How do you plan to RP Your Multiclassing?

Tael

Daeir said:

then you can suspend your disbelief for the guy who plays a Jester but is also a trained Runewarden as well.

Except, again, that isn't the issue I'm talking about. Worrying about that would be silly. There's nothing wrong with being a Jester and a Runewarden.

But that's not what multiclass will be. We already know that.

It's a person who is a Jester and not a Runewarden, but can periodically/with a delay/whatever suddenly be a Runewarden and not a Jester.

A person saying "I'm a Runewarden and a Jester" is fine. No damage done to immersion there. There's the possibility that for the sake of roleplay they basically pretend, for instance, as though they don't have the Jester class at all and are just a Runewarden, and I'm sure that that will happen given some of the responses in this thread and elsewhere, but, while I don't love the idea, I, like you, don't think it's a terribly big deal.

What I'm really not looking forward to is seeing a person saying "Oh, you need runes? I'm Jester right now, let me swap to Runewarden". That seems to me to be a much bigger problem for immersion.

My suspension of disbelief can stretch to accomodate that, but it needs some sort of justification. There's a justification for why adventurers are deathless (Thoth and the death sequence). There's a justification for why they're capable of ludicrous levels of strength (training in various skills). There's a justification for why some can rend space-time (they can turn into dragons, which are a part of the lore, and that's a thing dragons can do). There isn't, right now, any discussion of justification for why adventurers who couldn't swap out their skills and knowledge like floppy disks can suddenly do so. That's all I'm hoping for. I just want it to be such that, when someone says "Oh, you need runes? I'm Jester right now, let me swap to Runewarden", there's an IC interpretation of that.

And I'm a little bit worried because, though it's been brought up many times now, no one has ever confirmed whether there will be an IC justification for treating classes like floppy disks. And, moreover, Aetolia, which has a system like that already, doesn't have any kind of justification and it is really jarring there. I'm not just saying this might, hypothetically, be jarring for immersion - I've experienced it first-hand and it is a problem, at least for me, for immersion.

I don't think that's a ridiculous point and I don't think I'm catastrophizing.

@Trevize: Autoclass did have some big problems.

You started seeing way more frequent instantaneous, unexplained class changes. A lot of houses that tried to keep their old class-based ethos intact, that relied on a lot of class RP, just tried extend it to other classes and floundered. Many of the most active, most well-regarded houses (houses like the Naga or, until they fell apart at the start of the Renaissance, the Occultists) were the ones that resisted autoclass and stayed single-class houses. And then you had houses like the Ebon Fist, which were basically just containers for all the leftover classes that couldn't be shoehorned into any other houses, with some vague leftover monk-related ethos that few people played into and very, very little in the way of a sense of house solidarity. Many houses adapted well enough, but it was pretty catastrophic in some cases. And some of that fallout is only just now being addressed, years later and with a ton of work, as we just went through destroying and redoing all the houses so they could be created in a way that made more sense for all classes to be in each of them.

I think autoclass was a mostly positive thing in the end, but there were definitely some very serious growing pains, some of which we're only just now, years later, getting past.

I don't think this will be as big a deal as autoclass was, but autoclass was a big deal with big problems that took a long time, and major changes to the game, to fix and some downsides that will probably never go away. It was probably still worth it, but I don't think it's a great example of something where people predicted large-scale problems and were totally wrong.

Xari

I, personally, plan on going the "Xari's head is so full of <class> that he can't possibly be two classes at once but he was gifted, through intense meditation, a way to store a class into some tiny part of his brain that he can call up. But can only be one class at a time, or his head will be ripped apart and he'll lose his brain forever" way. When I do multi-class, of course.

