More Dakka!

[Revanche]

I'd like to float an idea that I've had in the back of my mind for some time now, and hear some of your feedback on the pros and cons. This is just an outline, so feel free to be critical.

Several years ago I played on a UO server with a dedicated group of RP'ers who ran a guild named Shadowclan. Basically, they played orcs and goblins - they had their own little fort in the hills, spoke in Orcish, raided towns for supplies, and did similarly orcish things. They were a hilarious band of misfits who added a lot to the server and gave character to otherwise static spawns.

My proposal is this: a player group of grey orcs, modeled after an orc clan, based in the hills north of Rivermoot and Fourthpeak. This faction would serve as a sort of opposing force to more traditionally good-aligned PCs, and would carry out a variety of nefarious activities including ambushing unwary travelers and raiding Rivermoot and the farms around Silverymoon for cattle/loot.

I suggest a number of limitations to curb the inevitable hassle that CvC seems to always cause, and to dissuade people from joining who are less interested in RP than in fighting other players.

1. Since Grey Orcs have some unusual advantages, no multi-classing. You're an orc rogue, barbarian, or shaman - no cleric/monks please.
2. All ambushes/raids will be done in subdual only. These orcs may beat and rob you, but for whatever reason, they're not going to kill you. This is an unfortunately necessary concession, though I think the danger of having armor and weapons plundered is enough to convince people that it the group is a legitimate threat.
3. All orc characters must come with a bio. I want to know why Gromph son of Momph carries a great axe, what his goals and ambitions are, and how he intends to differentiate himself from the rest of the clan.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I would encourage anyone in the process of re-rolling their PC or thinking about re-rolling to participate - a mix of older and newer players would be essential to make the idea work.

Realistically we might get a month or so worth of playtime out of this group before they're hunted down and slaughtered by the goodly PCs. This would be a foregone conclusion, and anyone rolling a character should accept that.

Anywho - let me know what you think! If it's feasible, great, if it's not feasible, too bad. If you can think of ways to make it possible or to improve the experience, let me know.

[hollyfant]

It's a suggestion that springs up again and again, in various forms: playable monsters. Drow, half- or whole-orcs, goblins... you name it, someone wants to play it. And I too see the allure. But the points against it are very simple, and very strong:

1. None of the existing servers have scripts in place to cater to them. PC monsters need to be killed on sight by guards. They need their own merchants, their own statics and their own areas. It's too much work.
2. It's a CvC nightmare. Too many "normal" PCs have good reasons to go out and hunt duergars or vampires or whatnot. Plus it's simply no fun for the players of common races to be robbed all the time, nor for the monster-players to be raided in retaliation. Regardless of all good intentions, the accusations of griefing alone would give the PA a full-time job.
3. It splits the player base. What's the fun in having a large segment of PCs not being able to interact on a daily basis with the rest?

When ALFA1's Underdark server closed, the remaining drow PCs moved to the other servers. No hilarity ensued. It wasn't fun on the drow players, not on the DMs and not on the innocent bystanders.

Maybe you can offer assistance to ElCadaver's Rift plan, which could cater to orcbloods and drow. But I can't see anything like a player-run orc tribe being viable on any of the existing servers. Though nothing's stopping you (or anyone else) from starting a band of half-orc thugs.

[NickD]

Vampire and werewolf PCs have been requested before as well.

Holly basically covered the why nots. There's nothing stopping you from playing a CE character of any race (just remember that grey orcs and yuan-ti are not allowed on TSM and gensai and planetouched (and underdark?) need approval) who can try to do all those things (although I'd strongly suggest getting DM approval/support first), but thinking you'd survive for a month may be wishful thinking. You'd be better off joining one of the established evil groups.

[ElCadaver]

And what are you all going to do on the second day, after Rathalain Whitsword & Co has hunted you down and butchered you the day before?

[Revanche]

I'll respond to these critiques in the order that they're presented.

1. I think you could rely upon players to not approach guards. Scripting would be too much of a bother, but saying "don't go near the guards" is perfectly plausible. The complete lack of merchants would be wonderfully difficult - it might require the orcs to find some morally ambiguous PCs to sell their loot too.

