Approach and Design Philosophy/Choices

Cool idea. I've been thinking a bit on how I want to reply and I think for now I'll just post the basics here and maybe do something more detailed later on.

I've had the idea to make a steampunk themed server for a long time, I was actually toying around with it 4-5 years ago before I decided to hop on the legacy development team. The impetus for working on the system and getting a server together pretty much boils down to a few simple things. Nwn2 isn't dead (yet), a steampunk PW would be pretty cool, and there's finally enough community content and building expertise out there to do it well. The other design choices, relating to server structure, DMing, content design, etc. have all been made with a little more consideration for what's worked/failed in the past, what we (the staff, our friends, etc.) would look for in a PW, and what we think are necessary features to keep a healthy player base. More specifically:

Character Creation:

- The driving principle is (like legacy) that build decisions should be about playstyle rather than stats. My biggest complaint about dnd (especially as in nwn2) is that a lot of very different characters are essentially indistinguishable in terms of how they're played because the choices that went in to making them were based on stats. In engines you get your stat line from your level and equipment, leaving your build choices to determine what classes of items you use, what abilities you have available, how often you use them, whether you devote inventory space to activated items, etc.
- The level system is designed to reduce levelling pressure, allow constant incremental progression, and to give more flexibility in terms of how fast/slow characters progress in power. The elder-scrolls style skill system helps in a few ways, namely allowing for many small increments of power and a "cost free" method of progression that lets you improve without committing to a certain choice. Levelling up in dnd can be stressful when you're being forced to spend points, class levels, and feats, but progressing a skill costs nothing and doesn't prevent you from levelling up other skills.
- The system is designed for gradual, reversible specialization. You pick nothing at character creation and all specialization is done by allocating earned levels. If you make a few bad choices there's always the option of spending XP to back out of them and free up points, but this will be more of a late game thing.
- One other goal was diversity among characters with similar roles. The three melee fighting trees play quite differently, and I've tried to stick to the goal of making four distinct final tier options for each activated ability.

Gameplay:

- My best work with legacy was in giving the fighting classes more abilities to choose from during their combat rounds. I've kept with this philosophy and expanded it a little, so that now you get activated abilities from items as well as character features. There are a few less default attack abilities but to compensate I've tried to make them all stronger than a standard combat round, so it's more a matter of choosing where to allocate your stamina than deciding whether something trumps autoattack.
- Overall health values are high so that combat is a little slower, with more chances to spend rounds on buffs, counters, taunts, etc.
- Ranged combat has always been a bit of an odd one out due to the lack of high damage enhancements in vanilla. In the engines system ranged has the best damage but comes at a cost of AOOs for reloading, no point blank shot, and stamina/rounds to load weapons. Great in parties but reliant on melee switches or pets to solo.
- I've tried to keep a cap on the number of different damage types and status effects so that strategies and counters see more use. Each special damage type has a unique mechanic that can be exploited and I'm hoping that as it develops I'll be able to add a lot of crossovers that reward tactical play. Stuff like certain abilities being better against targets that are on fire, knocked down, etc.

Static Content:

- Creating dungeons is slow work and it kind of sucks to put in a bunch of work for a dungeon that most players have levelled beyond or rarely level to. For that reason essentially everything is based on spawners that adjust for party size and level, within a broad range that usually covers 40-60% of the levels people will get to.
- For bosses I've broken the 4th wall a bit. I want there to be tangible accomplishments for setting personal bests on dungeons, so bosses all have a whole bunch of tiers and will spawn based on the lowest not yet beaten by a party. This way we can give big rewards for beating a tier you haven't seen before, keep leaderboards on who's fought the biggest "X", and make it so very high level parties are literally never without a challenge. It might get a bit tedious to take on the same bosses over and over, but once there are 5-10 solid bosses I'll be able to keep up with players by putting in new special abilities, minions, tactics, etc. that enter at high tiers.
- My take on so-called "PW amenities" is that they're great for role play and give players a natural reason to congregate and role play in a way that isn't just a face to face conversation. Crafting, in game arenas, customized housing, casinos, dice games, etc. give players natural reasons to interact and also give DMs access to easy plot hooks.
- The goal with crafting is to simplify it as much as possible and also to give it a more defined role in the economy. You can craft pretty much any item and it will always cost less than buying at a store, so that gives crafters a minimum value. On the high end items can get really really strong, but with rapidly increasing creation costs, so crafters will be restricted by how much money people have for items. I've also essentially done away with the ingredient grind, the only super important components are special metals that go 1 for 1 with items.
- Quests and NPCs are out there primarily story purposes. I want to let the DMs have as much discretion as possible with ingame lore and the plan is to progressively add stuff that relates to the server canon as created by DMs and players. Ideally every major event leaves its mark on the game world in some way.

DMing and Story:

- I'm sure the DMs could talk more about this but I've got a few ideas on where I'd like this to go. On a high level I'm looking for DMs to choose their own style, essentially set down what their goals/likes/dislikes with DMing are and approach the server in a way that's less janitorial and more about actively enjoying playing DM.
- The core themes of the server are rooted in adventure and discovery. Politics, law, and crime will certainly play in to that but I'd like to shift the focus away from PCs trying to gain power/titles/property and towards PCs trying to learn stuff/affect world outcomes/make cash money. This ties in to the idea that DM events and role playing should be done for their own sake rather than trying to climb the ladder. Playing shouldn't be a chore, there shouldn't be a penalty for taking a break, and chasing titles/NPC minions shouldn't be the endgame.
- On the other hand player initiative is awesome and I'm really hoping we'll get stuff that DMs can run with. The only advantage a PW offers over pen and paper dnd comes from throwing everyone in to the same sandbox and respecting what gets built there. The key is in finding a balance between storytelling/adventuring and letting people do what the want (which can sometimes get a little too focused on material advancement. I've been there). The DMs on board have all seen both extremes and if it's possible to get it right I think they've got a good chance at it.

To expand a little bit on the DMing and Story idea:

We basically built the world setting- and story-wise in such a way to encourage players to dig deeper on all levels. Talking to NPCs, joining factions, doing the quests, reading the in-game books, placeables, etc. etc. There's lots of cool stuff hidden everywhere in all these interactions if you just know where to look, and there are answers all over the place for those players that are interested in stuff like this to find it all out. My personal driving force behind my part in helping come up with some of the lore is the idea that there's always another layer, and that those who pay attention and connect the dots will get the most bang for their buck. Hence our inclusion of secrets in the game; puzzles and hidden clues that can lead to treasures and danger, answers and more mysteries.