A Land Far Away

I'd like to request that TSM be made more dangerous. Like Northern Cormyr of Old (NWN1), where Worgs and big cats and ants made meals of noobs, and resting at night in the woods meant immediate tripple worg attack while blinded.
I've been reading up on TSM. Did you know Dire bears are random encounters in the fourth peaks?

Could we possibly have more randomness to the spawns, as far as placement (random spawn radius) and things that need groups to be handled....

I can remember on NC a player would come running into town saying this or that person was bailed up/dying/eaten by a tiger, and everyone would drop everything and sally forth to kill the foe.

More 'wildlife' (the angry kind)... oh and goblin worg riders... hehe.

Yea, we had these and people farmed the hell out of them and shot up in levels and loot while those who stayed around and rped got jack shit.

[quote]Could we possibly have more randomness to the spawns, as far as placement (random spawn radius) and things that need groups to be handled....[/quote]

+1

I believe his emphasis (like mine ) was on the things that would most likely require groups to take care of, rather than soloing, which would promote RP in the crowd we have with us (ok, for the most part, anyway ).

Have volunteered to help out with this.

I'll set up a server module so I can test local spawns.

Vendrin wrote:Yea, we had these and people farmed the hell out of them and shot up in levels and loot while those who stayed around and rped got jack sh*t.

I believe good random monsters are a lot harder to farm.

If the powers that be like the idea, I would suggest getting into contact with Teric. He had a wandering random monster system for OAS2 that worked pretty well...I believe the premise of which was the monster for any specific area was determined by a percentage roll....and they also moved around on the screen so you never knew where they'd be... Now, you may not want the monsters roaming around in the exteriors with towns in them, or the main road for that matter, to keep travel for low levels relatively safe, but the wandering monsters would work really well in areas such as the moonwood or the path up to Felbarr. Again, up to the HDM...but I am sure Teric could point you in the right direction if this is wanted since it would seem to me he's already done a majority of the work....

Daniel

danielmn wrote:If the powers that be like the idea, I would suggest getting into contact with Teric. He had a wandering random monster system for OAS2 that worked pretty well...I believe the premise of which was the monster for any specific area was determined by a percentage roll....and they also moved around on the screen so you never knew where they'd be... Now, you may not want the monsters roaming around in the exteriors with towns in them, or the main road for that matter, to keep travel for low levels relatively safe, but the wandering monsters would work really well in areas such as the moonwood or the path up to Felbarr. Again, up to the HDM...but I am sure Teric could point you in the right direction if this is wanted since it would seem to me he's already done a majority of the work....

Daniel

*drools*

I didn't play on the OAS2 much, but I thoroughly enjoyed this system when i did (2-3 times, to be exact, and my toon got smeared by a wandering orc but survived due to a combination of the bleed/recovery system and the completely coincidental arrival of a patrol of PCs just after I started recovering).

The Randomness of Large Baddies Theorem States:

1. PC's will tend to band together for saftey, promoting RP
2. Running will be discouraged, lest you run into the percieve range of said large baddie before you notice it.
3. Farmers will be weaned out as they will only have low lvl PCs because they keep dying all the time.
4. Exploring will be a more cautiopus affair, because you cant count on the spawn loacations you saw last.

Heck I think ALL hostile spawns should have a degree of randomness to the location of their spawns. The only caveat is set a percieve range on the wandering baddie that is appropriate, so people who stop short and go around have the chance to do so. A heat seeking transcontinental dire bear is just no fun.

ElCadaver wrote:Heck I think ALL hostile spawns should have a degree of randomness to the location of their spawns. The only caveat is set a percieve range on the wandering baddie that is appropriate, so people who stop short and go around have the chance to do so. A heat seeking transcontinental dire bear is just no fun.

+1

johnlewismcleod wrote:

ElCadaver wrote:Heck I think ALL hostile spawns should have a degree of randomness to the location of their spawns. The only caveat is set a percieve range on the wandering baddie that is appropriate, so people who stop short and go around have the chance to do so. A heat seeking transcontinental dire bear is just no fun.

