I haven't ever seen this, but I've only been here for a year. Since my requests for NPC interaction were all denied in the past, even with several other players interested, I never recommend others to attempt it anymore and I have my characters turn away from such plans to pursue other means. I would prefer to take initiative with people who are currently playing with me. Trusting ANPCs to do what DMs are too busy to do just seems like it compounds the problem.
The only real solution is to recruit more DMs at the end of the day, as someone who runs a faction and has discussions on the regular with other people in a similar position it paints a stark picture. We get event semi-regularly and are able to interact on occasion with our respective faction NPCs. But I have also seen the exact opposite, and it is not just my view. Contacting a DM and getting a reply can be excruciating, especially if you don’t share peak time zone, your options from there to contact one is Generic Requests. To be denied is lucky to get no response at all is the norm. Realistically we have three solutions, more DM, systems that do not require 24/7 monitoring or more power to factions.
I agree. More DMs would be great to see, on account of how overwhelmed the current, very small team is. As someone who isn't part of a faction and just bounces between groups of players who drift & are not tied down, I just have no expectation of DM interaction with me unless I am invited and even then I know to be patient and wait as long as it takes for them to be ready. Like I said, I can do no more than treat the plot as a backdrop. It affects everything my character does, but so does every normal interaction with other characters.
AMPCs already fulfill this role (the rules say they do not need to focus so much on story as providing atmosphere), they even have the store and @voice for the horse head and "Keep going down this path" thing.
Players do fear the night, and honestly I'm not sure if I want to play on a server where to make people fear the night, we up the spawns. People actually hang around in the outskirts at night more when there's stuff to kill. Making those threats more dangerous won't change anything, there will always be players who are up for any challenge no matter how impossible it is. If anything, it will bring more people into the night, because stronger enemies means higher CR enemies, which means they feed more XP.
Oh, and the thing about "make sure no one ever harbours them without dire consequences" -- I've seen the effects of isolation, perceived and absolute, on RP here and on other servers. It is not something I would ever encourage. I think it lends little to the authenticity of the experience and walls off RP more than it creates new options. EDIT: It's always up to the player to forge their own path, confining them and making the mere act of branching out to new friends a very real risk might be thrilling for a brief stint, maybe not so much forever. And look at what you'd really be doing here. You're just affecting how other players' characters view this one and now everyone wants to know why it's got to be such a huge risk just to be around them. Disempowerment, isolation, etc. might be main themes here, but providing obstacles to RP that can manifest in no-RP PvP, even if the incidence of something like that is supposedly low, is a high consequence for what is likely an inconsequential existence, such as what most characters on this server would lead if the DM's presence is what makes them substantial, as truly, such a presence is rare.
At the end of the day this is just a different opinion, to me it's in the title “Ravenloft”. But I’ve never agreed with the people who say players should huddle in buildings at night; and to do otherwise is ignoring the settings intent. These characters aren’t NPCs they’re heroes, they have hero levels. When something goes bump in the night it's their job to say “let's go find out what that was gang” because though they might be scared they still by in large do the right thing, or the really wrong thing. Otherwise it isn’t so much Dungeons & Dragons, but Fear & Peasants.
And if you played the tabletop game, you will go out in the night. You’re still expected to right that wrong. It's between learning about the problem and the confrontation of that horror does the gothic come to life. And on the last part, all I can say is you dug your own grave by your own actions, don’t do things to upset them if you don’t want consequences. And in the poll by far the server wants consequences.
We don't disagree here. The only issue is that there's not really a lot out in the night once you get to a certain level. IMO, relying on PvP and corpse hiding for consequences is a really poor way of running a persistent story. Someone wins, someone loses, someone escapes a gank -- it all ends in the same thing. I see people take extended absences over this, often times the winners themselves, and I wonder just whose story benefits, who really won when everyone lost? So I would be illogical to say that more DMs running more events and giving people more to contend with than other players in what boils down to a PvP MMO experience is a bad thing.
