Escaped from Underdark: Archipelago

[Howlando]

Escaped from the Underdark: Archipelago
The Prelude is Over[/b]
 
Simply put, Escaped from the Underdark: Archipelago is not just a game server, but it is an intelligently conceived and elegantly built work of art.
 
History of our Server
 
Escape from the Underdark began in the fall of 2005 as an attempt to build and maintain the best possible NWN story-based roleplaying server that we could manage given the limitations of the engine while using no HAKs. We wanted to push the envelope in terms of designing an immersive world and encouraging new heights of cooperative story-telling and roleplay based conflict. We wanted our setting to compel players to create richly-characterized characters that would have opportunities for unprecedented impact on the game world. We wanted the world to evolve and change, and for RP'ed actions to have major consequences, to watch stories that would be as entertaining as those found in theater or fiction, and to produce something which we in EfU often simply call only the Awesome.
 
Although EFU has always been a flawed server, it has always been a successful one. Although our dark setting, extreme challenge, emphasis on conflict-RP, and steep learning curve unfortunately turned many new players away, the playerbase has always been large and active (player population typically reaching at least 30+ every day). The setting (a dismal settlement called Sanctuary located within the underdark, populated by escaped slaves and their descendents) evolved and changed dramatically over time. Plots and intrigue flourished in ways that exceeded our expectations. We worked hard to make the server the best it could be.
 
From the start, a major emphasis in the server was that of characters managing to actually escape the Underdark, and thus find a satisfactory (and permanent) conclusion to their character. Many tried, many failed, but some few managed to succeed. In the spring of 2008, the EFU DM team decided to prepare to shift our setting from entirely Underdark-based to including those areas based on the surface above. In short, we wanted to give the town of Sanctuary an opportunity to escape. We wanted to take advantage of NWN's surface-content (especially that which Bioware was introducing in the 1.69 patch) and build a fresh-server that incorporating the best of the old but avoided our mistakes. Although we were proud of Escape from the Underdark, we wanted Escaped from the Underdark: Archipelago to be much, much better.
 
In the Summer of 2008, the EFU DM team kicked into high-gear our building efforts while simultaneously trying to give EFU the kind of plot-intensive death it deserved. Significant effort was made to resolve complex plots that had been developing for years. Finally, in September, we transitioned from Escape from the Underdark to Escaped from the Underdark: Archipelago. Our three year prelude was over, and much more of the Awesome awaits.
 
A New Setting
 
The setting of EFU: A is a completely seamless shift, with the action simply shifting from taking place below in the Underdark to instead on an island on the surface above. The focus is on a non-canon archipelago of islands located somewhere in the Shining Sea of the Forgotten Realms setting. New characters begin their story with the abrupt and unexplained teleportation from a background location of their choice to the top of a an ancient ruined ziggurat within one of these islands. Extraordinary efforts have been made to flesh out the surface world and make it a fascinating and richly developed place.
 

Features
 
Scripted Quests: The primary means of XP gain in EfU is through cooperatively tackling any of upwards of a hundred different, repeatable scripted quests. Wandering through areas and mindlessly farming monsters is not an efficient way to advance or level. Instead, characters can band together to cooperatively tackle challenges: anything from storming well defended fortresses and castles, delving into mysterious crypts, doing battle with hideous jungle beasts, defending a point from ravenous hordes of zombies, or rescuing hostages. Our quests are generally fully repeatable, setting-appropriate, artfully designed, and often "spiced" or adjusted by DMs on the fly.
 
Lore/Setting: Considerable effort has gone towards ensuring that the setting and history of EFU/EFUA is fully developed and compelling. There are in-game stores that sell dozens of extensive books discussing histories and various theories as to some of the mysteries of the EFU/EFUA setting. While taking advantage of the Forgotten Realms setting, we've developed non-canon regions and details that incorporate themes and characteristics from some of our favorite works of fiction, including: Lovecraft, George R. R. Martin, Robert Howard, Tolkien, Kafka, the Wachowski brothers, Mieville, and others.
 
Metaplots: DMs are not just referees and builders, but also story-tellers. Metaplots are a major part of the EFUA experience. In the past, examples of major plots include: plagues, rebellion, invasion, the acquiring of important magical relics, political crisis, vampires, gang wars, and much more.
 
