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I don't think the two are irreconcilable, although thats mostly because at least what I took from it wasn't that a lot of people wanted bigger plots in terms of being "super god destroying epicness!" type of things but rather wanted them to have large reaching consequences and effects, so it could just be something smaller like a mage messing with the weather around amia but with that actually having an actual effect more broadly. And maybe say another DM was doing stuff with the Aurilites but now they got pissed off because suddenly it stopped snowing completely on their mountains.

Bigger plots doesn't need to mean more epic, I at the very least would love to see reactivity and have even the less epic plots feel like they are effecting things rather than just being dropped in show pieces.

Nivo makes the point that if the event is set up in a certain way then the all-stars can sit it out in favour of other PCs. Generals (these days, at least) lead from the rear. If the event is not world-shaking, it can be handled 'on the ground' by people who aren't world-shakers. This will obviously require fine-tuning by DMs and some restraint by the all-stars themselves (I hate that term but I can't think of a better one - 'well-known PCs'?).

The only reason Xavi went out to talk to the Kohlingen army in the recent Cordor event rather than sending someone else is because a) they weren't actually attacking at the moment, b) she thought it was important for a senior Commonwealth official to talk to a senior Kohlingen commander, and c) things were moving way too fast. And, yeah, she was petrified and praying nobody would kill her.

If the term "All-Star" is going to be tossed around, it would help to define what a "all-star" is.

The "All-Stars" are the players who have been around forever,and are pretty much guaranteed to be in every DM event.

Xaviera wrote:

Nivo makes the point that if the event is set up in a certain way then the all-stars can sit it out in favour of other PCs. Generals (these days, at least) lead from the rear. If the event is not world-shaking, it can be handled 'on the ground' by people who aren't world-shakers. This will obviously require fine-tuning by DMs and some restraint by the all-stars themselves (I hate that term but I can't think of a better one - 'well-known PCs'?).

Yeah but I don't think its really fair to fully blame the "all stars" because the way I see it seems to be a term used for persistent characters in a persistent world, the reason why some people might go to them is because they don't have 6 alts splitting up their time and they devote more focus to the matter. I would rather have a handful of persistent characters helping me then a army of sporadically active alts.

Also the sporadically active alts might have made the "all stars" who they are today.... I know in the past letting other people try to help and such has been a total let down because they were a alt who lost focus, or devoted to time into it....you want something done you have to do it yourself, because people are useless.

My 2 year old character has only been in 5 DM plots, reason being? They are closed nit among the same people. Not every old character is in every DM plot, because plots used to be givin to a select faction, it is only recently that they have been more inclusive.

Some people want NWN the Sims, and some want NWN Diablo, problem is when it comes down down to RP, both types come into conflict because one person's RP will be in conflict with another persons RP (i see this all the time), and thus say that player needs to RP a certain way that will be compatible with them.

There are people who want the casual, social adventure and people who want the world shattering end of the world event, especially at level 30 (Elminster for example is level 32 in FR)

Sticking to a single character, and then killing off that character when you get bored with it (instead of making a army of Alts for each occasion) will go along ways in making things more steady and realistic.

I have seen many on "team evil" make a "team good" alt when they feel they are in danger, and then when the danger to team evil goes away, they go back to playing their evil character, instead of sticking to the evil character even when things get bad. This makes a revolving door or faction alts.

You can play a character that is seeking a simple life of a cordor merchant, and you can play a hero who wants to slay dragons and defeat demon lords. Both need to be catered to. I myself get bored sitting in cordor talking politics for long periods of time, and going to the beholder caves for a epic loot run also gets boring because it is predictible. This is where large scale DM plots are needed, i want my character to have a challenge at level 30, but i also want the event to have a meaningful impact.

The Cordor plots are actually a good way to do a large scale plot. It has social politics for those who want, but it also had actual PvM high level conflict such as with the Blood monsters for those who want a new monster to battle.

