Finding the secret hideout of your dreams

[Angela Christine]

Suppose you want to create a hermit.  Could be a magicker, escaped slave, mindbender, a wild child that was raised by tregils, or just a ranger or old mercenary sick of civilization.  Whatever.  You need a hideout which has access to two things: a place where you can quit out and a place where you can find or buy moisture without needing to go into a civilized area.  The quit room and the moisture room don't need to be the same place, but they should be fairly near eachother.  The character has been a hermit for a while, so they must have already found a way to aquire food and moisture.

Now you, the player, know of a few good spots.  You've been around a while, you've fallen off the shieldwall a few times, and you've learned a few wilderness quit rooms and areas where food and moisture can be found.  This is previous character knowledge, some of it is IC (knowing where to find an oasis) and some of it is OOC (knowing where you can quit out) but you learned it all with previous characters.  How much of this is ok to use when designing the new character?

Obviously using some of it is ok.  Like you can't possibly design a character whose tribe or family are from the Thornlands (the Dusty Plains, the Canyons of Waste, the Broken Rim Mountains, etc.) unless you have previously heard of the Thornlands an know where they are.  The Thornlands aren't a secret location, but I don't think they have a helpfile either.  You learn about them by going there.  Your new character may not have ever been there in the 2 hours you have been playing him, but he has been there in the 17 years he lived before you took over.  I believe most people would think this was ok.

What about places that took a specialized skill to find the first time?  You climbed up that rock face and found a deserted village, or you climbed up into that cave and found a deserted hide out.  You used the search command and discovered a secret door with described as a thin seam, "open seam" reveals a normal doorway and "close seam" hides it again.  You turned yourself into a mouse or a wisp of smoke and went through on of those cracks that "even the tiniest halfling wouldn't be able to wriggle through" and from the other side found a man-sized secret passage.  Whatever, by using a specific coded skill that not everyone has you found a place that would be perfect for your hermit-to-be.  The problem is that your hermit won't have, or at least won't start with, maxed out climb, search, or turn-into-a-mouse.  You know that "open seam" (or whatever the syntax is) reveals a secret passage into that mountain, but if your character doesn't start with "search" there is no code way that he could have found the secret door, because no matter how much he searched he would have a 0% chance of finding it code-wise.  Or you know that it is a short climb to a pleasant nook in that cliff face, but it isn't plausible that a character without the coded climb skill (or that has newbie-level climb skill) would be throwing themselves over cliffs, down wells, or spending hundreds of stamina points to climb up a mesa to find that nook.  It isn't impossible story-wise (unlikely, but not impossible) but it is impossible or nearly impossible code-wise that the character could have found it on his own.  So what do you do?

Do you take a subclass you know gets "search" or "climb" just so you have the coded excuse to have found your hide out?  Do you put in your background that you found place X as a kid, even though you don't have the coded skill to discover it?  Do you just use your previous character knowledge to find the place, and hope no one notices that  the character doesn't have the coded skills to have found it?  Do you forget about it, and dash into the city or go to well-known wilderness quit spots to quit, since quitting is OOC anyway?  Something else?


Angela Christine

[Lazloth]

Like all things, it's variable.  

What do you do, after generating an expansive background involving <insert sekrit spot>, show up ingame, and realize it is occupied by some resident shaman?

Like I've said before, the learning curve in this game is huge.  Once you inherit the knowledge that <x-fruit> will cause you to die after sniffing it, you will more than likely not rediscover this with every character that follows.  Assuming you're doing something that will not insist on staff assistance, I think it's fair to gloss over some particulars, assuming things flow.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

I agree. Creating a deep character requires that you already possess OOC knowledge of the world. As long as you include it in your background, which is approved or declined by the Immortals, you are on safe ground.

[RideTheDivide]

I've always figured the first hour or so of a new character is "semi-ooc" time.  That's when you get a set of clothing that matches your background and stuff like that.  Sometimes you start in a place that is *nearby* where you would be from but is a place you might not go to.  Sometimes you junk 'sids to make yourself a really poor person.

That's my take anyways...

[drunkendwarf]

The problem is that your hermit won't have, or at least won't start with, maxed out climb, search, or turn-into-a-mouse.

I just branched turn-into-a-mouse, I'm so excited!