New application for 014 Dalelands

[Murky Majare]

BUILDING PLAN

Building a huge region like the Dalelands is of course a tremendous task, and we have therefore divided our work into iterations and we will concentrate on getting one group of sections of the server up and running before moving to the next tier. It is important that we do not overextend ourselves, and that we do not add material that is not supported in large enough player numbers.

Tier 1:
Shadowdale - village and nearby wilderness.
Emerald Springs - village and nearby wilderness. (Same wilderness as Shadowdale)
Glen – village and underground caverns.
Scardale – village and nearby wilderness.

Tier 2:
Daggerdale
Mistledale

Tier 3:
Myth Drannor (ruins).

Further iterations beyond these three will depend on capacity of the NWN 2 engine, the wishes of the community, and more important the capacity of our DMs and builders.

It is important that we do not stretch ourselves too thin. Thus, we will not continue to expand the server beyond the need of the player numbers available.

Tier 1
In Tier 1 we will concentrate on four locations which will be connected through either a simple travel cut scene between the locations, or a world map, depending on what system the admins decide on.

In this iteration we want to give diversity and build areas so that most classes, races and alignments will have something to do, and have decided on four locations.

Shadowdale
Shadowdale is chosen to be among the locations in Tier 1, as the village is the location with the most material published. She is also a location that many of the builders and DMs knows very well, and it would ease the transition into NWN 2. Further, it will also provide us with a good example of what works, and perhaps more importantly, what didn’t, and thus be a good learning example for us. Some things never worked as intended on the NWN 1 server, and other things worked well, despite us planning for it on before hand. Players specific desires and behaviours during live play in NWN 1, is a great source of information for us in making the Dalelands. What type of quests were popular? Where did players hang out? And several questions like that, will be put to good use.

Emerald Springs
There are many elven communities in the Dales, but Emerald Springs has been chosen because it is close to Shadowdale, and thus excellent for sharing its wilderness areas with Shadowdale (thus reducing the amount of areas we need).
Emerald Springs is a player created community, but it is very detailed and there is actually more background on ES than on most elven communities described in the canon material.

Glen
Glen was chosen to add a dwarven community to the server. Glen does not have much material published, but Glen is one of the few open access points to the underdark, and will easily provide a large range of quests and plots and an overall story arc. Going by canon, a large part of the undercity is restricted to dwarves only, and will do so in our suggestion as well. Several parts are open however, and will provide non-dwarves with a lot to do and experience as well.

Scardale
There are few places where evil and greed can thrive in the Dales, and Scardale is one of those 2-3 locations. It has thus been added to Tier 1, so that players wanting to play darker type of characters can have a place to do so, somewhat separate from the goody two shoes locations of ES and SD. Scardale is also one of the few (major) towns/cities in the Dales, and will provide a different mood than say Emerald Springs can provide.

Areas
The amount of areas you can have in NWN 2 is drastically different from NWN 1, and provides any team with a challenge in creating their servers. We can no longer map out every nitch and notch of a region, and this affects how we need to design the server.

The builders thus have to be very strict in adding new areas, and constantly pack their areas together as tight as possible without disrupting RP.
Shadowdale village under NWN 1 has some 15 exterior areas, making up the hub of the village. This will be reduced to just six areas. Glen and Emerald Springs will each only have one exterior area for their village, and Scardale town some 4-5 areas. To create the under city of Glen we need to use another exterior type area, and alter its colouring and lighting to fit being deep below the earth. Tests in the toolset looks very promising.

Wilderness
In the first iteration we will create a few wilderness areas around Shadowdale and Emerald Springs, and a few in the valley west of Scardale. A lot of the game play in Scardale will be city related adventures, and thus, there will initially be more wilderness around SD and ES than Scardale. Glen’s “wilderness” will be underground caverns etc. and thus not affect the ‘exterior’ area limitations of NWN 2. Emerald Springs and Shadowdale Village will share the same wilderness areas, “filling” the space between them.

When building these areas we will have to strike a balance between having interesting content in them, and not over stacking each area with too much either. Experiences from NWN 1 modules is a good tool for what works and what does not work.

