On gameplay speed:

In a perfect MMORPG for roleplaying, roleplaying isn't something you do between gameplay related actions, but during them. In most MMORPGs today you can't for example talk or describe your fighting actions during combat, simply because the fighting is too damn fast and hectic to allow you to type while doing it. Thus, you end up roleplaying and playing the game in turns - and all roleplaying is away from accomplishing things game-mechanics-wise.

All the gameplay actions should be slow enough to allow you to roleplay during them, without compromising your efficiency. This is why I liked Seed's pre-injury repair gameplay, at which you just ordered your character to fix the hatch, and then were free to talk and describe your actions however you wished. The injury gameplay took this element away, and thus was a step to the worse.

This doesn't mean gameplay should be plain and monotonic (like the repair gameplay). There can be whatever interesting choices to be made, as long as you have time to roleplay making them. A good example of a slow yet interesting gameplay was the science gameplay introduced by the GMs towards the end of Seed. Not only did it allow roleplaying the work, but it also rewarded those who discussed the puzzle with their collagues.

On level gaps:

Leveling (or any system of character skill growth) is usually a good thing. However, difference in levels should not make it impossible to work together. For instance, in SoR (as far as I understand) a high-level fighter will use only items created by high-level crafters who only use high-level materials produced by high-level harvesters. It's most annoying to be the low-level character in the group who can't do anything useful at all (speaking of experience ).

I'd like to see, say, a crafting system where a master can really benefit from a lower-skilled apprentice. In any crafting job there would be easy tasks, as well as more difficult ones, and those tasks could be delegated to the apprentice, and still produce just as good an item. The tasks should take enough time so delegating is quicker than just doing it all yourself (so the craft should not be insta-ready). I didn't produce at all in Seed, but I suspect this was how they did it.

What does this have to do with roleplaying? Answer: Level gaps make interaction between players less useful. And interraction is crucial to roleplay.

Welcome.

We could probably create a separate dialogue-based system for the extra classes and allow tranfering XP between it and the official leveling system.

I think I meant to say that if the city offers as many opportunities as a city logically would, the players might all get involved with different things (like someone joining the city guard, another going for alchemies and third becoming a thief in the dark alleys). Even if they lived in the same district they would be doing very different things.

That's why it would be necessary to decide on a coherent group concept and focus from the beginning, before creating the characters. And to focus the city creation according to that focus. However, that might make the things outside of that focus look plain and minimalistic and reduce the feeling of freedom and realism.

I think this concept would be great with more players and lots and lots of work. If wherever you go in the city there's something interesting to see and other real people to meet. And even with fewer players it would provide a very atmospheric backdrop for any stories we'd want to tell. I just think the possibilities of the city concept would not get properly fullfilled if used as a backdrop in such a way.

These came up in today's RP:

Fairhaven (Tryker) Rum from the Lexis fields
- a very expensive brand of rum - they sell nothing but expensive stuff

Meri Bitterwine
- brewed at the Meri estate near Yrkanis
- one of the many flavours of Meri wines
- red wine (as strong as Earth red wine)
- a bitter aftertaste

Where there are opinions there are politics. And for example, when it comes to the pesky Skräling dogs, there would likely be differing opinions on how to handle it. And who says the settlers have to be one happy community? There could be powerplay between rival families, for instance, and the position of the tribe (clan? village?) chief might have some competition. And the way the Norsemen made decicions was also a very nice one: When there was something to decide, like what to do to a criminal, the men (and women in our case, however we solve that issue) of the village would all gather in the center of the village and start arguing until the things were settled. The chief had final deciding power, of course, but he wasn't supposed to make decisions solo.

As for player vs NPC politics, there'll be the Norse vs Skräling situation as well.

As for downsides, another would be that if we're fighting for survival, not-surviving should probably be a possibility. Permadeath? Or some other method to make sure getting your daily food actually matters? (In Seed, we were fighting for our survival only RP-wise, which worked to some extent, but it did take away any feeling of danger.)

True, about the grind too. But grinding doesn't have to be the "keep clicking monsters" chore it usually is. In crafting, I vouch for a system similar to Seed's pre-injury repair gameplay - you set your character to do something, like build a tool, and then focus on roleplaying it and chatting with your comrades while the time bar is filling up. That, I hope, would make these chores feel similar to just sitting by the campfire, except you're actually achieving something.

On a side note, if implementable, some jobs like house building might require several people working on it to make any progress at all.

