A new player's concern

[Tenebrosity]

Greetings everyone,

First of all, I'd like to congratulate the development team for putting up this server. I haven't got the chance to explore much of it, but I can tell that there's a lot of work involve and I am grateful for it.

I'm writing this topic about a few concerns of mine when I am investing myself completly into another role-playing community. It's nothing negative, but simply things that have turned me down in past RP experiences.


1 - Economy; Is there an actual player based economy? Are the players who played this server for years extremely rich to a point where they can pretty much afford anything despite their social status? (For example, I played a role-play server on a different game and people in jail were billionaire...) What exactly are the ways to get a sort of income, is there work given by other players or most of the gold come from adventuring/looting?

2 - Organization/Politics/Intrigue; Does the server have important organization with important people around that are not NPC? Is there any room on the server for politic and intrigue? And most importantly, is there room for new player to achieve ambitions?

3 - Levelling; What exactly are the ways to level up? Is it constantly grinding in areas or is there quests that involve an adventure with an experience reward at the end? I have done the "skeleton remains" & "Wolves pet" so far, but it's only for gold.


I'm not expecting to get answers that I could have find out through role-play. I just want someone to confirm the existence or possibility to achieve any of it. I'm sorry for my many questions, but I do intend to bring other role players along with me and it would be my responsibility to be somewhat instructed on the server to maximize the amount of fun.

ps; Forgive my mistakes, english is a second language.


Thank you,
regards,
Tenebrosity.

[thids]

Hey, welcome to the server


1. Yes, players who have played for a long time and invested time in looting/grinding are likely very rich. Though that's not necessarily always the case. Majority of the income comes from looting/grinding, players paying other players for jobs or services or whatever is done mostly in symbolic amounts.

2. The server does have room for politics/intrigue. From my experience over the last two and a half years, the intrigue and politics plots go up and down in activity. Sometimes there isn't much happening behind the scenes and at other times there are several active intrigue type "games". Though, I would say not everyone is fit for that kind of roleplay (despite their own opinion ). There are quite a few organizations/factions on the server that are both important to the server's setting and led by a PC. There is always room for new players to achieve ambitions I would say, though it all depends on what those ambitions are. If it's advancing in ranks in various organizations, the difficulty of achieving that differs from one organization to another. Whatever the ambition is, my advice would be: be prepared to compromise when it comes to dealing with both DM's and players and more importantly be patient. Things do not happen over night.


3. Grinding and weekly quests are the main source of regular xp gain. You get awarded random amounts of RP XP by a script for roleplaying, but the cap is not really high. There is also fishing, but that also has a cap. (by cap I mean there is a set amount of xp you can gain per server reset)

[kellendril]

I've been on this sewrver for several years now and my main cahracter currently has about 12k gold, and has maxed out at around 200k after sale of an item..You see some people on the forums throwing around millions of gold for items, and I still have no idea how that could happen

Still, it depends on you. If you want a lot of coin, obviously, you can get it. If you RP a lot and don't grind all the time, you will be poorer.

In terms of plots: There are a large variety of guilds and much intrigue in some of them.

[V'rass]

Plenty of active player run factions which have huge impact on the server. Some of the more important ones are: Church of Lathander, Church of Bane, Church of Helm, Everwatch knights, order of the silver rose, order of the radiant heart, Church of Ilmater... and a whole crap load of others.

Economy is sometimes good and sometimes bad. How much money you make depends on what kind of loot you get and whether said loot is extremely useful to players. Certain pieces of loot on auction can go for up to 500,000 gold or more while others will barely sell for 100.
It really is a matter of luck and being patient.

Leveling is rather slow past five and it only gets worse the higher you get. You can get up to 15 relatively fast but after that reaching 20 takes a long time and getting to 30... yeah that can take years or even decades depending on how much you grind. That said knowing which areas give the best xp at a given lv can help speed up the process some. Usually the plan I use is: Graveyard undead/kobold ruins, bandits on road to Fai, eastern cloakwood, orcs or gnolls, xvarts, giants, and then im told wrym cave is good to get the final nudge to 20.

[Karond]

1.) Most wealth generated by players come from looting/grinding. All the quests give a small amount of gold as well.

2.) Well, so and so. It's definitely possible, don't get me wrong, but the tendency is to avoid conflict at all times between players from the staff's point of view. Since that's the case, at best you would be engaged in intrigue against NPCs as part of a storyline. It helps to be part of a guild, as that way a plot is not dependent on individual PCs too much. That milks it down of course, but the alternative is to not have anything happen most of the time as there is always a few that go missing or are unavailable otherwise.

3.) Quests reset once per week, so you can redo all the quests. This is the fastest way to level up in the epics, as levelling on this server is moving at a somewhat decent pace up to level 20, then slows down considerably. There is a few epic areas, but only two of them on the surface have a decent xp reward for the time investment (Lizardmen cave and the Wyrm lair). Level 1-20 is rather easy though, since many monsters are somewhat weak, give out quite a bit of xp and have a high respawn rate (Goblins, Xvarts and Hill giants especially).