Character Conflict: A major part of EFU has traditionally been that of the role-played conflict that occurs between characters. Examples of this might be: a thief running from the Watch, the consuming hatred between two rival wizards, a subtle war between merchants, bloody conflict between gangs, a Kelemvorite hunting down a necromancer, a paladin dueling a blackguard, a politician scheming against an opponent, or countless other examples. In EfU and EFUA, this conflict is resolved by characters through their RP. We do not encourage mindless PvP, but rather an environment that resembles the best of fantasy fiction and cinema. Just as with fiction, there is meaningful conflict between characters. Unlike fiction, there is no set-winner, and the victorious are separated by the defeated through what they do In-Character (sometimes this might be straight PvP, in other cases it will be who out-schemed, out-thought, out-planned, or out-tricked the other).
 
DM Quests: The DM team regularly runs DM quests and DM events. Sometimes these will be planned and advertised on our forums, sometimes they will be spur-of-the-moment or secret. DM quests could just be a simple event to kill some monsters and earn some special DM loot, or they could relate to a complicated faction rivalry or metaplot.
 
DM Team: The EFUA DM team tries to be highly responsive to the needs of players. We work hard to make ourselves available for NPC possessions and assist with a character's goals or needs, as well as being capable and fair administrators and referees. It is worth noting that we hold ourselves as a team to a very high standard of conduct in terms of not being biased, of not punishing characters for OOC reasons, of not cheating in any way, and of not having any kind of advantage when and if we play as a normal character.
 
Exploration: Exploration is a major part of EFUA. Characters will receive a one-time XP bonus for entering certain areas, and we've tried very hard to make a server that is fun, challenging, and rewarding to explore.
 
Module Updates: Tens of thousands of man-hours has gone into building EfU, and much of this has simply been updating the module to reflect the changes that have happened (often through the efforts of characters). Factions rise and fall, NPCs die, districts are invaded or built, buildings are burnt down, and the world is constantly evolving and changing - all of which is updated in a timely manner by the DM staff. In EFUA, this is even more prominent, as the playerbase works and builds a new settlement from the ground up, deciding much of how it develops.

Technical Features
 
EFUQS: "Escaped from the Underdark: Quest System" is a powerful, custom-designed quest system that allows for the efficient use of upwards of a hundred different, repeatable scripted quests. Our system maximizes server efficiency and minimizes lag while allowing the building team to create a large variety of unique challenges with multiple forms of objectives.
 
EFUSL: "Escaped from the Underdark: Status and Logging" is a powerful, custom-designed web-based application that interfaces with our server. With EFUSL, players can track their character's statistics and see what other characters are logged on remotely. DMs have access to dozens of different features that allows us to do our job better.
 
EFUVS: "Escaped from the Underdark: Voyage System" is a powerful, custom-designed system that simulates boat and ship voyages. When a character or party of characters hires, through a NPC, a ship to take them to a destination, they have the opportunity to fully roleplay out the voyage rather than simply appearing at the desired port. EFUVS takes into account the actual distance of the port as well as the speed of every ship to reflect travel time, and incorporates monster attacks, pirate raids, shipwrecks, storms, and half a dozen other elements as possibilities throughout the voyage.
 
EFURE: "Escaped from the Underdark: Encounter System" is a custom system that allows us to randomly populate our world with monsters. Using EFURE, builders can specify what kind of monsters might be found in a particular spot during a particular time of day, while allowing us to adhere to random elements as much as we please. Some kinds of monsters emerge only at night, while others might be found only one in ten thousand times you visit an area.
 
EFULOOT: EFU's custom loot system allows the building team to incorporate thousands of different pieces of unique and ambient loot for characters. Some items may be found only rarely in certain chests on certain quests, while other items are common to a particular region.
 
EFU Death System: EFU's unique custom death system enhances the importance of meaningful consequences to death while minimizing feelings of OOC frustration. In EfU, if characters drop below 0 hitpoints they are considered bleeding to death. They may either recover, be healed, or bleed to death at -10 HPs. If a character is sent below -10 HPs, they die instantly. A character's corpse, fully equipped with items, drops to the ground next to a bag that contains the rest of their inventory. A character's body can be moved around, or have the equipment removed, by living characters. Other characters can raise the deceased character which reduces the amount of XP lost, or the dead character may choose to respawn, either to a safe location (such as a town mausoleum), or directly to their corpse, which while risky does allow for an immediate return to the action.
 
EFU Custom Domains: In order to enhance the customizability of the cleric class, EFU features an entirely optional override download that allows players to select from a
much greater variety of custom-made cleric domains.
 