2. The CvC nightmare would be lessened by the fact that characters would not be killed. The one request you would need to make of the population in general is... there are thousands of orcs in the hills, supposedly. Hunting down and killing three or four specific ones simply doesn't make sense. That said, I think that any orc players should realize they are playing a "throw-away" character and agree not to file any CvC complaints beforehand, no matter what happens.

3. I doubt taking five or six people out of circulation is going to cause the playerbase to be too deeply split - considering that many players regularly move between BG and SM without affecting the population balance too sharply. It may, in fact, give the est of the players something to discuss.

In response to Vampire and Werewolf PCs, the difference I see here is that in either case you're taking established PCs, then giving them extraordinary powers and a virtual IC license to kill. These are, by contrast, one month throw-away characters meant merely to entertain, and operating under very stringent regulations. They are also, I might add, simply orcs. A clan of vampires or a tribe of werewolves is outlandish and high fantasy, while an orc band wandering the hills is meant to be deliberately unappealing - there's nothing sexy about it, you're doing it simply for entertainment value.

In response to ElCad, as I mentioned above, I would like to imagine that the playerbase would be mature enough to not automatically note that some Orc PCs are logged in and try to hunt us down. If they do, that's fine too - orcs die, end of story, that's a wrap. No whining or complaining allowed.

NickD's suggestion that we should join existing evil groups is noted, but I would like to believe that there is room for accommodation and growth on the server beyond what already exists.

[danielmn]

No whining or complaining allowed.

Good luck with that.

[Revanche]

No whining or complaining allowed.

Good luck with that.

Oh ye of little faith! Make them sign a contract or something. "The death of this character cannot be appealed or commented on, no matter what the circumstance."

Ideally, this would be a one-time thing. The faction begins with x number of orcs, operates under the pre-determined rules, and does not expand or take in new members. When the last orc dies, the project ends. Call it an experiment.

I do understand your criticisms, and if you feel that this idea is wholly impractical, I welcome it being shot down - though I would like it to be considered on a somewhat different level than someone asking to run a clan of elven vampire werewolves so that they can be all angsty out in the Moonwood.

[maralten]

So what exactly is stopping you from gathering a bunch of regular half-orcs and making these raiding parties, and self-imposing NPC regulations (stay away from towns etc)? I mean, besides the inevitable whinefest that would ensue, and the fact that you all start at level 1 and a harsh breeze (or most characters you would assault) could kill you if you roleplay the character as you should?

[Revanche]

You're right.

Now taking apps for my Half-Orc warband.

[Magile]

On the werewolf/vampire comment, ALFA did have a vampire PC that not many knew about. She was tweaked, had a move that allowed for Level Drain 1/Day and... yeah.

[dergon darkhelm]

I've played on a PW where half-orcs and drow were playable races but stodd in opposition to the bulk of the "non-monstrous" player.

To make it successful and beleiveable you would need to do a couple of things.

1- Build an extensive "infrastructure" for those orc PCs (NPCS, gathering areas, statics for them)

2- Alter AI scripts to make human/dawrf/elf/hin NPCs hostile......either by giving the orc PCs non-droppable tokens or doing an extensive rework.


imho, both of these steps would be require time that could be better spent in efforts that would be more inclusive and used by the larger whole of the player base.


oh.... and yes. It is a CvC fest. Orcs are KoS for most PCs...appropriately so.

[Brokenbone]

I can't see this concept being a lot of fun, but even unsupported (by building, scripting), it can be done.

Dergon's post catches a couple of key contributors to viability. That said, half-assed versions of either aren't awfully hard to make a go of. Example:

(1) Infrastructure might be one secret door in a hillside in the MFN, a handfull of mute, special faction'd NPC (see scripting below), and maybe a couple unique named NPCs, at least one of whom is a boring scripted merchant, kind of a start merchant and loot taker for all requirements. Others only get interesting if possessed by a DM, advising his raiders, cautioning them, giving them a mission, whatever.

