Ravenloft: Prisoners of the Mist
Suggestions, Feedback & Bug Reports (OOC) => Module Feedback and Suggestions => Topic started by: DM Macabre on June 19, 2008, 06:26:38 AM
-
Could there be a sign in game in the town of Vallaki - announcing all that are wanted? Perhaps updateable by DMs? Perhaps just a list of names, their crimes and a very brief description?
-
Could be really, really nice.
-
That be sweet.
-
If I recall, bulletin-board scripts tend to be a bit taxing, and in most cases, unnecessary when we have a forum to do it.
Having a simple 'spot' where those wanted posters are placed, however, would at least make RP interesting for all those blood thirsty bounty hunters to gather around and cackle.
-
If I recall, bulletin-board scripts tend to be a bit taxing, and in most cases, unnecessary when we have a forum to do it.
Having a simple 'spot' where those wanted posters are placed, however, would at least make RP interesting for all those blood thirsty bounty hunters to gather around and cackle.
Though some people on the server don't go on the forums much,so for example=
*Player one is wanted for murdering 3 guards*
*Player one does not go on the forums much*
*Player one walks into the city..And gets sent to jail*
Or you could do like Amia does,and put a poster somewhere in the city where people could write on it,so PC guards could just put the message on their themselves.
-
Though some people on the server don't go on the forums much,so for example=
*Player one is wanted for murdering 3 guards*
*Player one does not go on the forums much*
*Player one walks into the city..And gets sent to jail*
I think thats kind of a flawed example, if you kill 3 guards you've gotta expect that your wanted surely :P
An IC board could maybe work, Just a sign outside the city gates and inside the market bit that says somthing like:
WANTED!
Negnar- 10,000 (Murder, Assault, Resisting arrest)
Yves- 8,000 (Murder with witchery)
Bob- 300 (Fleeing from guards)
Have it so that only DM's can update it (and by that i'm figuring Soren with an update)
Thats the only way i can se it working
-
As DM's we could use an usable placeable and change the name of the sign to add those currently wanted. Spawn it at each reset.
Would need to be named:
WANTED: Negnar_Yves_Bob
Ideally would be a bulletin board but those are a mess ressource wise as I am told.
-
Renamed Placeables are nice, but why not just make a "town crier" NPC, with a conversation option?
~Rex
-
I think the nameable placeable would have less lag and annoyance than a town crier. I could see him getting murdered regualrly...
"Hear Ye Hear Ye, the Vile Negar is Wanted for...*GURK!*"
The Wanted placeable could have the name and the Bounty, it's not like we usually have more than 5 folks wanted at a time. Once caught, the placeable could be DM destroyed, no update needed.
The only hassle I see for DMs is replacing the wanted signs after each reset, I do believe DM placed placeables go away on reset.
-
I think the nameable placeable would have less lag and annoyance than a town crier. I could see him getting murdered regualrly...
"Hear Ye Hear Ye, the Vile Negar is Wanted for...*GURK!*"
The Wanted placeable could have the name and the Bounty, it's not like we usually have more than 5 folks wanted at a time. Once caught, the placeable could be DM destroyed, no update needed.
The only hassle I see for DMs is replacing the wanted signs after each reset, I do believe DM placed placeables go away on reset.
Just make the town crier, one of the typical POTM NPCS, Like Nym. Try and Gank him. Dare ya. Still though a DM placeable is a nice idea, and it doesn't take long to place or make one.
~Rex
-
I think the nameable placeable would have less lag and annoyance than a town crier. I could see him getting murdered regualrly...
"Hear Ye Hear Ye, the Vile Negar is Wanted for...*GURK!*"
The Wanted placeable could have the name and the Bounty, it's not like we usually have more than 5 folks wanted at a time. Once caught, the placeable could be DM destroyed, no update needed.
The only hassle I see for DMs is replacing the wanted signs after each reset, I do believe DM placed placeables go away on reset.
Just make the town crier, one of the typical POTM NPCS, Like Nym. Try and Gank him. Dare ya. Still though a DM placeable is a nice idea, and it doesn't take long to place or make one.
~Rex
heh, the secret of the town crier... he is a ninja, he knew you were going to throw that fireball at him even before you did :ninja:
-
Though some people on the server don't go on the forums much,so for example=
*Player one is wanted for murdering 3 guards*
*Player one does not go on the forums much*
*Player one walks into the city..And gets sent to jail*
I think thats kind of a flawed example, if you kill 3 guards you've gotta expect that your wanted surely :P
An IC board could maybe work, Just a sign outside the city gates and inside the market bit that says somthing like:
WANTED!
