ALFA's Faerun

[Veilan]

I can understand part of where you're coming from, but I'd like to point out that the attitude of 'treasured hierloom' doesn't work in the face of reality within 3.5 DnD, simply because you need magic weapons beyond a certain point to deal with various threats. Making them 'mystical' is doing a disservice to the PCs after a certain point.

By all means, make commoners and rulers go in awe as a DM (I do), but adventurers need this stuff to be effective.

Oh, as I said:

I fully acknowledge that DnD clashes violently with that wish

But I still insist that DnD is a tool, and that it's our choice how we use it. If we actually had the will and a unified vision, we could easily design or alter mobs not to require massive buffs or magic weapons to fight, or simply use those more sparingly, so that there is a reason to be actually awed by the one cool magic weapon that party hands around. And to be awed if such a creature is actually slain, rather than that event happening on a daily basis on a certain level.
Heck, you could even have epic "I'm dying son/sister/lover/random-party-mate-I-just-met-in-a-tavern, take my sword and avenge me!" moments. Something which today gets answerd with "eeew, but I'm specialised in bastard swords, not long swords, you keep that thing" .

Exaggerating for effect I guess. Point is, it's easy and convenient for builders, DMs, and Admin to morph vanilla 3.5 into a substitute for any true vision for ALFA. It saves us a fair amount of work elsewhere, but it's not how we did things in the past, and it's certainly nothing where magic and heroes can be overly special within the framework of the game reality (though here we start to drift into "we have too many adventures than vanilla assumes, since we're a PW" territory).

Cheers,

[Veilan]

I am regret

Now you made me sad that I made you sad .

Sowwy?

[Rumple C]

Can we hug it out?

In game i mean.

Sylvaine with my Orc.

[Ithildur]

Eloquently put, Veilan. While my personal preference probably is a little closer to more 'standard' versions of 3.5e DnD Forgotten Realms (places like WD and SM stock magic items, even old SD had a few, rare appearance of stuff like Elven High Magic, Elmonsters and Khelbens, etc can be fun if used judiciously - we did have El make regular appearances back on ALFA1 SD after all), overall I do agree, what made ALFA special was that it's different, it was much less about the game and more about the story compared to most NWN PWs and tabletop games.

And yes, hands down LOTR beats Ed Greenwood's world on his best day. However getting DMed by a guy in a campaign where the only loot in the game is a crazy cursed ring they can't use... I wonder how many folks would sign up for that. Unless the DM and the players were of high enough caliber storytellers... then you have something special, something people sign up for even if the only loot is an unusable ring. If you have some loot on top of that, well then you've probably hit the sweet spot.

Telling a great story used to be the target ALFA was advertised to aim at, even if it didn't always succeed. Lately the target is probably more about not letting players get bored. Not a bad goal at all certainly, but a world of difference.

Some of this is attrition and real life; people get older, move on to other things, have less time, less energy. Going after a great story is much more work than going for being entertained.

[Xanthea]

I would love availability of magical items being toned down a lot and giving them a rare and special feeling, provided that monsters were also rebalanced to compensate for that lack. Get rid of all the DR/something properties, for example. Lower DCs, and so on.

I've always thought that the trouble with ALFA is that the democratically run system is great for longevity, but it makes for a PW where the theme is inconsistent.

[Ithildur]

I've always thought that the trouble with ALFA is that the democratically run system is great for longevity, but it makes for a PW where the theme is inconsistent.

We used to have a somewhat coherent vision of what we were after here. sure it wasn't perfect and not everyone's understanding of 'hardcore rp' and such was exactly the same, but the fact is we did have standards and ideals, and the vast majority of folks I interacted with had similar expectations. I'm not opposed to all change by any means but the past couple of years it feels like nearly anything is up for grabs.

At it's worst, a democracy (which ALFA never really was) always has the danger of breaking down that way and becoming somewhat a rudderless ship. Eventually the thing will float/meander on somewhat aimlessly with this being the status quo until it decays and atrophies. The alternatives are:

1. a revolution (another Quake)
2. a renaissance/revival
3. a clear transition into something that has ALFA's name but is really a different project

I'd personally prefer #2, but you need enough people with energy, time, vision, a lot of determination and ability to work together with others for it to happen. I can see why #3 might be more appealing to newer folks given the history of RPG's... the RPG market has changed. There was BG1, NWN, and now stuff like DDO and NWOnline MMO. TSR is gone and WOTC has gone through 3 editions including one that was all about being simpler and more 'action game-y', everyone under 40 seems to own a console game unit and spends significant chunks of free time blasting stuff. ALFA really was/is a fairly idealistic attempt to intentionally be a dinosaur of a different color (an attempt that succeeds magnificently when the right people are in place and everything clicks, but might result in empty servers when it doesn't work so well) ; if we wanted to blast stuff or run through instances of high action DnDish gameplay there are far, far better options out there than what we do.

