Concept idea for the Surface.

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HinAttack
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Concept idea for the Surface.

Post by HinAttack » Sat Mar 16, 2019 1:48 am

Greetings,
I have a concept I have been mulling around in my head for some time and thought I would put thoughts on paper to solicit comments.

I sometimes play D&D as a pen and paper game with a regular group which is starting to move further away due to work, life.. etc. So I thought, how can I use Arelith to keep my gaming group alive and connected?

We are more of a heavy role play kinda group and my thoughts were to develop characters and backstories here in Arelith. My vision is to have some local and some non-local folks, mostly good aligned, meet on the docks and walk the speedy quest. Then perhaps meet in the Nomad and spend a few hours in there discussing the future or our plan on what to do. Perhaps go to the trading rep and get a few writs. Then off to the map room to see where the writs will be taking us. When nightfall hit, we would make camp and wait it out, posting guards. Have bedrolls and a campfire to add to the immersion.

Our group is not really a tragic hero group or a social butterfly group. (nothing wrong with that, just not us). We thought we would play these characters once a week or once every two weeks, so the level progression will be very slow.

I am wondering if anyone has tried this before and how well it worked. I am seeing camping and waiting for the sun to come up to be straining on us - we would sit in the same spot for 36-42 minutes RL. I am not sure if we would run out of things to say. :lol:

But I am looking for thoughts on this. There are 14 of us, most of who will need to download the game - so it may take a month or three to get to 'being in game.' It will be a large investment in time at the beginning and if other folks have experimented with this, I would love to hear your thoughts on what went right and what went wrong.

Thanks.

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Mr_Rieper
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Re: Concept idea for the Surface.

Post by Mr_Rieper » Sat Mar 16, 2019 1:53 am

One thing I'd like to see done on Arelith more often, is having characters belong to named adventuring groups or companies.

It would be easier to build a reputation on the server if the whole group had a name. And keep track of who's who.

I recommend just doing that. Start an adventuring company. New characters can ask to join you in-character too.
CosmicOrderV wrote:
Sat May 11, 2019 4:55 pm
Be the change you want to see, and shape the server because of it. Players can absolutely help keep their fellow players accountable.

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Kenji
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Re: Concept idea for the Surface.

Post by Kenji » Sat Mar 16, 2019 2:01 am

One thing to keep in mind is that Time is very different on Arelith than it is in PnP.

In PnP, the group usually gets to decide to have a short rest for fighters and warlocks recover their dices, spells, etc., or have an 8-hour full rest to recover wizard/cleric spells as well as the hit dice for rest heals.

On Arelith, the time has to pass through, which means "keeping watch" for the night means not doing anything for a good half an hour or so while your characters RP it out. Maybe have a fireside chat, etc.

The encounters in PnP are also very different from that of how Arelith is set up. Each encounter in PnP feels exhausting and dangerous (depends on DM), not to be taken lightly, whereas Arelith has multiple encounters in a single dungeon run and can become repetitive until the boss fight.

I have to say, 14 of y'all is a huge group! Normally I have 1 group of 4~5 friends for each session. At most two groups of different PnP with different campaigns. Coincidentally and ideally it's usually the same amount for Arelith.

Anything bigger than that is pretty much a warband or a company of mercenaries or heroes in Arelith! And it's still possible, they're pretty much organized via factions.

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HinAttack
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Re: Concept idea for the Surface.

Post by HinAttack » Sat Mar 16, 2019 4:13 am

Kenji3108 wrote:
Sat Mar 16, 2019 2:01 am
On Arelith, the time has to pass through, which means "keeping watch" for the night means not doing anything for a good half an hour or so while your characters RP it out. Maybe have a fireside chat, etc.

I have to say, 14 of y'all is a huge group! Normally I have 1 group of 4~5 friends for each session. At most two groups of different PnP with different campaigns. Coincidentally and ideally it's usually the same amount for Arelith.
Thanks for the feedback. You are right, sitting around a fire and chatting every 2 hours or so for 30 minutes may stress our RP ideas. And we are all discussing it. Personally, I would like to try it just to see what kind of RP we can generate. Off the top of my head, some of the topics can be the upcoming foray into the cave/swamp/whatever, discussion of tactics when we meet hostiles, deity morality from our clerics... I don't know.

As for the 14 folks, I am in two groups - one 7 person group of Dark Heresy and one 6 person group of D&D plus me. And it may not be all of them that join this experiment, however, all, so far, has expressed interest to try. This is still in the concept phase. I don't expect all of them to play every game night, so I am looking to have 'understudies' just in case we need someone to fill in.

The more I think about this, the more excited I get. I have had a few of the folks express trepidation, but overall, I think most will want to try it. If it works out, maybe you will see a large group of low level n00bs wandering around lost in the forest. :)

Again, thanks for the comments.

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Re: Concept idea for the Surface.

Post by Kreydis » Sat Mar 16, 2019 1:10 pm

Just be careful that they don't only have fun whenever you're online. A lot of groups forum, but they never have enough fun with their concepts or whatever because they feel like they have to limit their time to when the core is around. Not to mention outsiders will naturally feel a bit reserved at interacting with any preformed blob. Often leading to the whole clique mentality.
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Re: Concept idea for the Surface.

Post by kiljaedon » Mon Mar 18, 2019 10:47 am

Not wanting to say anything to dissuade anyone from wanting to play on Arelith but, in your case, you might be better served to look into running private servers for your campaigns if you want to experience the tabletop feeling of Dungeons and Dragons in an online format. There are plenty of premade resources to quickly set up your campaigns and you can pop a temp server up on a weekly basis. Arelith has too many other human factors that may impede on your focused tranquility.

On the other hand, also invite all of your friends to Arelith and do form that group to interact on the isle. You are going to have to do more than token advertising though because mercenary groups don't really work well. I've seen so many adventure groups form and disband from lack of customers so you will have to go out of your way to build alliances and influence and possibly be a neutral band that settlements might want to hire out if you prove your girth.

Sartain
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Re: Concept idea for the Surface.

Post by Sartain » Mon Mar 18, 2019 1:22 pm

Problem with mercenaries is that players aren't really going to be paying anyone for going to get that sweet loot and XP, since they'd rather have that sweet loot and XP themselves :)

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Re: Concept idea for the Surface.

Post by 420chambers » Wed Mar 27, 2019 6:22 pm

i like it a lot but just make sure that all the players interact with other characters all individually and separated etc fairly often so that you dont fall into the clique mentality as mentioned above

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