EFU Summons: In EfU, character summoning is an entirely unique experience. In addition to the default theme, characters can learn entirely new themes of monsters to summon, or find special reagents that enhances the power of their summon or unlocks new summonable monsters. Additionally, EFU has hundreds of unique pieces of loot that summon different kinds of monsters. Examples of some of our themes include: aberrations, animals, rats, ooze, devils, ghosts, demons, spiders, illusionary monsters, defenders of nature, elements (water, earth, fire, air), shadows, and many, many more.
 
EFU Crafting: EfU is deliberately not primarily a crafting server, and characters can not independently enchant powerful weapons or create armor. However, EfU does support Engineering, Herbalism, Alchemy, Cooking, and Wand/Potion crafting.
 

- Engineering is primarily (although not exclusively) DM-dependent due to balance concern, but is a way in which characters can engineer, design, or build complicated gadgetry or mechanisms. Examples of some of the things characters that specialize in engineering can do without DMs includes: setting up portable ballistas/repeating crossbows/catapults and accurately using them, repair and use of unique weapons, perform certain repairs, and learn the use and purpose of certain IG mechanisms. Examples of some of the things exceptional characters can do with DM assistance have been: the design and manufacture of scripted crowbars, the development of new and unique forms of ammunition, the development and control of unique permanent animatronic golem summons, the repair of major plot-related devices, and much more.
 
- Herbalism is a custom-system that allows characters to plant and grow a wide variety of unique plants and fungi. This flora is persistent through resets, although it can be destroyed or overharvested by characters and NPCs. Different plants can be harvested for different kinds of materials.
 
- Alchemy is a custom-system that allows characters to combine different kinds of materials (some derived from herbalism, others found on scripted quests) to create new and useful items: anything from medicinal herbs and tanglefoot bags to powerful reagents that improves summoning.
 
- Cooking is similar to alchemy, except the end product is a food item (either mundane or magical). Mundane food is a RP object, while particularly talented cooks can produce such magical foods as the Evil Muffin.
 
- Wand/Potion crafting is a way in which characters can produce highly useful magical potions and wands through the expenditure of experience points and gold.

EFU Voice Commands: Using a powerful NWNX plugin, EFU incorporates scores of different commands through simply typing certain phrases. These commands can in turn be hotkeyed by players and DMs for easy use. Examples of these commands are: different commands to adjust damage mode for PvP purposes, commands for different animated emotes, class specific tool commands such as ranger tracking or paladin detect evil, commands to swiftly pick up a dropped pack, commands to 'speak' through summoned companions, and many more.
 
EFU Weather: Escaped from the Underdark incorporates an advanced, custom weather system. Weather is consistent through areas that are geographically located close to each other, and has a large impact on a variety of factors. Certain kinds of characters can even, with difficulty, learn how to control the weather or use it as a weapon.
 
Subraces: EFU has a completely customized subrace system. Players can, without applications, play goblin and kobold monsters as well as the different varieties of standard races (such as Gold Dwarves, Wild Elves, etc.). Additionally, players can apply to the DM team to play any of our 20+ special subraces.
 
Mechanics changes: We are extremely proud of the mechanics adjustments we've made on EFU. Many of the spells have been tweaked to allow for a more balanced environment that suits our level of play, along with other core systems such as resting and barbarian rage. The carefully considered choices we've made make for a very balanced server in which every character class is useful and has a strong niche within the gameworld.
 
Prestige Class Adjustments: Many of the default NWN prestige classes have been adjusted to better suit EFU and our level of play. Examples of these changes includes giving palemasters access to powerful undead summons, providing benefits to weaponmasters that enhances their speed-based fighting style, and creating a completely custom system for Shifters that allows them theoretical access to every kind of monster in the game as a potential form.
 
Player Tools Utilization: One of the great new features Bioware has brought with the 1.69 patch has been the introduction of player tools. In EfU, we have scripted a system which allows players to customize their player tools to their liking. Some of these features include: catapult/ballista controls, improved tools to control animal companions and familiars, class-specific commands, and prestige class specific commands.
 
The features listed above are just a few examples. Other technical features EFU includes are: completely customized XP system, powerful customized AI enhancements for our monsters, unique scripted monsters and dangers, custom traps (such as deadfall traps and pit traps), a huge array of breathtaking visual effects, specially scripted unique placeables, unique scripted items and artifacts, customized outfits, persistent banking, persistent storage (limited as a perk for primarily faction characters), animatronic NPCs that can be fully programmed to perform various tasks in-game by characters through voice commands, hundreds of powerful DM tools, a SetDescription feature for DMs, and much, much more.