Liz wrote:

Do you think that's especially likely though, Yoss? I mean... Amia is fairly sanguine, as online communities go, but this still is the internet. It's kind of one of the primal online truths that it's hard to think of people as people, when all they are to you is a cutesy pseudonym and a 100x100 jpeg. (Totally incidental... this is why I use my real name as my forum name: I hope it humanizes me.)

I don't like to think of myself as a cynic, but my main character is a diviner and a politician who tries to participate in the important issues of the world. So far in this thread, I've been told that diviners, politics, and server plots are all Big Bad. It's a little disheartening.

It is disheartening to an extent, and no amount of honeyed words, deliberate guilting and shaming, subtle coercion or outright violence could successfully compel a community compromise (believe me, I tried many methods; some were successful, but only for a period of time until people gave in to their baser natures.)

But honestly, Liz, don't be too disheartened. I think we all look at these matters with a bit too much doom and gloom and blind ourselves to what we do have going for us. And everything here is just an opinion and it is up the DMs to figure out how to balance it all...

...and yet, the team will be unsuccesful every time if the playerbase refuses to be satisfied.

Sorry I do not have a satisfactory solution, Liz. I wish I did. And any response I have on these matters are likely to be general moreso than specific, because "in general" I see things that are needed, but how we "specifically" get to them depends upon the individuals involved.

I like to think that just having some players with good leadership skills representing this need we have to compromise would be helpful. But maybe those people burn out too easily. Or just a constant and dogmatic repetition of our need to compromise until it transforms from idea into material fact and becomes a server mantra that everyone is repeating everywhere.

Kind of like Good vs. Evil.
Or "x will improve roleplay opportunities", for a while there.
Or Amian Allstars.

Re: the Alts.

I will always maintain that you should have -some- alts. Not necessarily for RP, though. I love having a mindless powerbuilt bastard char that has RP, yes, but isn't involved in -crap-. She's just here to bust heads and take names and get phat lootz. She's my "unwind" char. When I'm tired of RP and political intrigue.

P Three wrote:

Re: the Alts.

I will always maintain that you should have -some- alts. Not necessarily for RP, though. I love having a mindless powerbuilt bastard char that has RP, yes, but isn't involved in -crap-. She's just here to bust heads and take names and get phat lootz. She's my "unwind" char. When I'm tired of RP and political intrigue.

This is why I have some of the alts I do, haha. I tend to build just to build and therefore make characters that I can just have fun with and explore builds. Like my undead summoner wizzy, or my druid/shifter (I say druid/shifter rather than just shifter because she follows the druidic path still, ie no undead forms and such), or my druid, or my spellsword (which became a main XD).

I still make RP backgrounds and properly roleplay even a 'powerbuild', but it's nice to have non-mains to screw around on. Leveling is fun when I actually want to do it, haha.

All this all-star crap is annoying. Since when is it bad to dedicate yourself to one character? Whether they turn up to events often or not is irrelevant, no one should be harassed for focusing on one character just as much as someone who has many alts.

My opinion that's a server identity issue is the subconscious elitism evident in regards to OOC character management.

No one said it's bad.

We're saying if your char is inevitably the one that saves the day, making it pointless for 99% of the other people in the plot to even bother, you're making it hard for any of us to feel like our chars matter, or are important to the server in any way. You can play one char all the time and not need to be the absolute center of attention.

And on the flip side, you can't play lots of characters and expect them all to be as well.

I'm an alt user and I am never surprised that a developed character gets unique opportunities, however it's annoying when you want to develop your newer characters when they have the say all and be all. On the flip side, I'm sure they get tired of letting new characters get the limelight and disappear when the player gets another new character

As I posted earlier, I think story arcs are there to keep things "fresh" and that bigger ones should be about providing characters "opportunities."

I'm not a "huge" fan of big end of the world story arcs that involve the server like the Arcanum because its such a pain in the ass to stay involved in with and its pretty much guaranteed that a bunch of other possibly more qualified characters will be on the job to solve it anyway so why bother? There's no personal stake for my characters, no real opportunity. That is NOT a jab at the Allstars by the way since any dedicated good guy could do it, I love the Allstars (not just because they become a fantastic target for my evil PCs to try and best) because they fill a good niche. Besides, saving the world is the good guys' job.

