The state of Andunor

[Archon]

Some thoughts from me, having played an open evil antagonist at surface which resulted to eventual casting down to Andunor, with literally nowhere else to go.

I think there's many reasons why outcast is so attractive to play, human's superiority as a character platform aside from mechanical point of view -- many of those points were outlined above by others; freedom of movement across the whole server content, and for fresh off the boat anonymity. However, I think branding outcasts is a horrible idea to get around that. It's a band-aid, and an ugly one.

Human can be just as monstrous as an actual monster race, but it is something that should be established in game with actively playing it out. When purchasable outcast status was removed, I felt back then, and still do, that outcast option should be removed entirely from character creation (if not moved to Reward category). While there were some people who bought status only for extra language (undercommon) and to be able to use the Hub portal, those should have been individual cases to crack down on. At the same time, it made no sense to me, that characters who have no in game background in crime/villainy could start with the status from level 1.

This ties to a bigger problem on the server and changes I have seen to happen since the removal of Wharftown. I am not opening a discussion why it happened, but how it impacted begs a mention as it is relevant to what is going on now. WT was a shaker of the surface side in good and bad, and no other place ever managed to fill that role since (pirate Sencliff or Sibayad). This led to general absence of sweeping changes and daring factions, and as there's not much to do at surface, or no place to build their proverbial castle, evil character rather start from UD as surface is simply not a valid option. UD is more hospitable, but here's also a catch. Evil humans/half-orcs etc thrive from antagonizing their racial equivalents and working whatever ideologies/agendas among groups they can relate to. This leads to a point there's not much for outcasts to do in UD either. While place is more ideal to exist in at the moment, it is harder to make an impact or have goals aside of carving their own place and holding their ground.

There might be a number of outcasts at the moment, but as it was said it's cyclical. If there's no leader figure(s) in Andunor, people easily fall to a spot they don't know what they can do/could do. Surface has no real place for them, and inter-Andunor politics only go so far to consistently inspire. Sure, there's a lot of tension because of racial/factional differences, but it is a lot more fun to build something than keep breaking things (or others) down repeatedly.


In short.

1) Overhaul of Sencliff/creation of a new shady hub at surface + add mechanics benefiting Evil (such as smuggler boat update was) to not come across as pirate only. I don't know about you, but not all wicked surface characters like tattoos, like the sea, and appreciate sea shanties. I know most likely don't. Evil is varied.

(Remove Banite Fortress' faith theme. Make it a place to be owned by anyone with Evil alignment, without presence of religion tied NPCs. A castle counter to settlement owned Darrowdeep and Gloom.)

2) Remove outcast from character creation, or make it a reward. This forces evil characters to start from surface, roleplay their fall from grace, and this gives surface a new generation of antagonists to tackle. I believe surface benefits from this as well, to put an end to -- and this is only my opinion, to stagnancy there has been since most "evil" moved to UD side, and WT got nuked.

3) No branding. I don't like this trend. If people actually would get thrown down to Andunor for in-game crimes, they would be well enough known to not warrant this, and those who'd invest to Reward locked outcast likely has a drive to make name for themselves - and would be less inclined to create a test/throw away characters.

[Drexyl N~drass]

