Restricted Abilities?

Hi all, sorry if it seems like I ask way to many questions. My site is still an infant and I like to be able to get feedback from more experience sites.

I am currently running with a restricted powers board in order to keep some things that are considered rare from overtaking the entire site. Currently I am granting the ability to take these powers as a reward to members who reach a certain post count. I find this rule frustrating but at the same time useful at keeping certain rare powers and pets rare.

I've lately started to feel like maybe I should just do away with the restrictions. At the same time I am afraid to lift restrictions on things like having a dragon as a pet when I only want them to be a rare spectacle in my game.

Does anyone have any feedback on this subject? Should it go away or should I change the way that I restrict it?

 

This is another case in which I'm going to talk about my own game. But I'm going to preface it by saying that what works for one game won't necessarily work for another. In the end you have to consider the expectations of the player base, the goals of the game, and exactly what you personally are shooting for.

CoSC shoots for a realistic base of players and population demographic. We use a system of pretty hardcore bans & restrictions to accomplish this. Our system is tiered. We have the bans, which means we outright say no to something. It's usually used to keep population demographics realistic and keep a single fur color for completely outpacing the natural genetic spread that should happen. We also use them to keep group populations comparable and gender balances within groups.

Our actual restrictions system is the next tier, and that are tiers within that. We have group restrictions that apply specifically to a group (IE: Things that have become genetically common in the group that we're not letting created characters born outside of new litters have), General restrictions that we don't permit on a person's first character, heavy restrictions which require at least a month of time IC before you're eligible for it, Extremely heavy that requires 2 months or better of consistent RP activity, and particularly heavy, which requires 6 months of activity. We also have a "HARD" version of Particularly heavy that almost never gets approved that requires doubling the minimum length requirements AND there not already being too many of that trait in the game. (If you want to see the craziness of what of my bans list, check out the list for ThunderClan

Because of this we're one of the few Warriors games whose characters aren't primarily in the 6-30 moons of age range and we have a game without unnaturalness in colors but still aren't overrun with unusual traits like white tail tips. and it encourages a brand new player not to make ALL of their character allotment in the first week they're with the game. It is, however, a pain in the ass to maintain.

You might consider a tiered system for your game that continues to reward players who make a time investment. Or you could just keep a list of things that have to be acquired IC and can't be done OOC (I have a few things on my bans list that are specifically "It happens IC only, if it happens at all"). In the end you'll have to find the balance between what works well for your game while still keeping the game from escaping the bounds of what you want it to be.

 

This seems like a much better way of doing things than just a post count. I don't mind managing things like this in order to prevent my board from getting super crazy. Thank you for all your input!

 

There totally was a time when we considered using post count. We decided it was too arbitrary and counted all OOC activity and not just activity that contributes to the game (we have OOC ways to be super useful).

and I don't mind at all. Forces me to think Critically about the systems I have in place outside of the realm of the game. And taking moments to consider what does and doesn't work about your own systems is a good thing. Granted... I've been tweaking and improving things on CoSC for 8 years (I thinks we're the longest running continuous world Warriors game on the net. I think there's one other game that's been as long running as ours, but they've rebooted the world).

 

There are, almost always, powers that I refuse to allow. Purely because I find them to be far too powerful. Things like:
- Complete/perfect invulnerability (nothing can injure them ever).
- Instant death powers (whether by a touch or stare or big beam... Though if the game is featuring grim reapers then this may be just restricted/limited somehow to prevent abuse.)
- Instant and irreversible transmogrification (like turning someone into stone).
- Possession of player characters. (I have no issues with possession of NPCs though.)
- Mind reading/altering. (Far too easy to powerplay. Also gets borderline meta-gamey too.)

Beyond that people are free to apply for whatever. Though if I think a power is too much then I'll require limits or something before I'll allow that character to be used.

Furthermore I also reserve the right to require edits/changes at any time after acceptance too. This means I'm never in a situation where people try pulling stunts like saying a power accepted before means it's accepted forever.
So, for example, if someone had their power as "fire" (which, blanket things like that, I'd never allow) and they went from creating small fires to raising massive pillars of lava. Then I'd get them to actually define what they can do (and tone down in the process).

 

Here is the basics of what I have built, massive credits to Kitsufox for the inspiration. My site has a strange economy called plushies, which can be used to buy restricted powers. You get three to start with- and you can get more for participating in writing contests, recruiting, and for completing threads. Here is how my restrictions are broken down.

Restriction Description
General- Already have one approved character with one month of activity. Additionally costs 3 plushies.
Nation- Nation specific sub tag. (No cost independently)
Non-Bender- Reserved for non-bending characters only, sub tag. (No cost independently)
Rare- Already have one approved character with no less than three months of activity. Additionally costs 6 plushies.
Legendary- Already have one approved character with no less than six months of activity. Additionally requires winning at least one site contest OR being featured as an exemplary character OR collect a full set of plushies.

Getting a legendary means that most people will have to collect 25 unique plushies.
I think this will be successful, because not every character will need the plushies to play what they want. This creates a simple economy, where people can sell their plushies for different things. One of my players has a spy type character, and he gives away plushies he earns and in exchange his character has that characters biography (application) on file, taking something that is usually metagame and turning it into voluntarily given info about a character who sells it to him.

Certain character archetypes don't even really need them, and they can use them as bargaining chips for the players who are after the "cool powers."