ALFA's Faerun

[kid]

Lona:
Isn't it awesome?
ALFA rulez!

[Ronan]

well you can make it low magic if all you use are orcs goblins and kobolds...but who wants to play that game?

You can fight nastier and more varied things than those in a low-magic setting, but yeah obviously the threat levels would need to be lower as characters would be less powerful.

And yet, in ALFA1 you could level faster than in ALFA2, says other people.

Funny how memory works. No one agrees on what ALFA1 was. Some say it had a lot of flaws, some say it was a perfect golden age.

This isn't all hindsight error. ALFA1 was much more varied in challenge, wealth and advancement compared to ALFA2. Some people advanced more quickly while others advanced more slowly. Some servers had RP-XP while others did not. I would guess the only way ALFA has gotten softer across all servers is a lower rate of PC death.

How is high level magic setting breaking when we have so many rules and counters for a lot of it...

3.5 doesn't always balance everything so well. Check out some D&D character optimization boards for how 3.5 casters are broken; there's no need to rehash everything here. Of course in a lot of ways (and for a lot of levels) its not broken. My personal preferences aside, my problem with the full glut of 3.5 magic is that DMs simply don't seem to use it. I've only ever had one DM who fully applied 3.5 magic with all its counters, meta-counters and cheap tricks. To me this suggests the system is non-fun.

Which tells me what every single tech support person and computer retail employee already knows: People don't actually know what the fuck they want. They think they do, but they actually don't.

Revealed preferences > stated preferences! Voting is largely about signalling, not physical changes people actually want.

We changed the things that made us stand out from the pack in the beginning (ie low magic, relatively slow advancement, high roleplay) and are now 'just another' roleplay world fighting for the ever dwindling player base. Go us. Faerun might be High Magic, but that was not the Faerun we used originally that got us our niche in the first place.

This was largely changed because NWN1 was so inconsistent. Some servers were high-magic, some weren't. We needed to get everyone on a common footing and largely used 3.5 standards (which are high-magic) for this.

ALFA is very democratic compared to other PWs. This makes changes very costly compared to a dictator's whim. It would be really hard for us to agree on a reduced-magic FR setting. Its much easier to point to the SRD and say "this is what we do", even if as Xan points out some of the SRD is completely ridiculous.

Guys, is it possible we have run all the fun people off because we who remain arent actually any fun ourselves? I think this is pretty likely.

A great swath of people left when the wealth standards were approved, and more left during the server selection team proceedings. Neither of those things were "fun". So yeah this has definitely happened, but we don't know how significant these effects are compared to all the other reasons people leave. I would bet the bigger problem is a lack of new people joining.

[Ronan]

3) I want a sizable chunk of PnP spells gone. They're incoherent, unbalancing, and make for a dumb fantasy setting. 3.5e is not a fantasy setting, it's a comic book. It is next to impossible to have a serious setting when you have lunatics zipping around in the sky or talking to each other over magical telephones or teleporting across the world for a cup of tea. I like high levels, it's more fun to me when you're not going to go down to a goblin flinging a pebble at you, but I HATE the baggage that comes along with high levels in the form of casters breaking the setting over their knee and laughing heartily.

There seems to be fundamental differences between game settings and story settings. D&D certainly seems to appeal more to the gamer.

Games are about establishing rules players find enjoyable to play in. They start simple ("you get a stick, go stab those goblins and don't slip in the mud!"), and slowly introduce more and more complexity ("scry on the bad guy while he's asleep, teleport in invisible and silenced, then slit his throat"). Modelling a world is costly, so games favor simple abstractions (crafting costs are always 50%) over more accurate ones (supply and demand). Abstractions are necessarily inaccurate, and so a game's abstractions focus on some degree of fun and believability within the context of the game (adventuring, in our case). They don't focus as much on things outside of the game (which in D&D is generally anything not adventuary) and so tend to seem more ridiculous in those contexts. D&D is focused on adventuring, so its unsurprising that it breaks down in most other contexts (e.g. commoners being killed by cats).

Stories are about creating characters and settings the viewers can relate to. Believability is more important here, because its harder to relate to ridiculousness. There's no reason to create complex rules unless they're needed to explain parts of the story, because the story's outcome is fixed. Plot holes are still possible of course, as established facts about a setting can always contradict each other, regardless of whether or not one is playing a game or reading a story. Its easier to tell good stories in lower-mid-level play, because few can relate to flying, teleporting, wishing wizards.

