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I want to add that the server is more than it seems. If you are a great RPer, that's all you need to be. You'll learn the rest of the "necessary" skills on the way.

Some people above may say they are bad at the mechanics of NWN. Trust me, they are not as bad as me. And I still find (ahem, "found") plenty to enjoy in this server. I used to really, really suck early on, dying multiple times some days. Losing weeks of leveling progress frequently. But I learned. I went from really, really sucking, to just generally sucking, which is enough of an improvement, and I know I can get better.

Of course, the crux of the matter here is that your RP might be based/focused on an ability you can only start using past level 4. Like some have said, level 5/6 is quite reachable, but there's no denying that, if you suck as much as me, there will be periods of time when you are level 4 (or lower).

But you say yourself you are good at RP. Well, RP this: your struggle surviving in the wilderness, your difficulty learning how to transform into an animal, etc... You can summon other animals to observe them and imitate them in hopes of bettering your transformations! You can look for a druid teacher (other experienced PC druids) to help you with survival! And related to that, the most important thing is to RP with and adventure with other players. These makes leveling enjoyable!

Heck, even when losing a level, the IC bond that can be formed from questing with other PCs can make it all worth it. You lose exp when respawning (and maybe a level or two), but you don't necessarily lose the work you've done from RPing.

And I just want to finish with this: DMs DO REWARD GOOD RP. Most importantly, if DMs see you do great RP, involving others, and notice you struggle on the mechanics side, they DO swing things your way from time to time through some loot here, some mechanical benefit there, that makes surviving quite a bit easier. And of course, DM XP is XP Forever! No respawning will ever take that away from you.

I must disagree with this strongly. I remember when I was a new player on an entirely different server and a very talented roleplayer took me under their wing and chided me for meta gaming traps in a low level quest. This sort of reinforcement of good play, at a low level when the consequences were small, helped keep me honest later on.

The best thing a veteran player can do is take a new player under their wing, speak to them OOCly about the server etc, and teach them proper play from the very start.

Traps, to me, can be as deadly as death saves.

I don't want to bring a new player in, and die to a trap he/she didn't see, and/or he/she couldn't do anything about it. Nothing is more frustrating than dying from something you couldn't even prevent, simply due to a (very likely) first-character bad build.

Once you get into the groove of the server, it doesn't matter. But based on your example, you had at least done that quest once before (in order to be able to metagame the traps), so its past the critical stage where you're doing player retention.

I chided too if on multiple runs of a quest, a player clearly meta games a trap location ("There is a trap here. You and I cannot see it, but I know it. Its of the electrical type, and blah, blah"). That's why I use vague things like "I feel..." or "There might be....". It might seem all the same, and I'm partly teaching a bad example, but I try to cover it up under the "for the sake of new players" mantra.

Once I know a player is not new (and actually logged in a 2nd time on the server after their first day), I'm less worried, and don't take these drastic measures any more.

But I'm not asking that anyone do what I was doing. Just saying what I tried to do, and for which I was (to my knowledge) somewhat successful.

In my opinion, traps in low-level quests should be as frequent as death saves. For almost all classes, its automatic damage no matter how good your low-level build. Automatic damage is bad at low HP levels, where you have little HP to spare. To make things worse, new players are the most likely to not be in search mode, specially once battle/dungeon begins.

If I know the new player is playing a typical rogue, I keep my mouth shut, and let them find the traps, of course. Low level quests, from my experience, have reasonable search DCs for traps to the point where a character invested in Search will have zero issues. But that usually only happens for new players when they play a rogue.

/rant

Not sure how things have progressed here with this thread, and I haven't been able to play efu since my personal laptop died many months ago, but I hope to come back someday.

During my time playing, I was a newbie-welcoming machine. My RP is far from perfect and my skills in NWN combat are probably somewhere below average, not quite bottom of the barrel. So I understood what to do and not to do with new players, for the most part.

Safety first!

Nothing kills interest like killing a new player, either via PVP (extremely rarely) or monsters on field/quests (extremely common). And if I have to metagame a bit to keep a new player safe, you bet I will.

For example: Doing a basic rat quest with just me and a new player. I know the quest OOCly, and I know the boss is a wererat, for which we'll need magic weapon to hurt and defeat it feasibly. As we are approaching this boss, my character might say something like "Something unnatural is causing all these rats to appear. We might need to enchant our weapons to face this threat, so keep that spell/scroll/rod of magic weapon at the ready" (or more likely, "we must be close to the main threat, let's enchant our weapons now, just in case").

That's just an example. It's all done to reduce the "bad luck" factor that can happen at low levels, that can really ruin a new player's day. Other times, I might be a bit more vague, with something like "I get the feeling the next room is gonna be really dangerous, be prepared to use your strongest potions" or "I get the feeling that there is a highly dangerous trap by that chest, so don't go near it till we are certain" (this is whether I see the trap or not). These things I only do with new players out of necessity to keep them alive, at least for a little longer.

