make stuff fair? - should we go for some sort of point system.. DKP, Battle points.. uhh.. experience points (I'll get back to the exp part later). Instead of passing out loot during events, should NPCs give cards with numbers on them instead? These numbers would be how much exp you've received from the plot/battle. Higher numbers go toward harder fights/battles/puzzles/situations. For example, after the Saturday night battle, instead of loot, everyone who participates would get in line and receive a card that says "20" - that battle was worth 20 points. Players then accumulate these points and are recorded in a spread sheet just like reward points. Players can then spend their battle/DKP/EXP points to buy items from a set list that includes components, potions and resources at the lower end of the price scale, up to minor magic items/one shot items and then major magic items are at the high end of the pricing scale. Players would then get a fair chance of getting a magic item - additionally, players would chose the magic item with the effect they want. If we wanted to get fancy, some items could be limited with a max (or even min) player level, required race, path or disciple. I would foresee this being a bit more work/headache for the staff, and would remove any "unique" magic items from the game.. but it would be a "fair" system. However, from a "living, breathing world" standpoint, it seems like a very unrealistic method of obtaining things. We want to find loot on people. We want to gather herbs from the ground.

As for current EXP and Levels (another gauge of "character power") - they are only based on you showing up and either paying money or paying in volunteer (NPCing) time. Under the current system, someone could pay their event fee, hide in the woods in a box for an hour (or less) and then check out and go home. This person would receive the same levels/experience points as someone who reunited a lost child with their family, broke up a camp of bandits that had been terrorizing local farmers, escorted a foreign diplomat back to safety, acted as a moderator between two rival tribes to prevent a war, and then slayed an evil shadow beast to save the town from destruction. I'm not sure how those two scenarios should result in the same value of levels and EXP - levels and EXP that are used to obtain tiers of power for your character. How is that not broken?

I would like to say as a person you have shocked me I would not have expected a reply from you first let alone one so detailed and thought out on the subject *thumbs up*

I know I freaking hate comparing them to mmo's. the only reason I do is aside from the method of interaction the ideas are similar, and mmo's must be balanced, fair, and fun to make money. its a case of why reinvent the wheel when much larger games that have livelihoods depending on its success have already spent millions in trying to figure out how to grab new players, player retention, balance, core design, etc.

I was trying to think of doing away with magic items altogether as far as unique one off items that drop from bosses. and perhaps expanding upon the player created lists (craftsman, alchemy, spells, etc.) and have boss monsters and the like we face perhaps drop hard to find crafting components. kind of like what we had with candium bars back in the day, only if they came from bosses.

and perhaps instead of increasing character power through items, speeding up the gain of character points or making further disciplines cheaper so that players have access to more skills. (as this is something everyone has equal access to)

I agree that a point system or xp system would be a headache and hard to keep track of, as well as that we do like getting treasure and questing for stuff. as for the last point dealing with what I would consider to be event participation. . .I don't know at the moment. I would want to have a more in depth discussion on that idea alone before I started trying to come up with anything.

I would also like to point out that this would improve the usefulness of crafters within the PC base, such as craftsman and alchemists, etc. as right now they are simply outclassed by magic items. if tough bosses were to drop generic rare crafting materials it would be up to the PC base what to do with it. instead of getting a sage specific recall augmenting magic item that is very specific in who can use it. as well as magic items being completely unique in that if we get one we have to fight over it because its the only thing that does what it does, were as with materials its easy (or tough) enough to just find more and make your item eventually.

and once again it becomes much more simple to both balance and police with all possible combinations (and game breaking problems) being in the book for everyone to see and scrutinize.

no more crap magic items because we don't know what they could possibly be combined with, and no more wtfhowdidthisgetpassed magic items that are laughably over powered and break the game.

Man, I go away for a couple days to visit family and I come back to the same conversation we've been having for years. Once again I find myself deleting posts that may nt be intentionally mean spirited they are at the very least overly familiar. Perhaps I'm overreacting but I'm tired of feeling like I'm in a time loop, reading the same damn things over and over again.