Bob Ross

Yea, and that's something that never made a lot of sense to me. There should be a price to pay for gaining the favor of any powerful force. In the case of The Icon you have to act like some sort of puritan for him not judge you as "No, you are not an evil person, only a bad person."

Personally I've always enjoyed subverting long held morals as well. I explored it with Fzhuzhem, having him justify his actions to druids by playing off the personality of nature. For those unaware nature is an incredibly generous force, some good study material that can be consumed in a matter of minutes would be the children's book "The Giving Tree" in which the tree gives everything to this boy as he grows up simply because he asks. Nature will always sacrifice itself for druids simply because they call upon it. Every druid spell uses their own personal energy and/or the energy of life around them. It's why despite game mechanics druidic resurrection is incredibly immoral to them. You have to kill a lot of stuff that wasn't past it's time to save one person that was. Fzhuzhem justified himself to druids by telling them that nature was caring and kind but was taken advantage of by all the races of the world. Sprawling cities where forests were, factories belching toxic fumes and spilling waste water into the environment, and that the Nightmare, which is part of the dream (thanks old gods) was the way nature would finally fight back. I wanted to explore why a Nightmare Druid becomes a Nightmare Druid. When you're told that Nightmare is just another way life can take shale and that a Nightmare world would restore nature to it's rightful state, it can become appealing. The other thing I wanted to work on afterwards, and still may if I return, was The Icon, who got some screen time before I made the call to resign before I burned out. The Icon was meant to be a powerful and mysterious living artifact of Holy power that case judgement on those it interacted with using a very black and white methodology. As the story would develop he would become a powerful ally to those he found righteous but become more and more difficult to work with given his refusal to aid those he did not see worthy of the light's grace. Even possibly becoming dangerous. The yin to Fzhuzhem's yang. Where Fzhu justified evil as good (I mean he didn't really need to justify it to himself, he was just fucking with druids) he would refuse to justify his actions at all despite them not being the most ethical means to conduct himself. A good support NPC should blur the lines of what is good and bad if they're powerful because they have less reliance on others. They don't have to make sense to people that can't help them, instead they should have people deal with the difficult choices of altering themselves or keeping up appearances for that person. There should also be contingencies that the DM plans for in an OOC manner that can help aid the players against plot elements in existing stories but isn't necessarily broadcast to players, such as the goblin space program allocating assets to provide a mortar strike against Fzhuzhem in the final battle. I saw a lot of people think outside the box and that was good but I also saw a lot of people try to improve their own power and story relevance rather than work their character into the environment and attempt to find aid where it already existed. There needs to be a considerable amount of that. Also lots of naked hotties.

Something I really liked about being a keeper, tagging onto what Alex said, is that you have the freedom to make a character as powerful or mundane as you want and play them freely without any fear of their death because they are a story element and not a personal possession. There needs to be more stuff like that, and done in a way where gaining favor with them or helping them reach a goal can give you some sort of rewards. It was a concept me and Rag toyed with before we departed the team with the goblin space program. Which I forgot to clean up. Oops. Players were tasked with the choice of supporting possibly shady, assuredly shoddy goblin escape attempts from the island. In the end players wouldn't get to get off the islands, but they would be given a generous reward for their hard work and cooperation. Unfortunately the goblins were met with understandable skepticism and in one case threats of third degree murder when they came around to seek cooperation... So nothing ever got off the ground. Pun intended, you're welcome. I suggest doing things that people have to think about, not just "I'm a mage and I want to make a big spell"... Think a group of savages that need help finding or digging up a magma chamber so they can sacrifice naked hotties to their volcano god. That'd be fun.

Part of the problem is that The Doldrums is both too large and small at the same time. Taking a package from one end of Opej'nor to another is a matter of minutes, but traversing to another island can take considerably longer where there isn't much to do but stand around, and dedicating a character to just standing at boat masters is pretty dull. If there was another perk to it, I could see it being a more desirable job and service. Something like but mot necessarily banking for powerful items. Maybe. I dunno.