I think medium scoped events, regional events, whatever, is the stuff we should have more of. Far easier for certain characters to be invested in if they appeal to them directly.
Bigger plots I think should be more rarer because rarity makes them sweeter. I'm more thinking of the Brogdenstein event which was a rather awesome example of a good portion of the server putting in to stop a common enemy.

In my own inflated opinion the best kind of huge long long term server encompassing story arc we can have is one that is an "enemy other" wrapped in enough mystery that we don't what the real stakes are until the very end. How should it be carried out over such a long term? Misdirection, putting forth proxy threats and enlisting the evil PCs to do heinous things for mutual profit.
Every individual struggle they put forward is a smaller part of a grand master plan or bigger struggle. You don't know what their goals are or how to act against it, but you get a really bad feeling about it. It doesn't even have to be world ending, it could be just something that could alter the balance of power on Amia. Its success and failure can be determined by how each of their proxy struggles went.
But every individual part of this story arc should be rewarding on its own to those involved and that the final pay off is something everyone feels.

Maybe the Arcanum was originally doing something like this; but their influence became overt, their world-threatening plans exposed, making zero friends with anyone and then painting a huge bull's eye on themselves so nobody really shed a tear when the Treaty of Light dogpiled on them. The aftermath is looking fun though.

Remal wrote:

GOOD VS. EVIL - I am personally uninterested in this type of conflict, especially PC generated. So far I've witnessed two large events that ended with as total clusterfu*ks, leaving many folks in sour mood and many leaving the server. It's good in moderation but any type of large scale conflict like this won't work, and definitely shouldn't be overarching theme of the server. There's many other possible conflict types who are completely left on the margins, which should be explored or sparked again.

I replied to that on this other topic because I'll just clutter stuff up and serbiris will try in vain to punch me, so its for his sake really.

P Three wrote:

The "All-Stars" are the players who have been around forever,and are pretty much guaranteed to be in every DM event.

Being around forever doesn't mean you're guaranteed to be included in a DM event though. When you go without having a DM present for long enough you stop appreciating what a DM can do, I'm sorry to say. Character-driven stories become more important, even if they're not important to others in some grand scheme of things.

What the all-stars do with their stories is really nothing for someone like me to be concerned about. I don't have the time in the day to read the PC Stories section of the forum or chase down someone who knows something. I'd rather have an inconsequential exchange with someone who just happens to be around regularly than put a lot of effort into something that is as hit-and-miss as online dating.

If you want to talk about the server's identity, I'm going to go to the fundamentals. Things like the rules and setting, for example.

For one, the setting, Amia Island, is by in large, a nearly fully settled island. There's danger on the roads, yes. However the island has a multitude of settlements, so there's safe havens for people not far for a lot of people. There are several large cities as well. This already creates a contrast from a world that say, has one outpost and one desert settlement as all it has as far as settlements in the world goes. So a lot of the wilds have already been tamed by civilization.

Next, you have our character and subrace rules. Characters are allowed to be the exception to the norm of their race with a more relaxed stance. Now, playing characters truer to their heritage is generally /encouraged/, but we choose to trust our players with the ability to make well thought out exceptions. Further, a lot of cities are more relaxed in their view on 'monster' characters, so it allows mingling beyond combat and PvP. You're allowed to play good, Bahamuti kobolds, Eilistraeean drow, evil Aasimar, evil Sun Elves, etc, and are allowed to lounge around in certain settlements, but again, not to an absolute extent. So, I would say that more loose restrictions are part of our server identity as well, as well as keeping enough constraints to keep things sensible within the setting. (No half vampire-celestial-spacealiens, etc).

Next, I'll go to the PvP rules. Ultimately, we're not a server which allows PCs to forcibly permakill other PCs. So, this means that: We encourage long-standing PCs that don't get bumped off randomly. It means we encourage longer rivalries, encourage risktaking without having to force people to roll up new characters every other day, and characters that can last and affect the world as they would like.

