The Future of the UD -- what happens now?

[DM Hera]

Not like the drow need a perimeter, as that would make trade unwelcome looking...

well a super heavily fortified perimeter would i suppose, tho the one at mist lake is not like that

a perimeter is simply a means of providing early warning but can have different functions itself, not to mention with being a trade city one would think that they would have checkpoints with goods inspections before merchants entered the city, would be insanely easy to attack them if not

trojan spiders everywhere

This sounds like a good rp..

After all a smart merchant bribes...

Others might think such check points violate freedom, while others think they are bad for business... after all what can hurt the city in a wagon!? Drow arrogance always wins out.


But we might have a good story here too...

[pimpjwp]

Yes the use of tsbarak is killer . It would be nice to see some of the other leaders as well not all together but to see them out and about doing things with the citizens and factions .

[Storm Munin]

The Conclave have made public appearance in almost all of its glory before a few times.
Most notably at the trial condemning the Eilistraeean threesome for opening a planar gate to the Abyss within the city proper.

The rare occurance of it happening due to the lack of desire to have anything to do with the public I would imagine.
Their own interests and schemes far outweighing any gain to be had by assembling for public display, normally. They simply do not give a crap about the denizens of the city overall.
The Conclave are not the Dukes, should discontent begin to spread concerning this stance towards the public they are arguably more likely to assort to entirely different and more violent means to quell it. More or less discreetly.


@Hera
I believe you have the right of it concerning possibles avenues of more political and economically angled events and would love to walk down that path with you and any other player interested.

However, the lore based conclave have been expanded in server lore with these three:
A House Sshamath Seat - depends on what DM runs a campaign (unsure of its institutional origin but it was a few years prior to the Alhoon War I believe)
A Temple of Lolth Seat - depends on what DM runs a campaign (Granted after Alhoon War and further player driven political powerplay)
A Seventh Circle Seat - Chaptermaster Ilphryssin Arkentlar (Granted after the Alhoon War and further player driven political powerplay)

A faction race to vie over the best trade and logging locations at Undrek Naudal in the Upperdark should be an interesting event campaign?

[DM Hera]

So there are more seats now on concil, and its no longer an even number? Why did the drow allow an uneven number! thats the whole point of the 8 the first time, sure schools of magic, but it meant no one school/group could be a tie breaker, instead had to go against..

hmm well.

any other neat details lol

are either of those three player factions?

Are either of those three seats held by a player?

[Storm Munin]

DMs, faction leaders and laymen alike please give me updates for the State of the factions thread I posted, as able.


Rasael holds the player faction Seventh Circle's Conclave Seat with his toon Ilphryssin Arkentlar, thus Ilphryssin holds NPC status now and as such is not a playable character without DM consent I believe.
NPCs hold the Seats claimed by the player faction of House Sshamath/the Temple of Lolth.
NPC Tsabrak holds the Seat for the School of Necromancy I believe and the School is a player faction.
AFAIK, none of the other Seats are held by a player or player Faction.

[BigJ]

Hey guys lets stay on topic.

Heh, I do get passionate sometimes hence I banned myself from the thread a couple of days

Ban over, so . .

Forums - Can we have an UD OOC subforum here for threads like this? We can split out the different topics and they wont fill up the RP forum, or get lost in the other forums amongst all the surface stuff.

Conclave (13 members- 10 schools of magic, 2 Llothite and an independant merchant house) - checkout my suggestion thread Hera for quick reference re the council members and their 'loose' alliances. I copied the info from the lore thread for easy ref.

The conclave itself ins't actually a 'faction' per se, more the bureaucratic arm of the the council and handles tasks that do not fall within the remit of one of the schools. These bureaucrats can also be members of one of the schools hence competition between the schools to get the jobs and increase influence (Make some conclave jobs available to players??)

The conclave's real skill though is balancing the power in Sshamath, if one faction seems to be getting too much power it will actively work against that faction, play it off against the others. Probably why they wouldn't let a third Llothite faction on the council, would give them too much influence.

NPC's - Named PC's always help me in building up background and immersion. Like has been said the schools are not just wizard schools and also have alchemists, warriors, assassins, spy's, scouts, kennel masters etc. Its why I took the step of creating some for the School of Evocation. Would love it if all the schools were fleshed out this way. Helps build up the image.

Questing - Sounds like you have some stories to unleash on us Hera which is great, maybe you can talk some other dm's into hosting one-shot events to dip their toes down here . Troglodytes have hijacked a trade caravan, Goblins have kidnapped someone to rescue, there a mushroom outbreak at the Mist lake etc etc. Something they can put a few dungeons together for and not worry about politics / factions.

