ALFA 024 - Proposal - The Shining Sea

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HEEGZ
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ALFA 024 - Proposal - The Shining Sea

Post by HEEGZ »

I've been talking over the idea of a NWN2 campaign style server with Castano and Mr Duncan for almost a month now. Discussions are ongoing and we would like some feedback regarding the direction this project is taking. The idea is that there would be an initial hub region based upon ports in The Shining Sea. The remainder of the server areas would potentially be modular and for DM campaign use by server and guest DMs. Please comment after reading the proposal below.

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Campaign Server Proposal
ALFA 024 - The Shining Sea


Areas

The hub of ALFA 024 will be The Shining Sea. It will be built within about 25% of the size of the our other larger servers however, so that the rest of it can be devoted to far off and exotic ports of call that our players can adventure in.

ALFA 024 will start with Tharsult and two other shining sea locations. The mission of the server is not to be limited to this sea, but to provide space for DMs to build just about any place you can sail to that they might want to use for a few weeks or even as permanent campaign setting for their games.

Even for one shot adventures, rather than bogging down a larger server with the areas they can be added to ALFA 024 and used for a while before being removed. Outside the core Shining Sea areas all of the server will be removable or replaceable.

Two of the three starting areas have been decided on already. The third I want to leave open for a few weeks to see if there might be others in ALFA who see this project and want to add a place of their own. Should no ideas come up in that time my team will make a third port of call after finishing these two, before going live.

Tharsult- The island nation of Tharsult is a trade hub and melting pot for The Shining Sea and many of the worlds great nations. Once a Calishite province it still has a middle eastern flavor but the peoples mercantile and cosmopolitan nature have mixed a little of everything in the capitol city of Urbeth. The island itself will have some adventuring and static quests.

Image

Fort Belurian- An outpost of The Flaming Fist on the north edge of the Chultan jungle. This port will be small on civilization and large on danger. Several adventure areas for characters, but no static quests planned at this time. You can see in the map below that the 024 area includes the Shining Sea and Chult, but Tharsult is in the 025 Halruaa region. I am proposing nudging the line from 024 to the east a bit to include Tharsult and the rest of the Shining Sea.


Image

The Team

I would serve as HDM of the server and I will take on other DMs in the usual process. We have mr duncan building Tharsult and I am building Fort Belurian. Both of us will continue to build more areas as I feel the server needs them, and the server will of course be open for future DMs to add whatever locations might interest them. We have Heero on our team too, for no good reason. He dosnt build, and wont DM... but we have him on the team. Thanks Heero.

The eventual vision is a server with a wide network of port cities and adventure spots all around Faerun. Players are welcomed and encouraged to make what changes to their world they can, and player housing will be an option in any of the core areas as well as anything other DMs might want to add for their own game settings later on.

Screenshots

The capitol city of Urbeth is already being built. Mr Duncan wants you all to know these screenshots are all images of unfinished areas. They are however worth showing. There are a lot of great exotic and jungle placables we just do not get to use in ALFA and this server will make full use of our toolset and haks to give a very different feel to the city than the cities we have in ALFA currently.

An overview of the city. It will be split in to multiple areas when it is done. You can see we are getting a lot of use out of the adobe buildings.

http://www.imagebam.com/image/72502d278868225

Here are a couple of close up shots of the streets, bearing in mind they are still very rough.

http://www.imagebam.com/image/7bb29b278520925

http://www.imagebam.com/image/cfcbb6278725977

http://www.imagebam.com/image/9e7f3b278870623

This one is not finished either, but I think the sultans palace is coming along nicely and showcasing the vast wealth of the island of merchants.

http://www.imagebam.com/image/b2d358279319218
Last edited by HEEGZ on Wed Oct 09, 2013 7:45 am, edited 5 times in total.
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Re: ALFA 099 - Proposal - The Shining Sea

Post by Rumple C »

You can do et.
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HEEGZ
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Re: ALFA 099 - Proposal - The Shining Sea

Post by HEEGZ »

Have been talking with Ith on IRC about the server proposal. He was mentioning adapting content from the NW Vault for campaign areas, since they are built already. We'd just need to swap out scripts and check quest awards, etc. But with only a few minutes of searching I've already found some interesting modules that might work:

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NW ... ail&id=501

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NW ... ail&id=529

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NW ... ail&id=408

Anyways, I have no idea how difficult it would be to adapt those for us to utilize. Perhaps someone could weigh in with the pitfalls of using premade stuff. Surely it would be less work than making a bunch of areas from scratch though.
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Re: ALFA 099 - Proposal - The Shining Sea

Post by Rumple C »

Fine!

