Player freedom and DM interactions

[DM Honk]

Hello BGTSCC!

I decided to make this post out of my own accord to ask for your insight about the balance between what players can do without DM supervision and what absolutely must require it.

This comes from the fact that we are always looking for ways to make our work behind the DM screen more efficient and enjoyable for the players, to the best of our abilities. It is not a secret that workload has been a problem and response time with it.

At the same time, potentially allowing the playerbase to do something without approval may lead to abuse and cases of poor immersion and lore breaking narrative.

So I am here to ask you, if you were to decide now, what would you allow players to do without DM supervision that currently requires it?

Please try to keep the conversation orderly and civil, I am genuinely looking for some thoughts.

Cheers,
HDM Honk

[Rhifox]

I would want the ability to play alts that have association with a main. There are times when it makes no sense for my main character to do X, but that she would send a servant to speak on her behalf. Currently, doing this would be a violation of the rules. Likewise, playing family relations or friends of a main (which some players have done) is also not allowed by a strict reading of the rules. This can limit players' ability to create stories between themselves, when every instance of an NPC absolutely requires a DM's support.

If metagaming is a concern (and frankly I don't consider it one, but I know my opinion is not common there), then simply having rules that restrict a player from playing 'spy' alts - such as requiring all 'associate' alts to have publicly declared connections with the main character - is enough to stop the abuse cases.

[metaquad4]

For me at-least it is a little "too late". I don't think nwn2 can mechanically handle some things (for example, I don't think you can have place-able permanence where placed items persist past a reset), and I think BG as a server and a culture is too heavily ingrained with the idea of DM reliance; plus I'm not completely confident there are enough players to sustain a proper economy.

But here are my 2 cents:
1) The ability to purchase houses/boats. Haven has this, so it is at-least feasible. With boats, you could have a "wheel NPC" that allows you to travel to nearby coastal settlements.
2) The ability to have a proper shop (insert item, set price, put down placable). Haven has this one as well, so it is feasible.
3) The ability to craft items/etc. Crafting also has to mean something mechanically though. It kills me that so much work and love went into a cooking, all for it to be meaningless. A bunch of skill points invested and a bunch of effort from the player (and developers) side just for a potion of a cantrip? That is not a great idea.
4) The ability to engage in interfaction warfare without worrying about DM intervention.
5) The ability to sneak around cities without a DM.
6) The ability for players to run settlements/cities and do the day-to-day with DMs only hopping in for truly unusual things and/or to use their NPCs for oversight against a player leader leading in a way that does not behoove the region (BG's PC leaders acting overtly CE, etc.). Haven and the former Dalelands Beyond both mostly had this. Sigil also semi-had this, though it was mostly limited to the factions. This is a BIG one because it facilitates inter-faction stuff.
7) Either lampshade distances or make the server physically smaller. If you are going to enforce distance in RP, you should NOT have cities that will not feasible communicate. Players might as well be playing on separate servers at that point. So yeah pick your poison; scale the zones down and cull or lampshade. This is especially strange with a very small population.

That would be a 'start' in my opinion. There is more that needs doing IMO.

[Aspect of Sorrow]

All of those, including object permanence through resets, are mechanically feasible.

[metaquad4]

All of those, including object permanence through resets, are mechanically feasible.

Many things are feasible. I'd question more how realistic asking for it is.

[Tantive]

Dev time and DM time is a bit different here, if we're talking about player freedom.

[selhan]

I would want the ability to play alts that have association with a main. There are times when it makes no sense for my main character to do X, but that she would send a servant to speak on her behalf. Currently, doing this would be a violation of the rules.

I like this

then simply having rules that restrict a player from playing 'spy' alts - such as requiring all 'associate' alts to have publicly declared connections with the main character - is enough to stop the abuse cases.

I so despise "Spy Alts"

My opinion:

Far as delays from DM's - with the current roster, I've not experienced any. In fact anytime I do submit something to the DM Team , I get a reply within a week. To me that's fair and satisfying.

For DM's workload:

I wont pretend to say I know what's going on behind the DM board, but maybe things like off screen Player to NPC interactions might help. I know some do it already but I think others are intimidated or think that they cant. And also in this matter, maybe allow factions more control of their NPC's with DMs only giving the resulting reactions off screen via forums? Would save from having to coordinate players and DMs to a desired schedule to meet ingame with something that could had easily been done between forum posts? If Im making sense.

Maybe another thing that can help is this..
Supporting Players:
I'm a player just like everyone else. However I consider myself a supporting player. I chase DM rumors and try to spread that knowledge to players ic specially those who are not savvy to forums. My top reasons are..