So what do you do in this setting? To answer the question I asked in the Golden City thread, here's the things you should be able to do without GM interference. I might be going a little deep into details here, but the point is to clarify what style of gameplay I was thinking about.

All of these things are meant to be done in a slow pace while roleplaying. Many of them would probably have longish waiting periods like repairing in Seed, to give the player a chance to chat in peace. However, they should also be made complex enough to make play interesting.

1) Get food to yourself and your family. It should be made important that you get enough food, because getting your basic living is one important challenge in a settlers life. Food could be gained at least in the following ways:

1a) Hunting. Not your generic wilderness grind but one where stealth and preciceness are key. It should be relatively easy to make most animals run instead of fighting when attacked, making it important to sneak or plan your hunt (such as chasing the animal toward another group of hunters). Of course, some animals, like bears would have to be fought, but these would be special, great hunts.

1b) Fishing. What a better way to learn to know your clanmate than to spend a day in a boat together, waiting for fish to catch? (Must check out how the Vikings actually fished.)

1c) Foraging. The woods are full of food for those who know what to look for. Leaves, roots, sweet berries just wait to be picked and eaten. The availability of berries could depend on the season, to make it necessary to plan for the winter.

1d) Farming. At some point of the game you might start growing crops in fields. Any ideas how this would work?

2) Crafting. We'll definately need to get our hands on some sort of a crafting system. The PCs will have to build everything from scratch (apart from what they brought with them).  This is so that there is no  You'd craft at least the following:

2a) Buildings. Not quite sure how to implement this, though it would start by cutting trees. Then maybe carry them all to the site and do some "house building work" or something. The creation of the actual house would probably have to be done by a GM.

2b) Food. You'd have to prepare the food before eating it.

2c) Clothes. Mostly out of furs.

2d) Weapons. Mostly spears etc, unless an iron supply is found.

2e) Tools to create all of the above.

3) Explore the surroundings. The woodlands should be made interesting in some ways, so it's not only "another tract of forest". Maybe by adding better hunting/fishing/foraging spots, holy locations (like erratic boulders etc). And of course as many special locations as the creators can come up with, such as native camps.

EDIT:
4) Maybe warfare against natives or other Norse groups if it comes to that. But fights should not be daily grind affairs.

This would only be the everyday life, of course. GM controlled stories could include pretty high-flying mythological stuff too.

I meant, what is the gameplay centered around? Chitty-chatty RP is good but even in Seed we were always looking forward to more gameplay to RP around. Would it be traditional combat quests (interesting ones, of course, with decent background, story, etc) or something else?

I tried one of those script engines in NWN, and while it was indeed powerful, it was not trivial to make it work the way you wanted. Although granted, I didn't spend a very long time with it.

Pros:

1) Possibility for a great atmosphere.

2) Stories could be lurking behind any corner of the street.

3) The Ars Magica style mystical forces element as well as the Christian side are intriguing.

4) A city instead of an entire world (like many are trying to build) is a good idea as it allows you to focus your efforts.

Cons:

1) It might be hard to justify why we're seeing only a small part of the city in the beginning. A Prague commoner would likely walk through the entire city quite regularly and there would logically be nothing to stop the players from doing it.

2) It would require a lot of NPCs just to make the city feel as lively as it should, and most of the city life would have to be run by GMs.

3) The city would have to be quite big when finished, which might lead to players scattering.

Definately make it something that welcomes all interested in MMORPG roleplaying. That way we might actually grow in numbers instead of dwindling with time. As a bonus, if we make it more general (and good), we might be able to get some publicity too. The Finnish roleplaying magazine "Roolipelaaja", for instance, might well have us as the link of the month if we manage to make this site more than a chat center for ex-seedlings.

So let's keep Seed there at the graphics and forum themes etc, but continue the current trend of including all possible games and players. As for the content, I'd like to see something anyone can contribute to, but in a controlled way. Meaning someone would have to play the editor, but he or she would accept text from anyone if they're good and relevant to the topic.

Maybe one day we'd even organize to make our own dream game...:)

Well, we'd probably en up with way more than 10% of the female population being these Aridani, but that's feasible, I suppose. And to keep from messing up with known historical facts, it could be described as a custom used by some remote Greenlanders at some period of time when they needed more hunters, fishers and protectors than nurses and housewives. A fact simply missed by historians, as we don't know so much about the Greenlanders, I think. (Give it another name, of course.)