Arelith

Hi i'm going to talk about Castle Gloom.


Pros:

• Swamps are rad
• Lizards still spawn on the roof, but the guard NPC you need to talk to in order to get inside no longer tries to help so that's good.
• portal nearby is handy for coming
• near lowbie grinding areas so the road is kind of trafficked
• the big Shadow Door is super rad
• what's on the Other Side of the shadow door is Equally rad
• Lots of space
• FREE COAL
• Lots of storage
• SPEEDY MESSENGER
• henchmen are AWESOME

Cons:

• you absolutely HAVE to be a citizen of the owning government to get access
• no way to tell if someone is outside the castle gates without someone sending you a tell to let them in
• still out in the middle of nowhere, no reason to go there unless you're part of the guild running there, even then you might not be able to go inside.
• no general open hall for large meetings
• the storage chests open to the public are routinely wiped clean when stocked with helpful materials
• The shadow door is two way, and lets people in from the other side into the castle. this would be viable for normal people if...
• The otherside of the Shadow door is populated by CR 20+ spawns that can and will ream you if not prepared or squishy
• The Otherside is also not secure or really furnished, making it not viable to put super important faction stuff down in.
• The Repair Wright is broken, and has never functioned >:(
• Its kind of obvious all the NPCs are sharrans. Awkward for good aligns.
• Always raining in the swamps, FPS can drop for my potato laptop
• The internal quarter is a guild hall, so in theory you could own the guild house and not be able to be evicted by the government.

In comparison, Darrowdeep;

• Close to the Biggest traffic junction on the server (Mayfields/Arcane TOWER)
• Much bigger keep + large general meeting areas
• little herald NPC man v cute
• Unique horses + large courtyard for entertaining/noble RP
• More quarters on the inside
• ??? Probably other stuff
• Door bell to let people know when someone is outside wanting to rp
• Area is generally bigger
• Not obviously evil or good, good base template
• Does NOT have a backdoor secret access
• No lizard problems

In conclusion:
Castle Gloom is;
-Cool aesthetic
-Lots of storage space
-FREE COAL
-FREE HARDWOOD


but also
-Not secure
-awkward for good characters
-not a lot of good spaces for holding big rp events/meetings
-in the middle of no where

Quick Fix suggestions:
->Put a doorbell/herald outside the main gate that pcs can use to alert PCs inside the castle that someone is outside and wants to come in
->Make the Otherside of the castle secure/not surrounded by kill your face NPCs.
->ALSO lock the Otherside so anyone can't just sneak in

Wait, Darrowdeep has a doorbell?

Otherwise good points, some of the stuff you mention is true for both castles. Actual access management and doorbell systems would go a long way.

thief of light wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 16, 2019 9:37 pm

[*]Its kind of obvious all the NPCs are sharrans. Awkward for good aligns.

While it may seem strange, Ilmatari monks of the Yellow Rose can multiclass freely as Shadowdancers in PnP. It's an interesting quality I've had fun trying to reconcile with IC. Not sure if the NPC dialogue in Gloom supports this, or if it's just really, really obvious that they're lying.

I don't want to go too heavy into spoilers but alot of the NPCs talk about "void, darkness, shadows, gloominess" so, I think it's fair to say they are very obviously ambigious at best and probably bad.

I could've swore Darrowdeep had a little gong you could ring that would alert the inside. I know one of the awesome Drow House mannors in UD has a herald NPC in their foyer that does the same function. That would be an easy copy paste in I think.

IT ALL MAKES SENSE

Are those spoilers meant to hide the text? They're not hiding it at all for me, not that I care but someone else might. They just put black background on the back and the text becomes white without me hovering the mouse or clicking.

To hide the spoiler, you also have to use black text. Dark theme causes the text to be white and make the spoiler feature pointless.

I kinda disagree with the cons, especially regarding the other side. I actually rather like using that for RP and it has a lot of potential as it is, something I'm wanting to expand on as well. As for the Gloomies as I like to call them, I just saw them as 'protector' sorts, guarding that entrance fervently. Castle Gloom is actually a really cool vassal as it is in my opinion, though granted, I don't really play a 'Cordorian' to the term, so I'm not 100% of the mechanics with citizenship etc. It's got a lot of cool cookies in it both player and DM built.
edit: Going back into the mechanic regarding getting into Gloom through the back door, if you can simply go through being a citizen of Cordor, that's actually a good point - Maybe restrict its access to people apart of the faction that currently own Gloom if that can be done?