The contrast between these two approaches is easily seen by looking at cut scenes vs. actual game play in most games. In play, getting shot once is usually never fatal. However in cut-scenes getting shot or stabbed once often means death for the victim (oddly even in Mass Effect, where soldiers have shields and armor). ALFA of course has no cut-scenes involving PCs. Everything generally follows our ruleset.

Good settings seem to be more consistent across their game and story modes.

[Witchdoctor]

Low advancement, low magic.

Rolled (or averaged) hitpoints!
No safety net.

Perhaps an increasing failure rate on rezzes (if people want to keep bringing their pc back)

Wealth advancement should be merit based. Ie - You take the adventuring risk, you get the reward. You spend all time cybering, you collect only carpet burn.

This.

Also after satisfying all RP questions in my old PnP days if a PC got a rez or raise dead etc. then successful system shock rolls were required as well as one point of permanent con loss for each event.

[Teric neDhalir]

I will believe everyone that says they favour a low-magic setting when they don't complain that you can't buy Cure Light Wounds potions on every street corner. Been there, had to alter the stores.

[danielmn]

And yet, in ALFA1 you could level faster than in ALFA2, says other people.

Funny how memory works. No one agrees on what ALFA1 was. Some say it had a lot of flaws, some say it was a perfect golden age.

Simple, alfa1 was less standardized as far as servers. So yes, you will get some people that spent a lot of time around others that flew through levels on say Daggerford, because it wasn't regulated as far as xp as heavily as say, The Pirate Isles. So yeah, there are those that did enjoy flying through levels and spending time in certain places in order to accomplish this. The current worry is....

There were also places in alfa1 where you could level extremely slowly (my own preference). Those that enjoyed slow leveling played in those more regulated areas. The worry now is, have we sacrificed this for the former, as our servers are much more standardized now than they've ever been.

[maxcell]

My favorite posts in this thread:

Iona - her sheer enjoyment of being level 1 with no rush to be 10

Heero - because he is correct.

Swift - All of his posts are win.

[Castano]

I will believe everyone that says they favour a low-magic setting when they don't complain that you can't buy Cure Light Wounds potions on every street corner. Been there, had to alter the stores.

Win. Same here. People like the concept, hate the reality of it.

[HEEGZ]

Thank you for weighing in. It seems that the way forward is to provide an environment that continues to cater to the varied play style preferences of our members. I think that perhaps the best way to supply this variety is for the admin to support the grouping of players and DMs who have similar preferences.

I think the breadth of our standards and guidelines for DMs supports the variety of experiences we see in game now. There is a lot to think about here, and I've really enjoyed reading your responses. I also enjoyed the fresh perspective of our newest member, thanks!

Probably the single biggest issue I see facing ALFA is the limited amounts of DMing. Castano has done a good job of attracting new people to DM, though the issue is more complicated than that. It is extremely complicated to DM well, and doing so within the convoluted confines of the NWN2 engine and toolset is not always a fun experience. Looking back, I'm amazed at how much time I have spent learning how to DM in general, as well as specifically in NWN2. I consider myself to still be in the learning process...

If we could shift the conversation slightly, what are people's thoughts on the DM situation? Particularly, how could we go about increasing the amount of DMing that is offered in ALFA in the future?

[Castano]

(1) Stop reflexively complaining about your DMs when a session goes wrong for your PC.
(2) Be considerate of DM time when requesting things like crafting.
(3) If you have an in game or out of game issue snarky posts on the forums about why X Y or Z was not done yet for your PC are not going to get X Y or Z done (they will burn out your DM however). PMing the HDM of the server team with (a) what the issue is and (b) the facts or data or item files necessary to resolve it will help fix the situation.
(4) Stop sending in game tells to DMs about why they are running the session wrong, ex. not providing enough healing or not providing adequate loot. You have 2 options - play along or log out - pick one.
(5) Follow server guidelines when requesting things like crafted items. Those posts are there for a reason, they make checking and getting and then finding your custom item in game much much easier.

A lot of the above creates and environment where people who would want to DM feel pressure to perform as opposed to having fun. Will your DM get everything right? - hardly ever. Will you both have fun? - often.

So I guess your answer from me is that DM burnout is the biggest issue, not recruitment. I can keep filling the hole with more people, but if the sand is running out at the bottom....

