Yes, I've finally found where the RPers hang out. There were a few others RPing in Pocket D after you left. Hopfully this will become a regular thing. I'll be dropping by Pocket D on a much more regular basis now.

I must buy NWN2, probably upgrade my PC to run it properly, then play this game. It sounds so good, I'm getting twitches thinking about it...

Play.com is where I got the Good vs. Evil edition, and it accepts debit cards, as that's what I use. if you already have one version of CoH/CoV, then buying the Good vs. Evil edition will allow you to add the month of free play to your existing account, so you'll be saving some of what you spend.

You should be able to get the Good vs. Evil edition now, which has both games on one account for the same monthly fee. I'm not sure if all existing accounts can now create both heroes and villains- perhaps someone who's been playing for longer could answer this.

If both types can create both heroes and villains now, then it wouldn't matter which version you bought, it would just means a longer downloading time for patches.

You can get Alpha Centauri at play.com in the £5 / 3 games for £10 section. I assume it's going to be available elsewhere at similar prices.

There would indeed be specified characters, but they are all based around a philosophy for the future of the human race, and are certainly not as anachronistic as the Civ leaders. The game has such long-term appeal to me because it doesn't hold that one point of view is inherently right.

I can see that an Alpha Centauri roleplay would work especially well with the Seed community. I remember reading about Seed prior to the release and thinking to myself, "wow- it's like an Alpha Centauri MMORPG." There are certainly parallels. Seed and Alpha Centauri both shared a certain dark outlook that is generally missing in mainstream Sci-Fi with its endless variants on the Utopian Star Trek ideal. In both games, the potential was there to build a Utopia, but it wasn't the ineviatable, or even most likely, outcome, and people were going to have to get their hands dirty to achieve it.

I'd be willing to give it a go- I love Civ-style games. The old Master of Orion games were always my favourites, but I'd be willing to give most a try.

What games are people thinking of playing? Some Sci-Fi game would be my personal favourite, as it would be realistic to say that it's the same person/people you're playing and not just a succession of rulers.

With that in mind, I would propose Alpha Centauri as the ideal game for this. Extremely atmospheric, with one of the deepest setting a strategy game has ever had. Plus, it's old enough that any PC around now can run it, but it still works on modern operating systems. Who else still has a copy lying around?

Having decided that Ryzom wasn't for me, I found that I was going into MMORPG withdrawal and with URU still a month away (assuming it even comes out on schedule), I decided to give City of Heroes a try. I'm actually finding it more engaging than Ryzom- it's a level-grinding game, but the levelling doesn't feel like a chore and level differences don't make as much of a difference in a group.

I've settled on a character for the long term, Athanus PA MkI (I may have other Athanus PA models, the same person in different Powered Armour suits) on the Union server. Feel free to get in contact, the one thing missing from the game for me is the fact I've not found any RPers there yet.

There's also the fact that, being in Yorkshire, things might have worked differently than in the councils back home in Scandinavia. There is evidence that, in the north of England, the Viking conquerers adopted some of the ways of the native Anglo-Saxons (and said blend of Norse/Anglo-Saxon ways produced a cultural divide between northern and southern England which lingers to this day). Plus, being invaders, the Vikings that landed in Britain were probably the more militant members of Norse society- so for them, a method of governing where your political influence is directly linked to how many warriors support you probably made more sense. And even the place the Vikings in question came from could have influenced it- what outsiders collectively called "Vikings" actually referred to several different countries. North-East England was conquered by the Danish, wheras the Viking who took over the North-West came from Norway, and there is definate evidence of differences between the two groups.

Actually, they will have quite a lot to offer any native tribes which bother to befriend them. In the real world, the two biggest trade items that the Native Americans wanted from white settlers were metal tools/weapons and alchohol, neither of which was made by the tribes. The Vikings could produce both of these. And unlike the white settlers of the real world who came centuries later, Viking technology isn't so far ahead of the natives that they couldn't learn to manufacture it themselves.

Friendly relations with the Vinlanders has the potential to jump the Mik-Maks (or whoever) from the stone age to the iron age in two or three generations.

I'm not sure what the game will turn out like, but from what you've posted here, I'm sure that we'll all at least give it a try once the game goes to full release. I know I'm intrigued. Perma-death has, to me, always been the game mechanic that will ultimately drive the PvP combat monkeys away. If you can die for good, you find non-violent solutions to confrontations or you play an endless sucession of beginner characters. The realisation that they can't just respawn, and that their hard-earned levels (or whatever) can vanish for good will rid a setting of anyone who just likes to kill for killing's sake.

The Vinland concept appeals to me far more than the Golden City idea. Both have potential, but Vinland would be much easier to set up and build in stages. I've also enjoyed playing the Cultures games, so Viking settlers is something I already know I'd like.

The crafting/gathering system seems a solid one. In D&D 3rd edition, there are NPC "Commoner" classes, and skills that apply to none-combat/adventuring situations. Does NWN2 have the potential to add these? Or to modify existing classes with extra skills?

The nature of the Skraelings should be defined as well. In the real world, these were Native American tribes. In this fantasy alternate world, they could just as easily be orcs or whatever. It would certainly add an element of combat to things if that were the case- certain areas would have a chance of encountering random Skraeling bands, and GMs could run adventures with full-scale fights. Of course, I'd say that such things should be kept rare, with the potential for a diplomatic solution as well. Historically, the Skraelings wiped out the Viking settlers because they were more numerous and the Vikings were cut off from their homelands by the long sea voyages. The same thing almost happened with the first European settlers five hundred years later. Long-term survival of a settlement will almost certainly require friendly relations with a nearby tribe.