Promoting RP while adventuring

[gedweyignasia]

Hey! So I'm a new-ish developer on staff, and my focus is on making areas that promote RP between characters.

I'm looking for suggestions on how I can help you find and RP with other PCs in any situation. I'm not here to change fundamental mechanics, but I can pull some pretty crazy scripting tricks in dungeons to make skills/RP spells/whatever relevant. The ideal changes are the super simple ones like, "What if we put a campfire and some seats outside the FAI?" that can make a huge difference.

Things I'd like to do:
1. Help you find people to RP with and do exciting/new/interesting things as a group
2. Help you share your character's background
3. Help you express who you are through your classes/skills/character sheet
4. Help you showcase parts of your character's personality that current situations don't address

Example #1:
Your Pale Master isn't much of a fighter, but he's a renowned scholar in everything necromantic and/or arcane. Including an abandoned library or some runes in a safe part of a dungeon with undead gives you a chance to RP this side of your character.

Example #2:
You want to find a group to go run through dungeons, but your character is kind of a loner, so she doesn't seek out a group-- she just tends to form ad-hoc parties if she finds other adventurers in a dungeon. I add a puzzle to a dungeon that has to be solved to progress, so that people will be stuck in one place for a few minutes in that dungeon, giving you a chance to get to know the people you run into.

Example #3:
Your character is a bandit who likes to mug helpless merchants and travelers on the roadside, but you never see any NPC merchants/travelers outside of guarded towns. I get permission from DMs and admins to add some randomly-named NPC merchants who occasionally spawn to travel between Beregost and Nashkel, and now your character can set traps/lie in wait with his bandit friends to do bandit things.

Example #4:
Your character is a historian, but you don't know a whole hell of a lot about Forgotten Realms lore, so you need more books in the libraries, descriptions on places of significance, etc.

Let me help you RP!

[Kauaiian]

What a great initiative.

I think you hit the nail on the head for me. I would love for more of the RP inclined spells to be of use in a dungeon. Perhaps the spells like legend lore, analyze dweomer and such could be used to unearth some knowledge that could allow access to some hidden area?

[Zanniej]

Awesome idea. I think I'd aim on giving more mechanical benefits to the less mechanical relevant skills / the more RP oriented skills.

Skills that come up from the top of my head are:

• Appraise
• Sense Motive
• Parry (because who'd take that!? . . . apart from me)
• Perform? (I know, bard songs, but apart from that, do you really RP those skills?)
• Escape Artist
• Disguise
• Sleight of hand
• A lot of the new lore skills
• Taunt! (Thanks Chad, your post reminded me of that one)

Perhaps later I can come up with some ideas on how to use those skills in in-game situations.

I also like the idea you have about the merchants. It would be good to have some scripted fun for the more evilly inclined toons.

[Theodore01]

Not sure if that is what your are looking for,
i would like to see more skill checks while adventuring and more random encounters.

Things like survival, search, tumble, spot, lore, listen,......,will/reflex/fort or some basic attribute checks.

some ideas:
On a narrow path make a tumble check or fall down (survival/CON)
Climb up somewhere as a shortcut (STR and/or DEX)
Cross a river (reflex) fall prone or get drifted off a bit.
Will checks in scary situations or get afraid.

Things like that could scatter the party while exploring.


Randomly spawn a wounded non hostile creature that a player can heal.
Randomly spawn an escortable NPC that wants to get out of a dungeon alive and rewards the player/party.
Or even one that tricks the player to help him and leads them in an ambush.
Randomly spawn a hostile adventure group that attacks, when not bribed or bluff/intimidate/dipl.
Randomly spawn a NPC that offers to sell one random unidentified item.
Sometimes a boss has unexpected company or calls for reinforcement (bigger fights).
Sometimes a boss is already slain and his badass killer is there(bigger fights).

Shrines where a player can pray - random good/bad effects.
Trigger a spell when touching an object - random good/bad effects.

Ohh and finally dead magic zones

[NegInfinity]

1. Help you find people to RP with and do exciting/new/interesting things as a group

Uh...

2. Help you share your character's background

In my experience this kind of thing simply rarely happen, and I'm not sure if it even can be addressed. On all my character, when the character is not an overly talkative type, biography will almost never surfaces, unless you ask for a dm help. Trying to reveal bio details usually feel forced and a bit out of place. For me, anyway.

3. Help you express who you are through your classes/skills/character sheet

I think it would help to have an anti-magic dunegon or two. One filled with traps/skillchecks and another one with melee enemies. Would be nice to have some randomness, like changing layout, but I'm not sure how feasible that is with nwn2 engine.

4. Help you showcase parts of your character's personality that current situations don't address

It would help to have more conflicting situations, based on racial or class dislike, because those help to show different side of your caracter. For example, warlocks are outlawed in almost all major cities, yet there's astounding amount of them running around in the open with no consequences whatsoever. Any attempts to push racial issues usually fall flat too. That greatly limits roleplay options. If you're playing a coward that can become dangerous when cornered, your character is never going to be cornered, even if it is some sort of a necromancer.

I think it could be great to have a random detector npcs that can recognize some of the darker spells and rat our characters to authorities.

Speaking of races, npcs at beregost and inn-keeper at the nashkel's inn are done in very awesome way. I'd prefer to see more of those kind of things in-game.

Another issue is that there's a strong disconnect between in-game reality and forum reality.
It would be much better if rumors, auctions, trades and sending messages was handled via in-game means. Meaning that "leave me the message at the inn" would actually require leavning the message at the actul inn, if auction house listings existed in-game, and rumors were told by an npc. I think there was some sort of leftover for a messaging service in UD? I think something like that could be re-implemented.

