Moonshaes Live

[Mord]

For now, a PC travelling to the Moonshaes will have to arrange with a Moonshaes DM for validation from Q after logging in there. Travel from TSM to the Moonshaes will be via ship from Baldur's Gate, and will require a 24-hour RL layover in BG.

Soo...uhhh...what is the point of this restriction?

1) It prevents BG DMs from moving between TSM and Moonshaes since they cant play on their own server, and this enforces them to do so, essentially restricting anyone who chooses to step up and help the community by DMing on BG to one server.
2) We have rules to prevent event hopping and DM shopping. Why dont we just use them to punish players that do it rather that putting up ridiculous walls like this?
3) Considering the small size of our community, what is the point of such artificial, arbitrary blocks on people playing together? Have we recently had issues with people running between TSM and BG to farm XP?

Baldurs Gate is weeks upon weeks of travel from The Silver Marches yet, for the most part, we have not enforced any kind of restriction on people portalling between the two servers and to my knowledge, it has not been abused by people to hit DM events on both servers. I simply don't understand the point of such an arbitrary wall considering we are only a small community when it comes to active players.

Overall, I am glad another server has gone live, but these restrictions totally negate any positive energy this puts into the community.

I will discuss this with Curm and Castano. One easy option for the DM players would be to give DM characters a limited time to travel through BG, I'd be happy with granting that right.

[kmj2587]

Is there a particular reason a portal can't be created that goes between the Moonshaes and TSM? There's no geographic reason for a layover in BG. The BG/TSM portal is a ship, but the only way to get to to the Marches by boat would be to take a ship to Waterdeep and catch another up the Dessarin river. So why not just make another ship that portals between The Moonshaes and TSM with the understanding that you're taking a ship to Waterdeep, then heading up the Dessarin river?

[Veilan]

A medley of what I've already stated elsewhere concerning the portal-question:

Skeptical as I am, I don't really like the thought of even DMs moving their PCs over their servers.

My own best preference would be the ALFA 1 mode of travel - no portal cooldown, but fairly great distances that you have to actually travel and thus immerse yourself in.

Yet that is not an option, and meanwhile all that this stop-over solution achieves is that people will be denied to play where they wished for 24 hours. It does in my eyes not foster immersion due to being an arbitrary, outside the gameworld barrier, and merely makes it harder for people to play in-game. And this is one of the very few instances where I actually agree with OGR on enforcement - because you can only "abuse" the travelling if a DM is present, then a DM will know. Fwiw, I think the arbitrary barriers work against our overall gameplay experience by artificially diluting concentration, and they do not help you experience travel either. If we think portalling is too fast for our small population, then why not keep a direct connection between all three servers, but discuss increasing the portal cooldown to 36 or 48 hours. If this is merely a fear of "event hopping", then that likely should be addressed via different means.

Cheers,

[MorbidKate]

Congrats on going live!!

At this moment in time, with few playing and fewer DMs than the good 'ol days I personally don't see the need to make players wait a day to play on a new server. I'd argue it takes too long for players to meet up on different parts of the same server to RP as it is. Just MHO.

Kate

[AcadiusLost]

To clarify:

Presently we have two "types" of server portals. "Adjacent" server portals (think Northern Cormyr/Arabel, or Waterdeep/Skullport), and "Non-Adjacent" ones.

Adjacent portals allow unlimited free travel back and forth, just like any other AT. Right now since all our servers are disparate geographically, we have none of these active; once WHL comes Live, I expect it will use "Adjacent" server portals to/from BG (possibly TSM as well? Not sure on that one.)

The standard "Non-Adjacent" server portal also allows instant travel to the destination server; the only difference is you can't then re-portal again until a certain time has lapsed (24h RL). This means a single PC can't bounce back and forth across Faerun in a single session (teleport or other means excepted), but it also means the 24h block should never be blocking "impulse travel" (unless, of course, the "impulse" is to travel across multiple non-adjacent servers in a single session).

Especially since BG has both its server portals in the same docks area, without a portaling cooldown what could be a hub of travel and a crossroads of PC interaction from all three servers instead becomes a 30-second turnstyle interval, which doesn't serve much purpose IMO.

I know whenever I did big cross-server travelling in NWN1-ALFA days, we almost always stopped over at servers along the route... met PCs there, checked out the shops, occasionally had unexpected encounters with DMs of those servers... it was part of the experience of server travel. Sometimes those interactions proved to be more memorable than the "destination" in retrospect. I'm not sure why it's viewed as some sort of onerous burden. If there is some DM session on a distant server that your PC somehow knows about IC and needs to be there on-time for, the DM can always handwave the details and validate from Quarantine; but the standard mode of operation being only one big geography jump per day seems pretty fair to me.

For BG DMs, I should expect validation from Q is the best way to handle it when passing through. They can click on the portal to BG and log into the destination server Q with the portalling pass for BG to show the DM(s) on the receiving end.

For what it's worth, both sides of the BG<->MS portal should be scripted now and available for portalling without requiring DM assist, as of last night.

[MorbidKate]

I know whenever I did big cross-server travelling in NWN1-ALFA days, we almost always stopped over at servers along the route... met PCs there, checked out the shops, occasionally had unexpected encounters with DMs of those servers... it was part of the experience of server travel. Sometimes those interactions proved to be more memorable than the "destination" in retrospect.

Point taken. The big difference between now and the long, long ago is that these days, most players travel alone. I too miss the days of gathering friends, getting geared up for a long trek across servers and stopping along the way for RP and adventure. If players server hop for DM sessions however, they tend to get noticed... and be dealt with.

Personally, anything that can be done to help get players together in-game quicker to prevent boredom isn't a bad thing. Most of us have limited time to play and with a smaller pool of players, abusers would stand out.

Kate

[Mord]

*approves of Kate's avatar*

[dergon darkhelm]

Any way to link up Moonshaes with the number of players seen on the top of the forums page?

[Rotku]

Slightly off topic, but nice to see you around Kate.

[MorbidKate]

Slightly off topic, but nice to see you around Kate.

Thanks Rot

Nice to be back and still see familiar faces.

Kate

[Hialmar]

Just a note that the population and details (PCs,DMs) should now be visible just under the ALFA logo on the website.

[NESchampion]

Seems to be pushing Baldur's Gate under the forum template for me.

[Hialmar]

Is it better like that ?

What browser are you using ?

[dergon darkhelm]

new layout is three across ...looks good to me.

Thanks, Hialmar!

[NESchampion]

Is it better like that ?

What browser are you using ?

Better like that now, three across. Before just BG was below. Using Firefox.