Adhoc Play: A discussion

[AcadiusLost]

If you would humor me for a bit, ask yourself "What was it that hooked me on ALFA?"

I was impressed by the ambition, scope and concept of ALFA, certainly. The lack of any "fees" to pay helped me overcome the reticence that had always kept me away from MMOs. The idea of being able to interact in a complex and nuanced way with other players (as opposed to free-for-all beat-and-humiliate competitive play), via a community-run project, enticed me. The chance to see, and even participate in, a world I had enjoyed in my youth through novels and sourcebooks intrigued me.

What really did it though?

A few days into my time here, playing on Shadowdale, I accidentally logged right into the middle of a small group of PCs who had grouped up to do a static quest. I was immediately swept up into the group, because a DM, Virvaldin, had been secretly watching, and decided to spice up the static from behind the scenes. Those players I was with had likely been through that quest before with prior characters, maybe even several times, but 5 minutes of Virv's effort from behind the scenes turned what might have been a routine errand for XP and gold, into something magical. I felt that flutter in my stomach from when the game stopped being just a computer game, reacting automatically to your actions in a more or less predictable way, and became something else entirely. In those five minutes, I was hooked on ALFA.

How is this relevant? We all get jaded by disappointments, frustrations built up over the years. Sometimes misconceptions become ingrained, sometimes personality clashes just eclipse other parts of the experience. But for me, the magic of a persistent world like ALFA is that chance that the world will unexpectedly come to life, that you can cross paths with and meet the concepts of other players, act out your PC's decisions based on their history and personality, and be drawn into things (or not, as the case may be) naturally as things develop. When I think of a campaign, I think of a story that grows out of such interactions; the characters who are involved vary from session to session, events transpire that may sweep up other characters around as well, and PCs have the times and spaces in between to plan, discuss, decide on a course of action. Developments in the story happen to different PCs at different times, giving them reason to participate and interact with each other.

I guess I feel like as people got busier, we slipped further from this style of play. DMs more often started to arrange their chosen PCs into parties, and run sessions for set groups. This got more plot advancement in for that group, and meant more of the DM's limited time available was spent in plot-focused DMing, but it also meant those not involved in that "circle" got left by the wayside. The PCs involved start not to have much reason to log in during times other than the designated timeslot, and those not involved start not to have much reason to log in at all. Now some of the suggestions for NWN1 involve making rules changes specifically to encourage this sort of play-style, even making it so campaign PCs aren't allowed to log in during times other than the scheduled sessions. My concern is that, in our attempts to please the players we still have active (through more campaign options), we're getting further and further from the style of play that draws people in, and gives them reason and interest to log in several times a week, for hours at a time. Building a "critical mass" for adhoc play and DMing seems to me the best way to go for this.

I think there are a number of things that can be done to help support this sort of play; one might be allowing campaigns to continue with current PCs, while allowing a second PC for adhoc play (meaning we'd potentially have a fresh crop of low-level PCs to mix it up and adventure with). Another might be facilitating IC travel between servers with some public magical portals. We could also port over a version of the automated RPXP scripts from NWN2, so players get some XP reward just for logging in, even if they don't end up seeing a DM during their session. If a 2nd level start would make all the difference for this, I'm not entirely opposed to that either. But, it would require DMs who are willing to make scheduled and unscheduled appearances, and do little things more often, as opposed to just infrequent "big things" with a select and prearranged group. The suggestion to relax the "play where you dm" rules seem unlikely to produce more "full-time" adhoc DMs to me.

Maybe I'm off-base here, and my experience with what made ALFA special to me wasn't along the same lines of what set it apart for others. But, I'd be interested to hear what others think in the matter, people active in NWN2 as well as NWN1, and members who haven't been in-game much in the last months or years. These sort of discussions impact our community on the whole; we don't really serve much purpose if we aren't supplying a satisfying in-game experience for our membership. Helping to recapture what made ALFA worthwhile for people in the past may go a long way towards improving the game for the future.

[AsteroidX]

+1

venturing through the sewers with of Waterdeep is what hooked me. The war in Loudwater.....those things.

I am hopeful that when a new server is opened in NwN2 DM coverage will improve vastly. We all have real lives so no DM bashing from me but a well covered server opens up lots of options. DM's truly make the servers alive....Players make them livable.

I will make an add note that the quality of RP I have seen on TSM has been the best Ive come across on ALFA. Hands down superb from top to bottom.

[fluffmonster]

What drew me in to ALFA initially was merely the thought of playing with other real humans; I was by then getting bored with single-player modules. I guess my expectations were lower...I wasn't looking for magic, I was looking for people.

