How is Sundren's DM coverage?

[Aux]

So Rhifox, why did you grind as fast as possible through those levels? If you hate it so much, why didnt you rp and take your time? I sense a powergamer hiding inside you, just waiting to burst out of that elitist exterior

[Scavar]

I'd like to mention that all but one of the several DM "events" I've been involved has happened while I'm in dungeon. You can take that as you will, whether you see it as I'm in a dungeon all the time, or that DMs like to find groups doing something.


As far as reasons for going to a dungeon, I've got a million of them, especially at my lower level. Why people do things is different, how they want to RP is different, how they view RPing is different. As far as I'm concerned, some of my best RP time on Sundren happens while out and about and not in and around.

[rustediron]

"Some disguise."

[Warfire]

Do believe the topic is DM coverage. Not leveling habits, methods or who is or not a grinder.

Jaus has been in a decent amount of DM events, and I am really pleased that Jaus has taken head of a few of those to a point, and ignored completely by the party at others (Naut my fault yoo cannaut understand vhat ees beenk said yoo barbarian!). Been times I knew Jaus would not participate in a DM event, and other times they just occur somewhere else.
While I haven't been part of EVERY DM event at the time, I do know they are willing to answer my barrage of ridiculous questions. Which I am thankful for. I know I can be annoying.

So yeah, A+ all around, mates. Keep it up.

[Infernal_Havok]

So Rhifox, why did you grind as fast as possible through those levels? If you hate it so much, why didnt you rp and take your time? I sense a powergamer hiding inside you, just waiting to burst out of that elitist exterior

Touche'

[Dune]

Damn, weres GBX with his 'stay on topic' picture

[Xanderleo]

I've discussed this aspect in another thread, and that is to make combat and dungeon crawls as interesting as possible when doing them. Not just for the universal aspect of it, but because, at least in my opinion, it makes it so much more fun.

GBX said it himself, if people are there just mindlessly grinding ... why bother popping in as a DM to mix things up? (unless that entails spawning an Ancient Shadow Dragon that dual-weilds scythes that have a crit range of 2-3) The group is obviously not there to rp.

I do realize however, that when the party has a series of buffs up, it's probably not the best idea to stop deep in the Sestra caves to engage in a deep theological discussion for twenty five minutes, but I think everyone get's the gist of the idea.

Its good to have reasons to go places, and if you ever want to be able to buy anything, you better do some killing. I'm not sure where you get your gold from Rhifox, but without the questing system online there's only a few other ways I know of.
I have no lack of DM interaction either, as I said a few pages back, but that doesn't always (in fact it rarely does) entail a monetary reward, and nor should it if not appropriate to the event.

Fortunately as a ranger I patrol the forest daily, which works well for that and also allows me to interact with people I don't see the rest of the time who spend most of their online hours out there.

[Xanderleo]

*trips and drops a picture*

Oops...



We are at least, peripherally on topic.

[Machiavelli]

*trips and drops a picture*

Oops...



We are at least, peripherally on topic.

This picture should probably be added as some sort of background when people are typing out thread replies . It's never gonna happen!

[Fajitaduke]

I don't want to speak for anyone, but I think, in short, the issue some of us have is that it seems like the filler material is getting a lot of attention and Adventures (at least for lower-level characters) aren't getting nearly as much.

Sundren has some of the best filler material around, and that's essential to a healthy PW. From that perspective, there is plenty of DM coverage. I've seen a ton of ad-hoc DM interaction when I've been online. There's a lot to do between Adventures.

It just seems like there just aren't many Adventures. With a capital A. As in, more than the combination of 2 minutes of planning, a couple nameless NPCs with vanilla personalities and judicious use of the spawn monster command.

That's great filler material that blows away the standard monster spawns, sure. But its leagues short of an AD&D adventure.

Obviously none of us expects an Adventure every time we log in, because Adventures take time and effort to make. But filler material (by which I mean hanging out in the social areas, grinding monsters, 'doing dungeons', ad-hoc DM intervention or programmable quests) is only fun for so many sessions before it gets stale.

Perhaps using the calendar to schedule adventures with set groups of players (and level ranges) would help.

[GodBeastX]

The reason I don't run a great many "Adventures" is because hooking players on Sundren into them gets to be more effort than the adventure itself.

I) Nobody wants to join factions that exist on the server so we can easily tap lore for the factions in order to give them long term stories.

II) Nobody wants to work with others or when they do, everyone wants to be the leader.

