A Land Far Away

For a while now there has been a slow and steady movement towards an effort to promote ALFA across the NWN community. Instead of merely letting applicants come to us, the idea is to go our with a clear and strong message out to attract the established community and make it even easier for prospective applicants to find us.

Our message is clear; we are a dedicated and dynamic roleplay community. This expresses itself in the stories and plots of which the forum library hosts many, yet are only a fraction of what ALFA has to offer.

We have a logo. We have a slogan. We have a format for our promotional campaign: a story. This is very appropriate to the nature of ALFA, but also has an important effect.

The main effect of our story PR is that we'll be able to make regular forum posts and be featured on news journals such as nwvault's, besides the banner adds and databse links we'll do. Forums are key to the NWN community, especially the official forums.

We already have three proposed elements/themes for this story, relating to Admissions and the applicants directly:

1. Immigration, this relates to the applicants and new membership the promotional campaign is supposed to bring.
2. Exploration, this relates to new servers opening up.
3. Chronicles, this relates to the existing servers, plots and characters.

For the OAS2, we have four thematic realities:
1. Soubar has been raided by orcs.
2. Dragonspear has been garrisoned and is subject to treasurehunters.
3. Boarsky Bridge along the Trade Way: many caravans and merchants stop here.
4. Undead activity at a ruin along the High Moor trail.

For the OAS1:
1. An ancient temple has been excavated
2. The mage Tethos and his tower
3. Probably more, but I've had only limitted time to explore the OAS1 as player and builder. Can anyone add to this?

What's important that what we do is reactive to the applicants that come visit the OAS as result of our promotional campaign, and has progressions in the plot/story in reaction to this and ALFA events (new servers opening, large plots, player groups, etc.).

I've asked Misty to help with this. Right now we're leaning towards a Marco Volo-inspired chronicle on ALFA's IC history. My personal idea is for this to have two layers. Our 'Marco Volo' will be telling of the stories of ALFA (thus showing off what we can do) and in doing so, have his own story to tell (for a more dynamic PR campaign).

We'd like to have something ready for the upcoming NWCON4. Here's more on that.

What we need to do now, is flesh out our storyteller, our Marco Volo. How he/she could know all the things that occured in ALFA IC, what his/her own story would be, personality, history, the name, etc.

We'll need to flesh out the character. Obviously ALFA has plenty of creative talent, so I'd like to aks you all to help with this and post your ideas on what this character could be like.

Furthermore, I'd welcome any input on the events of our current and past NWN1 servers (and our NWN2 one) that we could include in this story.

While I'm writing this, I've come up with another two ideas worth considering. We could expand this one storyteller to a storytelling group of some kind. Then the community members could potentially involve retired or current PC's in this, if they're suitable. The trick will be to forge this all into one cohesive story, but that's something for later.

Right now, it's time to brainstorm. Feedback, ideas, suggestions, criticisms are all welcome.

And if this is all overly vague or confusing, just ask.

Ive always thought this was a good idea. Its almost ALFAs way of doing a Living Forgotten Realms campaign. I'm glad to see you all getting this up and running and i hope folks will contribute to it. It can really be a good tool to promote ALFA.

Sounds cool, though you'll need an Anti-Marco-Volo to tell the stories from the Underdark.

A priest of Oghma in Waterdeep chronicles 3 journals he has received from adventurers and their travels.

The first journal is penned by a Harper agent, the second a captain in the Zhentil Keep, and the last journal is made by a freed/escaped hin slave of a Drow house.

"It is astounding to me how Oghma reveals that which has been hidden, here I begin scribing the Chronicles of (years X-Y) as recorded in the hands of three vastly different denizens of Toril. Within a ten day I had come to possess all three of these journals, my requisitions came all in the presense of happenstance. This culling of wisdom comes to me with a sence of urgency for which I am now hopelessly addicted, I write now with the fervor of a prophet seeing the doom of his world only days on the horizon...or as Captain Bructveil of Zhentil keep writes. "The awakening has instantly destroyed and rebuilt us, the hand of our Lord comforts us in these glorious end days."

The world view I have gained of the recent history, was not given to me by mere chance, it is in some way imperitive to the immediate future that this information finds the right host. I pray I have fufilled Oghma's wish, and you that read these lines are the intended audience. If this tome gleans nothing important to you, it is possible you are a link in this chain of enlightenment, I implore you to pass this text on to another.

I have organized the events in chronological order, thus you will read about events that occur at the same time yet are seperated not only by geography but by vast culture differences.

Bobbaldy Goop - Sage of Oghma

Your biggest hurdle, other than just getting the work done, will be the folk screaming "no meta!" because god forbid any player in ALFA ever find out what any PC in ALFA has ever done. This despite the fact we have an active library of IC posts.

In fact I'm surprised a post hasn't already been made by those folk. Otherwise I think it's a great idea, and very similar to the "IC server history thread" idea I propose on roughly an annual basis. Guess I can skip it this year.

Mulu wrote: I think it's a great idea, and very similar to the "IC server history thread" idea I propose on roughly an annual basis. Guess I can skip it this year.

I must have missed those proposal's not that "my" endorsement helps at all...but I think that is a great idea Mulu...fantastic even.

and thinking about it, Demson the first thing you should probably do is collect all the relevant stories and then pick which ones you want to tell... then you can figure out who would be able to "author it"... I tried picking 3 NPCs that could have been in a position to come by information, not have to experiance it first hand... this would allow for "embelishment" and also allow to protect Meta info to a degree.

I think it would be cool to make these into IG books that PCs can find, so the non-forums types can experiance it as well.

Actually, I don't think the problem will be people screaming "no meta" it will be people screaming "thats not what happened!" I have made some 60-70 posts in the Dark Flower saga which chronicles the first 4/5s of my PCs history or so, and only once did anyone ever complain about meta - what I got mostly was "hey, thats not what I said!"