What got me hooked was a campaign with a great group of people, and what made that possible was exactly the predictability of scheduled times and a defined role for my PC. I've never had the time to just log on and play for hours. In a way, I've always envied the ad-hoc play that happened and on occasion made choices that I thought might give me more opportunity to participate, and I have had such moments, but really making that my play-style was simply never possible given the time I could devote to it. An ad-hoc environment marginalizes me as a player, and this is probably the real source of my "envy"...its not that I was trapped by a campaign (which I have felt before); its that ad-hoc and the tremendous enjoyment and stories I knew it generated was never really an avenue for me in the first place. An ad-hoc environment would probably leave me persistently out-of-touch with events, an occasional visitor catching snippets of the movie and never really knowing the plot or even most of the cast.

It is only now that I appreciate how special those first 10 months in a regular campaign were, with the first best PC of my entire DnD experience. When I transited to NWN2, I couldn't find that kind of thing any more and I stopped participating. These days I'm doing PnP.

[Mick]

The first time I realized how much fun this place could be, I had been on board for about a month and I was playing out a scene in some bar in WD with S'ril, my first PC that made it past first level. I was playing with Regas and Dolen could not have been higher than second or third level. We had a great time trying to convince some fellow to leave the bar so Dolen could [redacted]. I laughed my ass off during that session. It was the sort of thing that made me hungry for more.

I really started to get sucked in to NWN and ALFA as a place for storytelling with my next PC, Loxy. At first level, she started getting some very personalized attention from Rotku. It was the sort of RP that ended up changing the course of her life as a PC. This attraction to the story was reinforced in spades by some further attention from Jayde, which ultimately guided Loxy to LW, where she found a place in the story of the war there.

However, it was the ad-hoc play between Loxy and Arana that proved my undoing with respect to this game. The sessions we had with our PCs turned my dedication to a storytelling game into a full-blown addiction to hardcore RPing. The hunger has softened a bit since that time, but I find those great intense RP moments no less enjoyable.

The majority of my best moments in the game have been during ad-hoc play. There are some exceptions of course, but most of the most enjoyable sessions happened with no DM around (or with only minimal DM involvement)and frequently only one other PC.

That said, even a small amount of facilitation from a DM in the personal story going on between PCs can go miles toward enhancing the experience and in fueling the RP for times when no DMs are around. DM-run events are thrilling and rewarding on a number of levels, but only those who are fortunate enough to be around when they happen really benefit. Being largely a function of time zones, however, there is not much to be done about it. That's just the way it is.

As far as increasing the amount of ad-hoc play, I don't know what the right answer is, if there is one. I think so much is dependent on the chemistry between various PCs that it is hard to facilitate without a DM. I would say that it does require players who prefer ad-hoc RPing over grinding through statics or hitting spawns. I know a very wise player once told me the secrets to savory RP were 1) Make the story your own 2) Find players whose playstyles match your own and 3) Don't play too much. I think they are reasonably good rules to play by.

[Pathos Street]

I'm a new player who has only logged in on the NWN2 side a couple times, who hasn't (yet) been hooked. I have a strong opinion on this subject and could write several pages on it, but I'd like to see more of what the ALFA community at large thinks.

[Riotnrrd]

AL, I think I may perceive a false dichotomy in your original post...

You state what hooked you was ad-hoc play, as opposed to group-oriented plot-driven play. But what I'm reading from your post is that it was DM involvement that hooked you, not just ad-hoc play among players.

What hooks me are
1) the quality and presence of the players (which our admissions policy should guarantee), and
2) the quality and presence of a DM (which is what we absolutely need to ensure)

Good RP can happen if two players or a player and a DM are present in the same location (no, I don't enjoy solo RP with NPCs or by myself). DMs "set the hook", whether I'm advancing a personal plot, a server plot, a scheduled group event, or what AL mentions, DM involvement in regular PC ad-hoc interaction.

Players will certainly come if they know a DM will be present, and may come regardless of DM presence. DMs won't want to be present unless there are players. We need to ensure players know a DM can be / is present when they can play, so maybe scheduling DM coverage might be a good step (if possible).

[psycho_leo]

Much like Fluff, what prompted me to join was the chance to play with other people. Back then I had a lot of fun with ad-hoc playing, but with less time to play, having only ad hoc sessions meant missing a lot of bits in a plot and generally being left out of the loop. About two years ago, I was almost giving up on playing when I was asked to join a campaign. I found a steady group of great RPers and scheduled sessions with an equally great DM and even though there are some weeks that I end up playing less than I could or would like to, the sessions are much more satisfying.

Ad hoc playing was what hooked me up to ALFA in the first place, but campaign style is what keeps me here these days. Maybe if I had found that sort of playing in TSM, I'd would still be involved with the NWN2 side of things.

