ayergo wrote:And to re-iterate again, from my first post about Waterdeep I have asked for "official" status. I still stand by that and I think you'll find everything with the server is to ALFA specs.
Rick7475 wrote:I think we should be refocusing ALFA with both NWN1 and 2, and get 1 official status ASAP. There are more people playing NWN1 than 2 online, so we can bring in a little new blood and old returning players.
Mikayla wrote:On WD/ALFA: Why isn't WD part of ALFA? It SEEMS like it is part of ALFA.
Vendrin wrote:Maybe I'll be the odd man out, but here's my two cents in regards to making this server ALFA official.
Don't.
Part of the reason this server has so many players is because a few oldies logged back in. And they invited other friends. And we all got going into it. And for once we didn't have to worry about xp guidelines, or someone calling us out, or any of the rest of over complicated bureaucracy that ALFA has become.
Keep your freedom to run stuff like this, or change guidelines how you see fit, or ignore them as needed. We have a good group of players, most of them old hands who trust each other. Let's not give that up for, no discernible benefit. If ALFA members want to play, they can, and we can share association of values and forums. But why give up the independence to deal with a bureaucracy that has done more harm then good?
Whether to make the NWN1 servers officially a part of ALFA or not is both an important question and a divisive question, as evidenced by the posts here.
I believe that from a DMA perspective it is best to let NWN1 be NWN1 outside of the ALFA rules and standards as an unofficial side project. This will keep the community here on the forums where we can all play and coordinate together and allow us to enjoy the current interest in NWN1 as it stands. NWN1 seems to be going well, it "feels like ALFA", the community is largely cohesive and happy, and I'd like to keep it that way.
ALFA has a system of checks and balances on DMs, Players, XP advancement, and wealth advancement. ALFA also has a clearly defined set of standards for feats, skills, items, classes, monsters, and races and uses ACR to automate that as much as possible; this is both to relieve the burden from the DMA and DM team as well as to mitigate bias and promote objectivity to the greatest extent possible. For convenience, I will call this entire system of rules and automated implementation "ACR Standards" and refer to it as such throughout this post.
To do this on NWN1 would require that a NWN1 ACRS Standards be developed, reviewed by the standards team, and be accepted by the DMA. This isn't something that can be taken on faith, but would have to actually be documented. Next, these NWN1 ACR Standards would need to be implemented in an enforceable manner and periodically or regularly verified for compliance.
ALFA accomplished this after years of refinement by the standards team, implements this as objectively as possible in the most automated manner possible via the ACR, and and verifies compliance by version control on the servers and SQL logs on the central database as well as other automated tools and metrics.
NWN1 does not have the ACR scripts, has different classes, feats, skills, spells, creatures, and items than NWN2 and would therefore require a different ACR Standards solution than NWN2 has used. From a DMA (and TA perspective, if I may speak on Arris behalf here) for us to develop a fair, objective, and automated system that works within the NWN1 environment is a monumental undertaking.
An alternative would be to rely upon DMs themselves to enforce a system of standards manually. This has problems of its own in that subjectivity, rather than objectivity, inevitably comes into play and the verification and enforcement of compliance could lead to unecessary conflict. Additionally, this method requires more personal attention on a regular basis in the form of manual or live monitoring.
Whether you believe that NWN2 ALFA is too bureaucratic and should be more free-form or whether you believe that ACR Standards allows for objective policing without personality conflicts and therefore provides a more enjoyable and fair gaming experience than a subjective system is ultimately your choice.
With this in mind, I reiterate my opening statement: let's not change something that seems to be working well right now and has players and DMs interested and happy.
However, should the NWN1 strongly desire official ALFA status and should the NWN1 group develop clearly defined NWN1 ACR Standards, I would happily support an official ALFA NWN1 proposal.
ayergo wrote:I would also like to publicly invite our DM Admin shad0wfax to come and take up the DM wand this Friday night for our session! Not only will it be a perfect opportunity to assess the state of standards on the server, it will give some much needed help to our growing player base!
Your assistance is requested in Administering some DMing in Waterdeep!
Thank you for the invitation. I'm out of town for a wedding, and must decline.
If we need a couple grand for someone to take a month off and get Skullport up, we should use Kickstarter or the like to fund it as a separate project.
