New mist travel system

[Aahz]

Interesting idea, great for traveling with a party... extremely annoying when traveling alone.  As someone who tries to play according to setting by staying inside all night, every night, I find that 12 minutes to go from Port-a-Lucine to Barovia somewhat excessive.  Could the time be shorter? Something like a 1 minute wait before the caravan leaves (instead of three) and a two minute transit time (again instead of three)?

[Telkar]

Hehe...I haven't used it while being alone, and can understand it can be annoying (lonely) like that. But with the company I had it was nice, creating a funny "dentist waiting room" feeling.

[Kendric98]

12 min [drools] I wouldnt complain about that sounds awsome. Besides if you ever played EQ and rode the boats you would know true pain.

[jugnaut]

How does it work?  He took my 100 fangs and didn't transport me?  What do i have to do to get to the mist camp?

[Aahz]

12 min [drools] I wouldnt complain about that sounds awsome. Besides if you ever played EQ and rode the boats you would know true pain.

Yes, I love it when a game forces me to not play.... 

Anyway, you have to get inside the caravan next to the captain before your 3 minutes is up.

[DM Tarokka]

The transition sometimes is covered by npcs like dogs or chickens. I lost 100 coins too the first time  I tried.

[Soren / Zarathustra217]

Interesting idea, great for traveling with a party... extremely annoying when traveling alone.  As someone who tries to play according to setting by staying inside all night, every night, I find that 12 minutes to go from Port-a-Lucine to Barovia somewhat excessive.  Could the time be shorter? Something like a 1 minute wait before the caravan leaves (instead of three) and a two minute transit time (again instead of three)?

Well, you hit the nail on the head with a dilemma here. Between great for travelling with a party and annoying when travelling alone, I prefer the former having some priority. The values are not set in stone however, but I'd like to hear a more general opinion when it's been running like this for a bit.

The transition sometimes is covered by npcs like dogs or chickens. I lost 100 coins too the first time  I tried.

Hmm, I'lll look at that.

[DM Tarokka]

With covered I meant not properly visibile, once one knows where the spot is there should be no issue.

[Aahz]

Limited play time + trying to get to friends in other domains + wasted time waiting alone before you can even really start to head toward them....

The math is not all that difficult.

[LadyDragn]

Gave it a shot myself, and honestly the wait time is a bit long especially when travelling alone. I found myself rather than roleplaying by myself, or staring at the inside of the carriage, windowing out because it was less than enjoyable for me.

I mean, we're talking 3 minutes just for the caravan to leave and then 12 minutes travel time? That's 30 minutes round trip and like Aahz said not everyone has the entire day to play so that 30 minutes really cuts into being able to arrive at the destination and enjoy the roleplay there.

Just my thoughts... cut down the time to 5 minutes total once the trip is paid for. That allows for some decent roleplay while players wait for the departure, but not too much time between point A to point B.

[Soren / Zarathustra217]

Gave it a shot myself, and honestly the wait time is a bit long especially when travelling alone. I found myself rather than roleplaying by myself, or staring at the inside of the carriage, windowing out because it was less than enjoyable for me.

I mean, we're talking 3 minutes just for the caravan to leave and then 12 minutes travel time? That's 30 minutes round trip and like Aahz said not everyone has the entire day to play so that 30 minutes really cuts into being able to arrive at the destination and enjoy the roleplay there.

Just my thoughts... cut down the time to 5 minutes total once the trip is paid for. That allows for some decent roleplay while players wait for the departure, but not too much time between point A to point B.

Travel time is three minutes, waiting time is three minutes, making it six minutes total. But if you have to go from VoB to say Dementlieu, you have to travel two times (first to the mist camp, then to Dementlieu), making it a total of twelve minutes, which is what Aahz referred to, I believe.

[LadyDragn]

Oh. Well, that's not so bad.... I suppose with it being 1am in the morning I was just tired and it "felt" longer.. LOL, I mean, that's a good amount of Roleplay time when in a group, cause I know for me it's a pain when travelling to get my companions to roleplay. Its a looong quiet walk to destination. Heh.

But when going alone, say to meet someone in one of the other domains, yeah its a bit long of a wait and kind dull with nothing really happening just to get to the destination where the RP is at.

