BETA: ALFA 09--Moonshaes - Proposal

Castano · Post by **Castano** » Sat Jul 22, 2006 10:03 pm

Moonshaes NWN2 Proposal

Introduction

Location: Sea of Swords (Western Sea off the Sword Coast

Rational for server: Smallest land mass to build with the largest number of playable PC concepts (see below) and greatest variety of terrain types (e.g. everything from marshes to mountains is covered on these islands)

Principal Areas:

1. Moonshae Isles - Celtic & Viking based civilization (Ffolk & Northmen)
2. Evermeet - Elven court
3. Lantan - Gnomish run island
4. Ruathym - Northmen
5. Nelather Isles - Pirates both humanoid and non-humaniod
6. Nimbral - Magocracy (home to an order of mages)

Playability/Racial Starting Areas

This list is non-limiting -- it is entirely possible for the various races to travel/start in other regions canon permiting

1. Openly evil PCs - Nelather Isles
2. Dwarves - Moonshae Isles
3. Halflings - Moonshae Isles
4. Surface Elves - Evermeet, Moonshae Isles
5. Lantan - Gnomes
6. Drow/Svirfs/Dueregar - Underdark portion beneath Norheim Isle (Moonshaes)
7. Mages - Nimbral, Moonshae Isles (Flamsterd Isle & Caer Callidyrr)
8. Barbarians - Ruathym, Moonshae Isles (Northmen controlled portions)

1. Server Layout - note all adventure areas, settlements and towns built by the server team will be canon locations only.

Moonshae Isles:

Islands/Principal Towns/Adventure Areas:

1. Gwynneth -

Human Towns/Settlements: Caer Corwell (Ffolk), Corwell (Ffolk), Kingsbay (Ffolk), Outports (coastal hamlets & villages - Ffolk & Northmen)
Dwarven Settlements: High home
Elven Settlement: Chrysalis & surrounding environs
Halfling Settlements: small villages neighboring human towns/hamlets

Adventure Areas: Myrloch Vale (Centaurs, Druids, Mystical Creatures & Firbolgs (fire-giants), South Shore Pirate Domains & Sea Caves (Pirates bases), Western Moors, Winterglen Forest, Castle of Skulls (undead), Darkhorn Castle

2. Norland -

Human Towns/Settlements: Rottesheim (Northmen), Outports (canon coastal hamlets & villages - Northmen)
Adventure Areas: Coastal Forests (Goblins), Jotunhammer Mountains (Trolls & Giants domain - Lair of White Dragon), Western Coast Wilds, Norland Swamps (Orcs & Lizardmen), Dwarven Area

3. Flamsterd -

Human Towns/Settlements: Sparsely populated remnant villages which survived the magical disaster (this is a canon event see TSR books for details)
Adventure Areas: Wizard's underwater domain, Wilderness areas with leftover/escaped magical beasts

4. Norheim -

Human Towns/Settlements: Hammerstaad (Northmen)
Adventure Areas: Giantspine Moutains, Caves leading to Underdark

5. Alaron

Human Towns/Settlements: Callidyrr (Ffolk Capital), Gnarhelm (Northmen), Outports (coastal hamlets & villages - Ffolk & Northmen)
Adventure Areas: Fairheight Mountains (Orcs), Hardenheight Mountains (Orcs), Drowned Forest & Dernall Forest (Bandits/Robin Hood types), Dwarven Home Tunnels

6. Oman's Isle

Human Towns/Settlements: Iron Keep (Northmen), Trondheim (Northmen)
Adventure Areas: Stone Wood, Grampalt Highlands

Evermeet (optional)

We propose building Evermeet so that it can be used for plots and gloabl-type quests...however I would like to poll our players and have admin's approval to build this location due to the influence this location would/might have on other servers. I would want some very elf knowledgeable people to be in charge of this area

Principal Towns/Adventure Areas:

Elven Settlements: Leuthilspar, The Elven Court, Outlying Towns
Adventure Areas: Forests, possible Drow invasion area for plots (this is a canon event iirc), Corellon's Grove (this would obviously be an RP focused adventure area)

Lantan

Principal Towns/Adventure Areas:

Gnome Settlements: Gnomish Capital with human minority population, Temple of Gond
Adventure Areas: Gnomish Capital (intrigues & RP-focused adventures), wilderness areas that are mostly settled

Ruathym

Principal Towns/Adventure Areas:

Human Towns Settlements: Ruathym (Northmen Capital), Rothgaard
Adventure Areas: Isle of Nerth, Pit of Stairs, Inthar, Green Tower of Tulnath

Nelather Isles

Principal Towns/Adventure Areas:

Human Settlement: Port of Skaug (human pirate port)
Adventure Areas: Sea Towers (abandoned wizard towers), Humanoid pirate base camps

Nimbral the Sea Haven

Principal Towns/Adventure Areas:

Human Towns/Settlements: Ormen (capital), outlying towns and castles
Adventure Areas: Nimbral Lords Wizard's School, Flying Hunt - possible aerial combat adventures (pegasi) via the knights of the fyling hunt if NWN2 has flying mounts

2. Server Content

a. Plan for PC persistent storage- Persistent storage will be available at: Inns, Warehouses which rent chests, as well as in PC-owned dwellings and ships

b. Plan for static quests - There will be static quests in the following format: easy, medium and hard. easy quests include clearing pests from the wilderness, collecting fish, deliveries to far away villages, collection of herbs and wilderness items (rocks, low value gemstones etc.). Medium quests will include returning rarer items to collectors, delivering messages to hard to reach far-away places, defending areas from wolf packs. hard quests will involve killign significant creatures - e.g. firbolgs, frost giants, giant spiders, powerful undead and returning their remains to a local lord as a bounty. Most quests will be non-repeatable. the few repeatable quests will use some form of Dimrets, if not feasible to implement then no quests will be repeatable.

c. Plan for spawn/mob placement and difficulty, and static encounters in general - See above adventure area notes in the server layout section for types of creatures in each area.

c.1 Humanoid encounters - will start out at CR 1-3 and progressively become harder as party moves deeper into the area. Top orc mob encounter will be CR6. Thus PCs of different levels can use the same areas...if they know when to stop.

c.2 Magical beasts encounters - will range from easy CR 1-3 evil pixies in malevolent forest areas to CR5-10 for the beasts left behind or escaped from Flamsterd

c.3 Firbolg/Giant Encounters - 2 types will be available -- those which a mid-level party can dispatch by working together and those which require the aid of heroes to defeat (CR10+)

c.4 Peasants/Townsmen - Will be CR 1-2 to allow parties of raider PCs to attack coastal villages on pillage & loot missions. Towns/villages will have CR 3-5 guardsmen also.

Higher end mobs: A system will be worked out with cypher that will cause mobs to 'learn' to run from PCs that have killed them before. We may also have organic growth of mobs based upon how often they get farmed.

d. Merchant availability:

Large towns and capitals:
Will sell leather & metal armor full range of mundane weapons. Sales of plate mail and gear typically worn by knights may be restricted by the local authorities and/or require an oath of fealty (even if only temporary) to buy in some of the Moonshae kingdoms. Masterwork items will be availabel in the capitals only, or at select fortresses which happen to have master smiths (e.g. Caer Corwell and the Dwarven capital of High Home)

Temples in these towns will offer full range of healing potions. Raise dead and such will be DM-only and available via only the main tempels of the dominant faiths which have clerics of high enough level to accomplish the spell.

Large port towns will sell the full range of common goods (e.g. fishing poles, clothes, imports from trading partner nations (e.g Calisham, Waterdeep and Baldur's Gate).

Magic items will be available by DM-only sale from magic-users in canon locations...e.g. Nimbral will have lots of magic user shops, Moonshaes, due to canon distrust of wizards might have three for the entire region (Capital, Flamsterd and one of the major Northmen capitals)

Small villages:

Will sell food, common clothes, gear related to their trades (e.g. fishing), and common ammunition (arrows, bolts & bullets) as well as common axes and knives.

3. Server Team

HDM: Castano
EADM: Fionn
ADMS: Loulabelle, MorbidKate

Builders: Castano, Bartleby, Fionn, Mikayla, Overfilled Cup, Mayhem, HDB, MorbidKate

Tech: Bartleby, Fionn, Castano

DM coverage: Loulabelle, Castano, Fionn, MorbidKate

Experience of the team: Have built one operational beta2 server (050 Moonshaes) which has successfully hosted PC played games, individual members have also built, HDM'd, DM'd solved tech problems etc. for a number of other live Alfa servers. Bartleby and Fionn have extensive programming knowledge. Castano has extensive team management skills from his RL job.

