Many people on EFUA Enjoy playing adventurers. As such, that means great feats of heroism and awesome. That also means glorious treasures, glorious rewards, and glorious awesome.
While doing our usual DM plotting and usual tomfoolery, Johannes and I were speaking and I was curious the Player's opinions.
For you veterans think of it compared to SooP'sold dungeons. Promise of grand and borderline unspeakable reward for victory in the form of both RP (a sort of "Legendary" Adventurer status) and Treasure at the cost of permanent death upon your characters for failure.
There was talk of possibly scripting this process, and placing somewhere within the mod a quest so harrowing and dangerous that only the most bold and brave would survive.
Naturally many factors would come into play:
- Traps and Tricks of all various natures, bringing numerous skill checks and such into play as to avoid people making level 10 powercrushers just to topple the quest
- Various routes and dangers, quite possibly leading you to a dead end if chosen poorly
- Strict and brutal and merciless punishment, as well as swift permadeath, to those who metagamed its awesome.
- A Fun way to retire a PC rather than "Quit", partaking one last roll of the dice against all odds at a chance of victory
- Strict and brutal and merciless punishment, as well as swift permadeath to those who metagamed its awesome. (Bears repeating twice, because if this is done, this sort of thing would be severely frowned upon)
- Monsters, Mazes, Old-School DnD style dungeon crawling
- Special perks to each NWN Base class along the way, as well as special perks perhaps for those more prestigious fellows who risk their PRC characters on such an endeavor
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Skill wise, things such as Lore and Search and perhaps even some conversation skills would come into play if what I have in mind is able to be done, as well as other various things.
Its all still roughly in the making but basically the question I'm asking of our playerbase is, If possible would you do it, at least once?
I've been waiting for this since EfU:A started. Yes, definitely, but keep the dungeon secret IMO. And ffs, don't make it something that only the people who are the very best at mechanics can survive in. Yes, the server should reward intelligent and skillful roleplay. Not twitch reflexes.
I would see the success of this similiar to the success of the current vampire quest, except less so. It is a long, epic adventure quest, with very nice loot, but people aren't seen doing it because it's really hard. If I played an adventurer I would probably try it, but I'd rather that time be spent on other things, honestly.
I think this challenge was typically taken by retired PCs -- but if this event was anything like the Johannes relic quest, then damn, I am all for it.
I have to agree with Sandstorm. There are already some epic scripted things we can do as players yet they remain mostly idle because of their difficulty. I enjoy the challenge and all the things that come with it, but why use so much time on putting this in when it will rarely be used. It basically sounds like a scripted DM quest without the extra interaction.
With that said, there is plenty of room for more 'basic' DM interactions around EFU these days. While the meta-plots are wonderful, sometimes it's a nice break to have something simple tossed at us other than 'spice' on a quest.
The Enclave quest is indeed grand but what is being brainstormed is more of an RP twist.
Back in the day, to my knowledge, most of the Quest that Soop made was set up already ICly. It just needed a DM to unlock. It would likely be on par with that, but as Kotenku said, emphasis would likely be put upon more than twitch.
Sounds great.
Quote from: Random_White_Guy;129358The Enclave quest is indeed grand but what is being brainstormed is more of an RP twist.
Back in the day, to my knowledge, most of the Quest that Soop made was set up already ICly. It just needed a DM to unlock. It would likely be on par with that, but as Kotenku said, emphasis would likely be put upon more than twitch.
Oh God, that quest was fucken awesome.
BRING IT BACK, BRING IT BACK, BRING IT BACK, FOR GODS SAKE AND FOR ALL THAT IS HOLY, BRIIIIING IT BAAAAAAAAACK.
On a side note, I shall make a 20 intelligence sun elf rogue just to do this quest.
Totally. I can see myself and a couple friends oragnise ourselves one night to do this with your highest level characters, see if we are up to the challenge. And then i can see myself letting out a long sigh after my character's been killed AND the other two are about to, as i had already accepted the fact i would die. Then, like 2 hours later i'd go break something, in frustration.
....
What were we talking about?
Do it.
This sounds a lot like the Clowns Mirror Maze. While respawning was not forbidden, you could not retreat until it was completed, making it a lot more harrowing than the normal quests. Though very rarely attempted, this quest addition was pretty neat and it would be nice to see something similar.