1. Because if players are ignorant of the rumors, how do you expect plots to get pushed?
2. Being an endgame player, it gives me something to do. I like rp above all, but if people aint got something to rp about my gameplay dries up. So I chase rumors IC even if I seen the DM post, just cause I feel it validates my ic knowledge, and then spread the rumor around in my own desire to be entertained how others take off on it. I know some DMs at times say "Sel WTF?" or "That cracks me up" and even "I love what your doing" and its all fun to me other than loot loot, talking about background of characters, talk about more make-believe stuff, or even trying to role dislike others and cause drama and conflict out of boredom. Not to say im trying to take the role of an NPC but the ideal is this...

If a player needs to come into a tavern to try to pick up a name or a rumor, why not be that barkeeper they can go too?

Or....

If players need to overhear shady talks about a particular rumor, why not be that shady character talking about that particular rumor?

Hell It might even be fun to rp a Town Crier sometimes. Im sure people will walk to them just to get the DM Rumor. I use to enjoy when DMs popping in the tavern and gave me a rumor to push out. I pushed out those rumors fully . It made me feel part of the team.

Overall:

Other than that, me personally I've not run into any issues. All my submissions have been replied within a weeks time. If DMs need ideals to lesson the Workload so they can get their stuff done, I highly suggest more "Support Players" or make it a thing . And that thing Rhifox mention about Alt usage.

[DaloLorn]

All of those, including object permanence through resets, are mechanically feasible.

Many things are feasible. I'd question more how realistic asking for it is.

Tantive's post is right on the money here. Whatever form these systems took would need to be approved by the DMs, but it's the devs - coders and builders alike - that are going to have to put in the time to design and implement it. Right now, we have maybe one active coder between me and Rhi, and our most prolific builder has just retired to refocus on actually playing the game. As it stands, chances are that the only way for us to compete with Haven, DB, and Sigil on the mechanics you've described would be to literally be given chunks of their codebase and other assets to work with. Even then, you've been on staff, even as recently as Honk's XP proposal: You know what a pain in the ass it is to get enough people onboard with any kind of meaningful change. Even admins aren't immune to this!

But to address the specific requests given...

1. Houses/boats are already a thing, and require next to no DM supervision to acquire. (The system initially had literally no DM involvement, and I remember there was some pushback on that from the team, but I don't remember how it was resolved except that the DMs are still a fairly minor part of the process.)
   
   I suppose we could have some kind of generic, instantiable housing too, but a system like that would require a fair few new maps first. (And, again, we'd need to discuss the design and all.)
2. I've seen this casually thrown around a few times, but it never coalesced into a concrete plan. The Mudd UI could probably be repurposed for this task, and it shouldn't require much (if any) builder work. Still needs to be designed, though.
3. Yeah... we've been trying to agree on what crafting should be like for as long as the server's existed. Every time we get close to getting it done, there's either a change in leadership or the guy pushing the project leaves. (Most recently, the war in Ukraine torpedoing EC's efforts to design the system. Pisses me off every time I think about it.)
4. Well, you sort of can do interfaction warfare without a DM already? Granted, it could be cool to be able to throw your NPCs into the fray, but I don't have even a theoretical notion of what the system for that would look like. Plus there's virtually no factions on the server with enough NPC troops for it to matter: Darkhold, and what, maybe the elven villages put together?
5. Sneaking around cities does feel like an actual DM request here, but I'll give my two cents anyway: Mundane, day-to-day sneaking is fine. Steering clear of the guards, just blending into the crowd. I sort of implicitly do it already in Virin's rumor posts, though I have the mitigating factor of not being married to the sneakiness of it so I can easily change tracks if the DMs say "no, you can't be doing this".
   
   Sneaking around guarded places, though? I'd leave this firmly in DM hands.
6. I'm not sure I understand this one. How are you "running" the settlements, mechanically, on the other servers? We've got plenty of settlements already which are either de-facto or de-jure under player control unless something special happens: Doron Amar, En Dharasha Everae, Candlekeep, Darkhold... arguably Undrek Naudal, though somewhat more tenuously than the other examples. That you are ignoring these tells me you want something not currently supported on BG, but your short summary leaves no indication of what it is.
7. The distances often are lampshaded/ignored for PCs, in my experience. It's generally only armies and caravans that need to respect realistic distances, with the rest often only paying lip service to the notion.
   
   Additionally, we don't have cities that will not feasibly communicate because of distance. We have some that won't communicate because of communication bottlenecks (e.g. Sshamath's communications with surface settlements will probably need to be carried by a PC unless approved by one of the Zhentarim, Uruk Lurra, or Kraak Helzak, because all the wilderness routes to the surface are dangerous), and we have some that won't communicate because they explicitly don't want to (e.g. even if Sshamath got a message through to BG, the Dukes would likely refuse to answer). Darkhold is our northernmost settlement, Nashkel our southernmost: They don't interact often, but the Zhents still played a part in the Amnian refugee crisis.