[Magile]

Been here since March of 2000 (yes, ALFA was around before NWN was released, I believe as early as '97). I've seen old names and new names come and go. I watched as everyone who created the community left in single file, one after the other. I've watched different regimes and cliques swoop in and out. I've seen the community at its lowest and at its highest.

So what hooked me to ALFA? Through all the hardship, through all the turmoil, through all the quakes and mass-exodus (see what I did there?) of people, it's still around -- why? To a community that has been told that its dead, that the game is dead (in some cases), that the dream is dead... why is it still here? Because, so long as one person gives a damn, it still keeps going. That's what hooked me to ALFA -- it was a dream that someone cooked up over 10 years ago, and even though most of those individuals don't even glance our way anymore, that dream is kept alive (no matter how big or small).

Sounds cheesy, right? Heaven forbid it's not the game play that keeps me wanting to stick around.

Now respect your (ALFA) elder, you young blooded hooligans!

Disclaimer: Burt is also as old as I am, ALFA-wise. Be glad that it's not the oldest member that inherits Admin status

[danielmn]

"Burt is also as old as I am, ALFA-wise. Be glad that it's not the oldest member that inherits Admin status"

So the over 13 rule was applied after nwn1 went live?

[FanaticusIncendi]

What got me hooked was a campaign with a great group of people, and what made that possible was exactly the predictability of scheduled times and a defined role for my PC. I've never had the time to just log on and play for hours. In a way, I've always envied the ad-hoc play that happened and on occasion made choices that I thought might give me more opportunity to participate, and I have had such moments, but really making that my play-style was simply never possible given the time I could devote to it. An ad-hoc environment marginalizes me as a player, and this is probably the real source of my "envy"...its not that I was trapped by a campaign (which I have felt before); its that ad-hoc and the tremendous enjoyment and stories I knew it generated was never really an avenue for me in the first place. An ad-hoc environment would probably leave me persistently out-of-touch with events, an occasional visitor catching snippets of the movie and never really knowing the plot or even most of the cast.

What drew me in was my dorky boyfriend Jayde, what got me hooked was what Fluff says. +1 to Fluff who saved me typing. The once a week, regular group I play with now is the best and most consistent group I've ever played with and my game has never been more fun thanks to that.

[JaydeMoon]

What hooked me on ALFA was the ability to play DnD with people and actually immerse. I've never been able to fully immerse around the table... because no matter who is playing who and how much acting you try to do, Greta the Lithe Rogue was still played by chunky Fred, and Vorlock the Barabarian with the strength of ten men was played by pasty, scrawny Kevin, etc.

I agree with a lot of what AL has to say, though I will mention that

The suggestion to relax the "play where you dm" rules seem unlikely to produce more "full-time" adhoc DMs to me

seems to me a misrepresentation of the what is a realistic goal, doesn't do justice to the possibilities of the suggestion and is counterintuitive to the spirit of it, especially considering our current status or members and what they are willing and have time to do.

I guess the issue I have is with the idea of a "full-time" adhoc DM. If what you mean is a member of ALFA solely around for a few hours everyday to encourage adhoc RP, I think you may find that the chances of finding ANYONE for such a role is low, and fnding a decent number of them lower still.

Examining WHY that is, we find that a lack of TIME to devote to the community is often the case. Not enough time to be on everyday of the week. Of the days that one can be on, not enough time to both progress a character which we are vested in AND devote time to DMing something.

Another reason is simply the ways in which choosing to DM can be stifling. It cuts off options. If I choose to DM on a serer, I eliminate any ability for my PC to interact in a meaningful way on that server. When I have a character I'm vested in, that is a pretty compelling argument against DMing in any capacity.

Now, allowing DMs to play where they DM doesn't do much for the first reason, it does not address the amount of time they have.

However, relaxing the rule can alleviate or even eliminate the second deterrent. And while, yes, relaxing the rule seems unlikely to create many "full-time" adhoc DMs (since they are focusing also on a PC they won't be full time DMs), it should allow for a few "part-time" adhoc DMs.

For me, at least, having several "part-time" adhoc DMs available for my adhoc RP will entice me far more than no adhoc DMs while we hold out for "full-time" adhoc DMs.

So I think that particular rule change will encourage adhoc playing far more than not

This, of course, just addresses the possibilities opened up by relaxing the rule vice not. ALFA still has to overcome its trust and fear issues.

[Karvon]

What drew me to ALFA specifically was curiosity. I'd heard a fair amount about ALFA, some good, some bad, and thought a first hand look would be educational.

I prefer playing in DM'ed campaigns, the less linear and more open-ended the better. I prefer playing in fixed time slots on a regular basis, as I'm in a dozen campaigns atm and, thus, don't usually have extra time to spend hanging around afterward for extended chatting/RP/whatever.

Unless the DM's given permission to do so as it fit's the storyline, I don't feel it's appropriate for, or allow in my own campaigns, PCs to be used between sessions.

