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Escape From The Underdark - A Dark Persistent World Profile by Jay Watamaniuk
Can you direct us to a website with more information?Howland: http://www.escapefromunderdark.com was made early in our development process, and needs to be brought up to date a bit. However our forums contain a lot of information as well. The Underdark is perhaps the most written about area of the Forgotten Realms and yet remains a mystery. Why did using this area appeal to you?
There was a number of reasons we decided on the Underdark, only a few of which I'll touch on here. We decided to go for a non-hak server, and there's a lot of great BioWare Underdark content (monster models, tilesets, placeables, etc.) available that we've really enjoyed using. Having a truly three dimensional realm also allows us a lot of design freedom in building a world where we can expand in literally every direction. Our philosophy as DMs is to allow players to change the nature of the world as much as possible, and we felt this could be more easily accomplished in a non-canon Underdark area. There is no central, canon, governmental authority that we needed to worry about. We also wanted a dreary, grim, survivalist feel to our server and the Underdark is excellent for that. Finally, we wanted to provide our players a way to end their characters that was more interesting than them simply getting bored with the character and playing something new: escaping from the Underdark is a major challenge on our server, and does represent permanent retirement for the character in question, but every story should have a beginning, middle, and end. Where did you draw your ideas for quests from?
Since the Underdark is a dangerous place, how do you handle new players?Howland: Welcoming new players is one of our highest priorities. The Underdark (and our server) is indeed dangerous, and a character that rushes out the main gate and wants to start killing spawns for experience won't get very far. However, we place a very high out-of-character emphasis in encouraging veteran players to extend themselves to new players and help them get to know the server. Additionally, the quests in the 2-5 range tend to be quite easily accomplished by practically any group that employs team-work. Level advancement to level five is very quick, but slows down a good deal after that, making for an average server level that we find balanced and encouraging for new players. I understand I need to apply to play on your server. Is this unusual for a persistent world? Does it help raise the bar for what players can expect from other players?
What do you most enjoy about DMing?Howland: This project as conceived is intended to be a storytelling server where our players go beyond fluff role-play and immerse themselves into their character. As a DM, I particularly enjoy spinning plots and stories that have every bit of intrigue and twists as some of my favorite books or movies. It's even more gratifying to watch as players participate in these stories and take them in a direction entirely unexpected. Ultimately, EfU is about providing entertainment to those who choose to play here, and it's been great to see its success. ~
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Howland: Our choice of a setting was considered very carefully. For our storytelling ambitions, we decided to use the Underdark (which has been described at great length in source books and fiction) and take a small corner to make entirely our own, with a creatively developed history and atmosphere that is non-canon.
Howland: We have over fifty scripted quests running to provide plenty of action for our playerbase, and we try to introduce one or two new scripted quests a week. Inspiration comes from a variety of sources. Oftentimes, I'll run an improvised DM quest for a group of characters, and later decide to go ahead and turn it into a permanent scripted quest. Many of our quests relate to the history of our world, and give vital clues as to some of the module's more significant mysteries. As a player, I really enjoy quests where you have to storm the walls and breach the gates of your enemies, or alternatively, send your sneaky scout around the back to scale the wall and pick the main gate's lock. Whenever possible, our quests are designed to be interesting conceptually, relate to the atmosphere and lore of our setting in some way, and be exciting from a combat-perspective.
We do ask for applications for powerful subraces, faction positions, unusual backgrounds, and prestige classes to maintain the integrity of our world, but absolutely no application is required to start playing on Escape from the Underdark. We are a non-passworded, non-hak server that is up 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at the address efu.us.to in the Persistent Story GameSpy category. We fully encourage new players to dive right in.