[kleomenes]

2.) Well, so and so. It's definitely possible, don't get me wrong, but the tendency is to avoid conflict at all times between players from the staff's point of view. Since that's the case, at best you would be engaged in intrigue against NPCs as part of a storyline. It helps to be part of a guild, as that way a plot is not dependent on individual PCs too much. That milks it down of course, but the alternative is to not have anything happen most of the time as there is always a few that go missing or are unavailable otherwise.

There is plenty of player to player intrigue and conflict if you look for it. I don't really recognise what Karond speaks of here in terms of only engaging in intrigue and conflict against NPCs, perhaps thats his experience but its not mine.

It is, however, a style of play that does not generally involve the DM team. The obvious reason from my perspective being that if DMs wade in to IC conflicts (which are otherwise fun!) with NPCs there is a real risk of it becoming unfair.

So I would almost offer the opposite advice, that if you are prepared to not try and involve NPCs in your intrigues you will find much skullduggery abounding. You do have to hunt out that sort of RP though, and joining a guild will help. If its your cup of tea try guilds like the Zhentarim, the Thieves Guild, the Harpers, the Red Wizards or the Phoenix Company depending on your flavour. There are other guilds who may or may not qualify, I'm not aware of their activities!

I know DM plots do take up a lot of time when people get involved in them so it can make it harder to pursue character interactions.

[Nomster]

2 - Organization/Politics/Intrigue; Does the server have important organization with important people around that are not NPC? Is there any room on the server for politic and intrigue? And most importantly, is there room for new player to achieve ambitions?

I am also curious at what Karond is saying on the above point... I would say that staff wants to avoid OOC conflict between players but conflict and intrigue between characters is MUCH of the roleplay on the server. Intrigue RP certainly has its place. As Thids say, it comes and goes like a wave but there are groups who focus a lot of it and may have undercover agents or people paid off to forward information.

I would say that however, it is difficult to achieve a powerful position unless you work very hard for it. Do not expect to get anything in that area handed to you. It is however very possible to fulfill goals, if they are realistic and others work along with you.

Political RP has gained an upswing lately, with the Foreign Exchange Committee (who's member were absorbed into the War Council). It might be difficult to get a foot inside as a new player but make contacts and ask to be introduces, be patient and you will get to those places.

[Karond]

I would say that staff wants to avoid OOC conflict between players but conflict and intrigue between characters is MUCH of the roleplay on the server.

I'm saying that I'm not aware of the staff ever having given an ounce of support to player vs player conflict whole-heartedly. It's been tested a rare few times, and the staff seems to have instantly regretted it due to poor management and drama. There are politics, in a way, but its focused on groups and not individuals, and really only with DM involvement. Intrigue is similar, since whatever secret shenanigans one would be up too, you need DM involvement to get an effect or be ignored (which might be one reason why people try for cartoon evil kind of actions).

It's largely due to how the server operates. BGTSCC is a land of peace, with random one-shot outbreaks of something that doesn't threaten anything and is quickly defeated by the heroes of the week. Even with something as small as a lone NPC necromancer appearing, you can bet that politics, as far as they're used, is just everyone teaming up together even when it makes no sense, just to partake. It's not easy for the secret shenanigans to be managed either, since all secret organizations have encountered that all it takes is some metagaming individual to tell people all about it, which then starts a cycle of metagaming (if you know OOC that this invidiual is part of the harpers or some evil organization, it tends to influence people more often than not. If it even is OOC, most of the time information like this is revealed as if it was IC) which can ruin it for people.

Having meaningful politics or intrigue require conflict, and if its not directed towards NPCs, it's not generally endorsed.

In my experience and opinion, of course

[Steve]

It's largely due to how the server operates. BGTSCC is a land of peace, with random one-shot outbreaks of something that doesn't threaten anything and is quickly defeated by the heroes of the week. Even with something as small as a lone NPC necromancer appearing, you can bet that politics, as far as they're used, is just everyone teaming up together even when it makes no sense, just to partake. It's not easy for the secret shenanigans to be managed either, since all secret organizations have encountered that all it takes is some metagaming individual to tell people all about it, which then starts a cycle of metagaming (if you know OOC that this invidiual is part of the harpers or some evil organization, it tends to influence people more often than not. If it even is OOC, most of the time information like this is revealed as if it was IC) which can ruin it for people.

Geez...and why do we play on this Server then?!?

No solutions, Karond?

[XyrisMourn]

Oh there is plenty of politics, both player and DM driven.

Welcome!

It's a great server!! You'll love it

[thids]

I agree with Karond in part. People will more often than not pick teaming up together over conflict even if conflict makes much more sense. That's part of the reason I said not everyone is fit for intrigue and politics type of RP. But I still believe there IS room for such roleplay on the server, you just need to make people you RP with understand that while OOCly we are all super-best-friends, ICly some of our characters can and should be ruthless.