I actually got this from a movie, but for the life of me, I can't reme----- AVATAR!!! No the blue-people avatar, but Avatar: the Last Airbender avatar. When the first avatar was training with the big-blue-spirit-woman-opposite-of-the-big-red-bad-spirit guy, she was like, running through him and he got a different element he could control. It would actually be pretty cool, like that, where every person who multi-classes gets some cool spirit-thingy companion that holds all their other class knowledge 'cause their minds can't hold that type of power. (And the companion is useless everywhere else)

But, the little storage space is fine :chuffed: Doesn't seem like it'd break immersion at all. In fact, could open a whole nother avenue of RP. Might have people trying to find a way to boost the brain's power to be multiple classes at once and get all scientific and quest-y and stuff. I freakin' love quests. And Avatar.

Trevize

Tael said:

My suspension of disbelief can stretch to accomodate that, but it needs some sort of justification.

@Trevize: Autoclass did have some big problems.

You started seeing way more frequent instantaneous, unexplained class changes. [stuff about House RP]

I think autoclass was a mostly positive thing in the end, but there were definitely some very serious growing pains, some of which we're only just now, years later, getting past.

Wow. Long post. I think you misinterpreted mine. I'm not saying that Autoclass had no problems, or that Multiclass will have none - I'm saying Multiclass' problems are not new - they are magnified Autoclass ones.

I'm not being sarcastic at all, serious question time: what is your current justification for quick/unexplained/one-Achaean-day class changes?

Aerek

For me, it's not so much an issue of immersion as it is story-telling and legacy. I can believe that we can learn multiple classes over the years, sure, but I think class has an immense effect on the flavor and the perception of your character. When I meet some bright-eyed novice, it's some of the best fun in Achaea to share stories of "Oh, you're a [class]? You should know about [name], the best [class] that ever was!" And then you fill their heads with the epic escapades of the Wulfens, Flairs, Metzgers, Rhos, and Tenebruses, of the world; folks who played one class and just absolutely owned it.

Now imagine capturing that newb's imagination, filling their head with those legends, inspiring them to follow in those footsteps. And then imagine that newb actually meets their idol, only to find Wulfen as a Monk because Mhaldor needed someone on Kai Choke duty, or discovers Tenebrus in Magi mode because he forgot Saltaern's password. I think it just kinda detracts from the narrative of the character.

So unless your RP is that you are some dilettante genius that does just swap professions on a whim, then you just automatically lose some credibility as a given class by dividing your time between multiple classes. Just like it's really hard to be remembered as a paragon of a given city if you kept swapping factions. Nothing wrong with it--play what you want to play--it's just harder to tell a great story about you when your character's flavor is malleable or inconsistent.

Aerek

P.S. Just because it came up, and the topic is my pet: there's nothing wrong with a Serpent/Paladin, Serpent/Infernal, or Serpent/Runewarden. You can play those classes however you want. But I would (and do) find something intensely wrong with the idea of a Serpent/Knight. I do feel that a class' flavor has a direct impact on the psychology and perception of the character, because each class kinda speaks to certain character archetypes or play styles.

If you go Serpent, that kinda speaks volumes about you. Kinda says that you enjoy slinking about, sniping people from afar, stealing/spying/assassinating, and all of those things are against what Achaean Knighthood is all about. Sure, you don't have to do those things, a Serpent could make a point not to, but if you're not going to do the things Serpent is best-equipped to do, why the hell would you play Serpent? If you go Jester, it says that you want to be a little wacky, a little zany, a lot unorthodox and definitely not the up-front soldier/warrior type. To play these classes and assert that you're not playing the archetypes they're obviously set up for kinda means you have to cover your eyes and ears every time you use your class skills, because those flavor descriptions are how the rest of us see you.

Which is why they conflict with the long-standing, player-developed roleplay of Achaean Knighthood. Starting with the Seleucarian Guild of Knights flavor, and further developed by the original Knightly Guilds and Inheritor Houses, Achaean Knighthood revolves around a particular playstyle and particular character flavor, and does have its identity rooted in three particular classes. There's a lot of really deep roleplay in that regard that's been atrophying terribly in this post-Renaissance, class-doesn't-matter era as people try to strip away the historical exclusivity of it.