III) Nobody wants to be places that aren't heavily populated with guards unless they are in fact grinding their bollocks away.


Then reasons why the main storyline of the server hasn't even started yet:

IV) Areas aren't all in yet (But mappers are working hard, we're Almost there).

V) We needed enough DMs to cover things, thank gods we got some new ones.

VI) Tons of dev scripts and stuff left to do.


So yeah, Adventures aren't going to happen a great deal with the play styles and the server situation. Maybe if people start branching out and taking part in the server, we can get more going for them ^_^ Some of you players come to the DMs to get us to help with your long term goals and getting mixed, which lets you become part of adventures and plotlines. However, if the whole server is Solitary Joes who just run around dogooding, or doneutraling, it gets odd.

[Saulus]

Oh and we're in open beta still. We sure get a lot of suggestions saying "there's too much grinding, not enough X or Y, add quests!" when we keep telling people we're working on it, it's not that we forgot about doing it or have no plans to do it... The simple fact is that it takes a lot of time and work to do what we're trying to do.

Be patient.

[Xanderleo]

I) Nobody wants to join factions that exist on the server so we can easily tap lore for the factions in order to give them long term stories..

First off, I think you know my position on all of this, and it's fairly favorable. Nonetheless, I have a few responses here, and none of them are complaints by any means, just points:

The factions don't cover all the bases. That's fine, I don't expect them to. But it shouldn't be surprising that Sigrun and many others dont want to hang out at Jimmy's or the Triumvirate or the Enclave.

III) Nobody wants to be places that aren't heavily populated with guards unless they are in fact grinding their bollocks away.

Those places tend to be the most heavily player populated places. While it's fun to talk to yourself in a remote corner of Cold Climb, if someone wants alot of rp, they'll need to go where the people are...and that ties back to limited play times.

Unfortunately (as much as I'd like to ) I'm not going to metagame when I see a character I oocly know is controlled by a DM and do a jumping slo mo high five over the fire with them all of the sudden.


That said, I do sympathize with the plight of trying to pull all us unruly bastards into a quest. It's one of the several reasons I never applied for a DM position.

[Fajitaduke]

I think something has been lost in translation.

By way of example, something I would love to see would be a post on the calendar page to this effect:

There will be an Adventure on Thursday, December 27th at 6pm EST for up to 6 characters of levels 7-9. Please reserve your spot by posting in this thread, and arrive at Jimmy's Dice Table at least 10 minutes in advance or your spot will be given away.

No need to herd cats around the server trying to get people together, and who cares why the characters are at Jimmy's (let them make their own reasons) so long as they are at the appointed place at the appointed hour.

No need for long-term storylines or character goals, either. Almost certainly some will develop out of the Adventure, and if a DM takes a particular interest in developing quests primarily for a certain faction, fine. Hopefully the quest is not exclusive to that faction, such that an announcement might read "be in the Red Lion HQ at hour X if a member, or be wandering along the street outside at Y hour if you're not and we'll invent a reason for your to join up".

If a longer series of related Adventures is spawned out of it, great! Fine! Hopefully they are flexible enough to accomodate rotating players over time.

And there's no reason well-done generic Adventures can't be run more than once with a bit of tweaking.

What does a bit of metagaming hurt if the end result is people having fun?

As stated previously, it may be a personality issue. It may well be that the vision of Sundren is wholly incompatible with this premise. If so, it isn't the right place for me, and again, that's no slight on Sundren, which has put together a lot of great features and has a bunch of wonderful players.

---Edited for typos---

[GodBeastX]

If I posted something like that, 20 people would show up.

We do post events, like Fight Nights and Feasts and such. And in time more will come. However, plot hooks, you'd never get me posting them like that. I'd rather sit on DM client for 3 hours waiting for someone to be in the right place at the right time to start it.

First off, I think you know my position on all of this, and it's fairly favorable. Nonetheless, I have a few responses here, and none of them are complaints by any means, just points:

The factions don't cover all the bases. That's fine, I don't expect them to. But it shouldn't be surprising that Sigrun and many others dont want to hang out at Jimmy's or the Triumvirate or the Enclave.

http://sundren.org/wiki/index.php?title=Factions <-- pretty much all of those are joinable now or able to be friendly with.

We don't have a nature goer faction yet, mostly because, like I said in Help forums to a request for DM help, I don't know jack about nature goers myself, and it's not something key to the history of Sundren, so I didn't bother to educate myself on that facet of lore.