No solutions, Karond?

People need to cut out that mental block that forces them to be nice to another player's character in all situations if they want that player to like them.

This should be the leading thought when entering potential hostile/conflicting RP for the majority of players: "If this player requires my character to be nice to their character (even if it makes no sense) in order for them to like me OOCly, is this person really a quality roleplayer I want to be spending my time with on the server?"


Seriously, people need to try being a proper (person) to others IC sometimes. The OOC response will more often than not surprise you in a pleasant way. And in those cases it pours over into OOC drama, -someone- is doing something wrong. If you didn't do anything wrong, then the other person did and they go into the category of people you shouldn't waste your time on.


There is also another layer that comes under the "let's all be friends IC" issue. The part where someone is aware that teaming up with the other side isn't the correct choice so they contrive some sort of "I'm going to work with them now, then I'll use what I find out to screw them over later". That's perfectly fine, except in most cases the "later" part never comes and it ends up just being an IC excuse to team up.

[chad878262]

I agree with Karond in part. People will more often than not pick teaming up together over conflict even if conflict makes much more sense. That's part of the reason I said not everyone is fit for intrigue and politics type of RP. But I still believe there IS room for such roleplay on the server, you just need to make people you RP with understand that while OOCly we are all super-best-friends, ICly some of our characters can and should be ruthless.

No solutions, Karond?

People need to cut out that mental block that forces them to be nice to another player's character in all situations if they want that player to like them.

This should be the leading thought when entering potential hostile/conflicting RP for the majority of players: "If this player requires my character to be nice to their character (even if it makes no sense) in order for them to like me OOCly, is this person really a quality roleplayer I want to be spending my time with on the server?"


Seriously, people need to try being a proper (person) to others IC sometimes. The OOC response will more often than not surprise you in a pleasant way. And in those cases it pours over into OOC drama, -someone- is doing something wrong. If you didn't do anything wrong, then the other person did and they go into the category of people you shouldn't waste your time on.


There is also another layer that comes under the "let's all be friends IC" issue. The part where someone is aware that teaming up with the other side isn't the correct choice so they contrive some sort of "I'm going to work with them now, then I'll use what I find out to screw them over later". That's perfectly fine, except in most cases the "later" part never comes and it ends up just being an IC excuse to team up.

+1 and QFT! I always write emotes or comments with Cranston when walking by Tieflings, half orcs and the like and occasionally the player will send a tell afterwords "thanks, I've been waiting for someone to have that reaction!" or "was wondering if anyone noticed the horns"

This is just a minor example, but it is ok for your character to be racist, distrustful of others or downright rude without you OOC'ly being a jerk. Conflict rp has been some of the most fun I've had on the server (and I usually get the worst of it, but it has only resulted in any sort of pvp twice in more than a year I've been playing). I encourage you to think about what some of your players prejudices and faults might be and rp then even if it is a little uncomfortable at first. You won't regret it.

Great post Thids!

Ps, sorry for the pm Thids, clicked the wrong button on my phone..

[Ithilan]

Wouldnt roleplaying be utterly irrelevant if we didnt have IC clashes and confrontations, political tension and conflict is the fuel for the fire that keeps it intriguing.

I remember people like Randall and Ol'Kel that had a million confrontations, not to mention various pirates and other notorious villains, I think thats the essence of the FR setting. Theres so many factions you can belong to and so many different motivations, not one is identical to the other.

That said I think its a fair point that people might not be considerate enough in who they team up with and why. But theres some fairly mystical people as well, that you might not be dissuaded to team with initially IC but as your/their character's develop it might create conflicts and thats quite interesting to be part of and observe.

Also keep in mind that each individual might react/act differently than another of the very same organisation. Back in 2011 when I played my Paladin in the Order of the Radiant Heart, I noticed how much we each differed in our preffered process of dealing with X evil threat and I think that when that applies to a virtuous order such as that, it is likely to be an even greater factor amongst more losely organised factions.

There are lots of stereotypes but theres also room for a lot of individual definitions and deviations from these stereotypes that usually make a character more immersive to play and interesting to play with.

[flipside43]

[quote="Nomster]I would say that staff wants to avoid OOC conflict between players but conflict and intrigue between characters is MUCH of the roleplay on the server.

Intrigue is similar, since whatever secret shenanigans one would be up too, you need DM involvement to get an effect or be ignored (which might be one reason why people try for cartoon evil kind of actions). [/quote][/quote]

I would 100% disagree with this. I've been playing a heavy intrigue character for nearly 2 years now and I've never once needed DM involvement and have had plenty of meaningful exchanges between various other characters on the server, both for and against. Though I do agree with what others said that not every character is cut out for intrigue and nor is every player.

[Rasael]

There is a distinction between player vs player combat and conflicts. Conflicts happen a lot, but DMs never do direct combat between players that i know of. A conflict can be anything else, plotting, asassination etc.