+1

Old Northern Cormyr, though some may have fond memories of it, was really a pretty awful place in terms of IC RP around those "Dangers". Right next to Arabel; you had one AT that had Vampries spawning. Another one, off the same screen, went to a massive killing field where waves of goblins and worg riders regularly attacked (and were regularly killed off by a handy NPC stationed there). The road (that everyone patrolled) had a few randomish things, plus the same giant Worg (or two) at the same place every time. The road from the neighboring server (a major traderoute) couldn't be traversed except by killing a bunch of wolves that always spawned right on the roads. On another side of Arabel, you had Owlbears spawning in packs, mobs of drow and driders, ettins, etc.

Initial RP for new characters almost always included either 1) swift death to the spawns, or 2) mentoring from established PCs who already knew about the absurd and inexplicable dangers that lay one or two clicks away from a major population center. ("Don't take the left fork of that road, ever. Don't go into that cave, don't travel this road alone, or that road, or really any road). As a DM, it was perhaps even more frustrating, because it was near-impossible to run plots in those areas without the normal spawns making "suprise" appearances and derailing the story. New players/members/PCs would frequently have one or two good RP sessions, then log on and try ATing somewhere and be immediately killed by spawns "meant to challenge a group". I lost track of how many DM plots I started laying the groundwork for that had to be trashed because the PC(s) they centered on logged in once without a DM and got instakilled by spawns that had been "tuned" for the entertainment of the high-octane mid-to-high level regulars.

Adjusting a spawn to the point where it makes a challenge for a group also accomplishes two other things, unfortunately:
1) it makes the spawn a rich farming source for a character of X+4 levels
2) it makes the spawn instantly deadly to anyone lower-level and not grouped up with several much higher-level PCs.

I agree that challenges that call for a balanced party can be a lot of fun, and should have their place in a PW, and on a server like TSM. Those sort of challenges should not be the sort of places new PCs are regularly stumbling across just trying to get from point A to B, though. Let's not enshrine the sort of absurdity that the original NWN1-Northern Cormyr got to- it should say something that the entire DM team unanimously decided to scrap the entire thing and start rebuilding it from scratch.

Oh, and re: randomness in position / perception ranges; some of TSM's areas do not lend themselves at all well to wide variation in spawn position, the twisting paths of the hills over Rivermoot for example, don't have "room" to change positions on things significantly. Making the perception range shorter for creatures helps PCs avoid getting spotted by spawns, but it also starts to turn powerful spawns into circumventable inconveniences rather than real unpredictable dangers (unless they're wandering as well, at least). I believe some changes are in the works for the server's spawns, but I would hope they would not be dramatic ones that suddenly turn what have been reasonably safe areas IC into crazy monster zones.

Oh, and if we've gotten to a point where we need killer spawns to stop players from running, that's something that needs to be dealt with on another front. Adding killer spawns is the wrong way to encourage better RP IMO.

There are currently spawns on the server that ought to be a challenge to any of our current PCs, and more are planned. They may be off the main highway, but they are there. No, you probably won't encounter them while hanging out in Rivermoot.

As far as randomnized spawns are concerned, I will not comment.

My PC roams the lands alot around RIvermoot, and he encounters plenty of spawns. They are easily avoided and won't sneak up on you, but they are out there standing around. I usually try to treat them like I do the rest of the sparse landscaping in these areas. (IE: to me on lone tree kind of signifies the area has trees scattered about the nearby area, not just that one tree. Likewise one lone wolf spawn standing in an area, to me means there are wolves roaming the lands and I have the choice of RPing avoiding them or encountering them etc.) However, I would agree that some less easily avoidable dangers might be a good idea for the areas off the main roads.

There were indeed some problems with the old NC approach as others have stated.

That doesn't mean we're not listening though! I think i have a solution that i've implemented on BG. Basically dungeons (that have anything worthwhile) have some sort of barrier to entry, and sometimes multiple barriers such that it will require multiple PCs to just get in the door. These are often social skills, Cha, or even a few with strength or search.

I believe this will be adequate protection against solo farmers while giving groups something interesting to do.

Problem is it needs more testing. Get a group and stop on by.