Merchants
There will be a starting location for all new characters, where they will have access to a starting merchant with all available standard equipment (barring any banned items, of course). This merchant will only be available to new characters and will have a buyback of 100% (and no appraise skill), so that players can buy and sell until they are happy with their starting gear.

Shadowdale
SD has many merchants along the main road in town, each selling different assortment of items. All the essential items will be for sale, but we will have to strike a balance between availability of some items, towards what is logical RP wise and of course according to the standards. Shadowdale is after all a small village, but we will set up travelling merchants with more “exotic” equipment to arrive infrequently.

Source material is very detailed on all the merchants of Shadowdale village, and provides a good background for our merchants.

The normal merchants will close their doors at night, but the temples will have a 24/7 store, so that players at any time of the day can access healing, cures, and other smaller items.

Emerald Springs
Even in small communities like ES, we will have to provide the players with merchants selling all the necessary items. A player should not have to travel half across the map to get hold of standard items. As with SD, the Springs will have her merchants close their door at night, leaving only the temple for emergencies.
Items sold in ES will have a more elven feel to them.

Glen
Most of the merchants in Glen will be located in the open sections of the undercity and the surface city of Glen. Their focus will be dwarven in design and be mainly weapons and armour. Glen will of course also have access to all standard items in their stores. A few merchants however will sell unique items only to dwarves, to reflect canon more properly.

Scardale
Scardale, being the largest (surface) settlement in Tier 1, and a port town to boost, will have access to the whole range of allowed items. Scardale is also an excellent location for sale of more exotic items, and customized items from other servers.

Merchants at Night
There will be merchants besides the temples that will be “open” at night. For example the kid watching the store at night, or one of the store’s owner’s sons, which can sell a limited amount of items during closing hours. That way the most necessary items can be gotten at all hours.

Finding the merchant
To ease a player’s search for the different stores, we will provide most/all NPCs with conversation options about merchants, detailing where one can find them and what they sell. We will also set up map markers and mark the building in game with signs and posts. While some players enjoy going shopping and looking for stores, experience from NWN 1 has shown that many regards shopping as something halting the action, and is something they just want to get done as soon as possible.

Cost, wealth & appraise
The cost of items, and merchants buyback is something that will be decided by the NWN 2 standards, and we will of course follow these guidelines once they are decided. Appraise skill will for the most part be turned on, pending how they will work in NWN 2. Auto identify will for the most part be turned off, as this has proven to be too powerful a tool in NWN 1. Each merchants will have a personal amount of gold as well as a max price offered, (if that system is also in NWN 2).

Persistent Storage
All inns, taverns etc. where you can rent a room, will have access to a storage. This has proven to not be enough however so we will expand on this in NWN 2.
Scardale and Glen are easy, we can add a (deposit) bank without stretching canon/RP too much.
In Shadowdale and Emerald Springs however, we will have a central office provide all players with storage through government officials offering to “take care of your gear for you”.
While it does not make I.C. sense that this option is free, it is our belief that we need to let everyone have access, and thus we consider stretching I.C. a bit on this issue.
Further, belonging to certain guilds/organizations will also provide additional access to storage.

Spawns
Most spawns on Dalelands will be tied/linked to various quests and the overall plot, so that there will be very few “mindless spawns” around. Those that are will generally be in distant caves and ruins.

Here are some examples:
Blue Eye Kobolds: CR1-3, low loot, slow respawn, close to town, fixed location
Black Tooth Orcs: CR 4-7, medium loot, slow respawn, far distance to town, fixed location. (Interior location will have a leader, CR8)
Red Tail Kobolds, CR1-3, low loot, slow respawn, medium distance to town, fixed location.
Gold Hair Giants, CR7+, medium loot, slow respawn, far distance to town, fixed location.

Bandits I: CR1-3, low loot, random respawn, along the road, random location
Bandits II: CR3-5, low loot, random respawn, along the road, random location

A PC will be able to travel just about anywhere on the server, and thus can risk venturing into the wrong location, but we intend to give messages and warnings to the player (when it is IC to do so).

