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My condolences to you and your family.  I'm around if you need someone to chat with.  Take all the time you need.

Well there's a name I've not seen in a while.  Hello!  We never really RP'd much since you were usually DM-side, but figured I'd say 'Hi' anyway.

Also, wow, over two weeks late.  Goes to show how much I check the forums, hah.

We've had a lot of fun over the years Darvins, and it's a shame to see you go.  Wishing you the best!

Been a long time since I've had an event that was nine hours long, and I didn't even realize where the time went.  The Soiree was truly amazing, Rykka.  Thank you for all the hard work you put into it.

I enjoy these types of things and could be interested.  Been a long time since we had a DM who *wanted* to run these kinds of plots.

Jan 14, 2022 14:52:00 GMT -5 Philosophy said:

This is a conflation; mechanical competency and 'legendary status' are not the same thing. On servers where you reach max level quickly, you distinguish yourself strictly through your roleplay. Or, put another way, if the only thing a character has going for her is a personally favorable level discrepancy, the player has necessarily failed to make that character interesting.

On conventional RP servers, of which CD is an example, it seems that there's a subset of people who unfortunately rely on 'time spent logged in' and 'proximity to DM attention' as indications of roleplay merit. Not the case, never has been the case. More obvious on places where these things are flattened or otherwise irrelevant.

Correct, mechanical competency and 'legendary status' are not the same thing.  However, there are two points I would like to mention.

'Time spent logged in' and 'Proximity to DM attention' are major factors that drive a character's reputation regardless of whether or not they come with levels unless DM events aren't a major part of the server.  If you wanna build a legendary reputation you need to get involved in legendary things, and that means spending a lot of time logged in, meeting a lot of people, and getting involved in a lot of events.  Great roleplay helps, certainly, but if you're not around and not doing things you're not gonna get much of a reputation.  All that mechanical equality does is allow mechanics to damage those reputations (Elminster would lose a lot of his specialness if every other wizard could beat him up and take his lunch money) and diminish consequences for bad roleplay.

Let's talk about those consequences.  If leveling is quick and efficient and everyone caps at the same level, then there's not as much of a consequence for losing a character.  Not only does this diminish the dramatic impact of a veteran character dying (they are, mechanically, easily replaceable) but it changes the dynamic of the whole server's roleplay.  This gives a lot of power to disruptive evil factions and outright griefers because there's actually not much consequence to getting caught.  Lost your evil necromancer?  Eh, roll up another one, no big deal since you'll be max level again in two weeks.  I've seen this happen a lot, creating huge swings in a server's roleplay and granting a surprising amount of power to OOC cliques, since they can all agree to roll up a big group of related characters who become a powerhouse faction overnight.  Alternatively, it can encourage DMs to turn plots into meat grinders ('Why're you upset about losing a character, just roll another one') or create problems getting attached to characters because they might wind up being dead in three months (See also, Game of Thrones).  None of these things are exactly good for a server's long-term health.

Edit:  Ultimately, we have different experiences when it comes to this sort of thing and indeed it depends largely on the community.  I'm glad that you were able to find a community that could handle it.  I've been a part of some of them, too.  In my experience, though, all those communities had one thing in common - They were small.  I've not been in a community the size of CD that this has worked well in for the reasons I mentioned above, and even in the smaller ones they could cause problems.  Having fun with your paladin?  Well, half the community decided it would be fun to roll up drow this month, so now you have nobody to interact with and if you try to be too paladin around them they'll kick your butt!

One more thing to toss in here is that level is actually somewhat irrelevant when it comes to CD.  DM events scale to the average level and abilities of the characters in them (or at least the DMs try to make sure they do) which means that gaining levels doesn't win you any power in those events; as you get stronger so too do the foes. You get access to more dungeons and better gear, yeah, but honestly once you hit level 18 you can access all the mechanical content the server has to offer.  Level 15 is the 'biggest' level in terms of unlocking content and gear, and is probably the most interesting dungeon-wise.  Blowing past it just means you'll get bored faster.

Further, I've been on servers where you could rush to max level and when that was an option that's exactly what people would do - They wouldn't engage in any serious roleplay until they hit that maximum level, and at that point they had no way to distinguish themselves outside of their mechanical builds.  You wound up with a bunch of superpowered blank slates nobody had ever heard of who were effectively equal to the legendary heroes of the realm in mechanical combat because they were all the same level and you couldn't go any higher; there was nothing to distinguish those legendary heroes from a random character someone made a month ago as a joke.   As a roleplayer?  That sucks.  It's difficult to interact with a character who either doesn't have a story at all because they've never had the time to develop it or a character that's basically finished their story already and has no need or means to progress beyond the concept the player already had in their mind.  There was no need to grow and evolve the character's mindset and attitude, so they didn't, and the characters had no accomplishments to their name, but that didn't matter.  And people who did choose to take the slow path and not level up to the maximum right away?  They got left in the dust and most often ignored because everyone was expected to rush to the maximum.