This sounds incredible, but there is already a [challenge out there for the Ultimate Adventurer. This should be the capstone on that challenge, imo.
http://www.escapefromunderdark.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24348
Quote from: Kotenku;129351I've been waiting for this since EfU:A started. Yes, definitely, but keep the dungeon secret IMO. And ffs, don't make it something that only the people who are the very best at mechanics can survive in. Yes, the server should reward intelligent and skillful roleplay. Not twitch reflexes.
How can something be challenging if it does not challenge your mechanical knowledge as much as your roleplay abilities?
I can think of a number of ways, say perhaps easter eggs in the quest that make it easier. Ones that you find only through RP. I can think of one quest allready that has such a feature. I would imagine these but on a grander scale. Now, if you DONT find them the quest is very, very diffuclt and requires top notch mechanics to complete. If you do find them and RP them propery it is merely very difficult.
If it's a randomized QA with permadeath inside and customized loot, sounds fun.
And if you can randomize one, why not others (not necessarily with permadeath): that'd be real nice to go on more "random" quest.
Just don't make it too long, please. I'm not a big fan of 2h-3h quests.
This one, being the epitome of challenge, should probably go into the 2-3 hour length. It should make Sinister Enclave look tame, and it should feature a bunch of puzzles, too.
Sinister Enclave already goes for 3-4 hours, and basically fits the bill of the 'Epic Quest' in every way save for scripted puzzles, which can be added retroactively if its considered important.
I have to agree with Sandstorm, I think the time might be better spent elsewhere rather than on a dungeon that might be attempted once every few months, at best.
I agree. Sweet dungeons like this always work better as DM quests.
moar riddles
It sounds like a great idea, and if it gets your creative juices flowing, do it please.
If I was sure that there would be no lag, no crash, or anything else out of my control that would cause the death of my char, I would do anything!
The concept of a scripted, RP based sort of Permadeath quest sounds excellent. Loot should be generated based on the characters and their classes.
And I agree that it should be a capstone sort of quest. Meaning that once you complete it, your character is marked as like unable to do any other quests because, in effect, this was the ultimate test for them. In lieu of this, I would recommend that the quest have a level min that is quite high so that completion could act as a semi-retirement. You could still play the character, go exploring, do DM quests or be allowed to do rescues of other players/characters on scripted quests (of course because a DM ports you into the QA) but scripted quests could not be started with this 'capstoned' character in your party.
I definitely prefer this idea as a DM sort of thing, rather than something that will only be attempted by those few who enjoy such challenges every few months. Like Sassy's dungeon!
This sounds like the awesome... Having a DM working in the background during this quest to provide cool spice and RP (did I mention RP) possibly with some evil bad ass that must be defeated or [gasp] OUTWITTED would be great! To give the feel of REAL role-playing (pen and paper) with skill checks and NO RESPAWNING in EFU:A sounds amazing. :) EFU:A ROCKS!
Neat, but unlockable by DM only preferably.
Great idea in theory, but in practice it would be a waste of time. Honestly, if someone did happen to beat the quest, who would care? Unless one of those victorious players walks away with loot so spectacular that it in itself could effect the server in a large and noticeable way (10 charges of FoD or such) nobody is going to think twice of it except for the players who were there. People typically care FAR more about what leaves their footprint on the server and it requires a DM to responsibly do that. Otherwise there will be 2 hours of buzz in IRC and an hour of buzz IG around it before your hero is forgotten.
The only difference between this quest any any of the others that nobody currently has the balls to do is that they weren't labeled as the definitive "extreme" quest/instance on the server. Pick any of the current difficult quests such as Enclave and spice it up a bit to make it even tougher and something "new". Then have some NPC offer an actual title with IG privileges for completing it or something. Thereby having the same effect and saving hours upon hours of dev/testing time.
If you REALLY want to make this work. Force this and some of the other scripted quests to have larger effects on the server. Completion of each quest for instance might lean power towards some factions or others. Completion of grander quests might have some significant effects on all sorts of things. Beat down some of trogs once in a while and prices for any docks merchants might drop as trade becomes more efficient. Take on a few orcs in a scripted quest and see the random wilderness spawns ease up a tad from them. Overcome impossible odds by risking fates worse than death in RwG's new 10th plane of hell and who knows what sort of things people could see happen (free succubi slaves for everyone?). Then you'll have a chance to make yourself an Epic Hero of Legend worth talking about.
Otherwise the first time someone completes the quest, it would no longer be considered the extreme and you'll have to go make another, even tougher one. Then the DM team will have to fall into a WoW like development pattern to keep up with such a simple concept.