Author Topic: The Proving Ground (Read 5297 times)

sirpercival · « **on:** March 02, 2012, 11:28:43 AM »

First the problem: there's a whole bunch of homebrew being created every day, and not many DMs allow homebrew content, so the creator doesn't get much feedback on how things go in an actual game environment. This in turn means that they may not know if things are over- or underpowered, or just plain broken and don't work the way they intend.

There's also very little of an objective measure of homebrew strength. There's the SGT, but that is limited and is also basically run as a thought experiment rather than an actual game.

So, I have this idea. Why don't a few of us brilliant minds come up with a bunch of encounters of various types and strengths. We'll call the collection "The Proving Ground". Then, when someone wants to test a piece of homebrew, they approach a PGDM and ask them to run a character or two through some of the encounters, chosen randomly at game time through some method that prevents overabundance of encounter types. We can have three tiers (a la SGT) at 5th, 10th, and 15th level, or do something more fluid.

Logistically, we'd get a forum for the Proving Ground in PbP or Homebrew; we'd create a PGDM group so people would know who to ask, and give the DM group access to a private subforum that houses all the encounter details.

Thoughts? Anyone else on board with this? I know I'd love to be able to run some of my stuff through encounters to see how they do.

ImperatorK · « **Reply #1 on:** March 02, 2012, 11:31:48 AM »

What are the criteria for becoming a PGDM?
English isn't my first language. Is that a problem?
I'm only mediocre at optimizing. Is that a problem?
Will it be limited only to 3.5 or can there be also PF or 3.P encounters and classes?
What about playtesting houserules?

sirpercival · « **Reply #2 on:** March 02, 2012, 11:33:31 AM »

I guess you're interested? Lol.

I wouldn't think that either of those things would be a problem. All you have to do for being a PGDM is run the encounters, and hopefully help design them -- and in terms of optimizing, I'm sure the other encounter-creators can help with that.

Mooncrow · « **Reply #3 on:** March 02, 2012, 11:37:55 AM »

Sounds interesting; I'm time limited a lot these days, but I would be interested in contributing when I can.

altpersona · « **Reply #4 on:** March 02, 2012, 11:50:49 AM »

i think 339 had a similar thing years ago

a fixed set of encounters with some odd progression.

iir, started w/ a snake in the woods then a cave...

dont recall the rest.

phaedrusxy · « **Reply #5 on:** March 02, 2012, 12:54:39 PM »

Yeah, that was quite an interesting thread. I submitted at least one "contestant" to that. The guy who started it had a screen name like "Meyer" something or other. It arose out of the argument about whether casters were stronger than non-casters... so they made up that "gauntlet" to test peoples' builds.

There was another one, in a different forum area (the one I'm talking about was in CO), too, but I think the same guy had started it.

They didn't actually do all of the dice rolling in those. They just had a way to calculate successes based on a probability system, which is actually better, unless you want to run each "experiment" over and over a bunch of times till you have a dataset that's large enough to be statistically valid...

bhu · « **Reply #6 on:** March 02, 2012, 06:41:17 PM »

ah would love to have mah cat burglar tested ...

Monotremeancer · « **Reply #7 on:** March 05, 2012, 04:49:36 AM »

Interesting idea, I'd really like to see it in full bloom.

sirpercival · « **Reply #8 on:** March 06, 2012, 05:59:57 PM »

Maybe this should be moved to the Homebrew board, since that's where the most interested parties hang out. Thoughts? Mod?

veekie · « **Reply #9 on:** March 07, 2012, 09:37:31 AM »

You COULD ask for people to put up what they think would be most interesting to run from Homebrew, but finding people who'd actually do it is a bit trickier. Besides I think most of the Homebrew regulars are already in this thread.

sirpercival · « **Reply #10 on:** March 07, 2012, 10:06:13 AM »

Well, really I'm looking for people to help design encounters and run them. Obviously I'm willing to do it

Garryl · « **Reply #11 on:** March 07, 2012, 11:43:50 AM »

I can lend a hand, both with running and making encounters. I don't know how much time I'd have for them, but I should have some.

midnight_v · « **Reply #12 on:** March 17, 2012, 04:00:47 AM »

I'm interested.
I'm curious to know how the gauntlet will be measured though. Thats the hardest part to me.
How does one measure what the class is capable of truly.
Sure I'd be willing to encounter some encounters.

littha · « **Reply #13 on:** March 19, 2012, 04:26:01 PM »

I can probably help design encounters, probably not got the time to be running them but I'll see what I can do.

Ideally we would want the tests to figure out what tier the class is, as such it cant all be combat encounters.

sirpercival · « **Reply #14 on:** March 19, 2012, 04:33:46 PM »

Of course -- you want a variety of different encounter types, and maybe some random tables to generate the set of encounters a given run will include.

Kaelik · « **Reply #15 on:** March 25, 2012, 04:25:35 PM »

This came up once before on the old BG boards, and what I said then still applies. I'm fine with creating and running encounters, and taking other people's encounters and optimizing them. I'm a big believer that encounters should be and are a lot harder than most people think they are when you run monsters tough, so I have a lot of practice building encounters like that.

If someone wants me to do something like this, just tell me where to start. Give me a level of the party/individual character, and some basic guidelines about goals and I'll make encounters for that level of party/individual.

sirpercival · « **Reply #16 on:** March 25, 2012, 07:37:38 PM »

Well, excellent. It seems we have several people interested in contributing encounters, and since that's the first (and biggest) step, let's start discussing the parameters of TPG encounters.

Here are my thoughts for critique:

~We should have 3 stratifications for encounters: those designed for level 6, level 12, and level 18. PrCs being tested will probably only want to run 12 and 18, but we should have 6 for the base classes.
~Each "run" at a given stratification will be made up of 5 combat encounters (level -1, level, level +1, level +2, level +3) and 3 non-combat encounters of various types. [We'll have to figure out how to adjust for solo vs party]
~The 8 encounters will occur over 2 "days", in a random order, to account for resource management. So, after encounter 4, spells and whatnot are refreshed.
~Logistically, we would have a private subforum to post all the encounters in, and a stickied thread which would have the tables for each encounter type. People would then post in the main forum where we would have a PG request thread; they would include 8 d% rolls, which would be used to generate their encounter list. Then when a DM is ready and available, they create a new thread and the player posts builds and they go from there.

Thoughts?

Kaelik · « **Reply #17 on:** March 25, 2012, 07:51:25 PM »

All of that is fine except that I need to know if I am making these encounters for single PC of level 8, or a party of 4 level 8 PCs.

sirpercival · « **Reply #18 on:** April 03, 2012, 08:15:38 PM »

So, no other opinions on this from anyone else?

What do we do about solo vs groups? Making two sets of encounters is a pain in the ass...

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Author Topic: The Proving Ground (Read 5297 times)