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The World of Layonara - Update Profile by Jay Watamaniuk
Where is your website?We understand that Layonara has added some very cool and unique technologies to enhance the immersion level for persistent worlds. Can you tell us about a few of these?
The historical, cultural and political detail of our world is on par with that of any well established fantasy world that has captured cult and popular imaginations. With a successful mentoring and training system, as well as an amazing range of in and out of game tools at our disposal, Layonara has truly pushed through the limits of the online player/GM interface in thoroughly positive and creative ways. Alongside these GM innovations, we have some amazing in-game enhancements, as well as a rich collection of supporting technologies outside the game. To name a few, we have a great and deep parchment and quill system, LORE, a farming system built around seasons, a unique deity system, custom FX and icons, and a mass animal empathy system. It sounds like you have some incredible systems. Can you tell us more about the writing system?
What is this LORE that you are talking about?Leanthar: LORE stands for Layonara Official Reference Encyclopedia. It is a large wiki site that has a large amount of the official world information on Layonara. But beyond that, it is tied tightly with our game world. Each player has a list of character records that are played in the game world, and each has detailed information derived from our databases on stats, equipment, and more. We have close to real-time information on all characters and everybody can see their character sheet in LORE. Users on the website can send messages into the game world--that's right, type a message in LORE and the message is delivered to your character of choice in the game by a messenger bird. Characters in-game can also place parchments they have written on using the quill into a folder and these notes show up on LORE in their character record. From there players can edit their parchments and the changes appear in-game. LORE is a fantastic system and we have just touched the surface with the plans for the future on this awesome technology. There is so much planned and possible with LORE that it would take pages upon pages to explain. What about that farming system? I hear some zany rumor that I can grow my own food? Is this madness?
We have an extensive CNR system that has been expanded and customized to Layonara. You can grow some of your own ingredients on your farm plots. CNR is a great system that was created by Festyx and Hrnac, but Layonara has added so much in to this product that it is hardly the same thing any longer. We have added many custom trade skills and have 1000's of items that can be crafted using CNR and then further modified by adding magic abilities to these items. I see that you have many deities that are defined for Layonara. Do they have anything to do with the world other than names?Leanthar: Most definitely. We have a unique deity system in that all deities have relationships with other deities across the board. When players are grouped together in a party they need to be aware of who follows what deities. Many spells have less effect, or even no effect, on characters that follow enemies of the caster's deity. Another thing about this deity relationship system is that it is not set in stone. Players, over time, will indeed affect the relationship with deities and it has happened a few times over the four years of the online version of Layonara. And the last, but certainly not least thing related to the deities is the tithing system. For every deity, people can tithe to temples, and the more that is tithed, the more temples are added or improved. These things really make the deities part of the world, also further adding to the immersion. Many more things are planned for this system. You also mentioned custom FX and Icons. Explain this if you would please.
On top of that, we have 100s of custom icons for most of the items that characters love to collect and hoard. We do this so you can see from the icon alone what something is, instead of characters having a collection of items with the same icon but a different name. What is this mass animal empathy system you spoke about?Leanthar: Anyone who has played a druid or ranger on an NWN role-play server knows that dealing with groups of animals has to be one of the most frustrating limitations of the previous world mechanics. Well, at Layonara we've given our nature folks ways to show off their tender sides and be the sorts of animal lovers many of them want to be. With this new system, Druids, Rangers, and Clerics with the Animal Domain are able to empathize and calm whole groups of animals by simply moving into their field of perception. It wouldn't make sense to calm anything with weapons drawn, so the nature character must stow any aggressive items to connect with the animals in question. The check is then performed automatically and is based on the character's Animal Empathy skill. If the check is successful, all animals within sight will be pacified. They won't attack unless attacked by that character or by someone in the character's party. It is a cool system that further defines those that have a special bond with nature and animals in specific. Have you released any of these systems to the community?Leanthar: No sadly, not at this time. We are currently working on exporting a few of the systems and making sure they are bug free, and at that time we will be releasing them to the community for use in whatever way they may desire. It takes a lot of time and effort, as I am sure many people out there know. We also plan to support the releases if there are bugs in the initial release. Do you have any wrap-up comments?Leanthar: Thank you to the Layonara Project, Writer, and GM teams for adding in all of the immersive content and creating and merging the unique and cool technologies. And to the Layonara players, thank you, it is because of you that Layonara even exist today. I also want to make a special thank you to a few people and groups. Papillon, you and your NWNX system just plain rock--it is the best system update for NWN, and without it NWN would not be what it is today, not even close. Festyx and Hrnac, thank you for creating CNR. It is a great crafting system that is easily customized--good job. Thank you to Lanthar. You created a great speech recognition system--good job. I could go on and on thanking others out there, such as Adam Miller, Phaere, Na, Pasill, Jeff McCain, Catskill, Knat, and NIC, but I have to stop somewhere. I am amazed at the NWN community, even four years after the product has been released. I am also very happy to see BioWare continuing to support NWN and the community; it speaks volumes for the company. The community has released so many great updates for NWN that it is simply amazing and goes to show people just the desire that gamers have to create and run worlds as well as play custom modules and games made by "normal people," not just game companies. ~
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Leanthar: Well, first of all, we have an amazing GM team composed of over 25 rigorously selected, creative, and intelligent individuals from all over the world. We run more than 40 quests a month, and that's not including the Character Development Quests and Epic quests that individual players and groups of players can request.
Leanthar: Sure! It's a popular new feature that allows characters to become authors in and out of game. Using a quill item in game, the character can scribe custom notes with advanced formatting onto parchment items--even in different colors if they desire. These can range from short notes that can be dropped or handed off to long epic journals. And then to top it all off, they can edit these parchments outside of the game via the LORE system that we have in place. GMs can also use this quill system to rename items on the fly in-game as well as provide descriptions for items in-game on the fly. If a character recovers or creates a special item during one of the many monthly GM-run quests, the GM can name and describe the item right then, while in the game, so that item becomes unique in the world for that character.
Leanthar: It is not madness. You sure can grow your own food. Our system allows characters to purchase farm plots and use them to grow, tend, and harvest crops and livestock. With the farming system add-on, players now have more options that further improve the immersion level of a persistent world. They can choose to farm and sell the products as well as support the citizens, and not just hack and slash.
Leanthar: Layonara has redone a fair amount of the spell FX that cause lag in large groups on a persistent world server, and these new FX's look fantastic. We also have special colored FX when they are cast through the deity system listed above, such as cleric spells. Certain deities use certain colored spells and it really does add to the immersion of the world and shows that the deity that one follows does make a difference.