TL;DR: Some of this is already done in my view, but could possibly be refined if some more concrete complaints were raised. Much (but not all!) of the rest isn't happening unless we completely transform our design process, and get a fistful of new devs onboard to spread the workload around.

Either way, not really the thread for this sort of conversation.



To answer Honk's original query... I can't honestly remember a lot of instances where I felt unreasonably hamstrung by the need for DM supervision. More often I've run into issues with the server rules in general, like what Rhi posted about.

If I absolutely had to make an original contribution here, then I guess I'd like to be able to play PCs on both sides of a conflict. Mercifully, it doesn't feel like Undrek Naudal and Blue Lantern Keep are going to be at each others' throats anytime soon... but if they were, I would have to choose which one of my two very deeply involved characters would be sitting it out, because one of them has fought for the right for her kind to live in Rockrun/BLK, while the other is the matron of a house whose existence practically revolves around Naudal. Tricky business.

That said, this is one of those restrictions I don't ever expect to see lifted, because the potential for abuse sadly outweighs the benefits. But it's the only one I can remember being particularly bothered by in recent times, and I wanted to say something that was on-topic besides a simple "I agree with Rhi/Sel".

[blazerules]

[*]I'm not sure I understand this one. How are you "running" the settlements, mechanically, on the other servers?

Let me chime in on this as a complete and total nerd. From both the place of someone who has ran settlements in different RP games and loves the concept way too damn much. Though I do not know this from a other server perspective.

The unfortunate side of this, is that its yet another DEV request, rather than a DM thing. But I suppose falls under player freedom? Still running settlements is a pretty huge impact thing even for a tiny one.

I will make it super turbo simple and not write a 50 page essay...
In essence: Politics, Economy, Diplomacy.
Politics: Ability to alter the states internal and external political structure from the form of head of state (Monarchy, Parliment, Chiefdom, Theocracy etc) to how that power is held accountable to (Autocracy, oligarchy, voting by the rich etc), general views on race, religion, other internal cultural conflicts.
Economy: Trade, what resources are generated by the settlement on a daily/weekly/monthly basis alongside costs and profits. What these resources are made into. What resources are harvested. Population growth, Standard of Living. This kind of falls into military as well as resources and wealth dictates how big an army a settlement can have.
Diplomacy: General interaction with other states (Not really feasible as theyre technically DM controlled)

Only realistic way i can see this exist is in the form of some sort of settlement management minigame. I could probably write up a whole design doc on this, and it'd be dope. But nobody in their right mind would code this nor do I think it would ever find enough support.

If it became a thing Id be the happiest human being on earth and, for a brief moment, achieve enlightenment as my chakras align with both the metaphysical and physical realms.

[DaloLorn]

Some sort of settlement management minigame? This is sounding like full-game stuff.

[Deragnost]

To stay in topic with Honk question, I actually believe what Rhifox brought up is what lacks. The chance to have NPCs/alts that either work for you or are hired by you, and that are fully aligned with your main character or a specific faction (no ifs, no buts).

Wether it is Thieves Guild, Zhentarim, Harpers, Broken Goblet, Candlekeep, Order of the Radiant Heart, or even (and I speak for myself) a simple stall like me and Mathilde do with the "Run a Rig", where we are actually using alts to craft us wands to make them available for players.

You would say: players go first! And I agree, I would choose them over our alts. We have been through that route, but when we open shop, it's not said that they are also available, and if we suggest to reserve it to our crafters and deliver it in the next days, 80-90% (if not 100%) says "nah thanks I'll check the auctions".

I disagree however on making spy alts, and then bringing Infos to your main character or the main of another friend within the faction, like it's been done in the past, both within the Zhent (I speak of the time where Victoria was still Dreadlady, but at the time it was a gray area and there was no rule about it, i know it because I was there - and it was ruled out later) and in other factions.

In short, yes: NPCs that support your main or a faction (even if not your faction, they ask you to do them a favor to make an expendable NPC to be eventually deleted, which is also a good narrative key point to interact with others) and fully aligned to the character or faction in a way that is obvious.
How? Maybe they have a signet ring, or a cloak, or anything that would make it clear in their Examine (and maybe having a tag [NPC] next to their name?).
My imagination is now running, so imagine to have an NPC in the Nexus (maybe Jergal?) that allows a new character to be transformed directly into an NPC (and maybe auto-renaming it with the NPC tag?). What would that mean?

