One of the first decisions we made regarding Blood of Dragons is that we wanted a game where not all characters would be equal and where it would be possible to start off as more ‘powerful’ if you were an experienced roleplayer. This was in reaction to other games we played at the time, where everyone either started from the same very low base (which meant that you couldn’t start off an older, supposedly more experienced character easily) or where the CharGen system was designed to try to equalize everyone, meaning that if you were good at one thing, you would invariably be very bad at most everything else.
We decided to use a system of Types and Tiers. The Type is what actually determines the availability of a character and the application requirements. The Tier is one factor that affects which Type the character is. For example, all Tier III characters are of Type Restricted, but not all Restricted characters are IIIs (though they cannot be higher than III).
The two Types that tend to raise the most questions are Restricteds and Limiteds. They are both available via application, but we have quotas for how many are available at any given time. They also have some additional requirements added onto their applications compared to Open characters since we want these characters in particular to set an example for inexperienced players. For Restricteds, we want to see two logs of prior roleplay. While it could be argued that logs may not tell us all that much, they can in general at least give some sense of the quality of the applicant’s roleplay. For Limiteds, in addition to the log requirement, there is also a requirement of recommendations from players known to the Admin. This does not mean we have to know the applicant personally (but if we do, we can obviously make our own judgement), just that someone who plays on the game knows them and can recommend them to us.
Finally, since the question does come up now and then, why all the hoops, in this day and age of shrinking MU*s? We would naturally not mind a big game, but quality is more important to us than quantity, and a lot of our current players (including the ones playing Open characters) feel the same when asked about it. We’re not putting these requirements in to keep anyone out, but we do believe that the these rare roles should go to really good roleplayers with really good character concepts. That does not mean, however, that Open characters are for raw newbies only. They are supposed to be ‘Good’ and the difference between each Tier in terms of CG setup and how it is reflected in the systems is smaller than many people think.