Now, what I have above, I won't describe as good or bad, merely what is. Though I will say it's a design I personally like.

There's then how us DMs interact with the world.

In truth, I'm finding it more and more common for players to nest themselves in settlements and try to either exert control or be a part of a larger whole. Cordor, Kohlingen, and Tarkuul are good examples, though there are plenty of other examples out there, with the Triumvir, Ostland, even Wharftown. In some ways, I find that the high politics RP takes precedence over the random adventure that players. This takes a lot of DM attention because DMs are more needed for this.

This type of RP requires DMs be an active part of the living gameworld, simply because we don't have players for the 25000 civilians that make up one of these cities.

Indeed, I find that adventure trips are often called hunting or training or the like, simply because it seems like a grinding monotony. Indeed, there really isn't anything that can be done for that, unless the developers continually made new areas, because eventually everyone will have gone through a dungeon at least once and then it's the same old grind, unless a DM spices some stuff up. Which indeed, often does make a good adventure! But just from mechanics, it's hard to keep the dungeons entertaining forever. Gibbering Maw, for example, brilliant as it is, won't have the same appeal the second or tenth time as the first. It requires DMs to keep things fresh.

Now, us DMs can provide both at our discretion, but I find that more and more of the focus of the server these days is on the vicious politics of the major cities rather than just going out on an adventure and the random FUN that happens with that.

A bit late to the party I supposed, but peeking in on this thread every now and again, this was on my mind.

A few recent events have begun to delve into this, but honestly, I feel like the Law vs Chaos dynamic is highly overlooked as a source of RP. It's just as intriguing and rewarding as the tired-ass tried-and-true Good vs Evil one.

I agree with the above post, and I bet this is going to be a big thing in Cordor over the next few weeks.

Kepaaalix wrote:

NinjaClarinet wrote:

More of an anecdote, but the servers I enjoyed most had the balance of power shifted the other way. Typically Evil was Top Dog. Nearly every city had corruption in the government, the evil churches had grand temples and bastions of darkness. DMs had various evil Big Bads with PC Lieutenants (Or Dragons, for you Tropers) that were rewarded with gear, money, and techniques for their successful evil missions, or horrible punishments for failure (Obviously, the flavor and severity of the rewards and punishments varied with the type of evil you were dealing with.) The heroes were usually seiged on every front, but damn, their heroics were freaking spectacular. With so many incentives for evil, the heroes that stuck to the path of righteousness really earned a reputation for being badasses. It tended to be closer to a storybook, with a few die-hard Citadels of Light standing against a dark world. It was very rewarding for the heroes and villains alike, with the confrontations containing real emotion and real rivalries between these heroes and baddies that have been working against each other for a very long time in very personal matters. To me, Amia feels like the story has already reached the "Happily ever after" stage and the heroes have gotten bored, fat and lazy and only put in enough effort to keep the evil down when it gets its shit together every few months.

The ironic bit is that back then, I led a faction of goodie Templar. I usually play for the underdogs. I don't see Amia ever being so drastic, but I don't remember any Forgotten Realms novel that played out like how Amia functions. The story seems broken and upside down. I don't know how to fix it personally from the player's chair, but it's something to think about.

Bumping this particular post up, because I think it went too unnoticed.

Such a shift would make Amia immensely more interesting, though this may be more suited for the identity thread. Of course, this couldn't happen overnight, but in the long run it'd make this place more exciting for everybody.

This. Most adventures/stories/movies take place in a realm where evil has the upperhand, and good has to save the day, not 'Oh it's that time of year again, time to weed out evil' ..every four months or so..

More evil!

