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A land far away—a magical term that gives rise to mental images of exotic lands and exciting adventures. A land far away—the setting of countless fairy-tales and myriad bed-time stories. A land far away—that special place that we all go to when we need to escape the pressures and vicissitudes of life.

Welcome to A Land Far Away, a persistent world where the vast, wondrous Dungeons & Dragons™ universe takes on a life all of its own. A place where like-minded role-players of all races, cultures and creeds gather to delight in the wonder and joy of a thousand shared imaginations. A place where the raconteur holds others spellbound; a place where every decision has consequences; a place where the games unfold before your eyes.




May Updates

A brief rundown of what's been up the last month:

TA Election -- another election came and went, with Zelknolf running uncontested and being confirmed for the next six months.

DMA Rule Changes -- some words on how our DM team will be handling some things posted here: http://www.alandfaraway.info/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=51468

After refinement and community discussion, we have three big changes to be aware of:

  • A DM Team does not have to ask for a PC biography for that biography to be worth experience, but the team still has to accept it.
  • Players may have more than one "Exceptional" PC (such as genasi, drow, favored soul, etc) as long as they get approval from the HDMs where they play.
  • ALFA no longer holds a community-wide policy for "Red Lighting" DMs; HDMs remain responsible for the content of their servers and the behavior of their teams, and any problems with DM team members are either simply discussed with that DM or escalated to the HDM.

DM Sessions -- Mick's haunting in the Elfsong tavern reached a conclusion this month, but we still have events running on all of our servers.
Xanthea has a high-level event currently being scheduled for use on Moonshaes: http://www.alandfaraway.info/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=193&t=51412
AnalogKid has regular DMed sessions on Moonshaes:
http://www.alandfaraway.info/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=193&t=51422
Adanu has regular DMed sessions on Western Heartlands:
http://www.alandfaraway.info/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=354&t=49631
Wynna is running a university-themed event on The Silver Marches:
http://www.alandfaraway.info/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=292&t=51467
shad0wfax has recently come out of hibernation on Baldur's Gate, and the salmon will have a hard swim upstream, though he's posted no events yet. Mick's banshee plot is recently concluded on Baldur's Gate, with no extra event yet announced.

ACR Update -- with all of the new activity we've been seeing on our servers, the tech office has been focused primarily on performance fixes. But that's not all we've done-- in addition to the servers being faster...

  • The visuals on our traps are upgraded, with rays, lightning bolts, shooting darts, and magical explosions added to give the proper impact to our more-spectacular traps.
  • We've made good on our promise to reward D&D-sized parties, and combat XP is now the most per character with groups of four to six players.
  • Persistent hit points and offline resting now cooperate with magic items that change your constitution score.

April Updates

The things! They keep happening! Time is terribly frustrating like that, and we poor mortals are stuck trying to keep up!

DMA Election -- Castano has opted to not run for another term as DMA, and the newly-elected DMA is Boombrakh!

DM Events -- kmj's events are on hiatus while the player group goes through some reorganization, but still plenty of events to attend. Mick has taken up a post as DM on Baldur's Gate and has been remarkably active, with many events for mid-to-low-level PCs. Things also seem to be picking up for AnalogKid's events on Moonshaes, and we even spotted the fabled Wynna on TSM once or twice.

ACR Update -- we once again have updated our core ruleset, mostly with fixes but also to support our next bulletpoint. The details can be found here:
http://www.alandfaraway.info/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=51401

Random Dungeons -- our first steps into randomly-generated dungeons have gone live on Baldur's Gate. They're still very basic, and only span a couple areas at low CR, but interested players can look for the Silver Owl company in Ruqel for the first couple glimpses into what will surely grow into the settings for many events and quests to come.

Greengrass -- Greengrass is concretely scheduled now, and will be a number of events running from May 1st U.S. evenings through May 3rd. Sparring, archery, mage duels, pie eating, song and poetry-- for prizes. Details can be found here:
http://www.alandfaraway.info/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=51402

March Updates

Seems there are many irons in many fires the last month, but unfortunately we didn't shoe many horses for it. Work continues on Greengrass, random dungeons, an ACR release, and video tutorials.

IA Election -- a formality as always, we held elections for Infra Admin. FoamBats4All stood uncontested and was confirmed for another six months.

February Updates

PA Election -- Mikayla ran for Player Admin again and is confirmed to the post for the next six months.

DM Events -- The Crew of the Queen Robyn events have come to a close, but it's not left ALFA with a shortage of DMed events. HEEGZ and Shad0wfax are still on Baldur's Gate, kmj and Wynna are still on The Silver Marches, Adanu is still on Western Heartlands, and Orangetree is trying to get started on Moonshaes. They all have their own event/coordination threads here:
http://www.alandfaraway.info/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=242&t=51344
http://www.alandfaraway.info/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=242&t=51323
http://www.alandfaraway.info/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=51354
http://www.alandfaraway.info/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=51359
http://www.alandfaraway.info/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=51285
http://www.alandfaraway.info/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=193&t=51342

ACR Update -- we rolled out an ACR update at the beginning of the month, tidying up some bugs that existed in swimming, defense quests, and providing support for some of The Silver Marches' recent repairs. You can read the full details here:
http://www.alandfaraway.info/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=51348

January Updates

New Host -- our central server has moved! If all is working, we should see more-spritely play as our database is now much closer to our game servers.

TA Election -- the one that our previous Lead Administrator missed in November ran, with Zelknolf confirmed for another term.

DM Events -- DMing has been picking up lately, with events coming into play from Adanu on Western Heartlands, Xanthea on Moonshaes, Shad0wfax on Baldur's Gate and Rumple C on Baldur's Gate while the going event from Zelknolf continues to run on Moonshaes.

Build -- Wynna has returned from a long hiatus, and has taken to repairing the static content in Silverymoon University. She announced a complete build just before this post's authoring, and we expect to see it on The Silver Marches soon.

December Updates

The foots. They're a.

Lead Administrator Election -- We have a new L.A. this month. HEEGZ will be taking up the post this term and on for the next six months.

ALFA1 Waterdeep -- Our NWN1 Waterdeep server has been started up again and runs as a campaign server.

Intro Quest Expansion -- Baldur's Gate's intro quest now takes you a little bit further, walking you from Beregost to Candlekeep, and teaching a little bit avoid avoiding threats on less-patrolled roads.

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