We seem to be going through an identity crisis with most people who really enjoyed the dinosaur not being around/active, and a lot of people who were disgruntled with it for whatever reason being in charge. It'll be interesting to see what all of it leads to, but I'd prefer we don't shift ALFA towards something like DDO plus RP.

[Heero]

Guys, just roll with what youve got and try to find a bit of fun if you can.

[Swift]

Guys, just roll with what youve got and try to find a bit of fun if you can.

We have just rolled with it for years now and ended up with something that feels bland and lifeless. We are a PW as designed by a committee, trying to please everybody without giving us anything to stand out and say "Hey, you guys really should play here and not somewhere else".

[Heero]

I'm not arguing. Rather, I'm just pointing out that we (the collective) have made our bed and now must do our best to lie in it. Its unfortunate that we've lost a few along the way but surely there are those that are enjoying the current state of affairs and they must be enjoying the place, right? Else who were the changes made to please? Haha

[Swift]

Else who were the changes made to please? Haha

I still remember 2 PCs initially being promoted as a super awesome ways to bring in new players

[Rumple C]

2 pcs breathed life back into the place. It may not have drawn new players, but it got players playing again.

[HEEGZ]

The continued discussion seems to confirm my earlier observation that we need to adhere to our pillars, but retain flexibility for DMs and players so that different play style preferences can be fulfilled within our community. It feels like there is a fairly even split in preferences, so I feel we should continue to cater to the variety.

I keep coming back to the DM thing: DnD needs DMs... Is there some out of the box idea that could help us increase how much DMing happens in game? I can't help but draw the same conclusions that more DMing means more fun to be had.

We've gotten the ball rolling on NWN1 servers and the feedback seems pretty good so far. I will probably make a separate thread about them regarding rules and such. Will wait until I feel that the project is going to get off the ground first before doing so.

[Zelknolf]

That's an enormous selection bias; you've heard from about 10% of active ALFA, and haven't even heard consistent opinions among that 10%.

[Swift]

That's an enormous selection bias; you've heard from about 10% of active ALFA, and haven't even heard consistent opinions among that 10%.

If they do not raise their voice, how can their voices be considered when making decisions?

You can only work with what you got.

[mr duncan]

what type of ALFA experience would you like to see, and how do we get there from here?

As it is, I like ALFA a lot except for the ugly areas that were made years ago when few of us knew the toolset that well at all. There really are some prominent areas that are like cavities on a smile.


I do have a utopian vision that I am 100% sure ALFA will never adopt, but since you were asking I feel like saying it.

We should be given level seven when we log in with a new character, minus the ECL of the character. Then there should be no more XP gains ever in game, for any reason. Characters can adventure for profit, or glory or quests to help their faith. Purely IC motives, since they will never be going up in level.

I think level seven is ideal because a single class wizard just barely starts to pull ahead of the warriors, but they are still pretty close to equal. This would give people a little leeway in their stories, you could have been a veteren of Cormyrs goblin wars and not starting at level one now, for example. Also makes those super long trips from the east more believable "I trained as a Samurai in Kozakura, but I will get tooled easy by a pair of goblins now that I am here"

With everyone getting the same level forever then you also remove the problem of scale of threats. There arent easy goblin areas you can go back and pillage later when you are high level. Sure you can have a goblin forest but spawns are like a dozen goblins, a shaman and an ogre now because everyone is level seven. A DM can use an overpowering threat that requires many people to band together to face more easily as well, if there is a young adult red dragon pillaging the countryside then it can not be handed off to two uber characters.

Magic items will be able to be easily scaled to the characters level, starting characters should get wealth appropriate to like half their level to start and access to minor magic items. Heirloom weapons mentioned earlier could be included as easily as making it a special approval and still making it a level appropriate weapon.

Approvals should be dropped for planetouched characters, the ECL that will always put them one level behind everyone should be enough to make them show up less often. I would outright ban underdark races unless we could get an underdark area for them to start in with a dangerous enough long span of caves between them and the top that would make any trips to the surface as rare as they should. But before that was built, just not allow them at all.

Getting a Raise for a character should be pretty easy, automated like NWN1 where you just needed someone willing to do it from the other side for you. We should however take one permanent CON for each Raise and then even the pampered pet who has lots of friends to save them over and over would eventually either learn to not get in trouble deeper than they can handle, or they would get tired of loosing CON and make a new character. Natural selection would keep this like planetouched characters from happening too much.

There would be no such thing as a character who could yawn and kill a Tyrannosaurus but there would also never be anyone dejected at loosing their new character to a single stray arrow. No power leveling, ever.



I know, pretty extreme and certainly nothing we would go for... but failing that utopian vision we can at least send our servers to the dentist and get rid of those nasty cavities.


J


PS- I really think NWN1 blows and opening up those servers again is like going backwards. We dont need two new NWN1 servers, getting BG back up and running should be the priority. After that, an underdark server