Can I do Zhentil Keep?!?!

Image

And Hap.

Love the Hap.
Last edited by Rumple C on Tue Oct 08, 2013 8:07 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Ithildur
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Re: ALFA 099 - Proposal - The Shining Sea

Post by Ithildur »

It's a potential resource of ideas and possibly stuff like scripted content, dungeon lvl x, chamber of Terrible Kobold Traps y, or encounter z, etc. that would need to get tweaked to work with ACR and comply with ALFA's guidelines/standards. Would still require work, but might save some time, provide inspiration, etc especially for static content.

There is good stuff out there (as well as a lot of not so good stuff, some in the same module); we're short of builders/content providers atm, and we're not the only people making stuff for NWN2.
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Heero
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Re: ALFA 099 - Proposal - The Shining Sea

Post by Heero »

Youre welcome, Heegz.
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kid
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Re: ALFA 099 - Proposal - The Shining Sea

Post by kid »

You're all nuts.
Enjoy!
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Castano
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Re: ALFA 099 - Proposal - The Shining Sea

Post by Castano »

I suggest you do grab the best of the vault and make use of it. If you just want the areas stripping out the scripts and monsters and triggers is easy. One of the towns on MS is a heavily edited version of a vault town (Oman's Isle).

Have you given any thought to allowing all ALFA DMs permission to DM on the 099 server? Given that it has no fixed "lore" aside from the core area, it may make sense to open it to the entire community.
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kid
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Re: ALFA 099 - Proposal - The Shining Sea

Post by kid »

Castano wrote:I suggest you do grab the best of the vault and make use of it. If you just want the areas stripping out the scripts and monsters and triggers is easy. One of the towns on MS is a heavily edited version of a vault town (Oman's Isle).

Have you given any thought to allowing all ALFA DMs permission to DM on the 099 server? Given that it has no fixed "lore" aside from the core area, it may make sense to open it to the entire community.
Do you mean DMs will be able to play there and DM there?
Or once you've DM'd there you can't or.. uhm... whatchu talkin about, willis?
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Brokenbone
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Re: ALFA 099 - Proposal - The Shining Sea

Post by Brokenbone »

Thanks Heero.
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Re: ALFA 099 - Proposal - The Shining Sea

Post by Zelknolf »

Trivial thing:
Needs a new number; ALFA099 is our vault and database test server. They would duel to the death for who gets to claim the call number, and the tech server will probably win. Bad times for portals.

098 should be free.
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Ithildur
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Re: ALFA 099 - Proposal - The Shining Sea

Post by Ithildur »

I'll be there with popcorn to watch this duel.
Last edited by Ithildur on Tue Oct 08, 2013 7:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Formerly: Aglaril Shaelara, Faerun's unlikeliest Bladesinger
Current main: Ky - something

It’s not the critic who counts...The credit belongs to the man who actually is in the arena, who strives violently, who errs and comes up short again and again...who if he wins, knows the triumph of high achievement, but who if he fails, fails while daring greatly.-T. Roosevelt
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kid
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Re: ALFA 099 - Proposal - The Shining Sea

Post by kid »

I thought it was a duel.
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Ithildur
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Re: ALFA 099 - Proposal - The Shining Sea

Post by Ithildur »

Get a life Kid. :mrgreen:

*fixed*
Formerly: Aglaril Shaelara, Faerun's unlikeliest Bladesinger
Current main: Ky - something

It’s not the critic who counts...The credit belongs to the man who actually is in the arena, who strives violently, who errs and comes up short again and again...who if he wins, knows the triumph of high achievement, but who if he fails, fails while daring greatly.-T. Roosevelt
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Castano
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Re: ALFA 099 - Proposal - The Shining Sea

Post by Castano »

kid wrote:
Castano wrote:I suggest you do grab the best of the vault and make use of it. If you just want the areas stripping out the scripts and monsters and triggers is easy. One of the towns on MS is a heavily edited version of a vault town (Oman's Isle).

Have you given any thought to allowing all ALFA DMs permission to DM on the 099 server? Given that it has no fixed "lore" aside from the core area, it may make sense to open it to the entire community.
Do you mean DMs will be able to play there and DM there?
Or once you've DM'd there you can't or.. uhm... whatchu talkin about, willis?

At a minimum I want this server available to all ALFA DMs - otherwise it's utility as an ALFA campaign server is limited and we are just really getting another "live" server with changed up areas, which any existing live server like BG could do already.

If we keep a 30 no play rule on it, that's fine they just won't play w/in 30 days of their DM session there. I'm not a fan of that but many in the community think this 30 day thing is sacrosanct.
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