I had an idea for a courier character back when things were a little more fresh and chaotic. And when silver had more value. Could still be resurrected.

As an avid Faceless enthusiast who is looking for something to do after my current one's demise, I welcome this

fucking sick!

Given that dwarven structures are predominantly made of the stone they are carved from I think it'd be safe to assume that your largest resource would be stone, seeing as its not enough to carve it, you still have to use that stone in other applications there. Then there would be the wood needed to craft replacement tools and the metal for it as well for the various other things around. And a mountain of prod. I don't think it's impossible, but it'll be a bitch. Expect to pay at least triple that of the barracks house above, but likely in a different configuration as far as the resources would go.

Goblins wouldn't really take to communism, no matter how you portrayed it. Goblins are highly competitive and are constantly trying to outdo one another. Poor as shit? Well my shanty shack has four walls and yours only has three. My roof only has three leaks in it, yours has four and a half. Rich as balls? My bathtub full of gold has has little ornamental feet on it, yours does not. I'm taller than you in my oil painting of myself. They wouldn't take to being paid the same as others for the same (apparent) work. The dwarf thing looks cool though. I like the idea of using a carpus to enter a cool dwarf interior too. It'd take a dick load of productivity and probably a significant requirement as far as the participants' prospector skill, but I like it and could see it being a favored hangout for IC shenanigans.

Not to mention the fact that them calling themselves a cartel would make them subject to a lot of snickers and jeers by other goblins. Cartels are huge, standard organization would be a merchant -> company -> corporation -> conglomerate -> cartel -> trade coalition ... This is a rough definition. Basically a cartel is a hell of a lot of other big businesses working together in a sort of... Pyramid. Trade Prince tier. Which that rank goes Merchant -> Baron -> Mogul -> Trade Prince. At best it could be called the Goldwolf Trading Company or something without attracting rude remarks. Goblins are cruel.

We do need a way to increase the value of the silver coin. Currently we operate on the trust system. The way most modern currencies work. A dollar is only worth a dollar because we trust that it can be spent in order to obtain something of it's value, and the silver coin is exactly the same. U-S should work off of some variation of a gold standard, when countries worked off of the gold standard their money could be exchanged for gold through the government and therefore it was backed by a highly sought after material. Currently the silver coin is only valuable because we say it is, and there isn't much proof of that, especially given the allowance we receive each hour. The two can't really work at the same time though the allowance is a smaller fish and perhaps a necessary one. We do need something valuable that we can exchange silver for that has a set value to the community. It doesn't necessarily have to be a gathered resource either. It could be something RP related that people would enjoy like approved spell visuals or something that aid in RP. I know I for one would like to pimp out ny characters with neat sparkle hands and wouldn't mind saving up for the coolest ones. I'd even slave away for hours providing a comprehensive list of the best ones. Also maybe base game enchants for the particle effects alone. Want a fancy flame blade? That'll be one thousand silver, sir. This preserves the crafting good economy being in the hands of the players and adds value to silver. The problem every MMO has with currency is inflation, and it's money sinks that fix that, gruesome as that term may be. The other way is premium currency but ho boy are we not going there. Hello blizz, we are being good, no scary papers please :^) Premium objects independent from crafting might work as well. Luxury items that couldn't be crafted and had to have been pilfered from wrecks by shady black market goblin types. But that might be a stretch. Spell effects and weapon effects might be a better fit. Thoughts? Also I am in the field (army shit hoo-ah) so don't expect me to be super fast in responses. I'm just in between shooting shit.

I dunno. Goblins are all about hoarding resources and stabbing each other in the back. I get that Grom'gashar has no economy though, so it's good that they're trying to fix that.

