A Land Far Away

As per the title, I'm ready to face your fire, standing firm but fair, likely not quite like Robert Mugabe; but perhaps I can manage a Morgan Tsvangirai.

What plans will you be putting in place to make the trains actually run on time?

Swift wrote:What plans will you be putting in place to make the trains actually run on time?

Simple. I plan to seize all the world's atomic clocks and bend them to my will. (As an added bonus, this is going to help with timezone coordination for playing in ALFA.)

Sidenote: I also take serious questions, if there are any.

These elections are a farce you know

Oh. You again. Can we have Arri back? She calls us mooks far less often.

On a more serious note, thanks for stepping up. What was your inspiration for doing so? Are you operating to keep the lights on, or do you have anything you want to see accomplished?

FoamBats4All wrote:Oh. You again. Can we have Arri back? She calls us mooks far less often.

On a more serious note, thanks for stepping up. What was your inspiration for doing so? Are you operating to keep the lights on, or do you have anything you want to see accomplished?

Hey Foam, thanks for the question.

It's honestly mostly to keep things smooth, but there are a few things I am mulling, such as raised visibility by a more prompt update of our linkage (see Arri's effort), and (thriller of thrillers) to think about what changes ought to be in place if we downsize further and may end up not finding enough volunteers to fill the positions the project has set out for functioning.

I have chatted with Arri before my announcement several times, and I should probably mention that part of my motivation is to let her concentrate more on her, in my opinion currently more valuable, work as builder and HDM; she's just a terrific source of new content and energy and LAship tends to breed cynicism sooner or later.

So yes, my understanding of the LA position is that of a constitutional peacekeeper and "check and balance", not of a revolutionary to drive the project with "visions" that the LA has no authority to implement. From experience I know that it can have the ability to drain you when things turn sour, and my comfortability with it is probably the best skillset I can currently contribute to ALFA; I have honed a thick skin and light touch both as LA and as head moderator before.

Furthermore, I will consider your request for less mook-calling without committing to anything. Ever.

Cheers,

*flibbles*

Veilan wrote:As per the title, I'm ready to face your fire, standing firm but fair, likely not quite like Robert Mugabe; but perhaps I can manage a Morgan Tsvangirai.

Analogkid wrote:These elections are a farce you know

You don't need to tell Morgan Tsvangirai that.

Though really I think of Velian as a Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev, given his rotation in and out of Alfa top jobs whilst remaining a popular establishment figure with a smooth, firm, and fair exterior. Is it getting hot in here?

Dmitry - You have mentioned keeping the lights on - at what point do you think they should be switched off? (ps - that is a metaphor)

ayergo wrote:*flibbles*

((Ayergo is it time for the 2nd Bangkok-ALFA-CON? My wife found a solid pub we can hide in with like 100 craft beers, where no one will witness or overhear our uber-nerd talk about D&D and sharing saran-wrap clothing in the shower...))

#hijacked

Hells yeah! I'm in Melbourne this week and half of next, then have to host another big party for the office on Friday when I get back. Should be around for a bit though, I don't travel again until just after the new year.

Whoa, penguin invasion. This feels like the Waterdeep quarantine area all over again...

Anyway.

Rumple C wrote:Dmitry - You have mentioned keeping the lights on - at what point do you think they should be switched off? (ps - that is a metaphor)

I, too, had thought that ALFA would not make the year, and considered a bit on a natural ending point. In honesty I have not found one, apart from maybe a platitude about "as long as the gain outweighs the cost". Our costs at this point are volunteer work and hosting cost & services. The gain is harder to measure.

I think as long as people are willing to put in the effort and have fun here I am happy to continue. I would love to consider "moving on" to another platform which might bring an influx of new (and perhaps some old) people, but I think the era of games like NWN 1 & 2 is pretty much over; there just isn't enough money in the business model (consider how many hours we spent with those games, for only having paid their box price... or mooched it off fellow ALFAns).

So, yeah. Would endorse new platforms that suit us, and would continue here as long as there are people around who get fun out of it (and are willing to carry cost in sweat & treasure). I would rather not shut the project down artificially, as I think that even in times of lull (and we had gotten close to complete flatlining in-game this year) we are still a community of like-minded roleplayers who on occasion can hang out and catch-up on boards and in chat. Having this place around so that it might serve as wellspring of a new project is not the worst of things.

Or, to speak with my previous ideas as LA candidate, I mentioned considering ALFA not as a specific PW, but rather as a brand of high-immersion roleplay, under which's roof we could organise all sorts of activities, such as PbP, organising participation in other games, and even, apparently, the occasional RL meeting and tabletop sessions (Melbourne Cons or Holy_Rage, Rusty, Lath & I in London, Arkitsa & Berlin for instance). Mission statements can evolve, and we might benefit from integrating more and different playgrounds; that is something I would be very happy to provide support for.