Negnar- 10,000 (Murder, Assault, Resisting arrest)
Yves- 8,000 (Murder with witchery)
Bob- 300 (Fleeing from guards)
Have it so that only DM's can update it (and by that i'm figuring Soren with an update)
Thats the only way i can se it working
While that may indeed be a flawed example, one that is not is:
PlayerOne is wanted.
PlayerOne gets unwanted.
PlayerTwo who is in charge of notices doesn't fix the notice.
PlayerOne gets killed repeatedly til PlayerTwo gets off their butt (which could be... who knows when).
I prefer forums personally. Concentrating responsibility on one or few people is always fail online.
-
Though some people on the server don't go on the forums much,so for example=
*Player one is wanted for murdering 3 guards*
*Player one does not go on the forums much*
*Player one walks into the city..And gets sent to jail*
I think thats kind of a flawed example, if you kill 3 guards you've gotta expect that your wanted surely :P
An IC board could maybe work, Just a sign outside the city gates and inside the market bit that says somthing like:
WANTED!
Negnar- 10,000 (Murder, Assault, Resisting arrest)
Yves- 8,000 (Murder with witchery)
Bob- 300 (Fleeing from guards)
Have it so that only DM's can update it (and by that i'm figuring Soren with an update)
Thats the only way i can se it working
While that may indeed be a flawed example, one that is not is:
PlayerOne is wanted.
PlayerOne gets unwanted.
PlayerTwo who is in charge of notices doesn't fix the notice.
PlayerOne gets killed repeatedly til PlayerTwo gets off their butt (which could be... who knows when).
I prefer forums personally. Concentrating responsibility on one or few people is always fail online.
Got the same problem with the Forums, or even In game announcements lately.
~Rex
-
That's why I thought a summed up sign in game, including just brief info would be a good addition.
-
I fully endorse this idea.
I would much rather it be not so much a board for PCs to write on, but one that the DMs can update with information. Even the town crier concept is an interesting idea, one that could add some color. Though it may tax the system more by having something that is constantly spamming I couldn't tell you since I don't know what resources such a script would eat up. A couple of boards around the outskirts and Vallaki Market would suffice, or even an NPC that players could merely interact with.
I strongly oppose a message board that PCs can write in. Since as mentioned prior both Amia and Arelith have such options and they end up being cluttered with trash and pointless drivel or flame wars. Ending up with 20% useful information and 80% crap.
-
"evles r stupit"
"NOE DYER NOET!!"
-
"evles r stupit"
"NOE DYER NOET!!"
exactly case in point *motions to the drivel drooling from Sedrik's lip*
-
nobody thought of a messenger? just one outside town that a dm can update?
or try the bulletin board from the nordock servers dms have the scribe in thier lair, they port him down add a name and voila done and players cant add textx just read.
-
*reads the bulliten, both ellana and atlantia, looking at each other briefly with out recognition and then continue their separate ways, shrugging*
(on a side note, i think the server bb in the market district use to function like that, but was turned off as sometimes bb's cause major lag issuses)
-
I think the placeable spawned sign with the name changed by a DM to reflect the Name of the person wanted and the reward would be the easiest sollution. The Signs could run along the walls of Valaki in the outskirts. When someone wanted was captured, or pardoned, the DM could destroy the sign.
Anything script writing to and drawing from a database tends to be a lag producer. That is why conversations tend to be choppy when interacting with NPCs. The Conversation is called from the hosting server and puts a strain on it... hence the lag. The more the server is doing the laggier the premade conversations are.
Now imagine how bad it would be if people were constantly reading and posting to a bulletin board while in game.
At least this is how I understand it works.
-
*jumps in late*
*signs the petition thread dealie thingie*
I'll affirm that renamed placeables are really the way to go. Years ago I knocked together a farcical module titled "Holy $#!t, RUUUUUNNNNN!!!"; the module only allowed Level 1 characters, and the gist of it was that the characters had to make it alllllll the way from Hinoki's Entrance Chamber, through the Hall of OMFG DRAGONS!!! and down into the Hall of Unlikely Legends, where the characters would receive 1,000,000 Experience, 1,000,000 Gold and a whole mess of magic items at the end, along with whatever goodies they managed to scoop up along the way and a chance to save their suddenly grotesquely overpowered characters for use in other modules.