Gah I'm doing it again, wall of text, once I start writing hard to find the brake pedal That's enough for this post.

BigJ

[professiondude]

You guys got me hyped for the UD!
I'm already creating plans within plans on how to make this UD part of BGTSCC fun x.x

[BigJ]

You guys got me hyped for the UD!
I'm already creating plans within plans on how to make this UD part of BGTSCC fun x.x

Fun? Nau . . death, torture, pain, disembowelment . . Hmm . . okay fun

And there's fishing too . .

Welcome to the dark side

BigJ

[professiondude]

We can fish? :O

[lilani]

My view is that there are the following issues with the the UD right now:

1) Too many factions, not enough players
With 11+? factions, there are simply more factions than there are UD mains.

From what i've seen there are around a half dozen UD main characters, the rest either only log on when it's time for Sunday's event, or they main surface characters, this leads to the factions being simply far too diluted.

I'd suggest closing all the inactive UD factions and then with what's left, it would make sense for players to try and form alliances so that they've reasons to work together.

The remaining factions (i.e. schools that aren't represented, other houses etc), can then play as protagonists for DM's plots.

2) No PC Hierarchy / stagnant factions.
Another problem right now is that even if there is a PC who holds any rank in a faction, they simply aren't active enough to be seen.

I'd suggest looking for volunteers from players willing to a) main and b) step up and lead and give them some authority in their respective factions. This will allow the factions to become functional rather than being as stagnant as they are now.

Once you have leadership, your npc's can take direction from the players and this will make plot hooks far easier & help towards creating engaging RP.

3) Events
I know many people playing Drow want some huge intrigue plots (and i can't blame them), but I do urge extreme caution around this. I've seen how player conflict unfolds on the surface & it quickly can descend into ooc hell. This isn't a road I'd recommend exploring until the UD player base becomes more understanding of how the UD is run.

As an example, It would be far better (in terms of keeping players happy), to have the players find common ground and work together and plot against npc's than be plotting against each other - this ties in with my #1 point above.

To start with, i'd be encouraging drow player factions to be finding reasons to be working together, giving them small adventures and slowly build up from that.

[BigJ]

I'd suggest closing all the inactive UD factions and then with what's left, it would make sense for players to try and form alliances so that they've reasons to work together.

Storm M pointed out in my suggestions thread that alliances already exist in Sshamath re the lore. From other thread:

Abjuration, Transmutation & Divination (None IG).
Conjuration, Evocation and Elemental magic (None IG)
Necromancy, Illusion, and Enchantment (Necro IG, other two aren't, which works out as alliance is shaky so just add a port for Illusion and Enchantment)
School of Mages is IG, but is unaligned which works out well.

So if we include adding House Sshamath that is 4 new portals / entrances to add. **

So that would be 10 down to 4. Necros / Illusionists are active for one, Evocation is active for another, not sure about any Abj/Trans/Div. Not seen anyone from School of Mages for a long time either.

I have seen a few House Sshamath about, giving them a home might promote more activity for them being as they are the founding fathers.

The 7th Circle have been active but off the radar, so that completes the Conclave. If we can generate some political intrigue by using "The Bureaucracy" mechanic, some players might roll up chars for those inactive factions in order to get involved in it, or bring back old ones.

The fact as well that ANY faction (Bregan/Zaufin/Devlin) can get involved with the Bureaucracy brings us all to one place.

BigJ

[Pimple]

Three weeks since the last post in the Gloura's Wings forum. Is the UD dead again?

[Blackman D]

slowly died off again yes, lost another DM

[BigJ]

Three weeks since the last post in the Gloura's Wings forum. Is the UD dead again?

slowly died off again yes, lost another DM

Actually I've noticed more new toons in the UD in the last month than previous month. The player event I tried on 4th dec had about 8/9 players and others were in the UD at that time that weren't in our party (Which reminds me, I need to update the UD beginners guide as a couple of them asked me questions).

Granted, in terms of old toons I've only rp'd with five of them in the two weeks since and its been a bit quiet, but then its xmas so other things to do.

Also THIS HAS NOT HELPED, several maps are spawning rats or the wrong mobs. If it had been surface maps I expect it would have been fixed quickly, supply and demand I guess. Plus its xmas

Shared some interesting tells with a dm also who said there were big things ahead for the UD for the new year.

I wish people would post more though, something I try to encourage otherwise it does give the wrong impression. I know most of the stuff in the UD is cloak and dagger, unlike the surface, but there must be something the conniving drow can post

BigJ

[DreWalker]

Put mining in the game, have precious metals that you can only find in the UD, and others on the surface. even for a little while, if it gets crazy, take it out.. how bad could it be?