I would really like to see some incentive for building alts. A major reason things stagnate outside of events is that it's really risky to be daring. In a way that's a good thing, but who doesn't feel anxiety at the thought of their character dying and having to start over? It feels like a penalty to put your limited XP into a character that can't really do anything without at least a week of XP dumps because that's a week that your main is now falling behind which puts them at greater risk if they've made a few enemies. I know as well when I first started I was really turned off by dying to snails and crabs. Account wide productivity and XP caps are meant to keep the system from being abused, but I really think a better system would help breath some new life into the server, it'd feel a lot less like Game of Thrones: Survivor Island Edition if there were new faces, even if they were the same players that we already know.

I'd be really interested in more variety. I had the idea to make an apothecary character, but the potions available never struck me as something a morally questionable dead fellow would desire to make. The addition of throwing potions and potions with bizarre and unlikely effects would be nice. I want to make a potion that makes someone projectile vomit poisonous spiders at their enemy, god damn it!

Keepers also sometimes give out GHI items that have some sort of relevance to the plot or how the fights will go (one such item is a source of a lot of turmoil ICly and was unwittingly used to bring an unspeakable horror into reality. So keep an eye out for that stuff). I'm going to be spending some time coming up, working on viable rewards and such with the the council as I hammer out more customs dungeons and shit.

Problem with gaining XP from combat is that if there is a cap it makes it feel way more like a grind. If there is no cap people can grind all day and eclipse people that don't five fold. As well there isn't a large variety of mobs to grant varying XP amounts so if it wasn't done carefully you could grind raccoons for your XP safely or on the flip side force low levels into a corner where they feel like they can't progress because they can't take down panthers yet. Plus I do enjoy spawning a good old fashion trash gauntlet in events from time to time. Embrace the chaos. I will elaborate that I think we can and should do better than a button push daily XP system. It feels like a leftover testing mechanic and something that does feed into a log in, dump XP, log out mentality, at least for an incubation phase of a new character... But it would take an overhaul to fix, not a simple few lines of code. There's a lot of factors. Maybe XP for especially challenging events could be used, but challenge is a hard thing to gauge at times due to the tendency for people to drop in on an event in progress. I am working on some custom dungeons in my spare time that would effectively lock people out who were not present at the beginning, so that might be a thing to consider. But for a normal event it's hard. I can have something devilish lined up for five people, word gets out and suddenly there's fifteen people curb stomping my mobs. Entertaining, yes, but challenging, no. Maybe XP as part of a random loot table, for a very small amount could do. But then how long before each island is hunted to extinction? Like I said, I'm all for a solution, but its a very very big question with a lot of pieces that move when you reposition even one of them.

first problem that comes to mind is banking them. Productivity serves a secondary purpose of keeping an incentive to play regularly sine the cap makes them a use-it-or-loose-it resource. Even a .5 handicap in reimbursement would break the system. I could in essence avoid the entire cap by making sure I cash out whatever it takes to be below the cap for however long I am not online and then spend it when I am.

I'm aware. I was thinking more about the static ones like in Last Battleground

there's a wide range of differences in people's fighting ability regardless of their XP relative to a creature's Cr, as well as a difference between creatures with the same Cr but of a different type. I'M LOOKING AT YOU RAPTORS!! I don't think that one is possible. inspecting corpses would be really interesting especially if tied to perception. It'd be really neat to have one character look at a corpse and say "he's definitely dead" another say "he was stabbed to death" and another say "it looks like he was running from his attacker after being stabbed and had tried at one point to fight them of"

The scenery certainly is nice. I think I'll have fun painting it.

Hi, my name is Bob Ross. I really like to create things and I want to share my joy of creativity with you. My favorite thing about role playing is that I can make a character whatever I want. It's in my hands, and that's a really neat thing. I'm excited to see what everyone is going to make here, and I aspire to some day help develop the environment here, landscapes are a favorite of mine. I'll see you all in-game!

Thank you all for the warm welcome. People here seem really friendly, and that's just great. I think I'll like it here.