When I was a newer player starting out I made the mistake of trying to correlate FR lore with the Arelith setting and by and large the two are incompatible with the way things are set up. Take humans in the UD, Why is this a thing? They can't see down there, it is arguably the harshest of environments in the material plane as far as FR is concerned. It's not a place that a bunch of humans are going to decide "Well things aren't working out for me and my plots here in Athkatla, so I'll just go live in the underdark". For one a journey from the surface to the UD would not be one taken likely, the majority of adventurers, even well seasoned ones would perish on the journey. Is "well the population is kinda inactive in this settlement so let's all go down there and take over" really a justification for people to go down to a completely alien environment to them and steamroll it?
We also have to take into account that "what you see is what you get does not apply to the cities. Sure it may not seem like there's not many people down there @ XO'clock but Andunor is supposedly populated with hundreds of thousands of monsters that we never really see, are we to suspend belief that these hoards of actual monsters would suffer a dozen new humans moving in?
There is also the reality that a lot of people either don't want to play their toons traditionally, or perhaps don't know how. Take the drow. Or in Arelith evil elves. Some of that has to be mitigated for a PG-13 environment, but when I look at how the drow situation has changed in the two years I've been playing... well the drow society doesn't much look like Drow. There used to be a really healthy temple that had a good amount of player involvement, then it fell off to individual drow all doing their own thing with generally two active houses at a time.
At this point I'm not sure if there is a remedy other than a hard reset down there. There are some really great monster players on the server, and it's unfortunate that a number of people are frustrated with the current UD. I guess in a perfect world, normie goodly races would stick to where they belong, out of respect for lore and their own supposed physical limitations. Vampires have a mechanic that when exposed to sunlight they go blind and start taking damage. Drow could have part of that mechanic and go blind on the surface, humans could go blind in the UD (Because you know they lived their whole lives in sunlight and wouldn't just adjust to a black beyond black where the only light is generally Faerie fire the drow use to illuminate in an extremely lowlight situation.
This is just my two cents, it doesn't really mean anything, but long before I even played my first pen and paper dnd game I was reading R.A. Salvatore and Ed Greenwood. UD lore matters to me. Drow lore matters to me, and a character like Aretimis Enetreri are incredibly rare, that is a human who could not only make it to the UD, but also work with drow (Jarlaxyle) After all the guy was an assassin who was near the end of his prime, not some 18 year old fresh toon who wants to level faster because everyone knows that the better hunting is the UD.

[Blood on my Lips]

I will say this though, for the monster races, if they get kicked out of Andunor, as has been done in the past for a few, they really don't have any other settlement they can go to. Outcast humans really do have the best of both worlds in that if they end up on the losing end of one of Andunor's disputes, they can flee to one of the surface settlements.

I wouldn't say that Outcasts have the best of both worlds. Outcasts can't own property in surface settlements. They can't own a boat. They can't become a pirate. Captain Laurick won't take them anywhere. And if you are a known Outcast, you get chased out of surface locations, often violently. So, while they do have a few advantages over the monster races in the scenario you describe, they do not have the best of both worlds.

[Cerk Evermoore]

I can safely say Outcasts do not have it that bad. Unless your on the scene and everyone knows you, you can freely walk around any surface settlement and shop without much issue. You can buy the items from surface shops and sell them in Andunor at gouged prices. You can read surface message boards and capture useful information and even interact with some of those players you always saw on the server list, but could never actually meet because they were peaceful farmers in Bendir Dale.

In short, being an outcast rocks. I'd say move it to a lesser reward but it would damage the Underdark population too much.

[The1Kobra]

I will say this though, for the monster races, if they get kicked out of Andunor, as has been done in the past for a few, they really don't have any other settlement they can go to. Outcast humans really do have the best of both worlds in that if they end up on the losing end of one of Andunor's disputes, they can flee to one of the surface settlements.

I wouldn't say that Outcasts have the best of both worlds. Outcasts can't own property in surface settlements. They can't own a boat. They can't become a pirate. Captain Laurick won't take them anywhere. And if you are a known Outcast, you get chased out of surface locations, often violently. So, while they do have a few advantages over the monster races in the scenario you describe, they do not have the best of both worlds.

Some PCs get this treatment due to IC interactions. I typically find this is only restricted to the most infamous of outcasts though. Other outcasts can get right on by nearly invisibly. I've seen several outcasts get along fine with others in Cordor.

My point is that this is possible though, whereas a kobold, goblin, gnoll, etc, is never going to be welcome in any surface city regardless of other factors, period end, while the option is open to outcasts.

[ForgottenBhaal]

Alright. We've heard quite alot of points from both sides of the fence on Andunor. I know its abit beating a dead horse, but would it be possible to get a DM's or a developers insight into the city and how they feel about the current state?
Because as I see it, there is some dissatisfaciton with both sides, which means that the intended experience is perhaps not working out as intended.