And then there is the threshold question - do you even know what happened NJ? Do you know what ALFA's actual in-game history is? For example, ALFA had a "war of the spider queen" and some things happened as in the books (Ched Nasad was destroyed) but a LOT of details are completely different (like, WHY and HOW Ched Nasad was destroyed). How are you going to learn ALFA's in-game history if you were not there or a part of it?

Sorry, Mr Author says it happened this way, alfa must therefore be wrong.

Mikayla wrote:How are you going to learn ALFA's in-game history if you were not there or a part of it?

Oh in NO way was I offering to do this...

That same statement could be made to anyone of us, no "one" person in ALFA knows all the in game history...All I was doing was giving Demson some of the input he asked for...

How, what format would the "Marco Volo" be in...

And as I said in my after thought post, the first thing that should happen is actually collecting the stories...only then will you know who the "author" would be... not the OOC author but the narrator of the story, since it isn't logical for anyone other than maybe Elminster or a God to actually know all of the history I offered a suggestion that it could be an Oghma priest that has collected and combine some journals into a single "record"...

I know very little of the ALFA history... I know about the days of the Quarentine in Waterdeep, I recall a band of giants attacking the walls of waterdeep, I recall a bit about a Demon, the White Stars and Glorfindel in Shadowdale...But I wouldn't be a good source of "complete" information for any of those events...which brings us back to Mulu's suggestion of maintaining a "server history" (Demson's task would be a great deal easier if we had such a source for him to draw from.)

Anyway I am a bit leary of poking my head outside of my little corner of the ALFA anymore, so I bid you farewell Demson and good luck with this...

FWIW, I think its a very good idea, and the sooner its done the better before some of these old timers forget what happened...

I have been here through it all and can't begin to remember half of the in game events that happened. However, who said we have to capture "ALL" of it?

Not to mention there is only a 1/4 the servers that are live so I would focus the history on those select few at first. No use covering events on a server that we don't even have live anymore.

No matter which way you look at it, the task will be rather large at first. Though being the ALFA Historian might be fun.

Good ideas all around I say.

I've offered to write some, possibly all of it.

what I need are details. Writing down the rumors of the land only goes so far, and would work for some places, and not others. The 'aspiring famous writer' is a possible background for our Voloclone.

Also, how far back do we want to go? While I'm still quite proud of Lak'shmi becoming the stuff of SD nightmares, it was four years ago and totally irrelevant to current events. Should we stick with the past year? two years?

there is also the case of 'found journals' in a few instances, but too much of this happening would be too cheesy. Perhaps a 'found journal' leading into questions/investigations to.....


mostly brainstorming here. so.. uh..

A thought on trying to capture the history of various servers could be this:

Create a library or history forum for each server and let folks go to town. Each server can have a moderator in charge of running the project and separate threads for each plot line.

For example, I remember various details about various parts of things I was involved in, but no way to I have any clue as to the comprehensive plot of any of this anymore. I can write down what I remember, someone else can write down what they remember, and the mod can pull it all together in one consistent story.

No way no how do I volunteer to be a mod on any of these, I'm just tossing out an idea.

From a PR standpoint, these in-game stories are perhaps the most valuable asset ALFA has. We can say "ALFA's been around for forever blah blah," but what does that mean really? How about, "ALFA's been around forever, and here's what you can be a part of! Be the story!"

For that matter, we have quite a bit of player-generated content as it stands. It's possible we could launch a marketing campaign with what we already have, we just need someone to go through it and identify appropriate content and think about how we want to specifically go about presenting it.

We should also keep an eye toward some of the more interesting aspects of these stories, rather than the battles or what-have-you. ALFA is unique in that it offers more than that. Perhaps a story could focus around a battle, but go into detail on how it affected the characters and how the characters affected the game world.

Thanks for the response, everyone.

Since the account of ALFA IC history is also IC, I don't see why we should worry about the accurateness. Authenticy, yes - it needs to be true to some extend. Let it hint at what could have been.

The story we'll do will have to be relatively straightforward and packed with detail. We don't need to go at length and explore the depth of every little hallmark of a story. With a similar effort, I tried to keep the story updates short enough to read while waiting on the server to load or waiting for a game to start. The 'catchers' of this story shouldn't take longer to read than 5-15 minutes for an average person. We should do more elaborate pieces for ALFA with other pieces besides these 'catchers', but the point is that it should be relatively easy to digest. It has to excite and attract and convince, it does not need to provide an in-depth record and account of ALFA.

This'll keep it manageable and sustainable, too.

Ok, how about this: our voloclone around which a company or network of some kind has formed. Voloclone has a specific purpose: voloclone wants to uncover some hidden truth. In pursuit of this truth, he maintains a network of informants to acquire knowledge and lore. What his purpose is...? Who knows... The mystery of it can sustain the story, though we'll need some sort of idea of what this pursuit is if we want to steer the story somehow.

In pursuit of this truth, Voloclone comes across all sorts of interesting stories which might or might not relate to his pursuit.

All still pretty vague, but it'll give some opening to include what has been mentioned so far.

Hm, what was the timeframe of NWN1? I believe NWN2 is 1374 or something?

NWN1 made its official break with the FR canon when it went live, though time continued to pass, so it's 1375 IG now, but it's not the 1375 published in the FRCS.

//edit - I get the damn centuries mixed up constantly.

I can do the Loudwater Shade War (about 10 pages of IC posts in the libarary somewhere...and really an epic piece of work and DMing and building) and the Saga of the Wayfarers (ALFA's favourite group) if you'd like.

Of course i will HORRIBLY over-promote my own characters and their role in both.