Quests
Merchants
Most merchants will have a few quests each, varying from the classic fed ex. quest type to combat missions. Most of these quests will be for 1-3, but there will also be a few higher level quests (properly warning the players before taking them).

Several merchants will offer repeating quests, like accepting the poison bags of dead spiders, but we will have to limit this somewhat so not to encourage farming and abuse.

Typical merchant quests can be:
Tulba the Weaver; CR 1, XP 15, Deliver a package to Bron Timer, the farmer.
Pierren, CR6, XP100, Retrieve a lost book from some ruins nearby
Weregund, CR1, XP: 15, Find and get his apprentice to show up for work.

Temples
Temples will also be a natural location for players to find work. Each temple will provide work for their temple / religion, and will typically be religious in type.

Typical temple quests can be:
Temple of Tymora; CR4, XP: 75 Retrieve a stolen religious icon from some bandits.
Temple of Lathander: CR1, XP: 10 Convert NPC to Lathander
Temple of Helm: CR8, XP: 350, Attack and destroy a hidden Bane altar (and followers)

Inns
While innkeepers will be a good source for finding quest locations, some will also provide their own quests. These will for the most part be tied to their business, but also of personal nature.

Inns and taverns will also be a central location for travelling/random NPCs with quests, and can be anything really.

Typical inn (owner) quests can be:
Jhaele, CR 1, XP: 10, Help open a jammed door.
Classic, CR 2, XP: 20, Clear cellar for rats.

Typical inn (guest) quests can be:
Guest, CR5, XP: 100, Help escorting him to some nearby ruins.
Guest, CR3, XP: 50, Help cleaning out a remote farm of its occupants.

Guilds
Guilds, like adventurer’s guild, and thief guilds will also provide a few quests, which of course will be only available to its members. These quests will of course depend heavily on the type of guild in question.

Typical adventurer guild quests can be:
Guild, CR varies, XP: varies, Kill animal/monster X.
Guild, CR varies, XP: varies, Clear out dungeon Y.

Typical thief guild quests can be:
Guild, CR 1, XP: 15, Steal storage key from merchant Z.
Guild, CR 5, XP: 125, Sabotage water pump/well at Union Street.
Guild, CR 2, XP: 25, Pressure Merchant K to hand over protection money.

Governmental
Most quests a player can do will be provided at official locations like the Guards HQ or the City Council Office. These quests will contain repeating quests (like patrols), and scouting missions, but also diplomatic missions and even kill missions. Most of these missions will be balanced towards level 1-5s, and some will only be available until others have previously been completed. All repeating quests will naturally have time constraints, preventing abuse.

In general
As with merchant locations, NPCs will provide excellent help in giving information to players to where they can find quest. Though getting access to some quests will require the player to interact with more NPCs than the “head NPC”, players should not have to go searching through every little conversation option to find quests. Most quests will thus be known by the NPC population and be easy to find and access.

SERVER

Technical specs

Choosing the final technical specification for the server is something we have to postpone until the game is out and we can read the technical specifications of what will work. Can NWN 2 server run on a 64bit platform or does it need 32bit? Can it handle dual core (or even quad core?).

I have set aside some 3000 dollars to spend on the new server, going for at least 3 GB low CL memory, optimized for the best motherboard and processor the game can handle. OS will be a licensed Win XP Pro, (and later Vista). We will choose the best hardware available at the time of purchase.

The connection speed will be 20.000/1350. (It already is)

Maintenance and upgrades
One of the weaknesses on SD today, is that I am the only one with access to the server. This works as long as I am active for hours every day, but it is not doable in the long run. The Dalelands server will be set up so that everyone with proper password can access the server for updates, restarts, access to the database etc.

We will of course have to have a system in place for keeping track of changes and version numbers.

Cooperation & teams
It is my wish that the different teams is given as much freedom as possible in the design and creation of their section of the server. I certainly do not own the module, we, as a group, will own it.

Technical specifications, like name of items, monsters and areas etc. will have to be decided beforehand of course.

[Murky Majare]

People that have stated desires to help out on the team have announced their intentions on the thread in general forum, and I have been instructed that this is confirmation enough.

Please let me know if anyone need confirmation beyond that, and we will provide that.