This is followed a close second by the interface, which Zelknolf has done wonders improving. DMing does not have to be some technical wizardry where we wow everyone with our mad skillz with the interface. There are different levels to everything....if someone is getting zero DMing they will appreciate even the odd road spawn and you just need to know where to find goblin in the monster folder and make sure you spawn a CR (CR's are noted in the critter's name in brackets (e.g. "Goblin {CR0.5}") less than the PC level's. So if a member is not playing on a server I would strongly encourage them to apply to DM that server.

[FoamBats4All]

If we could shift the conversation slightly, what are people's thoughts on the DM situation? Particularly, how could we go about increasing the amount of DMing that is offered in ALFA in the future?

That, I believe, is the most important question to ask in ALFA.

And the one that we have so few good ideas on. DM XP ticks? Not a great idea, but we know that it will inspire at least a few DMs to DM more... Incentives in general are kind of hard to give. But we need one -- as obviously "DMing is fun in itself and should be good enough" isn't, indeed, good enough.

[Adanu]

Swift seems to be under the impression that making levels a bit easier to get automatically diminishes the desire to keep going.

That this is what you think clearly shows you have no idea or understanding of why so many old school players walked away from this community and why many of the ones that are left talk more fondly about the old days of ALFA.

The only thing about ALFA that has not changed is that we are still using Faerun. Pretty much everything else is gone.

Also, we didn't just make it a 'bit' easier. We have made it vastly easier, to the point that low levels are trivial unless you are a brand new player.

We already knew we have different tastes.

Very few people actually enjoy being a level one. I know of... three? Offhand, the rest hate it.

With 3.5, I'd much rather start off at level 2-3. Take that as you will.

[Galadorn]

Level 1 is my favourite level! But making level 12 in 3 years is also very fun.

Many good points! Go alfa!

Swift and Veilan always make the best sense I think. OOps, no Veilan posts yet? Where is that cuddly German anyway?




later...
Back to WoW.

[Ronan]

I also enjoy level 1, but would not shed a single tear if it was replaced by level 2 or 3. As I mentioned earlier, I believe reducing the PC power spread would help a number of ALFA's issues, including player-DM time.

I will believe everyone that says they favour a low-magic setting when they don't complain that you can't buy Cure Light Wounds potions on every street corner. Been there, had to alter the stores.

Win. Same here. People like the concept, hate the reality of it.

A lower-magic setting would come with less dangerous opponents (or in other words, your opponents would have less magic and/or be less fantastic). Of course FR is not low-magic, so making some servers lower magic than others is probably not going to work out so well (e.g., the push to have more items in TSM stores). As much as I like lower-magic settings I don't really see lowering in-engine magic as an option - FR is just not low-magic after all.

If we could shift the conversation slightly, what are people's thoughts on the DM situation? Particularly, how could we go about increasing the amount of DMing that is offered in ALFA in the future?

This is probably something best asked to current or past active DMs. Aside from my limited time to devote to computer games in general, this is what keeps me from DMing more:

• Technical problems from the host, NWN2, client, module scripts, ACR, whatever, are by far the biggest time-sink for me. I don't think any of our other server-maintainers are also active DMs though, so this wouldn't apply to them.
• The sheer volume of received requests when I am online.
• Administrative issues, such as teaching or helping out new DMs.
• CvC (though not since the new rule change).
• B-game politics.

On BG, the following seem to be major causes of other DMs not DMing more:

• The multi-DM environment (i.e. learning PC histories and server-canon).
• Learning ALFA's rules and standards (though this is a by-product of the multi-DM environment).
• CvC (though not since the new rule change).
• B-game politics.
• Player complaints.
• Difficulty organizing a party with like-leveled PCs.
• Clashes with other DMs on the server.
• Dislike of the active PCs on the server.*

* I continue to see more evidence that the players who get the most DMing do so because they play PCs with DMing in mind. Simply rolling up a PC and hoping he'll get DM support, or continuing to play an old PC hoping for the same, is just not going be as likely to receive said support as making one specifically for a campaign. Thank god we got past the 1-PC rule and can let people get DMing without giving up older PCs.

[Ronan]

Oh, and in response to "ALFA is too soft!" vs. "ALFA is/was too hard!" arguments, I'd like to point out that I have 14 people interested in my new campaign, with at least nine likely to show up. As I am ALFA's most murderous of bastards, this makes me think the "ALFA is too soft!" people are more correct than their opponents.

Although, Rumple had some big numbers (about the same as BG's Tempus Tears event I think) for his dracolich ending, and he is undeniably a Big Softie.