Alkor wrote:

Kepaaalix wrote:

NinjaClarinet wrote:

More of an anecdote, but the servers I enjoyed most had the balance of power shifted the other way. Typically Evil was Top Dog. Nearly every city had corruption in the government, the evil churches had grand temples and bastions of darkness. DMs had various evil Big Bads with PC Lieutenants (Or Dragons, for you Tropers) that were rewarded with gear, money, and techniques for their successful evil missions, or horrible punishments for failure (Obviously, the flavor and severity of the rewards and punishments varied with the type of evil you were dealing with.) The heroes were usually seiged on every front, but damn, their heroics were freaking spectacular. With so many incentives for evil, the heroes that stuck to the path of righteousness really earned a reputation for being badasses. It tended to be closer to a storybook, with a few die-hard Citadels of Light standing against a dark world. It was very rewarding for the heroes and villains alike, with the confrontations containing real emotion and real rivalries between these heroes and baddies that have been working against each other for a very long time in very personal matters. To me, Amia feels like the story has already reached the "Happily ever after" stage and the heroes have gotten bored, fat and lazy and only put in enough effort to keep the evil down when it gets its shit together every few months.

The ironic bit is that back then, I led a faction of goodie Templar. I usually play for the underdogs. I don't see Amia ever being so drastic, but I don't remember any Forgotten Realms novel that played out like how Amia functions. The story seems broken and upside down. I don't know how to fix it personally from the player's chair, but it's something to think about.

Bumping this particular post up, because I think it went too unnoticed.

Such a shift would make Amia immensely more interesting, though this may be more suited for the identity thread. Of course, this couldn't happen overnight, but in the long run it'd make this place more exciting for everybody.

This. Most adventures/stories/movies take place in a realm where evil has the upperhand, and good has to save the day, not 'Oh it's that time of year again, time to weed out evil' ..every four months or so..

And what would stop people from simply switching places with what you claim is 'good' now with a group of 'evil' characters? The only thing that would change would be one letter on character sheets G->E

Also, the majority of player characters is non-evil and that likely counts for a lot as well. There are a few people advocating a turn around but I can guarantee you if that happens a lot of others wont be happy in turn.
And that would validate Yoss post as I think he is right.

You simply cant please everyone on a large server as Amia.

Quote:

You simply cant please everyone on a large server as Amia.

I was gonna change this to 'anyone,' but that wouldn't be true.

People cry foul over the smallest things that irritate them. But as I don't want to drag a discussion about being evil back, I'll leave it at that.

I think Amia needs an Ankh-morpork. Or at least an area which is just too anarchic (at least lore wise) to ever really have any one side come to the fore and pacify everyone. Where the realities of just living there means that goodly adventurers can't fire their money cannons at everything and suddenly have it be happy bunny land, and where people are just too staunch or hard nosed to ever be truly pushed around by a villain.

We've gotten to the point where any real villains are just sort of the threat of the week for the paladins to wipe off their massive hammers, but I want to see the case where they're fighting off that villain of the week for the sake of people who are just kinda jerks. You can still have your massive crusading armies, but they're made of flawed people who are out for glory or promotion and make mistakes. You can still have your evil enclaves of doom, but they're full of... Well, what the evil enclaves of doom have to deal with now, the same jerks that good people should be dealing with. The ones who should be taking their protection for granted, or seeing them as an opportunity to exploit, or a pickpocket mark. Not necessarily because it'd keep things balanced, but because it's actually pretty realistic.

Really, I think what we need is for problems to stop being solved, and instead to just lead to more problems.

Murkoph wrote:

I think Amia needs an Ankh-morpork. Or at least an area which is just too anarchic (at least lore wise) to ever really have any one side come to the fore and pacify everyone. Where the realities of just living there means that goodly adventurers can't fire their money cannons at everything and suddenly have it be happy bunny land, and where people are just too staunch or hard nosed to ever be truly pushed around by a villain.

We've gotten to the point where any real villains are just sort of the threat of the week for the paladins to wipe off their massive hammers, but I want to see the case where they're fighting off that villain of the week for the sake of people who are just kinda jerks. You can still have your massive crusading armies, but they're made of flawed people who are out for glory or promotion and make mistakes. You can still have your evil enclaves of doom, but they're full of... Well, what the evil enclaves of doom have to deal with now, the same jerks that good people should be dealing with. The ones who should be taking their protection for granted, or seeing them as an opportunity to exploit, or a pickpocket mark. Not necessarily because it'd keep things balanced, but because it's actually pretty realistic.