TL;DR: Class identity matters, and just like I would never assert my right to call myself an "Archmage" as a Runewarden, I wish people would stop trying to co-opt my institution's hallmark title that I feel is a distinctly unique example of player-driven lore. It's like if someone from Targossas decided they really liked the title "Dread Ecclesiarch", and started wearing it around. You could do it, but it would fly in the face of the history and roleplay of that title. Just ain't right.

Shirszae

I am not seeing it. Any of the people you could tell a story about could one day wake up and change class. That does not detract from the stories you can tell about them, or the fact they were superior in their class. Nor do I think people really lose credibility by swapping classes, or at least not to the extent you are making it out to be, but that might just be because we have radically different ways of perceiving characters in this game.

As for serpent/knights, have you maybe considered that what people like, or find alluring about that combination is the paradoxical nature of it? The challenge of an honest serpent? One who is all shadow-y but at the same time tries to be stand-up and up-front? To me, it seems perfectly valid, and holds the same appeal as a kind of anti-hero. A shame you don't like it, but that doesnt mean people should stop pursuing it.

Tael

Trevize said:

Tael said:

My suspension of disbelief can stretch to accomodate that, but it needs some sort of justification.

@Trevize: Autoclass did have some big problems.

You started seeing way more frequent instantaneous, unexplained class changes. [stuff about House RP]

I think autoclass was a mostly positive thing in the end, but there were definitely some very serious growing pains, some of which we're only just now, years later, getting past.

Wow. Long post. I think you misinterpreted mine. I'm not saying that Autoclass had no problems, or that Multiclass will have none - I'm saying Multiclass' problems are not new - they are magnified Autoclass ones.

I'm not being sarcastic at all, serious question time: what is your current justification for quick/unexplained/one-Achaean-day class changes?

(Edit: Also, pretty much all of my posts are long posts. I can't help it much and Achaea has made me too fast a typist :P)
 
Mostly I just assume that Tael doesn't interact with people on a daily basis and there's some sort of story of the class change that he's plausibly not privy to. I've changed class on Tael a number of times over the approximate decade he's been around - very few people interact with him daily, so even if he had a good excuse, it probably wouldn't seem like it to most people.

And even if they change one RL day to the next, that's technically a whole month, which doesn't seem quite as crazy for a fairly radical change in knowledge, profession, and practice. I know people in real life who have undergone huge changes in their lives in less than a month.

Also, it doesn't happen that often that individual people change class. Even those that change class often don't change class that often. And people very rarely talk about it. No one says "Oh, you need runes? I'll go change class to runewarden.". So even if it does break immersion, it doesn't break it terribly often.

In Aetolia, it was way more jarring when I played. It was a clearly OOC mechanic and it ended up mentioned in otherwise IC conversation pretty frequently. Even when people were interested in roleplaying a multiclass character, IC discussion of the mechanical, OOC class-swapping system did pretty serious damage to immersion (at least my immersion).

And that's assuming that people were interesting in roleplaying their character as multiclass, which even in Aetolia, where roleplaying tends to be a bigger focus and the general expectation for roleplay is higher than in Achaea (or at least it was, this was a little while ago), probably the majority of people I encountered who were multiclass were multiclass so they could have a more advantageous class for bashing and/or for PK, not because they had any interest whatsoever in incorporating that class into their RP. I was a cabalist and several people in the guild roleplayed hardcore cabalists, but were totally explicit about swapping to other classes just because the bashing/PK was better. Because it was mechanically advantageous to be other classes, several of them basically just pretended, for the sake of their RP, that they were not in fact spending about 90% of their time as a class other than cabalist.

@Shirszae, I agree that there's nothing whatsoever wrong with serpent/knight. That's a potentially very compelling combination and I certainly don't think there's any loss of "credibility" involved.

My own reservations are about people who are totally uninterested in that combination and the RP opportunities and just want to roleplay a totally conventional knight, but think that serpent happens to be stronger at the moment, or want serpent utility. And there will be such people.

