Interview Feargus chats with HomeLan

[StraitLacedDeviant]

Can I get a side order of r00fles with that?

 

[Human Shield]

Playing only with a good DM and the player-made item dice bag can be great. I was only able to play one such game, we were able to roll for listen to find people in woods, rolled strength stat to brace doors etc... The DM took control over any NPC to react to whatever we said, no dialog trees. No other online product has such a graphical DM multiplayer mode. The real-time combat still sucks but haven't seen another online program that was better (the other online DM things looked lame, has anyone tried one).

But getting in a good DM game is hard and gets harder the longer the community is around with all the expansions and hak files you have to download. And now most DM games are session games with set group and any new ones starting are all invite only. And all PW server follow the same monster treadmill as other MMORPGs.

 

[Astromarine]

Exactly. NWN must be absolute heaven for the small hundreds of people that managed to secure a place in the good game groups, from neverwinterconnections or some such place. The possibility of getting in one of those was what made me buy the expansions. I didn't though, so sucks to be me I guess.

 

[RGE]

I didn't have any trouble filling my schedule with more sessions than I could safely handle. Eventually I got tired of having to show up all the time though, and as campaigns ended, I didn't bother looking for new ones. And I'm sure that I could easily get in on some DMed games right now if I wanted to.

There's a small persistent world called Kuu-Loona where they almost have more DMs than players, so the DMs frequently play their PCs instead of DMing. From what I've read on the forum they've got DMed sessions every week or so. Sure, there's the level threadmill too, but it should be possible to reach level 2 by doing scripted quests alone, and then proceed from there by participating in DMed events.

Not even close to the levelling speed of someone willing to kill for XP, but being high level is not a requirement for DMed sessions. Still, some people seem to consider a certain level to be necessary for them to enjoy the game. Perhaps they have certain abilities in mind, or perhaps they just want to feel that their character is powerful enough compared to other PCs. Playing with others is generally not the same ego-booster as being the Chosen One in a single player campaign.

 

[Human Shield]

I hate the elite role-playing that people want in PW servers. You can't shout and all the quests are made for parties. So you have to get lucky and find a group of equal level people, meanwhile all the regulars are the same lvl, use PM, and know the DMs. Starting on a server is always pointless hell.

Then people want conversation to spring up out of no focus point. All the clerics want you to stop and talk about a god you know nothing about. All the paladins want to lecture someone. The bad-ass characters want to mess with you and talk about how their parents and village was killed or they lost their memory. And I usually play a normal character that is like, "Why is this important to talk about? We aren't doing anything." And my character has no fantastic background and without any meaningful stituation to deal with, I have nothing to say to a stranger.

 

[Volourn]

"I hate the elite role-playing that people want in PW servers."

the worst kind - even more than powrrgamers and munchkins - are the ones who truly believe role-playing consists of sitting on a park bench talking 24/7...

 

[Sol Invictus]

Those people should play Paranoia.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Those are the kind of people who wouldn't want to get killed or kill another person, even in a game tailored towards backstabbing, deceit and trickery like Paranoia. You're not going to spend a whole night coming up with a background story for Troubleshooter Jon-R-DOE because you know that everyone else is probably going to be secretly trying to kill him or set him up for the blame in the MISSION SUMMARY. That's what those people like to do, basically write little fan fictions about their characters and get overly in to their characters. They play with DMs who coddle them along and cater to that.

 

[RGE]

"I hate the elite role-playing that people want in PW servers."

the worst kind - even more than powrrgamers and munchkins - are the ones who truly believe role-playing consists of sitting on a park bench talking 24/7...

Yeah, that becomes boring pretty fast. I used to play on a server where the DMs seemed to like that kind of roleplaying, and when they expressed their disappointment with (in my opinion) mild powergaming, I left. And I wouldn't have recommended Kuu-Loona if it was a place like that.

And I usually play a normal character that is like, "Why is this important to talk about? We aren't doing anything." And my character has no fantastic background and without any meaningful stituation to deal with, I have nothing to say to a stranger.

Well, if your character has nothing to say to a stranger, that's one thing. But if your character has no way of making friends, and then nothing to say to those friends, I can see why you might prefer to play on your own. I'm not a very proactive player myself, so I rarely create events, and when I do, they're usually based on what the module has to offer. Usually I just react to stuff that other people are up to. And I too tend to play characters without fantastic backgrounds, though if I bother with a background I usually come up with one that is at least somewhat interesting.