Really, I think what we need is for problems to stop being solved, and instead to just lead to more problems.

WE CALL IT SIGIL HERE. :p

Murkoph wrote:

You wrote some stuff

Unless things have drastically changed, you can find all this and more on the Abroad server. That is where I intend to play. Abroad is the frontier and Island is the highly developed metropolis with it's carefully sculpted thingies.

What I would like to see is a decrease in hunting zones on Island or at least a reduction in average monster xp and level to around 15. From a anthro standpoint it makes more sense for the creatures on Island to be weaker as their strongest are repeatedly killed which weakens the gene pool. This is inherently more logical as small weak monsters pose a negligible threat to the Island cities whereas, for example, a lair of Illithids and Beholders should really have Kohlingen in a constant state of war and eradication.

The Monsters that are 16+ or higher are then located on Abroad, which is essentially vast untamed wilderness with small constantly besieged outposts, where life is a daily struggle and alignment doesn't mean so much because there are bigger bads just outside the gate. Even the lower level monsters could be made tougher, or at least nastier.

It would also make for a more user friendly server, with Island being the initial kick off point, heavily infested with quests to enable new characters to articulate and transition into the server.

This is just my two cents.

MoshingChris wrote:

This is just my two cents.

Add my $0.02 to this as well, it sounds awesome. Is four cents enough to get it done?

Don't really know Liz, it would be a massive undertaking requiring many DM resources to get the juices flowing, and it seems most of the DM's are tied up in various Amia of Thrones plots. Not a bad thing either.

It's not really a new idea, it's just a different approach on the idea of having localized monopolies on resources. If you view Island as having the monopoly on early level hunting and concentric, concurrent and repeatable quests within a initial rebuilding phase, solely because it's the natural starting point for people new to the server and for most new characters, and Abroad as being the harder, harsher and tougher server, intended for veteran characters or veteran players. Yes you are then admitting that a division exists, but that the division is there for a positive reason, rather than what we have now which, although cyclical, is generally viewed in a negative light. (Boss-Mia, The Rejectory, The server to safely knock up a-Broad)

Liz wrote:

MoshingChris wrote:

This is just my two cents.

Add my $0.02 to this as well, it sounds awesome. Is four cents enough to get it done?

I'd like $0.02 withdrawn from my account as well.

MoshingChris wrote:

The Monsters that are 16+ or higher are then located on Abroad, which is essentially vast untamed wilderness with small constantly besieged outposts, where life is a daily struggle and alignment doesn't mean so much because there are bigger bads just outside the gate. Even the lower level monsters could be made tougher, or at least nastier.

That's more or less how Caraigh at night it, it goes from a level 1-5 zone in the day it seems to more like 5+ at night with the 100+ HP zombies in large numbers, IC its a battle to hold on against them because it was a small town with limited people,defenders and defences, then top it all off with IC the dislike of magic meaning no NPCs who can do anything fancy like spam fireballs at the hordes of undead and take them out in 2 rounds from 30 feet away.

Also what makes it a bit more fun because as a PC you do play a more key roll, in a large city with armies if one PC is away it would/should not matter much.... but in a small town that one PC does matter.

corypx wrote:

That's more or less how Caraigh at night it, it goes from a level 1-5 zone in the day it seems to more like 5+ at night with the 100+ HP zombies in large numbers, IC its a battle to hold on against them because it was a small town with limited people,defenders and defences, then top it all off with IC the dislike of magic meaning no NPCs who can do anything fancy like spam fireballs at the hordes of undead and take them out in 2 rounds from 30 feet away.

Also what makes it a bit more fun because as a PC you do play a more key roll, in a large city with armies if one PC is away it would/should not matter much.... but in a small town that one PC does matter.

Caraigh is a prime example of extremely good total design, enough quests to make you feel like you want to be there, more opportunities for, well, opportunistic players and a very good history due to DM events, extremely well designed spawn packs. Yes some things have changed, but the fundamental principle of feeling like you are on the frontier remains.

A Question of Identity

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