Narfell
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Winterhawk99
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Narfell

Post by Winterhawk99 »

The Narfell Server is a Heavy Rp sever that has all the markings and longevity of the great server that it is. It is a very old server converted to EE. You may find it easily enough on the Beamdog boards. Many I have spoken with would not call it heavy Rp but it has all the earmarks of one. This is as close to the servers I have worked on or created as you can get. I really love this server.
Narfell consists of simply built areas, Complex scripting, a highly active Dm staff that constantly coordinates together to keep the overriding storyline straight and at least that I have seen four to six build updates every few months. Every weekend I come in; I was able participate in a Dm adventure and Dm’s will work with pcs on personal quests occasionally to help them move their individual stories forward.
I had the opportunity to ask one of the lead developers questions about the world, its build and its players. The dev’s name is TPickles and I will speak of the interview as I go along.
One of the first things I noticed about the world is something I have never seen before. All outside transitions are invisible. Now that is a wonderful development because the blue triggers always seem to take away from the submersion effect of the game. I asked TPickles about that and he told me that the scripts to do that are done within the trigger events of the triggers themselves.
Needless to say, I took what little time I have at home went into the toolset and tried to copy this innovation. That’s awesome!
Narfell is active enough that they really don’t need my review. They have a good population every day of the week. Their players are extremely loyal to the server. On weekends I always mark more that 20 each day and at times 20 players on at the same time. However, in roleplaying they are so good that I just had to do this paper on them.
Another of the first things, being an old Dev myself, I noticed on Narfell is they regularly break the 12x12 tile rule or the 144 max tiles per area. If you have a lot of areas that are bigger that 1044 ten-meter tiles lag starts to show up on your server unless you head, it off in other ways.
I found no lag on the server and load times were very fast. One of the things about the serve regarding this is that areas are built simply with few placeable place. That will reduce your load screens, which is different from lag. I question TPickles about the minimal lag on the server. His reply was that the scripters are especially careful on how they use heartbeat scripts. I think this is only a partial answer for most developers and owners now days are careful about heartbeats. I think they are even more mindful of nested loops which can really mess up a server.
NeverWinterNights is run on one giant continual loop. Something one of my developer friends taught me, RDJparadis. If you put a lot of nested loops within this system, the loops lag the server and eventually you start getting infinite loops called TMI errors. RDJ did pull off an AI on a nested loop but he is a professional developer and really knows what he’s doing.
I think that the Narfell staff pays attention to a lot more than just heartbeats also including a careful screening of nested loops among a lot of other things. The team has its shit together on developing.
Money is very hard to acquire on Narfell. Especially at low levels. I’m currently playing a 9th level mage on the world and she has never had more than 6,000 in gold. The good thing is prices are also somewhat depressed giving your character some assurances that they can survive on this world and update their own equipment to a point.
Narfell is also what I and most others would call a low magic server. Even with being that mages are not kings and queens of the server. The world balances the mages, however there is a way for a mage to learn pen and paper spells on DM events which really adds to the feel of the server. I’ll mention this again a little later.
Another of the things I noticed was a persistent Item in my inventory. I questioned TPickles about it asking if they had an outside OBDC database running things in the background to place variables on players. He told me that in fact they do but they keep the item as a backup variable holder and also use it for flags.
There are also some of the older servers out there that do not allow Dms to play and players to Dm to keep cliquish behavior down on the server. Narfell lets its Dms play as well as Dm. I tend to like going this way so that Dm’s feel a part of the community they are writing stories for. However, though I have not seen any cliquish behavior some players have commented to me that there is some of this behavior going on in the background. My current character has been with several groups. She’s a fairly outgoing lass and I have been welcomed into several groups. Every player I have spoken too and every Dm I have spoken to in tells has been extremely nice. The characters may not have been according to background and alignment but the players themselves are all outstanding people. That is a big bonus. The staff may need to watch out for cliques because that can eventually kill a server.
Narfell has both a custom language system, custom chat system, and a custom trade system. All of them I find somewhat cumbersome for the player though I have not delved into the trade system much. They do not incorporate the DMFI chat or language system. The good thing about the language system is that it is much more versatile than the DMFI. There must be near fifty languages you may learn. The price of this is of course players have to do a lot of typing of long string variables to use the system. Same with the general chat and emote. You have to use a lot of variables. My suggestion is keep a notebook at your side. I’ve gotten somewhat use to it in the languages but as yet have not figured out the emotes. They do provide you with a wand and I just use that from laziness.
One of the other nice things about the language system is Narfell turns off several skills. If you dump two points in one of those skills, you can pick up another language over and above your maximum allowed. I kinda like this more than my old system where for each 10 lore points you can add another language to the max int modifier.
Being a heavy Rp sever there are few scripted quests. In fact, in all my exploration I have found no scripted quests. I asked TPickles about it and he told me that they in fact do have a few, however they have level limits and there are few to encourage roleplay on the server. The player community is active enough to support there being little to no scripted quests on the world. All the while I played, I never even thought to go look for the quests because people engaged me as soon as I come in, each and every time I come in.
Custom content and modeling is a hit or miss thing for Narfell. Areas are mostly clean and plain. I see no new tilesets and placeable models. Narfell obviously takes care to make sure polygon counts are reduced in the world. There is one exception. I have seen several creature models I have never seen before. Otyugh, Behir (although that looks like an old DLA model) and a host of other creatures. I asked Pickles about it and he told me that the Narfell CC team is small and regularly comb the vault for interesting workable things to use.
Narfell also uses a 20th level cap both to encourage play and reduce the need to build high level areas that could potentially add to server lag. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not. On most of the servers I have worked on we had a soft 20 level cap ourselves. However, if a character got big enough, and the player rped their heart out a Dm would make a special epic quest for that one character. If the character accomplished the quest the 20-level cap would be unlocked for that character and they could move on to 40th level.
Overall this is a fantastic server with a well established and loyal player base. Most times day or night you will find someone on the world to play with. The custom systems add ambiance. The Dm’s are almost always floating around. There may be a few cliques, but they are generally underground and do not disturb play much. It’s a lot of fun to play there. The storyline is consistent and if you are a role player this is an excellent site for you to give a go.
There is minimal lag and load times are extremely fast.
There are a few downsides. One of them frustrated me to no end. There is a 20level cap, but it will take you a very long time to get there. A few years at least.
The one thing I found frustrating about the server is their clothier and custom armor designs. The system they use isn’t just encumbering to the player. It’s downright taxing. I spent 2 hours trying to make one outfit for my character and after I finished the item disappeared from my inventory never to return.
Frustrated I bought out my toolset dusted it off and went into my own server that has cep (2. Whatever in it) I built armor in the toolset for her, wrote down all the numbers. Then I went back to Narfell and started over. Nope! Plugging in the numbers didn’t work at all. At this point I wanted to strangle the dev team or give them my own scripts. This system is not in any way shape or form player friendly and if fact it’s downright terrible.
Every server has its issues like this, and just having this one issue is ok. Narfell overall is the best Server for my kind of play that I have thus far reviewed. It doesn’t have the pretty builds that Alangara Rising has. It is level caped, but it compensates for that with its PnP developments. Narfell is the closest server to Pen and Paper that I have ever been on, and I’ve been on a lot of servers. In fact you’ll be seeing me there on a pretty regular basis along with Alangara now that Dragonlance Cronicles Reborn is down for the count.

