As you may have already read, my computer is below the minimal specs. But if we choose a very interesting topic, I'll buy the game anyway and might even update my machine. (It'd be due time soon anyway.)

I'm mainly interested in storytelling can conceptualisation but could also design new game mechanics and create locations.

If you want, you can always turn off combat XP (in NWN you can tweak the amout of XP gained from combat  - in Narfell they disallowed combat XP after a certain level for those without the RP token).

At a point in my life I spent a lot of time trying to come up with the perfect MMORPG setting. Here's what I thought of:

1) Settlers in a new world. This would have the same advantages of expansion and focus as Tantavalist's plan. In addition you could explain the new characters popping up regularly by ships carrying new settlers from the old world. The downside is that using medieval imagery in a setting based on the era of great voyages is a bit off.

2) Dream. The point of this idea is to explain the tendency of the player character to vanish from the gameworld on logout. In a shared dream everyone would pop in and out based on their sleep rythms (Darkhawk's character would obviously have been bitten by a tsetse fly).  Also the differences between dream me and real me might be interesting to explore in your RP.

3) We're in a dream. The opposite of the previous idea where humans find out they're in some kind of a matrix thing and are released from it at random intervals (malfunctions in synch with login and logout times). The original idea had a "matrix" based on technology but it could just as well be based on magic.

(Just some ideas. Still not have NWN2...)

But don't most of the successful story-driven games follow exactly those classic storytelling formats? I'm talking about the Aristotelian story arc with a beginning, middle and end, with major twists in certain places. For example, the much-praised Knights of the Old Republic is a prime example (I act: Taris; first twist: escape from Taris; II act: the other five planets; midpoint: the big revelation; final twist: the big choice; climax: fighting Malak).

And KotOR is great - the interaction between the player choices and the storyline works wonderfully. But I think the people in the acticle - as well as you - were talking about a deeper integration of story and game. KotOR was, after all, based mostly on cut-scenes and dialogue trees. Plus making KotOR was, undoubtedly, several times more difficult than it would have been to make the same story into a traditional format (even without the combat gameplay).

Or did you have some other game in mind as examples of how story and game have worked together in the past?

It could also become extremely complicated very very quickly, if you need to make sure the different layers of the music always play together without creating a cacophony. (It would be easier if the music was very simple, but that's not what we would want.) It just might work with music, but with something as complex as a story...? Barring human direction (= other players / GMs) or scifi AIs, I don't think such a system would be able to create any storytelling near as meaningful and powerful as the traditional stories. Maybe some semi-random artsy stuff, if you're interested in that kind of thing.

Feel free to point me at examples that prove me wrong - I'd much like to be.

Which games are you talking about? Seed, I suppose, but what are the others?

I totally agree with you (I think) that multiplayer storytelling hasn't been used to its fullest potential. Even though Seed may not have, on the avarage, produced as interesting stories as the traditional media, the interaction between people and how it affects the narrative is in itself interesting and entertaining.

True. Though there's still quite a bit of innovation to be done - even if the attitude is right, you might still not figure out how to do it so it works (I'm living proof of that:)).

I'd be happy to go for the original Neverwinter Nights. I did some stuff with the toolset back then too (nothing radical like changing the rules or anything, though, but I did some scripting). I'd be happy to help with the work some time in the spring.

As for the world: whatever we make, we should start small, like Seed was except even smaller. The NWN part of our community isn't that big so making a huge world from the start would be not only wasteful but detrimental to the experience.

It's unlikely I'd be playing this any time soon due to computer limitations, but I'll give my input anyway:

1) I'm not interested in Forgotten Realms or any other kind of D&D fantasy. Not using a D&D world would, however, cause difficulty, since the rules, especially the magic system, are geared for that.

2) What do you mean by alternate history? Something like Ars Magica with basically a medieval setting but with all the beliefs and superstitions being true? Or some sort of different timeline?

3) If we go for a unique setting, we need to have a clear vision as to what the world is all about. Otherwise everyone will contribute their own great stuff and the world will lose all focus. In my opinion this would require that someone gets a position of authority to dictate what goes into the world and what doesn't.

4) A medieval world would be nice, but it could easily become watered down. For example, there's always the problem that real medieval women rarely got to do any "adventuring" or other such things generally considered interesting content in games. And if we made it more equal, it would not feel as much like medieval anymore. This would apply to peasants etc as well, as they didn't lead such exciting lives either (unless you create some kind of an interesting farming system). Also, we couldn't use many aspects of the engine, like the magic system.

EDIT: Whichever we choose, I'd personally like to see something down-to-earth and rather gritty, not super-epic "everyone's a great here" kind of thing. As for magic, I'd like it to be mysterious, not just another branch of technology ("Hi, did you learn that new firebolt spell already?" "No, I prefer to maximize the efficiency of my healing magics - just need to find some herbs with the correct divinity levels.").

No.

1 Jena Year = 1 Earth Year = 4 Atys years

So, a person of 16 Earth years would be 16 Jena Years or 64 Atys years.

As for the topic itself - let's just not think about it, okay? It'll never make sense in the small scale anyways. Conversations can indeed last for days, people go on with no sleep easily for a week , and nobody cares what time of day it is when they do stuff. So we'll be far less annoyed by the inconsistencies if we just ignore the whole thing.

From what I could tell from the tour, Second Life does offer some great potential for roleplaying. The ability to create so many different kinds of custom content, from clothes and houses to animations, for instance. And it seems people have already made quite a bit of those.

To Oluf, it's not exactly a game, but more like a playground with lots and lots of toys. So what you're supposed to do is up to you and your RP group. We saw, for instance, a place with typical monster combat grind. I think, though, that Second Life would best suit a freeform kind of game with no rules, just story. A more rule based game would require quite a bit of work, and there seemed to be hardly any AI to the mobs.

We didn't see any roleplaying at the moment, though, but Mir told me some groups have regular sessions while others have persistent MMORPG style worlds. It remains to be seen what kind of gaming people do there, but I'm pretty positive right now. The fact you can do anything except own land right from the beginning without levelling, is already a great plus to me.

Jack

...his snout brown.

...so the duck...

melon