Road Server

[indio]

The work I intended doing on Skullport is essentially done. The city (minus Skull Isle), the sections of Undermountain (3 interior maps...I gave up on the YATT idea for them), the Yawning Portal interior and the Waterdeep Dock Ward exterior (1 16x16 area) are all ready to be passed along, save for some links and some tidying up.

I've got to do some mapping for Marklos which will take me a week or so, but after that I thought maybe of working on a road system to link servers.

Remember Boom's idea of Server 000? It linked all the servers together on a separate server and ensured server-hopping was minimised.

I'm open to some feedback on the idea...my plan is marked below, factoring in servers currently being worked upon:



Obviously I haven't sought approval on this. It's just an idea at this stage.

Opinions welcome.

[bartleby]

Im all for it if it can be done well. In my opinion travel shouldnt be seen as an obstacle and this seems like an opportunity to dedicate an entire server to the idea of a journey a very important part of any adventure.

A well maintained communal travel server would allow for a plethora of novel stories to emerge as well as portray the real commitment one would have to undertake in traversing the large tracks of wilderness that separate more civilized regions. While at the same time allowing individual servers to worry more about dedicating time and resources not to linking portions of their domains to the rest of ALFA but to creating their own areas as acurately and immersively as possible.

Think of the possibilities, the camps that would have to be made the highwaymen to be avoided the stories by the campfires, news from distant lands, caravans in need of assistance, and if nothing else the beautiful rugged terrain ...

I almost wonder if some rangers and rouges might come to call these roads home ...

[Senor T]

I love the idea. I remember traveling between Daggerdale and Waterdeep through the Anauroch for the first (and only) time and it is still a meaningful memory for my PC. I like it because it will ensure consistency in travel throughout the life of the NWN2 incarnation so the road between Daggerdale and Waterdeep won't ever change even if the Anauroch, Loudwater and Daggerford servers come and go.

A drawback is that the Anauroch server would have to include these areas if it came to be after the triple-oh server was established, but a benefit would be that these areas would already be built for them!

Word to your mother, indio.

[Mord]

A travelling server actually has merit in NWN2 as opposed to NWN1 as it would save up space on the other servers for more interesting locales than X number of road areas given that we have a very finite pool of resources to dedicate to each of them, so not only does it add immersion but it has a practical use as well.

[indio]

It's kind of a graveyard, this forum. Can't we have it back where it was? I'd like to hear what people think, but I suspect only those who are developing NWN2 stuff even look at this forum.

[Teric neDhalir]

I really think this is a waste of time and effort. The lousy gameplay experience of endlessly trudging along a relatively featureless road just to make the scale "correct" doesn't do it for me, I'm afraid.

[indio]

I really think this is a waste of time and effort. The lousy gameplay experience of endlessly trudging along a relatively featureless road just to make the scale "correct" doesn't do it for me, I'm afraid.

Featureless?

[danielmn]

with no real hub, and the road being the main focus of the server....it makes me wonder who would be willing to dm on such a transitoryesk server....

perhaps the best solution to that would be to give over dmage for the server to ALL the dms, so that they can see the PC's to where they are going... I don't imagine a dm group dedicated souly to this server idea is going to remain a firm group. Having to dm transitory PC's is a bit different than dming PC's who are settled/semi-settled.

As for the server, I like the sound of it. I don't want every single server we have focusing on a huge hub with the wilds being a minor factor altogether...I personally would like to see two or three servers with a small hub and a vast extent of wilderness for less civilized PC's.

DAniel

[darrenhfx]

I'm assuming that you'd have to reduce the in-game scale, if so, how would you include trees etc. Maybe this is what Terric means by saying that it would be featureless; that it wouldn't have wilderness placeables at the proper scale.

If this is true, can we make a package of prefab shrunken trees and other wilderness placeables? Recognizing that placeable terrain features add to the server load and would have to be used sparingly, the savings by not having city/town areas might offset this a bit.

If by featureless he means lacking interesting locales, I can think of a number of players who would find great joy in rolepaying in wilderness areas as well as those who would enjoy the travel aspect, as Bart and Senor T have mentioned.

[Wynna]

While at first glance the idea's got merit, Indio, with a few things that may or may not be able to be worked out, I think the issue for me right now is just that I can't keep up. I'm entering the last few weeks of build time on 003 and my focus is right there, literally in every waking spare moment I have. There are plenty of critical things that need doing there, trust me.

Don't stop doing what you're doing. If it's building fresh territory you crave, then build away. The rest of us will get there eventually. Of course, we could really use that energy on 003, too, but nothing you do will languish, either interior or (eventually) exterior when we can turn our attention to a proper assessment of your vision.

[psycho_leo]

I don't really remember the previous discussion about this. But if this is going to be just for travels, do we really need it?

[JaydeMoon]

Right, I am wholly against the idea of a road server simply to make people walk along a road for a few hours. It's a prime example of 'going overboard' with what we do here.

HOWEVER, those roads aren't featureless per canon. There are small towns and trading outposts in places, and chances for banditry and other wandering encounters.

If you open the server to all HDM and ADMs (which seems like it would make sense), then it could definitely be a place where DMs could extend their plots and add a level of depth to travel.

It depends on how much work goes into it, ultimately. Theoretically you could run whole plots centered around the goings on at a trade outpost at one of the major crossroads.

TLR was a popular server and didn't consist of much in the way of important canon areas.

[AcadiusLost]

I guess I'm having a hard time envisioning how the travel server would work in this case- is it intended as a big rescaled travel map, for all the areas that aren't covered by specific-server travel maps? If so, how do we plan to transition between the two? (000 travel map and the corresponding area of, say, the 003 travel map). Is the (presumably even further scaled-down) 000 map going to have corresspondingly slowed movement? If so, seems like it would lead to an indordinate amount of time watching a speck hold nearly completely still on an abstracted worldmap, which doesn't seem to add much to the RP of travel.

Maybe you could take another stab at explaining what you have in mind?

[Thangorn]

I'll reserve my response until I have a better understanding of what you are planning.

Travel maps or whole areas?

[indio]

Thanks everyone.

I'm very happily dropping the idea.

Plenty else that can be done.