To help, I also usually say things like "don't draw attention to the enemy too much, let me do that. If you do draw attention, try and get away, or go on the defense with invis/expertise/etc..". Of course, I tend to play with a character that takes point. If I don't, then I usually focus on keeping the new player alive as much as I can with healing/protection/etc... at my character's expense.

It's a victory if the new player survives. Whether my character dies or not matters a lot less. In fact, dying -> loses exp -> loses level -> is now closer to the level of the new player -> can keep questing with new player -> success!

What? Don't look at me like I'm crazy! This is proven stuff.


So, disregarding the slight meta-gaming, there are two problems I have encountered doing the above:

1. Who is/are the new player/s?

There should be a way to mark these players. If not automatic, maybe something optional at the OOC starting area that a new player can easily 'enable', that lets someone like me be able to tell that this character in front of me (or through looking at the player list) is the first character of a player account on this server, and take into account the IP or something.

I don't know if this is just not feasible or its not done due to something else.
I know that veterans make new accounts to hide their identity, blah, blah. But these veterans are not constantly getting new PCs, are they? Or changing their IP address or whatnot?

And even if it cannot be tracked like this, something optional at the starting area, that veterans would be wise enough not to use, would be great, I think. In theory. The DMs could always implement something and then see how it goes. And if its not good, take it away. The details would be up to them.

All I want to know is if, the character over there roleplaying pretty well (not like a pro, not like a complete newb either - because those can be somewhat easily identified as new players) is a new player 'trying', or just a regular that's trying to refine his/her RP (like I am).

I can always send a tell, as I generally used to do. But that breaks RP, and leads the new player to send me a lot more tells, and do less RP. New players are especially sensitive to tells, since they are usually trying to reach out to get a hold of the server. I prefer to use them with new players at the end of a session rather than at the first meeting ('hey, have to log out now. Been fun playing with you, and would like to do it again. Make sure to check out the forums at efu.com! Send me a tell next time I'm around').

2. Quest level restrictions  

Once in a blue moon, my character would go past level 4/5. And all of a sudden, my interactions with new players take a steep dive, since I can no longer quest with them on "safety" quests that get things going with a new player.

So in terms of questing, I have three choices:

A. Show them a lowbie quest they can do by themselves or someone else. Try to find this 'someone else' through sending or some other way. If by themselves, if the quest is at all dangerous, I could be sending them to their deaths (and I have!).

And trying to find another low-level player to accompany them is not that easy at times. And can be quite odd from an RP perspective ("hey, here's another stranger! Why don't you 'pair-up' with him to take down those nasty zombies").

And besides, it feels like a "hey, I have no time/don't want to quest with you, so do it yourself, or find someone else to do it with", even after explaining the mechanical 'whys'.

So, not my preferred choice.

B. Take them on a more dangerous quest that is appropriate for both our levels, generally with a group. Seeing as I myself can struggle greatly in this mid-level quests, I won't be able to quite protect this new player, thus quite likely leading to their deaths. I try things like "stay back, and use this crossbow." or "Here, use my shield, which is better, and take this rod of healing. Use it generously".

Again, my own character's death is not the problem. My creed is new player survives -> I win! This is hard to do, especially if its the first time the new player is doing a quest/a mid-level quest. Might as well just tell him "By the way, the monsters say 'you're not welcome!'"

Not my preferred choice for new players either.

C. Do other stuff. My other options, which are quite varied, but will likely not provide mechanical rewards for the effort. Guided tours of areas, chat at the inn, sparring matches. More interesting, but really depends on my PC's current state, is including them in some plot/event my PC is involved in currently, or welcoming them to an association (the app-less ones), which again depends on my PC's relationship with said faction/association.

I prefer not to bad-mouth any particular faction/association if I can avoid it. If I'm the welcoming committee for a new player, the last thing I want to do is color their options. What you tell them there at the beginning of the server can have lasting impact on their character (and maybe other characters!). EFU is about possibilities. If I close to them a possibility with my PC's opinion of that possibility, they might decide to not pursue that possibility simply because of the 'friend' mentality, which is very strong when they hardly know anyone else. Again, I try to avoid this, though sometimes its inevitable.

Anyways, why is there a problem with this third option? Because EFU is half-action/half-RP, more or less evenly. A new player should get a taste of both to understand this. The half-RP is the easy part. It's the half-action part that can be tricky, because like I said, the goal at this very early stage of a new player is not to show them how the fugue looks like (they'll get plenty of opportunity to discover this fascinating aspect), but rather to show them how dangerous things can be, and the lowbie quests with enemies are the best way, imo and ime (in my experience). Also, getting rewarded for the challenge is important, again something that finished lowbie quests can do fairly well, that half-finished mid-level quests don't do at all.  

Is there a solution to the level limits of lowbie quests?
The only thing I can think of is to somehow allow a player of higher level than the quest to accompany another appropriate-level character for a once-a-day kinda thing somehow. Details can be figured out by DMs of how this would work, and what limits would be imposed to prevent abuse, like no XP for higher level PC, allow certain DM-flagged characters can do this, etc...

Ignore those aspects of my post that have changed in the latest incarnation of EFU. I'm just speaking of my experience of playing in past years.