[MineTurtle]

Alright. We've heard quite alot of points from both sides of the fence on Andunor. I know its abit beating a dead horse, but would it be possible to get a DM's or a developers insight into the city and how they feel about the current state?
Because as I see it, there is some dissatisfaciton with both sides, which means that the intended experience is perhaps not working out as intended.

You're more likely to recieve a response if you PM the team with your concern than hoping one reads this thread and wants to comment here.

[Lunargent]

Echoing MineTurtle's sentiment that this probably should have been a PM to the DM team, as people are now dredging up their personal dirty laundry. That's never helpful to sane discussion and pretty much every thread about the UD devolves into that kind of mud-flinging.

[ForgottenBhaal]

You are probably right, but I thought that we as a playerbase could handle this subject maturely without getting to namecalling or throwing dirt at eachother. I will let the thread linger for abit, and then send my original point to the active DM team.

[TimeAdept]

(Remove Banite Fortress' faith theme. Make it a place to be owned by anyone with Evil alignment, without presence of religion tied NPCs. A castle counter to settlement owned Darrowdeep and Gloom.)

YEAH. THIS ONE. THANKS.

[-XXX-]

The Banite fortress (and its predecessors) is a prime example how faction and race catering content doesn't work so well IMO.
Yes, for as long as there is enough players to justify its existence, it's great (even though a strong argument about this being fundamentally unfair could be made too).
Then the moment these players move onto different characters, the entire area becomes not only largely unused, but also unusable for anyone with a different concept that might want to re-purpose it.

And while, yes most settlements struggle with ups and downs with regards to their population, the ones without a racial/faction caveat seem to be re-populated much faster and provide more room for a larger variety of RP concepts. To further support this, I'd just mention places like Stonehold I&II, Udos, Gnoll Camp, Benwick, Myon, Abyssal Fortress and the Druid Grove and how they have struggled with population issues for the majority of their existence (heck, even Brog has been largely a ghost town for the majority of the server run).

I'd probably just suggest designing settlements and guildhouses in a more generic fashion.

[Brandon Steel]

My post history pretty much speaks for itself but yeah I’m definetly not a big fan of the UD. I understand the dev’s say it’s supposed to be akin to Skullport but it just doesn’t much feel like the UD period to me nor Skullport. If anything Sencliff is more like Skullport, and I really think that’s how it should be treated. I’m hoping to see a big push for Sencliff being a new den of evil for the surface to bring humans back up, it just doesn’t currently work for the various reasons posted here and the Sencliff discussion.

[Richørd]

I will have to mention that I am typing this reply without having read all three pages of previous posts. Rather I want to just give my feelings about the current situation.

As someone who plays a human who is a surface-character that frequently visits Andunor for personal reasons I'll have to wholeheartedly agree. Way. Too. Many. Humans.

If I remember a relatively recent post about how high the percentages of each race over the entire population was correctly there were more humans PCs than all other races combined. Which, if my memories don't betray me, is in itself a problem. For the Underdark, that is.

It speaks for itself that I can just walk around that city and not get even questioned once unless someone who knows my character actually spots me.

So , yeah. Do something about outcast humans. Nerf them, give them more downsides, whatever it is. Enforce Andunor to be more oriented towards actual UD races, not humans that feel like having the benefits of both sides.

Oh and furthermore ... it also feels like , without attacking anyone here (no offense, really) , a lot of surface players lack an understanding of what is implied by actively being a citizen of Andunor. Too often do I witness people KNOWINGLY ignore Andunorion human PCs and just reacting as if it's a casual thing to have a murdering slaver running around in Cordor.

[MineTurtle]

Oh and furthermore ... it also feels like , without attacking anyone here (no offense, really) , a lot of surface players lack an understanding of what is implied by actively being a citizen of Andunor. Too often do I witness people KNOWINGLY ignore Andunorion human PCs and just reacting as if it's a casual thing to have a murdering slaver running around in Cordor.

Worth noting that Cordor is not a good aligned settlement, and there may be all sorts of reasons dubious individuals are tolerated there. No spoilers!

[DM Atropos]

As it was asked for, I will give my input.