On the last part -- it's not always your own actions that lead to consequences, and it's part of the setting that you can make all the right moves and still be "wrong" in the eyes of the powers that be. Hell, you can even do nothing but be in the wrong place at the wrong time and end up an enemy of the state, thus globally opting in to PvP which is, IMO, again, a huge cop-out, a waste of everyone's time, and a divisive force in a server that otherwise seems to want to unify and let the good times roll. But every time things start getting good, it seems to me like someone gets ganked, setting everyone else a week back, a month back, or more, trying to find them, trying to buy them back, and inevitably someone loses interest or takes a long break.
DMPCs and tuned-up plot NPC swarms are no less capable of wiping players out but it usually causes less grief because a DM is unlikely to corpse hide, much less in an invalid location, and there is zero chance of approaching them and asking, "Hey, is the corpse we're looking for hidden in a kosher way?" only to have to report it later because it was not, in fact, hidden in a kosher way. Back to NPCs and DMPCs, though, balance is very difficult and a DM might leave something extremely powerful with no indication of its particular strength in a corner somewhere. No fault of their own -- the game works on a meta like such. Yet still, sometimes a good challenge or a fun fight can be dreamt up by a DM without everyone walking away at half or less HP with no compensation for all the consumables they burned just to survive. I loved creating encounters of all varieties, some easy, some hard, some short, some long, some simple, some tactical, any combination of these traits and more when I used to admin. Part of adventuring is obstacles, and, indeed, consequences. But imposing them in certain ways and for certain reasons can do more harm than good, and stagnate a story more than it provides for it. As it is, it seems most DM encounters I happen across lead to grave consequences that span a long period of time after just a couple hours total of interaction (4-6 hours of DM time for every 500 hours of gameplay or so), and the light at the end of the tunnel is only what we make it. So if people want consequences, my honest opinion is go looking for them. Because they are there. As sturgeon says, and not to you specifically -- break out of the trench. Go harass the guards. Go kill random players and NPCs in emotionally charged moments. Take people away from hubs and involve them in morally questionable activities. Look for reasons to break the stagnancy. Do
all of this without a single scrap from a DM besides maybe a flavour item. See if, by the end of this, no one is feeling alienated, pushed around, or a prop in someone else's story with half a mind to eject themselves, as indeed the PvP rules invite them to become. And really look at it from all angles and consider the perspective of the one RPing the victim. It would be a milestone in my books, which, once again, have only been around for a year, so my experience differs from those who remember the glory days of DMs pushing the story forward every week or two. Would I like to see it? Yes. But I'm not banking on anything. I prefer to keep my character's ambitions grounded in what I can do without having to type up an application or ask a DM for help, and I know that might sound wrong, but that's what I've been told to do. Sternly so, at times.
AMPCs already fulfill this role...
As someone whose played an AMPC and is in the process of creating another, they cannot meet the server demands by numbers and or tools. The only thing that separates them from players is a template, the ability to spawn companion NPCs, and a menu to grab prop items. Between the level disparity of the AMPC and PC, you are almost always forced to segregate yourself against a large number of the server. There are a lot of hurdles you have to overcome, you are constantly chasing the one on one encounter.
(Other possible solution) Atmosphere Team; The Solution To A Growing Playerbase - https://www.nwnravenloft.com/forum/index.php?topic=52150.0
Between the AMPCs closure and creation of new one, there is a large window of time where there is one less piece of atmosphere in the persistent story.
Not incorrect in the slightest, AMPCs are few and far between even when there's 4 or 5 of them running amok and to the point where they fight even each other. I gave one a shot and liked it on NCE and I hope others enjoyed it too. The bar is very high by application alone. On some servers in other games, we used to have people apply to simply become the equivalent of an AMPC and all they would need to do from there is get approved by a DM (lock the character in the creation zone for example, like what should be happening with app subraces and whatnot). I think the infrastructure of the server would massively benefit if the DMs could solo-approve AMPCs from players flagged with that trust, so that nobody has to apply over and over and over again to make one. But being able to run an NPC and say something that NPC would never say (also without having the knowledge of the DM logs in their private forums where they let other DMs know how to react to certain characters etc.) could be immersion breaking and cause confusion. More full DMs, more junior/apprentice DMs, tech support DMs like Khornite said, and maybe even a couple more head DMs could remedy this.