As far as other platforms go, the only one that seems viable is Shards Online. I have no confidence at this point that the studio will make it to their promises however.

FoamBats4All wrote:As far as other platforms go, the only one that seems viable is Shards Online. I have no confidence at this point that the studio will make it to their promises however.

Yeah, that last bit. If we're proven wrong and a viable NWN replacement emerges, great. Less ambitiously, I think we would only stand to gain from supporting "diversions" under our roof, to keep the community going and enable our members to find like-minded gamers to explore other options. Who knows, they might even rope somebody in from there.

I for one would love to play some TaleSpire with ALFAns, if it gets finished: https://80.lv/articles/talespire-bringi ... rpg-to-3d/

So there are still lots of people playing NWN1 and 2 on roleplay servers:

As of this post, the top roleplay servers (278 players in total for all servers, triple that for NWN1):
49 / 75 (Baldur's Gate, ironically)
29 / 96
20 / 70

Here are ALFA servers (some with the wrong website):

ALFA 010 Baldur's Gate A multi-server Persistent World set in the Forgotten Realms world, using the 3.5E timeline, permadeath, low-med magic, slow-med advancement, one PC per player. Details and applications for players at http://www.alandfaraway.org. 1 / 30

ALFA 003 The Silver Marches One of three linked Persistent World servers set in Faerun; permadeath, one character per player, membership by application at http://www,alandfaraway.org 0 / 30

ALFA 011 Western Heartlands ALFA 011 Western Heartlands. http://www.alandfaraway.org 0 / 24

ALFA 009 Moonshae Isles Open Server for ALFA (A Land Far Away) multi-server Persistent World set in the Forgotten Realms universe. ALFA uses the 3.5E timeline, with a challanging enviroment . Details at http://www.alandfaraway.info 0 / 30

So what is their Baldur's Gate doing differently than us?

Now I have the utmost respect for HDM's, having been one for several years, but we have one active HDM with no players, and a server with players meeting up with an HDM on chat every day. We have builders and a hope for NWN1 Waterdeep coming back.

So Velian, you have some choices, you can sunset, reorganize or do nothing and watch this place die slowly like it already is. We have too many servers, and I am sure it is costing for hosting. We have HDM's and EADM's who are absent in game but happy to post their opinions on forums.

My blunt advice:

1. Put Baldur's Gate and Western Heartlands offline until there are higher numbers, if any. Because currently Baldur's Gate is the most popular role playing server, why would we compete with that with another one? WH needs more building, which isn't going to happen. TSM and MS are unique. The 278 currently players are looking for unique, not another Baldur's Gate.

2. Remove the HDM's and have a cadre of DM's on both TSM and and MS. There would be a possibility of 3 DM's active or more right now. The DMA could the lead and have a builder assigned to each server. Concentrate all our last resources and run games from a tighter world.

3. Let players in with a dumbed down process. I mean, people that are playing NWN2 now are in it for the RP, let them in here for a trial if need be.

4. Talk to the people from those servers and try and share ideas on what works to run their servers because they have a whole lot more people than we do.

Anyway Veilen, some ideas. You can play NWN2 on most machines these days and it is an easy set up.

Rick,

You have plenty of ideas, but I suggest that you read the ALFA Charter and investigate what the various ALFA Administrator domains are.

• The LA doesn't have the authority to take ALFA 010 BG offline; the DMA has domain over servers. I'm hosting Baldur's Gate, you're DMing Baldur's Gate, and the DMA isn't taking BG offline (nor is the DMA taking any server offline at this time).
• The LA doesn't remove HDMs; the DMA removes HDMs and the DMA is not removing any HDMs at this time.
• The LA doesn't admit players to ALFA as that is the PA domain; BG and MS are "open" servers that bypass the player application process, meaning that your "dumbed down" process is already in place, on the servers that have HDMs supporting it. The DMA supports the four HDMs decisions to support or reject the open server concept, as the HDMs see fit.

What the other BG (non-alfa) server does differently than us, is that it doesn't have perma-death, doesn't have limited level progression at 20, and doesn't have limited advancement, and doesn't prohibit farming/grinding. In other words, the other BG server (not ALFA) doesn't adhere to several of ALFA's Pillars, which, along with the Charter, form the Constitution of ALFA.

Amendments to the Charter are within the LA domain.

The LA could propose changes to this. If your intent is to pose questions to Veilan, as a prospective Lead Administrator, perhaps you should be asking Veilan about possible Charter amendments.