(Random trivia: Hinoki was the pseudodragon from the Endless Quest book Dragon of Doom, and Shen--the black Dragon of Doom and one of the antagonists in the story along with the evil wizard Zed--was among the dragons attempting to thwart the players' flight to the Hall of Unlikely Legends. Also included among the cast were other noteworthy dragons such as Smog (The Hobbit), Singe (Dragon's Lair), Draco (Dragonheart), the Huge Red Dragon From Tower of Doom (Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom) and the unholy trinity of Yorgle, Grundle and Rhindle (Atari's world-famous Adventure). And Falkor (The Neverending Story) was the friendly white dragon who approached and greeted the very rare survivors in the Hall of Unlikely Legends; the first few conversational lines of player text included such appropriate repartee as "AHHHHHHHH!!!" and "EEEEEEEEEKKK!!!" and "NOOOOO, PLEASE don't eat me, Mister Dragon!" and "Before you explain the details of my pending horrific demise, can I have a moment to pray to the god of my choice?" as Falkor patiently explained the player's great accomplishment and repeatly denied charges that he ate people. :lol: )
The problem, of course, was that the Hall of OMFG DRAGONS!!! was a long, long labyrinth of a hall, and a whole bunch of dragons had been scattered throughout the maze. Each dragon was surrounded by oodles of treasures, and the closer you got to the center of the dragon's treasure pile, the better the treasures were; you might find a measly bag of 50 Gold a couple of cells from Singe and a Longsword +5 Holy Avenger right under his butt. Of course, the dragons were certain death to anyone who got too close, and those dragons had a huge aggro range. You couldn't fight them; they'd plow right over you. You couldn't sneak past them; they had Spot and Listen out the wazoo. If anyone actually did make it to the finish line (and out of all the times my friends and I used to run through Holy $#!t, RUUUUUNNNNN!!!, only two characters ever made it), it was through running like hell, running some more, running around walls or other big obstacles, avoiding all the Slow traps, skirting well around the dragons (which wasn't always possible, since some of the dragons lingered around doors and other chokepoints) and having certain players act as sacrificial lambs, luring the dragons away with ranged weapons and trying to stay alive as long as possible while the rest of the players ran past...not that it always worked, as the sacrificial lambs usually died quite swiftly and horribly, and the dragon would immediately turn around and wipe out the rest of the party with a well-placed breath weapon. But in a sick and perverse way we found entertainment in watching the dragons stomp us into the flagstones, and sometimes we competed to see which one of us could suffer the most brutal death possible. "You dumb lard-butt! I can't believe you went through the gate with the twin Slow traps. Ooh, damn! Yorgle critted you for 30 points on a bite? Lucky you!" :lol:
Getting to the point, among the treasures and surroundings I scattered a number of renamed objects which catered to the lighthearted yet fatalistic tone of the module. The Book of You Are So Very, Very Dead. The Staff of Miracles Such as You Still Being Alive. The sarcophagus renamed "Here Lies You...in about eight seconds". The skeleton renamed "Your Uncle Bob, who apparently never finished his trip to Nilbog". The sheet of paper named "Survey: What color of dragon would you rather be eaten by?" The other sheet of paper named "Fill in the Blanks: Last Will and Testament" (which, when examined, said "I, [your name], of soundly terrified mind and soon-to-be-mulched body, do leave my entire estate to the dragon Smog in the event that Smog should successfully eat me...which, at this point, seems very, very likely. __[your signature]__"). The door renamed "Which would you prefer? Cremation or burial?". The Deadly-spike-trapped door renamed "Touch Me and DIE!". And the list goes on.
And I'm pleased to assert that the renamed items didn't cause any lag at all.
However, the one time when we somehow got Grundle, Rhindle and Shen to converge in the same room as all four of us shouted stuff like "In the name of Monty Hall, CHARRRRRGE!" or "I REGRET NOTHING!" before charging them like berserk lemmings...that caused a little bit of lag. But it didn't last more than a few seconds. :twisted:
-
...what?
-
*jumps in late*
*signs the petition thread dealie thingie*
I'll affirm that renamed placeables are really the way to go. Years ago I knocked together a farcical module titled "Holy $#!t, RUUUUUNNNNN!!!"; the module only allowed Level 1 characters, and the gist of it was that the characters had to make it alllllll the way from Hinoki's Entrance Chamber, through the Hall of OMFG DRAGONS!!! and down into the Hall of Unlikely Legends, where the characters would receive 1,000,000 Experience, 1,000,000 Gold and a whole mess of magic items at the end, along with whatever goodies they managed to scoop up along the way and a chance to save their suddenly grotesquely overpowered characters for use in other modules.