I disagree with this sentiment, including the "now" part. Ever since I started playing here about one year ago, I've noticed DM plots are more like backdrops on account of being spaced out over a very long period of time.
And that’s fine, but when so much of the world is locked behind interactions between DMs and NPCs the world stagnates. Especially for any high lvl players, how many characters sit and stare into that fire desperate for any conflict that might get off that wagon.
You feel like you’re separate from the setting, alien. Not apart of a role-play server but on a dungeon-server with role-play light elements. Is it any wonder they come down to Vallaki and unbalance the zone/factions/AMPC interactions.
I've been told to expect the world to be stagnant and unresponsive, actually. To expect that my characters will likely one day die for their choices and be remembered only by other characters when I decide to close. This is not a server where monuments are built for people who tried to provide for others, despite there being more than enough space. On the off chance it does happen, it's the exception, not the rule, so again, I have come not to expect it, but accept the contrary. That those locked doors will always be locked. That the Vistani will not do their business with you, besides what they are scripted to do. That, in general, the setting will not take your hand when you reach out, but when you have a DM's attention, they will instead grab you and your character will quickly be on the line every moment thereafter.
I mostly agree with the second statement, a lot of people probably would. It is just so much less hassle to hang out, socialise with a lot of people, yes-man myself into dungeons if people want my help or seem bored/need an invitation, whereas waiting around for some kind of "big story" is something that happens entirely in the background. Again, I can do no more but base every encounter off the fact that these world-ending plots are occurring and my character is literally powerless until the moment comes, and might even be outmatched then. It does have an OOC effect. It has led me to continue creating characters who will do decently in the role I select in PvE as I care little for PvP and I do not feel like making a character who will be "good in DM events" (whatever that means) is conducive to a positive experience when I, realistically, have little chance to interact with them when acting of my own initiative & volition.
The dichotomy I'm trying to make is that if you're RPing with 5 players and 1 DM, or if you're RPing with 6 players, it's still 6 people in the end, and the interaction is no less valuable just because a DM didn't come in with a validation stamp.
And I agree, initially. However a lot of the interaction becomes samey and repetitive and so many concepts requires DMs or AMPCs, when you play a monster hunter you can only talk about monsters for so long before you need to seek one out, or a wizard and you talk about experiments and boundaries. Foreplay is all fine and good but if that’s all it is, you’re walking away with a lot of tension and no resolution.
It's not ideal, but it is what it is. I don't think there's meant to be resolution, some of these plots go on for years, claiming the lives of some characters and sealing the fates of others even before the end. I'm told every good story has an ending, but to me that would seem as incomprehensible gibberish when injected into a persistent world. Seeing characters who meant a lot to mine disappear forever when I'm not even online, seeing people brush my character off then disappear a week later while they would have undoubtedly survived with my character's help, listening to people talk about their perfect closure scenario like that's actually going to happen, makes me wonder sometimes if I am intruding on pre-arranged plotlines that people have laid long before I tried to get involved, and I feel like the resistance isn't worth it. I've even had people push me away because they were afraid I'd try and get involved in "their plot" in the past, without even having met my character, without me even knowing what the plot was, and without having any interest in getting wrapped up in something that seems to stress them out so much that they would stoop to this level. When people respond to my characters, who tend to be loudmouths that pose ideas they disagree with just for conversation's sake, or abusive fools that attack their allies to see where their loyalties really lie, I am excited at the prospect of making a new friend so I can help prop up their story. That keeps me coming back, not the other promises the server makes, not the dungeons, and certainly not the PvP "stories" which have more often than not proven to be an upset or a disruption from my point of view.