I think Adhoc DM-assisted sessions would be fine and fun if you made them one-shot single session stories. Participants would either need to have PCs between missions in their campaign, so free atm, or have a second PC available - which currently is not allowed here.

However, the bigger problem IMHO is getting DMs to do this on a regular basis. Most PWs I play on seem to have problems getting DMs who can and will be available on a regular basis to run such adhoc/off-the-cuff/free form sessions, this is not a problem endemic to ALFA. Some DMs are simply too busy to take on extra time slots. Others are not comfortable running these kinds of sessions, preferring scripted storylines and predesigned NPCs and encounters to winging it as they go along. Finding the right DMs is pretty important.

Finally, if you're going to start offering these kinds of sessions, you need to do some marketing; you should do some checking/surveys and see what times would likely draw the biggest crowds; then promote these so players know well in advance and can plan accordingly.

Karvon

[Zelknolf]

I guess the issue I have is with the idea of a "full-time" adhoc DM. If what you mean is a member of ALFA solely around for a few hours everyday to encourage adhoc RP, I think you may find that the chances of finding ANYONE for such a role is low, and fnding a decent number of them lower still.

Jayde fails at paying attention. I ad hoc DM, on the same server as you, no less.

Of course, that's just one person, and said one person finds ALFA's NWN1 servers to be a vast and empty wasteland without inspiriation or creativity and 11 NPCs renamed a hundred times each to populate a world (plus the divinity-boning mainfestation of Greenwood's ego, of course, who would trip and fall into a sphere of annihilation if I had my way) made all the worse by the fact that the modules - full of completely empty areas - are so ridiculously full of nothing that it negatively impacts performance.

Did you know that Shadowdale has actually gotten so bloated that nwserver lost its ability to keep track of all of the resources when we tried to put it on 3.1, causing it to believe that the file - full of perfectly valid and independently tested components - was corrupt? The content on this module? 4 villages, 3 basically abandoned by PCs, populated by the beforementioned 11 NPCs (and Greenwood's ego, no less!) and about a thousand
empty
lifeless
templated
areas

Just an illustration, though. There is an actual point, and it actually relates to the original point: if we want to make ALFA NWN1 a hoppin' place, we need to make it a quality world. But the fact is that it's not a quality world, and the people who are staying only do so because they have friends who are also staying (while all of them talk about how cool it would be to have another world they could play on). Seriously: what does ALFA1 have? RP spells? I have a core rules I've put exactly nine weeks into - while slaving through the murderous end-of-semester gauntlet and my usual end-of-year depression - and it has more of them with more functionality (shocking, I know, to make create water scripted to put out fires or fill waterskins, but the little shat like that helps.). Tilesets? Yeah, little secret: +ALFA exteriors = CTP. Permadeath? HCR (hell- HCR does it better; even combats muling by enforcing a 1 character per CD key, if you tell it to). RP-facilitating scripts? C.R.A.P. does it better. Combat spells? PRC. Modules? See above. Immersive RP? The public servers have more quality RPers. Yeah, they get a couple of bad ones, but their bad ones are about as bad as our bad ones (and don't kid yourselves: ALFA has members who have no concept of the distinction between the IC world and OOC world, even in NWN1's extremely restricted population that would have, in theory, long since "weeded out" such things.).

The kicker is that ALFA hasn't been quality for years, and every effort (except Acadius', and God help you all if you do something to offend him.) I've seen put into it has been met with hate, insults, rumors, and insinuations. Repairing catastropic memory leaks on a module gets one accused of metagaming; serving as a "temporary" host for six months gets one called inconstant; upgrading a brutally defunct server gets one ruefully ignored. I'm not the only one who's been treated this way. I'm just the loudest about it. Take a look at the garbage Jayde takes for pouring his soul into his DMing, or the crap FI takes for burning out horribly in her attempt to bring positive change as PA, or the crap Nalo takes for struggling against the stagnation with new ideas. They don't get any kind of support or defense. They don't get any empathy. They don't get any help. They get treated like crap and told to shut up. And see where it leads: four people who have demonstrated will and ability to at least quadruple the work of the next-best-contributors sitting in the corners trying to eek out something resembling a game with friends, and I bet only one is still doing anything in ALFA next year.

[FanaticusIncendi]

+1 to Zelk. Funny I just said pretty much the same things in the admin/dm forum today.

[FanaticusIncendi]

Oh and BTW today I turn in my DM wand.

Northern Cormyr is going bye-bye and I can just as easily run my campaign from elsewhere.

I would be happy to retain my DM wand and engage in ad-hoc DMing on Shadowdale and Sembia..... unfortunately my PC has ties on both servers and there's that whole "no DMing where you play" rule.