Andunor is *Not a Drow city*. It is not an orog city, it is not a goblin city, it is not a gnoll city. It is all of these things. It is a human city, a svirfneblin city, a duergar city. It was never intended to be one race's city.

YOU, the PLAYERS, determine what critters rove around down there. Skullport is the closest comparison, and Skullport (the Promenade aside) is home to nearly three thousand people per the wiki, a good portion of whom are, in fact, human. Mostly pirates and other ne'erdowells.

I have played drow here in Andunor. I can tell you it is hard, if not impossible, to play strictly by the book Lolthite, and not *just* because the faith itself is bonkers. It is probably just as hard to play by the book anything, because those races weren't considered for multiplayer RPG servers of our size when their lore was concocted (read: when Greenwood had a seizure, threw things at a wall and kept whatever stuck).

This means bending from traditional lore. It means suspending disbelief a bit and rolling with what other players want to do. It is not against lore to be a human in the Upperdark. That does happen. Outcasts, by definition, have burned all of their bridges, and a home of monsters and killers is basically all they have left.

If you see outcasts ambling about Cordor? React. Handle it IC. Ask *why*.

Feel free to ask anything and I can try to answer.

[Kuma]

When people go and play in Andunor, you must recognize the setting. The setting is a METROPOLITAN CITY where DIVERSE PEOPLES have all agreed to KILL EACH OTHER LESS for PROFIT. Andunor isn't MONSTERSBERG, it's not LOLTH TLUMALLTON, it's Andunor.

this.

as the player of the first human government leader in andunor, all i can say is long live the outcasts. the tooth and nail culture war that was fought back then was so gruelling and draining, to see it resurrected on the forums for the sake of "the setting" (see above, it's not what you think it is) is honestly depressing.

one of the stated aims of andunor was to prevent the segregation problems the old UD had, where pockets of race-based activity were in far flung corners of the server and rarely interacted. i can safely say that some of my favourite roleplay "eras" have been in andunor, and only because of its far more cosmpolitan mashup of crustpunk dystopia, polite society hiding fangs behind smiles, and persistently simmering bar hooliganism. there's plenty of room for your tribes, your houses, and your gangs, y'all just ain't the only ones playing in the same sinking ship.

[Kuma]

When I was a newer player starting out I made the mistake of trying to correlate FR lore with the Arelith setting and by and large the two are incompatible with the way things are set up. Take humans in the UD, Why is this a thing?

skullport (just, all of it)
ched nasad: (free: drow 97.7%, human 1%, orc 1%. slaves: goblin 40%.)
menzo: (free: drow 98%, human 1%, orc 1%.)
sshamath: (free: drow 98%, human 1%, deep imaskari 1%)

and those are the drow cities. andunor is not a drow city.

They can't see down there, it is arguably the harshest of environments in the material plane as far as FR is concerned. It's not a place that a bunch of humans are going to decide "Well things aren't working out for me and my plots here in Athkatla, so I'll just go live in the underdark".

strawman argument, you're assuming peoples' backstories from a place of low trust.

For one a journey from the surface to the UD would not be one taken likely, the majority of adventurers, even well seasoned ones would perish on the journey. Is "well the population is kinda inactive in this settlement so let's all go down there and take over" really a justification for people to go down to a completely alien environment to them and steamroll it?

no, but this is a strawman argument, see above.

We also have to take into account that "what you see is what you get does not apply to the cities. Sure it may not seem like there's not many people down there @ XO'clock but Andunor is supposedly populated with hundreds of thousands of monsters that we never really see, are we to suspend belief that these hoards of actual monsters would suffer a dozen new humans moving in?

since the dms and devs have, if anything, actually supported the outcasts' existence via setting and npc responses, this infers the "thousands of monsters" are actually pretty chill with dave the outcast.

There is also the reality that a lot of people either don't want to play their toons traditionally, or perhaps don't know how.

it's the first one.

Take the drow. Or in Arelith evil elves. Some of that has to be mitigated for a PG-13 environment

hard cringe

well the drow society doesn't much look like Drow.

i'll be honest i think this is by design.

