Looks nice.
I also enjoy slow, low leveling worlds where items in shops are of fair/good/excellent/superb quality, and the magic items are found in the very depths of dangerous places, maxing at +2 or +3, the latter being so rare, they're given on DM quests.
Where exploration experience is more when in a party, than it would be on your own, or random placeable transitions are scattered around the world on a reboot, taking a player to a new area that might just have descriptions and give some extra experience for doing so.
Where magic is low, possibly even frowned upon in some regions. Teleportation spells are nasty, because it defeats travel and randomly coming across someone. Teleport from city to outside of dungeon. Run dungeon. Teleport from region back to city.
Most importantly, DM run events that don't require two of the same player character to complete the plot line. The events should shape the world, regardless of the characters. Custom DM run events can be done for those characters, but nothing is worse on an RP server than being a tag-along in a DM event while the main two player characters take the spotlight, dialog and make all the choices.
Persistence is key. On a server reboot, a player that uses an item to save their location, should return to that location if they so desire via the starting location, not be forced to start in the same area all the time (to a degree. Saving in dungeons should be disallowed). One server, only allowed characters to enter the world to other regions if they met certain level requirements. Awesome for 1st level characters, who could only start in the starting town, where no one was to RP with. I also like the idea of only being able to save one's location at an Inn, which would be the inn you would start in on a server reboot. It beats logging out at an inn in a region you're out exploring, come back the next day on a server reboot, and be back in the damn starting city.
Allow customization from the start for unique character look and style. One place I visited just dumped a new player on the side of the road with a traveling caravan. There were campfires and traders lingering about, along with wagons, crates - a large camp with everything a starting character required. You'd go into one wagon and it was a tailor shop. Some guy sitting under a tree sold goods. General signs dotted the area. An archery range close to combat dummies, had a sign you could read about the combat rules/changes. General NPCs were shooting arrows at the archery targets/smacking around the dummies. You could enter a wagon nearby and buy your gear.
The traveling brewer/illusionist had another sign that gave details on the spell changes hanging on the wall inside the wagon where you bought potions and the like.
Stone carved statues listed the DM/Admin/Builders of the world on little signs at their feet, with another posting the rules players were asked to follow.
All of this was neatly placed in a starting area that just looked like you rode along with this traveling caravan, they stopped for the night on the side of the road and off you went with your starting gold.
Up the road, the transition that set you on a footpath that lead to the main city gate. It worked well in creating a sense of exploration from the start, and let you bump into other players as they walked out of the city on adventure, rather than exiting an inn and bumping into players standing around some courtyard waiting for something to happen.
Try to avoid the + effect. You see it a lot on worlds.
What is it? Starting city in the middle. North/East/West/South gate. It runs in a line to a larger region you can explore, but you can't get from that region in the north, buy going south-east through other areas to get to the east area. You have to go back into the city and go out the east gate if you want to explore that region.
Worlds should be designed like a spider web. Central in the middle, and span out, each grid getting bigger as you go outward, making a circle of areas, rather than a + design.
Great to still see some new places popping up. Good luck!
FP!
Modifié par Fester Pot, 26 novembre 2013 - 05:53 .