Benefits:

• you'll start directly at Level 10 ( ECL excluded) if you're creating a new character, or you can keep your level and gear if it's an existing character of a superior level;

• you receive (untradable) decent gear (including untradable healing potions and kits), with the chance to refuse it at "NPCisation", to face dangers (this is perfect for a level 1 character upped to level 10, so maybe getting +2 or +3 items for free, even if untradable/undroppable without DM supervision);

• the chance to give missions to low or high levels for one or the other faction even if you're not a member (under agreement of the faction itself);

Maluses:

• you can't level up further and you can't RCR it;

• once you're dead, you're dead, no rez and you gotta create a new NPC;

• you can't get loot from chests, or rewards from quests.

Just putting down some thoughts, but to conclude: I concur with Rhifox and Sel in what they said.



EDIT: I also think creating plots like, "a murderer is in town in Baldur's Gate", or "a paladin is in Soubar / Roaringshore, smiting evil creatures/pirates" with props, it would create fun situations... as long as the people who are doing it, know exactly what it means.

EDIT 2: It would also be great, if it isn't already doable, if characters can be part of the local militia (as in, BG or Soubar or Beregost or Nashkel... or Darkhold if it has one?) and be able to truly enforce the law... with evidences (or bribes).

To use the above example: I, Watchman, discover the murderer during the act of killing (placing props in that case), I can attack / arrest the person.

EDIT 3 (sorry I'm getting too many things in my head!) : the possibility to summon / conjure NPCs as cohorts of sort, representing the faction of yours (maybe as something to be added to a guild behind a payment) and choose their class (rogue, fighter, cleric or wizard - classic). Only the Guild Leader (or who for them, so maybe the higher rankings who have a specific token) can summon one and only one. Their level, level 10 at best (maybe only level 1, and you can increase the level depending how much gold you spend with the DMs?). It's for RP purposes afterall.

[Ghost]

EDIT: I SHOULD SAY THIS IS MY OPINION SO PEOPLE DON'T THINK I'M A TYRANT AGAIN

Baldur's Gate City Watch is already open to PC recruits. You're not immediately allowed to go about and enforce the law, because that would make no sense: The City Watch needs to first see that you are trustworthy and that you get the appropriate training and stuff.

I will just say immediately also that I am 100% against any and all cases of players playing multiple characters that know and interact with one another. If your character wants something done, don't hide behind an expendable, throwaway NPC with no personality. Work on building your character. This isn't Crusader Kings. It's a role playing game, not some strategy game or a city builder. Sure, there can be aspects of city building in roleplaying games and character development, but focus on the character. Hire other PCs or NPCs to do work for you if you don't want to do it yourself.

But access to throwaway, foolproof semi-PCs is a terrible, terrible idea.

[DaloLorn]

Hiring NPCs kinda requires more DM oversight than it's worth, though. A lot more, depending on the task being hired for.

[Planehopper]

I will just say immediately also that I am 100% against any and all cases of players playing multiple characters that know and interact with one another. If your character wants something done, don't hide behind an expendable, throwaway NPC with no personality. Work on building your character. This isn't Crusader Kings. It's a role playing game, not some strategy game or a city builder. Sure, there can be aspects of city building in roleplaying games and character development, but focus on the character. Hire other PCs or NPCs to do work for you if you don't want to do it yourself.

But access to throwaway, foolproof semi-PCs is a terrible, terrible idea.

It comes down to trusting your players to take their time and characters seriously on this server. There arent very many players left - to run a full fledged guild without DM support these alts are nearly imperative. Guilds continue to struggle to entice new characters or low level characters to join them when the rest of the guild is high-level, or the heads of guilds have worked their way up in character to a point where a lot of the menial tasks no longer make sense. The Dreadlady wouldnt go deliver a message herself. Jackard wouldnt be out collecting herbs and fishing. The guildmaster of the thieves guild likely wouldnt be running around with a low-level cutpurse. These things are jobs and roles of underlings and characters that are lower in the food chain - characters that simply cant exist with the paltry player numbers the server puts up these days.

To me its not very different than trusting your DMs to run NPCs with full-personality, character, and rich role play. There is nothing at all that sets a DM above a player when it comes to RP ability or dedication, its just a matter of trusting the players the same way (and with very little risk as compared to a DMs NPC controls)

And I would mention that this was completely fine, encouraged, and done often earlier in the server's history. I've had a House Wyndsoul page that delivered messages, I've played an underling in the thieves guild when we were running it, and an apprentice in the Weave Masters when we started that to name just a few that I recall enjoying.

Metagaming is going to happen either way, the players that will metagame will do so regardless of the protection disallowing this might try to provide. Only by not allowing alts that know one another we are also denying the reality that this server shrinks by the month and that many of these roles that could/were taken up by other players are just not there anymore.

[Titania_1]

I was going to post a long explanation with reasonings, but I'll just say I disagree with the idea of letting mains and alts associate and work together.