[Zedrik]

I already hate running from Vallaki to the Tser pool just to get to Dementlieu. If I have to sit and wait for that crap... My time in Dementlieu is going to be shortened from almost never to pretty much never.

Oh well. :/

When I have people with me to RP with, we RP and probably last a lot longer than these minutes. But when I'm alone and trying to GET TO SOME RP, more waiting time is NOT WHAT'S NEEDED.

[Kaspar]

I like the changes. I can see the possible draw backs, but at least people aren't zipping from Barovia to Dementlieu in the span of twenty seconds anymore. It's a /little/ bit more realistic now.

[herkles]

I am curious if this will make even less people wish to go to Dementilieu. It isn't going to effect me as I will still go there. but not sure for others.

[Dhark]

I hope it would make PCs less willing to travel back from the Port & so slowly increse the population there.

The lack of RP in the Port is a problem, but I dont know if this will solve it, saying that I dont know what to suggest.  Limiting mist travel to once a week ? Thereby trapping people there?

I just hope that the new player hub is implimented fairly soon & we can all see the logic in the various changes.

Spoiler: show

Also the new placement for the even deadlier Deamonologist temple

[EO]

Spoiler: show

Also the new placement for the even deadlier Deamonologist temple

I just sent in that update, so expect it in the coming days hopefully.

[Ryltar/ Robert Archer]

Spoiler: show

Also the new placement for the even deadlier Deamonologist temple

I just sent in that update, so expect it in the coming days hopefully.

O.o deadlier?! hells a level 15+ party of six people properly setup still has a hard time that i've been there.

[EO]

Yeah, it'll be bigger and tougher than the current version. A real high end dungeon.

[Kendric98]

Sweet i hope it was acomplished without lame time stop!

[Thoraion]

I hope it would make PCs less willing to travel back from the Port & so slowly increse the population there.

The lack of RP in the Port is a problem, but I dont know if this will solve it, saying that I dont know what to suggest.  Limiting mist travel to once a week ? Thereby trapping people there?

I can only guess what you are talking about there... there has been an intended delay placed in the mist travels?
Whatever you may have intended with that, you'll get two primary effects from that:
- even less player population in Dementlieu.
- more player characters standing around n the mist camp with AFK players.

Well, if you had encouraging RP in mind with that, you have just achieved the exact opposite.

[bloodandsoil]

How about a delay for all mist travels to barovia, but no delays for mist travels to Port?  This would help to provide incentive to travel to Port and also to stay there.

[Soren / Zarathustra217]

I hope it would make PCs less willing to travel back from the Port & so slowly increse the population there.

The lack of RP in the Port is a problem, but I dont know if this will solve it, saying that I dont know what to suggest.  Limiting mist travel to once a week ? Thereby trapping people there?

I can only guess what you are talking about there... there has been an intended delay placed in the mist travels?
Whatever you may have intended with that, you'll get two primary effects from that:
- even less player population in Dementlieu.
- more player characters standing around n the mist camp with AFK players.

Well, if you had encouraging RP in mind with that, you have just achieved the exact opposite.

Blimey, why did we ever try to experiment with stuff when you know the facts all along?

We discussed the system last night and decided that we are going to implement a feature that allows people to instantly set the caravan in motion from inside the wagon, so they don't have to wait the three minutes to take off. That'll reduce the forced travelling time to 3 minutes only.

At later, we might make the time depend on where you travel, and we are also hoping to add the possibility of random encounters when travelling through the mists.

[Major Tom]

Personally, me and Brian's player, Varyell, love the new travel system. So much so that it reminded me of one of Worm's tilesets that featured scrolling windows. Even made a test/demo mod of it using the Ravenloft haks to see if there was any conflict, then sent it to one of the DMs as a suggestion for even further immersion. Who cares if it takes a while; that's what roleplaying is for in the first place. For the whole duration of our caravan rides to and fro, we did stuff like talk about the gloomy atmosphere of the caravan, to the lack of windows, speculating as to whether it was the Vistani's way to make sure the path through the mists remained their own secret, and then simply use the caravan ride to take a load off and relax after our little misadventures and reflect. We also chatted about it OOC'ly over Ventrilo, how there was potential for ambush scripts, with something leaping out of the mists at the caravan if they were going through perilous lands.

[puckwolf]

we are also hoping to add the possibility of random encounters when travelling through the mists.

I really like this idea