Note: My character on Narfell's story is too long to put on the site for now. You can find her story here. I must warn you there are some small spoilers to book 2 and 3 of the Children of Hell trilogy within her story. If you want to wait for the books don't read the storyline. Here is her story thus far on Narfell:
https://narfell.us/forum/topic/30805/la ... ore?page=1
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Winterhawk99
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Re: Narfell

Post by Winterhawk99 »

I'm having so many problems with the Narfell web site with adding to my posts that I have decided to post here and hope that a copy and paste when I get home will help with the situation. I will continue Lauriella's and other pcs stories here when I am at work using my shipping/receiving computer.

An update: The problem seems to be fixed at the moment. for updates to Lauriella's story click on the link in the above post.

On a different note I hope to have two other characters approved shortly and will post their links on this thread. I really like Narfell and hope to have one of my rp homes here.

Update 3 march: The problem on the Narfell website is fixed so disregard this post.
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Winterhawk99
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Re: Narfell

Post by Winterhawk99 »

My elder fey ri got nixed by byt Narfell Dm's. I was hoping to play her but will find another server for this particular character. She and Lauriella may go into a possible 4th book on the forgotten realms. call it the next generation or however. 20 years after Kioshi, Seryne, Miwa and the rest of the gang have their great adventures on Toril.

This is Angelia Vail. Kioshi and Seryne's daughter. I'll change the part on where she is sent too.

Enjoy the character intro. :)
https://narfell.us/forum/topic/30925/fo ... of-narfell
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Winterhawk99
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Re: Narfell

Post by Winterhawk99 »

I'm moving Lauriella to another server so I may continue her story. There fore I will copy and paste her write up here. It bears remembering and is a good story to folk to read. Several on Narfell have told me they enjoy reading it. so I'll post it in a special place for her story had ended on Narfell and continues on Corymr and the dalelands.
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