As promised, I wanted to check in before we start up the main story about where we’re at in development as well as what to expect, and when with the story.
To put it briefly, we’re still not done implementing everything we want to play with; We’re still going to be chipping away at all we’ve been hoping to get done for season one (Allopathy, Jewelry, Drugs, etc.) But at the end of the day there’s no reason to wait to get things moving: we still have some of those most sophisticated systems and set pieces I’ve ever seen in UO, personally. So we’re just going to use what we have at the moment to make it work as the story asks for things.
We have however finished and have started to work on the unrolling of Reputation. Reputation is the big new mechanic we’ll be using in Season One: We’ll be unrolling it with a minor element over the next month to bug test the new system as well as introduce some new augments, a dungeon, and -interesting- character progression choices, and of course TRANSMOG.
Reputation will also extend to roleplay. Depending on your Reputation, NPCs may react differently to the things you do, both in the Main Story as well as minor events and organic happenings around the Province. We hope to utilize this mechanic to fairly allow more access, support and influence over NPC factions. I strongly encourage anyone looking to hop back into the roleplay with the upcoming events before the main story events to get acclimated.
While we’re playing with minor story elements - we’ll be slowly introducing the Main Story in the background - so you’re going to start seeing articles in newspapers and running into interesting characters, etc. during both scheduled and unscheduled intervals.
And now for a quick rundown of how we plan on approaching the main story, think of this as notes from a session 0. For those players not from TTRPG land - A session zero is a meeting run before a larger campaign in which you and your players talk about the upcoming campaign before you actually run it. Session zeros are intended to get gamemasters and players all on the same page about the game you plan to play, and the campaign you plan to experience. I aim to write some things out about the coming season like a session zero to help players engage with the material and know what to expect with the world waking up:
- The goal of the main story is to provide a backdrop for players to interact with each other: NPC factions realistically have offscreen resources and manpower that makes them a little imbalanced top pit against a handful of players.
- Don’t expect these NPC Factions to resolve problems between you and your fellow players. They’re going to be very, very busy with their own stuff. I.E. running to tell a VIC to do something about a mage will probably be met with, “Why did you let them live?”.
- We’ll have metrics like reputation to inform us what happens next, but well organized, roleplayed efforts can have additional effects on the story. A single person showing up to an event to try and wipe out the Foundry is very likely going to fail horribly for that individual. But a well organized, roleplayed arc of you and your best buds planting a bomb? We can definitely do some stuff with that.
- In any given situation, staff doesn’t mean to use any of their elements - adversaries or not - to punish players in ways to soft or hard-lock them out of content. That said, don’t force their hand - NPC characters will react accordingly when pushed to do so. This can mean exile, jailing, injury, and even permadeath.
- Ignorance of the lore will not excuse you from the consequences of the lore: Your character should understand the world’s dynamics, and roleplay character accordingly. We'll be providing a lot of social events in the exposition to help inform you organically of these elements.
- The first few events will be social, slow moving, digestible exposition to help inform you of the main story elements - their motivations, where they stand politically, spiritually, etc. so that once things really get going, we as staff can safely behave the way these elements would without fear of lack of information presented in the world.
- Not every main story event is for you, some events will be combat, some will be social, skill locked, and some will involve factions that require a certain reputation standing. Be mindful of the NPC factions and what their world views are to decide when it may or not be safe for you to attend an event.
- If you’re only showing up to big events, you’re going to miss the majority of the story: After the initial exposition, big story beats will be a result of everything that happens in between the last one - reputation metrics, roleplay from the players, etc. will all inform staff about the next big narrative beat in the story.
Ideologically speaking, we’re hoping to provide a wide variety of world views and playstyles on the board, and within those spheres there can be a more nuanced cast of characters that embody different aspects of those larger world views to provide even more flavors to interact with. These elements are meant to provide character foil for your personal stories - This means at any given time, there will be NPC’s in play who will not like you for one reason or another, please don’t take this personally. In a Grimdark shard, the world is complicated, and there’s no right answer to any given situation, and everyone thinks they’re right - just like in real life.
There'll be individual casts of characters who have their own individual ideological viewpoints, one NPC character may not 100% encapsulate their factions collective thinking - taking interest in various aspects or characters within different elements could open up different opportunities. - We’ll try to have EU and US friendly “NPC Office Hours” for each major faction to allow you to interact with the elements in a social setting on regular intervals. We invite you in these windows to come ask questions and engage with these elements in ways that can help inform us what you’d like to see in the story moving forward. These are also great ways for players to jump into the main story and catch up to the individual factions and what’s been happening thus far.