10-05-2003, 04:22 PM
Hi Occhi. After reading your post, I decided to follow the KoP link that I think you are referring to and take a walk down memory lane (funny how we get to this conversation from where that one started). It occurs to me that Sirian was (is?) not really a variant player; he was doing something a bit different. It also seems to me that the kind of thing he was doing never really caught on within the D1 variant community, and that's kind of a shame. The things of that sort that I have done with variant players were always a blast.
Variants are focused on character, a system of restrictions based on the life story of the character, that stay pretty much consistent through the life of the character. A quest or a challenge is something very different, usually a single game effort that can have restrictions based on something entirely apart from the nature of the character. The 3@30 fits in this category, and has the benefit of being reasonably difficult and simple to understand, but frankly it is an artificial and unimaginative quest. More interesting possibilities exist, but this avenue wasn't explored nearly in as much depth as the character-based things. Most variant players were too busy doing 3@30s with their variants!
I'm pretty sure Charis created the quest called Retribution. I'm not sure if you've ever been involved in that one, but it is a blast. The concept is fairly simple: A group of heroes decide to exact revenge and justice for the suffering and death caused by Diablo. Diablo must die, but first he must witness the death of his most elite guardians. So the first thing the team does upon reaching level 16 is to open Diablo's chamber and lure out the big guy, being very careful not to kill anything first. Now, the entire level must be cleared, and Diablo must be visible on-screen when each kill occurs. Once Sir Gorash is located, he should also be kept alive and on-screen for the rest of the level (I imagine someone who has a particular beef with Sir Gorash would want to locate him before anything is killed so he witnesses it all). At some point, the notorious black knight was also deemed to be worthy of this punishment, but keeping both him and Gorash alive is pretty tricky. After this demonic triumvirant has witnessed the fall of their most loyal subjects, it's finally their turn. This was always a blast for moderate to powerful characters (variant or non-variant), and was especially a good way to reverse a bad mood after getting your butt kicked by Diablo's minions in a previous game.
Things like this can be complimentary to variant concepts. Different variants playing together usually avoid their variant-specific quests and stick to the basic "let's clear this chunk of levels" game. They are thus not much different than normal characters cooping together (although some variant combos do require unique sets of tactics). Throwing the team into a new situation with different goals can be a nice change of pace, variants or not. And in the case of the variants you have the added benefit of potential roleplaying twists within the new scenario.
Variants are focused on character, a system of restrictions based on the life story of the character, that stay pretty much consistent through the life of the character. A quest or a challenge is something very different, usually a single game effort that can have restrictions based on something entirely apart from the nature of the character. The 3@30 fits in this category, and has the benefit of being reasonably difficult and simple to understand, but frankly it is an artificial and unimaginative quest. More interesting possibilities exist, but this avenue wasn't explored nearly in as much depth as the character-based things. Most variant players were too busy doing 3@30s with their variants!
I'm pretty sure Charis created the quest called Retribution. I'm not sure if you've ever been involved in that one, but it is a blast. The concept is fairly simple: A group of heroes decide to exact revenge and justice for the suffering and death caused by Diablo. Diablo must die, but first he must witness the death of his most elite guardians. So the first thing the team does upon reaching level 16 is to open Diablo's chamber and lure out the big guy, being very careful not to kill anything first. Now, the entire level must be cleared, and Diablo must be visible on-screen when each kill occurs. Once Sir Gorash is located, he should also be kept alive and on-screen for the rest of the level (I imagine someone who has a particular beef with Sir Gorash would want to locate him before anything is killed so he witnesses it all). At some point, the notorious black knight was also deemed to be worthy of this punishment, but keeping both him and Gorash alive is pretty tricky. After this demonic triumvirant has witnessed the fall of their most loyal subjects, it's finally their turn. This was always a blast for moderate to powerful characters (variant or non-variant), and was especially a good way to reverse a bad mood after getting your butt kicked by Diablo's minions in a previous game.
Things like this can be complimentary to variant concepts. Different variants playing together usually avoid their variant-specific quests and stick to the basic "let's clear this chunk of levels" game. They are thus not much different than normal characters cooping together (although some variant combos do require unique sets of tactics). Throwing the team into a new situation with different goals can be a nice change of pace, variants or not. And in the case of the variants you have the added benefit of potential roleplaying twists within the new scenario.