4. Contribution to ALFA diversity:

Playability/Racial Starting Areas

This list is non-limiting -- it is entirely possible for the various races to travel/start in other regions canon permiting

1. Openly evil PCs - Nelather Isles
2. Dwarves - Moonshae Isles
3. Halflings - Moonshae Isles
4. Surface Elves - Evermeet, Moonshae Isles
5. Lantan - Gnomes
6. Drow/Svirfs/Dueregar - Underdark portion beneath Norheim Isle (Moonshaes)
7. Mages - Nimbral, Moonshae Isles (Flamsterd Isle & Caer Callidyrr), Northmen capitals
8. Barbarians - Ruathym, Moonshae Isles (Northmen controlled portions)

5. Hosting:

Will use dungeonserver if its availabel and compatible with ALFA.
If not will buy a very nice server. 2.5-3.0Ghz + with 2GB+ of memory.

Rotku · Post by **Rotku** » Sat Jul 22, 2006 11:06 pm

Looks great. Is there any particular order you plan on building?

Castano · Post by **Castano** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 3:13 pm

most player interest seems to be Nelanther Isles (pirates) and the Moonshaes so we will tackle these areas first. If I get a 1000 PMs from gnome PC players wanting Lantan then we would build that first...but I don't expect to......In other words we will be responsive to the player base as far as locations are concerned.

Ronan · Post by **Ronan** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 9:50 pm

If I were you, I wouldn't build Evermeet. Its large, utterly safe, and contains numerous things the toolset can in all likelyhood never reproduce. Its also really high magic, probably more so than Halruaa, and that could cause problems with wealth and whatnot. The drow/monster invasion took place a few years back in canon, but the island is so rarely attacked (the last one took like five centuries to plan) that another serious threat would be unlikely, and would probably influence much of ALFA's elf population to defend it.

Nelather Isles 4tw!!1

Castano · Post by **Castano** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 3:21 am

was thinking of building it so people could purely RP there...however if there were no stores selling magic stuff and no way to get it...would that work or would it be totally unrealistic?

I can drop Evermeet easily...unless people scream for it...so Alfans: let us know if you really want this and can come up with a way to make it without upsetting balance or making it look ugly as hell

....I suppose alot depends on the tiles they release for NWN2.

wvincenti · Post by **wvincenti** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 3:32 am

Some more accessible elven territory would be lovely instead of Evermeet. Anything to give them something of a physical home or two in game. Myrloch Vale is on the island of Gwynneth and the elves in the Moonshaes seem to have a presence there.

The total elven population for the Moonshaes around 27,000.

Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, page 149.

-Bill

Castano · Post by **Castano** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 4:19 am

good enough...consider Evermeet scotched --- unless I recieve a 1000 PMs begging for it in the next week I will delete it from the proposal

Dorn · Post by **Dorn** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 6:55 am

Looks very interesting Castano.

And yep, even though it looks like we're not including the Last Mythal series in ALFA2 canon those elven settlements may be better.

I'm getting more and more excited about the bredth of servers in western faerun. Cant wait to see the server map!:)

darrenhfx · Post by **darrenhfx** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 4:14 pm

Lantan!

Rumple C · Post by **Rumple C** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 4:22 pm

darrenhfx wrote:Lantan!

send him a thousand pms and its all yours D. Offcourse I suspect it would be first choice for a myriad of pcs to invade and raze to teh ground given the gnome racism.

Castano · Post by **Castano** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 8:21 pm

gnome wars. enough said.

darrenhfx · Post by **darrenhfx** » Tue Jul 25, 2006 2:12 pm

Rumple C said:

...gnome racism...

Castano said:

...gnome wars...

*sigh* Where's the love?

Great proposal by the way.

psycho_leo · Post by **psycho_leo** » Tue Jul 25, 2006 2:56 pm

OMG! Evermeet! Awesome!

Fionn · Post by **Fionn** » Tue Jul 25, 2006 4:25 pm

Castano wrote:good enough...consider Evermeet scotched --- unless I recieve a 1000 PMs begging for it in the next week I will delete it from the proposal

There's no reason we can't have the *public* portion of it if we get around to it. I could be wrong on canon, but I thought most of Evermeet was a pretty exclusive club ;)

Swift · Post by **Swift** » Tue Jul 25, 2006 4:43 pm

I think it would be awesome if the Elven 'home' was a part of ALFA