My greatest reservation though is about not having any kind of IC counterpart to the OOC class shift - so when people say something about swapping class (which they will), that becomes an undeniably OOC statement. Right now, it's possible to assign an IC interpretation to most statements about OOC mechanics - if someone talks about health in numerical terms, you can chalk it up to some numerical standard for evaluating wellness (if a pretty absurdly precise standard) and that doesn't seem totally crazy. If someone changes class and loses access to their old class, you can chalk it up to falling out of practice (even if it's only been a RL day between their classes, in real-life you can definitely fall out of practice of something in a month, and even become an expert in a lot of things with a really dedicated month).

But, if we get Aetolia-style multiclass, then I just can't think of any plausible IC interpretation that can be given for "One second, let me swap to Runewarden", even if you're playing up an otherwise interesting Runewarden/Serpent RP angle. All I'm hoping for is some sort of thing like maybe you attune to a spirit a la spiritlore or maybe you hold your knowledge of the class in a talisman or maybe some event causes people to be able to splinter their mind in some way.

The reason I posted this thread was mostly that I was curious whether other people were thinking about this - whether other people were already coming up with their own ways to provide an IC counterpart to the mechanical class-swapping. It seems likely people largely aren't, which makes me more nervous about whether or not we'll get such an IC justification.

Kez

Tael said:

 "One second, let me swap to Runewarden"

Nothing is ever this easy in Achaea.

Tael

Kez said:

Tael said:

 "One second, let me swap to Runewarden"

Nothing is ever this easy in Achaea.

While it's by no means a sure thing that it'll be the same, that is exactly how it works in Aetolia - you type CLASS SWITCH <class>. You can't do it for 10 minutes after being involved in aggressive action and you can do it once every 12 hours, or pay 30 lessons to reset it (40 the next time you reset it that day, next 50, etc.).

It's limited, but given the huge number of lessons a lot of people have sitting around, especially from memberships, if Achaea had something like this you'd definitely see people saying "one second, let me swap to Runewarden".

Trevize

Daeir said:

Well this is awkward, guess I was completely off the mark re: event introduction.

Well, shit.

It's the urns.

There's something in the wine.

Tecton

Daeir said:

Well this is awkward, guess I was completely off the mark re: event introduction.

Well, shit.

We had this massive event planned, but then @Amranu just kept hounding us all day every day...

Moral of the story: Blame @Amranu

Amranu

All I did was tweet at you about it, mention you in threads about it. Open a thread about it, mention it every hour on TMC...

Oh, guess I see your point

Austere

Amranu said:

All I did was tweet at you about it, mention you in threads about it. Open a thread about it, mention it every hour on TMC...

Oh, guess I see your point

You have done well, my friend.  I for one am thankful. 

Anedhel

At the moment, multiclass is spectacularly OOC, from what I've seen. I've yet to see a single person I know do any kind of roleplaying related to it; it's basically just like a test server atm. It might get better, I suppose, but...

So far, it's pretty cool, and people are very much enjoying it, but from a roleplay perspective, it's made something relatively cheap even cheaper!

(Not that that's a bad thing. Games are for fun, and this has been pretty fun, universally lauded!)

Tharvis

eh, explaining multiclass can be as simple as "I've fought denizens using these techniques in my travels, and after practicing against them, studying their ways, I have made their skills my own." - with the "practicing against them, studying their ways" reinforcing the level gating

Sobriquet

Tharvis said:

eh, explaining multiclass can be as simple as "I've fought denizens using these techniques in my travels, and after practicing against them, studying their ways, I have made their skills my own." - with the "practicing against them, studying their ways" reinforcing the level gating

"I've flung tarot for over 300 years, but since I learnt to jumpkick I can't seem to remember how to open my deck" 1 hour later.. "ah, there we go, it's open. Right, what is a jumpkick?" I appreciate its not real life as is always the comparison. But @Anedhel mentioned the test server feel comparison and I get that vibe for the moment too. I'm sure it'll settle down though.