Project Presentation

[scotchco]

Just wanted to let you know that we are planning to use the Birthright campaign setting as background for our own little persistent NWN project. It's called "Cerilia: Versuchung der Macht", which translates to "Cerilia: Lure of Power"

See http://www.versuchungdermacht.de

Summary: We try to start with recreating Roesone, and add specific content by-the-by.

Comments appreciated.

Caveats: It's going to be in german, it's not about recreating the domain rules (for now) but simply uses the RPG background, and the site is not yet finished by a long shot.

The team is currently about 5 dedicated people, all age 30+, all IT pro's. And yes, we have the necessary ressources to make this a success.

If anyone else is actually working on a similar project, we'd be glad to exchange material (scripts etc.) ideas and portals for/to/with anything else Cerilia-specific..

Regards,
scotchco

[scotchco]

On request by Arjan,
I'll post a little more about our project, and our ideas and concepts as they are forthcoming.

Our intention is to make a german site, and so far, most of the material are literal translations of known stuff.

We will probably only switch to english if there's gonna be not enough interest in the german community. We go for german because the times our team (and GMs) have time for the game would have to be
similar to those of the prospective players, so timeshift would be a huge issue - we'd all be in bed and snoring when the US players just started.

Furthermore, there are, in comparison, only very few german Neverwinter Nights projects - about 8 to 10 currently, as compared to maybe 150 US based NWN projects.

Nevertheless, many purely mechanical things (such as scripts - except dialogue) should be fairly language-independent, and there I think we could cooperate intensely.

I'd go so far that, after Release, we might see if it would be feasible to have som flag, and have dialogue bi-lingual, so US GMs and players could mayhaps use the server(s) during (our)
night.

Our planned availability is currently 18.00 to 08.00 and weekends, that would roughly translate to about US 12 PM (noon) to 02 AM or 10 AM to 12 AM (midnight), depending on US timezone.
That would also depend on the way we'll finally connect the servers, currently we are sponsored by a company which would allow to use their T1 equivalent during non-working hours. If we
have to switch to a pay-by-volume connection, we'd obviously have to be more conservative.



Project is supposed to offer:

- No permadeath, medium-difficulty resurrection,

- Availability of priestly NPC facilities heavily dependent on character religion and karma status.

- BR typical (compared with FR setting) low magic (no magic shoppes), truly unique (i.e. named) magical items only.

- Heavy faction interaction. Actions commit PCs to factions.

- If at all possible, implementation of craft/tradeskills and item creation.

- Basic implementation (Barony of Roesone) true to existing material (canonic), adventure material (such as from LotHKs) situated in Roesone as well.

- Adaption of own content, as well as "canonic" BR adventures (e.g. SoR), but also canonic D&D and AD&D modules slightly modified for BR setting.

- Some static dungeons and static spawn points a la MMORPGs, mostly the 4 old battlefields in roesone, the border into Spiderfell, Erebannien, and the Forest around Goblin Tower as static spawns, and the catacombs below Blacktower and the two abbeys as static dungeons (no limit of supply of restless dead). Helps to fill times between moderated adventure updates

- Fixed hooks for dynamic dungeons, and adventures such as the Elvenmeres ruins, the Goblin Tower, the Storm Tower, etc.

- GM moderated "Tavern" setting for social interaction and adventure hooks

- Integration of GM moderated one-party quests/adventures

- Integration of semi-auto pregenerated adventures

- Simple Task mechanism to tide over times between Adventure updates

- All Tasks/Quests results reflected in faction interaction matrix

- Support for integration of player guilds/factions

- Entry hooks for many of the "classical" D&D and AD&D modules

- Portals to other projects, sites, modules, quests, guilds, whatever adhering to project charta

- Roleplaying supportive project charta - Heavy Roleplay Server, but not fanatically so

- IC communication preferred, OOC only permitted if non-disruptive

- Player participation expected, ranging from player initiated GM supported events to player written/implemented modules/quests and players-as-prt-time-GMs

- PvP permitted, but standard Roesonian law is applied!

- Naming controlled for RPG atmospheric reasons, PKs, Doodz, MaStAkIlLaS etc. are banned

- Powerplay discouraged but not forbidden

- Mixture between scripted/semi-auto and GM moderated environment

- Multiple concurrent arc-plots developing over time dependant on player actions withing plot-defining "epic" quests

- Minor storylines intertwined with player/group actions

- Website offering "in-game" newspaper with ongoing events and activities

- Quest/Adventure structures tailored to NWN environment: repatable/non-repetitive, circular, immaterial incentive, etc.

- Mid-Term (year-end): implementation of bloodlines

- Long-Term (2003): implementation of strategic element of birthright setting

- Dedicated Dual-Athlon 2000 MP Server, 2 GB RAM, RAID Drive subsystem as core server for multiple modules, depending on max. player per module (design decision upon release)

- Multiple smaller Quest Servers connected via Portals for no more than 16 players each at a time.

- Availability 18.00 to 08.00 plus weekends. Patch/Backup/Repair/Mod time daily 17.00 to 18.00 except weekends.

- Player extensible via Hak-Pak addons distributed via Server, integrated by project team within 5 workdays. Example: Guild Heraldics etc. - if such modification is possible without disturbance of server operation (see "edit save game issue") on Bioware fora.

- Free of charge, gifts are appreciated

- Exact map/time ratio is not yet fixed, will produce 3 variants to be voted upon by participants before implementation

- Operational: First runs expected 6 weeks after Release.

- Looking for: Scripters, Mappers, Adventure Implementors, partnering projects. Have to discuss about english/german issue, though.

- Possible solution - players get language flags, dialogues done in german AND english (and other languages IF supported individually by interested teams)

- Target number of players: app. 200, depending on actual bandwidth requirements

- Target GM ratio: 1:20

- Shared Server Vault: Will only permit characters from our own vault, or from other servers sharing our vault (via NFS or similar, not yet fixed)

- Server OS: Not yet fixed, either Linux or Windows 2000 Server


And so forth...


Regards,
scotchco