(2) Not sure what scripting is required, as I don't know how many flavors of onperception scripts we have. If there's only a few widespread ones, tweaking with a condition about if you see a guy with (insert resref) in his backpack, run away or kill him, might be possible. Whether ACR loot scripts are something in play on all bumpkin commoner NPCs and whatnot though (so if you needed income, you kill commoners), beats me. Same goes for whether any NPCs out there (named merchants? key canon figures who don't need a lot of hitpoints?) might be flagged immortal etc. in case of mishap... as well as whether NPCs who should reasonably be rich and looty (merchants), necessarily are, given how abstract things like "ready to wear armor in just your size in a heartbeat if you have the gold" are. De-abstracting that into "assume the merchant sends an unrepresented NPC servant off to his secure warehouse or other supplier to fetch items once he's assured of payment, which may take half an hour, despite the single-click purchasing..."

All that said, especially the scripting side would be recyclable into "outlaw" or "notorious" tokens if that was actually interesting for other applications, like the rare times you see an IC posting of warrants/bounties for PCs, drop an outlaw token on the relevant PC so they stay far away from non-DM'd commoners (and unrepresented masses of commoners) who would always, eventually, pierce even magical disguises... there's a really low DC on most which will fool most PCs/NPCs temporarily, but in any crowd, someone's eventually going to roll a 20 and go nuts (considering the chance comes up every round / six seconds for a new save or spot roll, depending on magic or skill based disguise).

...

Afterthought: at least this faction would serve as a loot delivery vector to the righteous PCs, ha ha. Woot corpses with... well, black hats, axes, orcish rations, etc.

[blacksheep_44]

I know im almost never on here but might i make a suggestion? If people are really interested in playing throw away villains why not make six or seven public villain characters and have people volunteer to play the villain for DM run plots?

Im not sure how far the magic DM wand goes but cant it be used to change the character name and experience? The DM could in theory bring the character back to the starting area where there is full buyback, have the throw away character change clothes to fit the villains persona, change the name and level him up to desired level and then you have a fully interactive villain!

Because these would be throw away characters the regular players could still hunt down and kill them and there would be no hard feelings- and it would provide the option for those who want to play the villain the chance, even if only for a short run.

Just and idea ^_^

[oldgrayrogue]

To follow up on the last post, I played on a server where we regularly "rewarded" exceptional RPers by allowing them to play an alternate character as an NPC in a DMd campaign. The rules in Revanche's post would apply -- the NPC is gone when it dies or the campaign is over -- period. No whining, period. They were not necessarily level 1 either. DMs found this very helpful as essentially their plots continued through the efforts of these "player/NPCs" when they were not logged on. To make something like this ALFA acceptable (or even feasible) one would have to agree to not play their usual PC while the campaign is in effect /NPC is alive, and to not involve their character in the campaign in any way if the NPC dies.

I, and I bet a lot of other players with "advanced" characters, would do something like this in a heartbeat. The chance to play a member of a drow surface raiding party for a while -- or one of JLMs gypsies would be awesome. And the NPC's don't have to be evil antagonists either. I have long bemoaned the "one PC" pillar, and this idea offers a nice way for someone to play a different concept for a while that can have an impact on server lore. Yes, one can DM if they want to play different concepts, but some of us (me at least) find RL gets in the way much too often to do so effectively. Something like this provides a nice compromise and would spice up the server quite a bit. It requires a very flexible DM and mature well intentioned roleplayers to work, but I for one would be all for it.

Kudos, Revanche for pushing the envelope. I agree with the others, that an inevitable whine fest would occur under your original proposal. But if it is DM controlled and part of a specific finite campaign, I don't see any reason why something like this is not doable.

[Brokenbone]

That "NPCs working for the DM thing" is pretty much equivalent to a "campaign PCs (even if multiple PCs)" thing that was okayed in the dying days of NWN1. Or less than equivalent, it's like minting "junior" DMs who can't see the module, player stats, etc., and who might be given a list of do's and don'ts, rumors to seed, places to go or not go, times to be on (perhaps only during DM events), etc. You'd figure an HDM could welcome five "mini-DMs" on whatever conditions they wanted (i.e., don't play your normal PC on this turf during the project, these NPCs will be retired when the DM goals are done, bla bla).

Or I suppose a DM could approach their HDM to appoint mini-DMs, if they wanted help