At this point I'm not sure if there is a remedy other than a hard reset down there.

or perhaps appreciate the expanded realms at your fingertips with enhanced edition if the one here isn't to your liking, since this has been pretty much the course for four years

I guess in a perfect world, normie goodly races would stick to where they belong, out of respect for lore and their own supposed physical limitations.

that sounds startlingly dull.

Vampires have a mechanic that when exposed to sunlight they go blind and start taking damage. Drow could have part of that mechanic and go blind on the surface, humans could go blind in the UD (Because you know they lived their whole lives in sunlight and wouldn't just adjust to a black beyond black where the only light is generally Faerie fire the drow use to illuminate in an extremely lowlight situation.

goblins don't get low-light vision, their preferred terrain is temperate plains, and they are one of the highest statistics for chattel enslavement across the entire underdark. y'all gonna complain about goblins being able to wield influence, and see?

also again it's not a drow city, and has to accomodate for all sorts of levels of vision by default, never mind humans. also on an island of atomic supermen, access to visual aids isn't exactly all that hard, or compelling as an argument or narrative device

UD lore matters to me.

does it, see above statistics. further, andunor IS ud lore. it's the arelith setting.

Drow lore matters to me

goblin lore matters to me. mass enslavement, blinding penalties, why are they in my sentient humanoid streets? goblin, swerve

[monkeywithstick]

If you see outcasts ambling about Cordor? React. Handle it IC. Ask *why*.

How do I react to that? I am a human and not an outcast. Unless I spend a lot of time sneaking around Andunor to see who else is there, or play an underdark alt take stock of the names I see and metagame the knowledge, I simply do not know that any given non monstrous character is "outcast from surface society"

The only IC obtainable "tells" I can think of would be speaking undercommon and inability to use some portals.

Inversely surfacers in the UD need to learn to speak undercommon to pass there RP wise without raised eyebrows (learning to speak undercommon being a much heftier investment in time and energy than typing -- when you reach the surface) and likewise have some portals deactivated.

[Nekonecro]

This is where RP and investigation comes into play.
Have fun!

[flower]

This is where RP and investigation comes into play.
Have fun!

A poor argument why one "subrace" (outcast) reaps only all benefits and no downsides.

[Nekonecro]

This is where RP and investigation comes into play.
Have fun!

A poor argument why one "subrace" (outcast) reaps only all benefits and no downsides.

There are plenty of downsides, you're too busy riding the "Humans REEEEEEE" train.

[Kuma]

sounds like there's a big void topside for an anti-outcast secret police to me

[flower]

This is where RP and investigation comes into play.
Have fun!

A poor argument why one "subrace" (outcast) reaps only all benefits and no downsides.

There are plenty of downsides, you're too busy riding the "Humans REEEEEEE" train.

So please, share them with us? What is downside of playing an outcast? (regardless of race, human, half orc ...etc).

[Nitro]

So please, share them with us? What is downside of playing an outcast? (regardless of race, human, half orc ...etc).

Laurick won't interact with you (which often leads to your outcast status being revealed when people start questioning why you're avoiding laurick for the umpteenth time instead of just taking a boat ride with them), you can't own surface property or partake in surface settlements as a citizen. Sure you may not be as openly shunned as a drow or kobold coming up to the surface but that makes sense give that they are literal monsters. In tradeoff, you can expect to get bossed around in Andunor a lot (Especially by monster characters) unless you find someone to suck up to until you're powerful yourself.

You also can't trade with the skull coin merchant, which means that technically, as far as mechanical limits go (with the killscripts being gone), outcasts have more mechanical restrictions on them than monster races do.

[Cerk Evermoore]

How about when a guy comes out of the forest inspects you. says your a pirate and kills you and its totally fine because what you see is what you get.

Sadly i am less worried about the plight of outcasts who live in surface settlements with tons of surfacer friends and cant buy homes or vote in elections.

Not saying it doesnt suck but in the big ladder of detriments being an outcast comes near playing a regular surfacer.

Worst of all, nobody knows why you are an outcast which makes the whole /so wide known everyone on the surface knows you/ point kind of moot. Like why even live in Andunor/The Underdark if nobody knows why you were outcasted anyways.