(Random trivia: Hinoki was the pseudodragon from the Endless Quest book Dragon of Doom, and Shen--the black Dragon of Doom and one of the antagonists in the story along with the evil wizard Zed--was among the dragons attempting to thwart the players' flight to the Hall of Unlikely Legends. Also included among the cast were other noteworthy dragons such as Smog (The Hobbit), Singe (Dragon's Lair), Draco (Dragonheart), the Huge Red Dragon From Tower of Doom (Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom) and the unholy trinity of Yorgle, Grundle and Rhindle (Atari's world-famous Adventure). And Falkor (The Neverending Story) was the friendly white dragon who approached and greeted the very rare survivors in the Hall of Unlikely Legends; the first few conversational lines of player text included such appropriate repartee as "AHHHHHHHH!!!" and "EEEEEEEEEKKK!!!" and "NOOOOO, PLEASE don't eat me, Mister Dragon!" and "Before you explain the details of my pending horrific demise, can I have a moment to pray to the god of my choice?" as Falkor patiently explained the player's great accomplishment and repeatly denied charges that he ate people. :lol: )
The problem, of course, was that the Hall of OMFG DRAGONS!!! was a long, long labyrinth of a hall, and a whole bunch of dragons had been scattered throughout the maze. Each dragon was surrounded by oodles of treasures, and the closer you got to the center of the dragon's treasure pile, the better the treasures were; you might find a measly bag of 50 Gold a couple of cells from Singe and a Longsword +5 Holy Avenger right under his butt. Of course, the dragons were certain death to anyone who got too close, and those dragons had a huge aggro range. You couldn't fight them; they'd plow right over you. You couldn't sneak past them; they had Spot and Listen out the wazoo. If anyone actually did make it to the finish line (and out of all the times my friends and I used to run through Holy $#!t, RUUUUUNNNNN!!!, only two characters ever made it), it was through running like hell, running some more, running around walls or other big obstacles, avoiding all the Slow traps, skirting well around the dragons (which wasn't always possible, since some of the dragons lingered around doors and other chokepoints) and having certain players act as sacrificial lambs, luring the dragons away with ranged weapons and trying to stay alive as long as possible while the rest of the players ran past...not that it always worked, as the sacrificial lambs usually died quite swiftly and horribly, and the dragon would immediately turn around and wipe out the rest of the party with a well-placed breath weapon. But in a sick and perverse way we found entertainment in watching the dragons stomp us into the flagstones, and sometimes we competed to see which one of us could suffer the most brutal death possible. "You dumb lard-butt! I can't believe you went through the gate with the twin Slow traps. Ooh, damn! Yorgle critted you for 30 points on a bite? Lucky you!" :lol:
Getting to the point, among the treasures and surroundings I scattered a number of renamed objects which catered to the lighthearted yet fatalistic tone of the module. The Book of You Are So Very, Very Dead. The Staff of Miracles Such as You Still Being Alive. The sarcophagus renamed "Here Lies You...in about eight seconds". The skeleton renamed "Your Uncle Bob, who apparently never finished his trip to Nilbog". The sheet of paper named "Survey: What color of dragon would you rather be eaten by?" The other sheet of paper named "Fill in the Blanks: Last Will and Testament" (which, when examined, said "I, [your name], of soundly terrified mind and soon-to-be-mulched body, do leave my entire estate to the dragon Smog in the event that Smog should successfully eat me...which, at this point, seems very, very likely. __[your signature]__"). The door renamed "Which would you prefer? Cremation or burial?". The Deadly-spike-trapped door renamed "Touch Me and DIE!". And the list goes on.
And I'm pleased to assert that the renamed items didn't cause any lag at all.
However, the one time when we somehow got Grundle, Rhindle and Shen to converge in the same room as all four of us shouted stuff like "In the name of Monty Hall, CHARRRRRGE!" or "I REGRET NOTHING!" before charging them like berserk lemmings...that caused a little bit of lag. But it didn't last more than a few seconds. :twisted:
Epic.
-
...what?
The three dragons crucified all four of us in record time, that's what. :mrgreen:
Epic.
:onfire:
-
...what?
The three dragons crucified all four of us in record time, that's what. :mrgreen:
Hmm... No, I believe she means the anecdote you gave went off on a tangent to explain why placeables like those would be cool. Even I went: "um, what's this have to do with the IC wanted placeable?". I saw the argumentation in it, but you have to go through a lot to actually reach it. There's nothing wrong with it, but it at least made me go: Huh? :dubious:
-
Ah, that's the thing about black humor: to truly pull it off, there's usually about ten pounds of set-up to one pound of punchline. I just figured that if ten pounds is good, fifteen pounds is better. :mrgreen: