Roman Republic Challenge?

[meh]

One format I've been thinking about a bit is to do the race wars thing from last year, but instead make it a battle of the sexes. The classes are divided into male and female ones (I've already done a preliminary division, but it ended up slightly unbalanced). The two teams will then decide on the ten combinations themselves, but each race and assigned class must be used exactly once. One team would of course only play male characters and the other females.

Problems with this is that ten characters per team is quite a lot and that there isn't really enough to set the two teams apart. Gender has such a small influence in the game. Something like the "don't change alignment" rule from last year would be needed.

For those that weren't around or have forgotten, the basic premise of the race wars was that each team had a set of characters that were passed around within the team like in a RRC game.

[Silfir]

In the original Roman Republic Challenge, the fate of the PC hinged entirely on the players. Had anyone one of them killed Rhea, she would have been finished for good. All of us were fully expecting some sort of death at some point, since there was no way in hell that a character played by 12 different people would not have fallen victim to the sheer chaos that ensued - to our all astonishment, Rhea lived, and won.

This is the thread of the original proposal, and the discussion thread for it all.

EDIT: I remember the Race Wars... Those were lots of fun too, even though I had sort of an ADOM rut back then and hardly played.

My proposal:

Team gut. Team Grey. Team Soirana. Team Someone Else (I've got the fourth most posts - crap, it'd be me, wouldn't it?). Maximum bickering and name-calling. It would be glorious.

Twenty classes, each assigned to a team for a total of five classes per team. Ten races, assigned to teams twice, total of five race choices per team. Races and classes freely combinable. Character passed around freely within the team, only restriction being that the team leader may not fight either the ACW, D:50 or Andor Drakon. 1 ToEF point for getting the fire orb, one victory point for closing the gate, one ultra point for defeating Andor Drakon, as I think it went for THUS. Not that those points have any meaning, anyone who followed the Treasure Hunter Ultimate Showdown also knows about the true, secret win condition.

Call it... THE GREAT BATTLE FOR SUPREMACY OF THE ADOM BOARDS, also known as The Great BS! As a proud badge, the winning team members may create a signature referring to the losing team leaders and their teams as a bunch of n00b faggots.

Okay, so think of a better name, but the proposal is serious. Kind of.

[gut]

> my turn on an RRC and die? I assume the character survives,

Not in an RRC game it doesn't. One death means a dead PC.

> Team gut. Team Grey. Team Soirana.

Battle of verboseness? I'm not sure we could all stand that : )
I don't think teams should be devided up by post count, but
by some phillosophy difference. We all KNOW there aren't
enough females around here for gender wars, so what else?
Maybe archers vs wizzies vs barbarians? L vs C? Trolls vs
hurthlings?

OK, so a true RRC is out because it's time and difficulty
restrictive to newbies? That's fine by me. A race wars style
is fine, and I like the restriction about who can kill what
bosses. Maybe have a restriction that each player can only
kill one boss with each PC? Maybe that's too much to keep
up with though.

[Grey]

I don't have the time for anything too complex or over-reaching, and I especially despise any system that starts giving arbitrary points to different things. The game would become about collecting the points instead of having fun.

I do have an idea though for something somewhat new - The Best of the Worst.

Most of us agree that the worst 3 classes in ADOM are Thieves, Merchants and Farmers. But which is truly the worst, and which of us are the best with the worst? Basically you choose a side, in particular you should choose which class you truly believe to be the worst. Try your best to win with it (we'll have separate report threads for each class). At the end we'll have a massive and pointless argument about whether the team that did worst overall was because it has the worst class or the most noob faggot players, and if the teams that did well were because the players were skilled or they pussied out and chose the easiest class.

We could do it Roman Republic style, even using the league accounts on the server for those that want to. However it is a little restrictive to new players, and to those that have lives and want to play at their own pace. I'd rather it just be in the style of the TH competition, maybe with a similar points system (though this time the points would be negative). Race-wise it's probably best to have people simply choose what they personally think would be worst for their class.

Thoughts?

[pblack]

I would be up for any type of challenge game. I am registered on the forum for quite some time but only started posting recently so i never participated in any of the previous competitions.

I'm not really a noob, playing adom on and off for about 4 years now, but no legitimate wins so far.

On the topic of point system vs. RRC challenge type I guess the point system is more interesting overall but the dynamics of keeping the scores with so many different pontuation possibilities might be a little overwhelming. I followed the last TWL and liked it very much. Specially since you could easily play locally, wich I prefer 'cause i'm too lazy to instal the SSH thingy.

About grey's last idea, the best of the worst, it is indeed good. But wouldn't it require a bit of honesty when choosing? I mean... personally i tend to do very well with thieves and suck with farmers... and trying my best to win, I would be tempted to choose a thief even thou i think farmers are worse... so... maybe assign classes randomly... perhabs even races?

[gut]

There isn't so much 3 worst classes as there is
1 worst class, and it's farmer. Unless you herb
scum your head off, then it's prolly best. My
head hurts.

How about a no-herb farmer. Everyone rolls one,
maybe a random race, and we all play for 2000
turns. We give a brief list of our accomplishments.
This way, no one should be deterred from participating,
because their save wouldn't have to be chosen.
The best saves get chosen and we each pick the
one we want to continue with, and play it for 2000
more turns.

We tried something like that back during the 'divine
finger' challenge, but due in part to Soirana's creative
use of the English language, morons like myself were
unable to understand what in the world a 'breakpoint'
was supposed to be, and thus the whole thing died on
the vine. Was fun while it lasted though, and this time
we can just leave out the whole breakpoint thing.

Eh?

[Grey]

About grey's last idea, the best of the worst, it is indeed good. But wouldn't it require a bit of honesty when choosing? I mean... personally i tend to do very well with thieves and suck with farmers... and trying my best to win, I would be tempted to choose a thief even thou i think farmers are worse... so... maybe assign classes randomly... perhabs even races?

Well, any competition requires honesty. Just playing ADOM normally needs honesty. We have to go with some element of trust. The whole thing is for fun anyway, and technically doing well is somewhat discouraged (since it implies you chose a pussy class). I'm definitely against random races - trolls are way too easy and overcome any class obstacles, and I've already proved elsewhere than any drakeling (even farmers) can win the game easily enough. If race were to be set in any way it'd likely have to be human, since they're the most mediocre race in general (though elves are even worse to start with for these classes).

gut, is your suggestion that we all play to a certain point and then swap saves? Requires a lot of co-ordination and means we'll have to wait for everyone to catch up all the time - would take forever.

With regards to farmers being clearly the worst... well, perhaps. Maybe there should be the caveat of no generating herbs for farmers (naturally found and altering existing is okay), no coin-tossing for merchants, and no heir gift for thieves. This way they're much more even.

Y'know, we could simplify this much more and just have everyone play a random human farmer. I just liked the idea of choice so that we could have competitive teams.

[koctyxa]

There isn't so much 3 worst classes as there is
1 worst class, and it's farmer. Unless you herb
scum your head off, then it's prolly best. My
head hurts.

I'll defend farmer. This class has several advantages. Having fletchery and archery makes him poor man's Archer. He can choose lightning shot talent. Half food consumption and herb gardening means faster crowning with stomafilia or more precrownings. Smaller xp needs means you don't have to scum for experience. Smaller weapon marks requirements in the best weapon class helps with regard to speed. 30% protection from chaos in the final battle and cooking with food preservation (for guardian corpses to be fetched to druid) lessens chaos worries. Almost all his crowning gifts are good ones. This class combines nice with evil races or gnomes.

I'd rather argue that fighter is the worst class ever.

[phauli]

I'm with whatever! Although i've only won once and got past ToEF maybe 10 times but if you do come up with a good game idea and rules count me in! Except if it is going to be on the server only since i don't understand any of it and, at the time, don't have the time to learn using it. And thats the second problem that i don't have enormous time at my disposal so if its something like use your turn in the next 12 hours i'm out.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

I like furious-styles' idea of the points tournament (although it would require organisers willing to count the points).

I also like the "Best of the Worst" idea (either roman republic style or TH style, both have its pros and cons). But I think if we do this, it is essential to forbid herb scumming (and perhaps other powerful forms of scumming as well). Any character with herbalism or the means of getting it can become an uber-char if he lives enough to find some herbs and the player doesn't mind the boredom. This would destroy the appeal of playing a weak class.

Another idea that occurs to me is what we could call the CHALLENGE OF DOOM. Someone creates a save that somehow starts with a ring of doom (is this possible? I think it should be for wizards), equips it, and we see who scores more points or advances further in the game without removing the ring. We would probably need to forbid sacrificing monsters in altars.