I have one character who would be interested in joining and another that would be a perfect fit but might not join unless approached.

Zurtch the Foul (NE Human Druid/Wizard/Theurge) would be interested in joining to further his studies into the poxes, pestilences, and plagues of yore for the glory of Talona.

Lystra (CN Sun Elf Sorceress) might be willing to help out if approached.  A worshiper of Oghma (and Eldath, in a very twisted and probably heretical way) and a genuine sociopath who cannot innately comprehend morality, ethics, or empathy, she has a great interest in furthering the understanding of Enchantment and Transmutation magic.  This includes the taboo and off-limits aspects of it that require testing most Mystrans would consider unethical.  Practical and self-serving.

As discussed in the AMA, some classes need their skill selections looked at.  This could be a good central place to post them all!

I'll start.

Arcane Warrior could use access to Heal, Discipline, and Tumble to bring it up to parity with Eldritch Knight.

Oh, hello and welcome back!  Good to see another old-timer return!  Join us on the Discord where the madness happens.

To add a little bit of elaboration on the kinds of things the admins worry about in regards to #2, I used to play on another server too.  They restricted it so that past a certain point you could only gain one level per week.  Well, what wound up happening is that everyone would wait until the day the timer reset then play on that day.  This got to be more and more an established thing, and these days the server is basically only populated one day a week, the day when the timer resets, because that's the day people can gain their level for the week.  It went from being a small population server that mustered 7-8 people per night to basically dead, and while that wasn't the only factor it was a fairly significant one.

I can see a similar thing happening (though not to that extent) if this gets implemented.  The day that XP resets will have the highest population, but it will trail off as the week goes on.  The apparent popularity of the server will fluctuate depending on what day you happen to look at it.  Are you looking at it on reset day when 40+ people are on, or are you looking at it five days later when those numbers have dropped by 50% or more because everyone's capped?

The reasons have already been mentioned in the thread.  Let me expand on the three primary reasons a bit, since I was around for the last discussion too.

1)  It makes it harder for new characters, especially those of new players who don't know how the system works, to get out of the early levels.  This means powergamers and well-connected players like veterans will be able to race ahead of new players because they will have the knowledge and experience to fully take advantage of the system, moreso than they already do.  You think you're having problems keeping up with people now?  You ain't seen nothing yet.

2)  Every kind of persistent game needs a carrot to get people online and active, and there's nothing better for this than a daily perk.  Most major MMOs do something like this because they're aware of the 'death spiral' - If a game has a low player count, then people won't log in, and if people won't log in because there aren't many people online, then, well...  The daily XP ticks are how CD helps to subvert that.  Want to level up a bit quicker?  Well, better log in and be active for a bit every day.  Otherwise you have people who will only play one or two days a week and simply no-life it, whih drops player count, which means fewer people log in, which means fewer new players show up...  There's a reason it's called a death spiral.  This is a simple case where something that the majority of players support would actually be bad for the long-term viability of the server.

3)  The fairy isn't really supposed to be the primary source of XP on the server, quests and events are.  The fairy is meant to be a supplement to that.  This gives players a motivation to get involved in the stories being told and work with people they otherwise might not meet, encouraging socialization and making new friends (or enemies).  I've met a lot of interesting people because they happened to be in a quest group with me, and I've had characters grow and change in major ways because of quest events.  The XP is a big carrot to encourage people to share in this experience.

Now I am not a staff member, but just in this thread I've noticed that you're demonstrating argumentative conflict-seeking behavior.  You seem more interested in making accusations than in figuring out why you got the response you did and you're dragging a private dispute (several of them actually) out into public as well.  This doesn't speak well to your ability to handle a character that requires significant nuance in their roleplay and could potentially be at the heart of a whirlwind of IC and OOC conflict (including PvP and permadeath) should they get found out (depending on the race).

Basically, you need to show you can handle the character not just on an in-character level but also on an out-of-character level.  Your reaction to being denied seems to justify the decision to deny you, even knowing nothing else about what the staff might have considered.

A huge thanks to Blackheart  for his continued work on Mist'as personal quest.  I've seen things I've never seen done in NWN before, and after a little bit of a rough start each quest since then has consistently been high quality.  And props to Darkfangs for helping out along the way, elevating things to consistently top tier.  Much respect for you both.

The ones I like the most, as opposed to simply the ones I run the most...

3-5 - Ant Warehouse
6-10 - Hullack Goblin Bolthole
11-15 - Witchlords Keep/King's Forest Orcs (Tie)
16-18 - Wyvernspur Crypt
19-20 - Asbaron's Tower

21+ - Frost Giants

Honorable Mention:  Thunderstone Crypt