Your Pale Master isn't much of a fighter, but he's a renowned scholar in everything necromantic and/or arcane. Including an abandoned library or some runes in a safe part of a dungeon with undead gives you a chance to RP this side of your character.

Safe zones in dangerous locations would be great, especially if libraries there have books that are not available elsewhere, even in candlekeep.

You want to find a group to go run through dungeons, but your character is kind of a loner,

Speaking of which, hiring a proper mercenary at the moment is surprisingly difficult. We have two message boards, something similar to them could be probably used for mercenary hiring.

so she doesn't seek out a group-- she just tends to form ad-hoc parties if she finds other adventurers in a dungeon.

The issue with loner characters is that they may find large groups of people hard to approach. Entrance to FAI usually gathers very large crowds. So unless there's just one lonely PC standing near the entrance, the "loner" might just decide not to deal with this mess and travel on his/her own.

Your character is a bandit who likes to mug helpless merchants and travelers on the roadside, but you never see any NPC merchants/travelers outside of guarded towns.

Actually...
Random encounters coudl be fun. Speaking of which, it might be possible to add random paladin/cleric which could detect evil spells (warlock, nercomancy, blood magic), and then confront character about it. Then again, something like that would be best handled by a DM.

[NegInfinity]

Oh, and one more thing. Crafting Skills. I almost never see them being used. Would be great if your char could assist a blacksmith/alchemist/etc, maybe for gold or something like that.

[gedweyignasia]

Would be nice to have some randomness, like changing layout, but I'm not sure how feasible that is with nwn2 engine.

;)

[NegInfinity]

Would be nice to have some randomness, like changing layout, but I'm not sure how feasible that is with nwn2 engine.

Not sure what's that supposed to mean. I'm fairly certain nwn script doesn't allow spawning of dungeon tiles. Rewiring teleport transitions should be doable, though.

[chad878262]

I think it was originally discussed that Lore: Dungeoneering would make resting possible in some 'no-rest' zones. Would be really cool if that were implemented. Likewise, would be nice if Survival/Lore:Nature in some way helped find safe rest in area's that are currently no rest (like the camp fire and druid grove in the Lion's Way map )

I am definitely in agreement for more skill checks being relevant as currently there are only a select few with mechanical benefit and the rest are only useful if you get in to a DM Event or RP with players that like skill rolls in each others company. The above would be nice as a way to get some nice RP and mechanical benefit for a Ranger, Scout, Cavestalker type as even in an area with a group, when the wizard says "My spells are nearly exhausted" while halfway down the Nashkel Mines, the Tiefling Cavestalker might say "I know a place we should be safe from the denizens to rest for a time" That's good stuff IMO!

Might also be an interesting idea to have a battle or two similar to SoZ where you can bluff/diplomacy/intimidate prior to a battle to impose a debuff on the enemy, which might allow that CHA bard or rogue to shine a bit.

[NegInfinity]

Might also be an interesting idea to have a battle or two similar to SoZ where you can bluff/diplomacy/intimidate prior to a battle to impose a debuff on the enemy, which might allow that CHA bard or rogue to shine a bit.

Does anyone remember the mighty bandit of doom that used to haunt the boarskyr bridge?

You could scare him off with intimidate check. The DC was over the top, though. IIRC it was DC55 or something like that.

Some soubar npcs had skill checks in their quests too, which wasn't that bad.

[taylorstar]

I used to play on a nwn1 server called Island of Fredian (my first RP experience/home) in one of the dungeons used to be a door that could only be opened by correctly answering a riddle, and given the dm's love of riddles etc, I would like to see something like that in game.

The way it worked was there would be like 10 riddles stored in a database, you try to open the door and the text would flash up on the screen and you had to type the answer in chat. I know eventually people would catalog it but it would be a great conversation starter and would be awesome to include questions about in game lore and locations.

[gedweyignasia]

I used to play on a nwn1 server called Island of Fredian (my first RP experience/home) in one of the dungeons used to be a door that could only be opened by correctly answering a riddle, and given the dm's love of riddles etc, I would like to see something like that in game.

The way it worked was there would be like 10 riddles stored in a database, you try to open the door and the text would flash up on the screen and you had to type the answer in chat. I know eventually people would catalog it but it would be a great conversation starter and would be awesome to include questions about in game lore and locations.

You should visit the newly renovated Durlag's Tower, by our tfunke. (Don't rush though; I'm not sure that quest is working yet.)

[Side]

One thing I've just noticed while running around with a slightly oversized party is that everyone kind of strings out, with the faster members leading the charge and the rest catching up.

There are not a whole lot of places that help a combat focused character show off in RP, and in groups above 3 it gets harder and harder to keep everyone in text range. Enemies are almost always in small groups and spread out relatively evenly, at least in the UD.

Maybe while you're making combat maps you can group up the encounters to make them last longer, or just add enemies that take longer to kill? That way there is more time for emoting and talking during fights, rather than just adding more areas to RP when you need a break from the killing.

[chad878262]

Wouldn't be bad for more areas that require a party/are more difficult to solo.

[NegInfinity]

Wouldn't be bad for more areas that require a party/are more difficult to solo.

In my experience forcing people to cooperate doesn't really generate a very good or entertaining roleplay. People just band together other thin-vieled excuse for mechanical reasons, and not much development and interesting interactions will be going on there. As a result, someone who don't like those kind parties will simply avoid locations that require cooperation.

Those things shouldn't be forced, and if someone wants to solo, they should be able to try and solo. The risk is much higher than in a party, in the end.