Hello again Dev-Log Readers,

It has been a while and we've been busy worker-bees. We thought we'd just let you know we're still alive (and working!) with another interview from another of our team members.

We interviewed Aragon a few days ago about his part on the MMO team. Another of the MMO artists (and a little more) tells us about what he's been working on. All you aspiring evils out there take note, however, there may be some subtle directions from one of the server's original "Evils."

rowana: So first we'd like to know how old you are, and I'd offer you a shot at being vague but no one else has taken me up on that so far....!
Aragon: Well no shame here ... 33 years old. Plus I wouldn't want to be the first one to take you up on your offer. I mean if I was as old as Rasterick then I might ;)
rowana: **laughs* Ah, I'll make sure he takes a peek at this interview then!
Aragon: Jolly good show!
rowana: So he'll know where to send the mail, or you know... scarier things: Where are you currently living?
Aragon: I am currently residing in the small community of Rota, Spain. For those not familiar with Spain, my house overlooks the Bay of Cadiz about 2.5 hrs west of Gibraltar along the Costa del Sol. Good luck finding parking in the summer when all the Northerners come for holiday.
rowana: Heh! Sounds interesting!
Aragon: Nice place to live for now.
rowana: It sounds like it would be inspiring. Speaking of inspiring, I happen to know that your character, Chanda is one of Layo's original Queen of Mean. Can you tell us a little about your Layonaran history?
Aragon: Sure thing ... Once upon a time ... **goes to look at his Layonara account to see when he joined*
rowana: Oh, glad I'm not the only one who has to look that up. Hehe.
Aragon: Oh wow ... 05 Nov 2004 ... dang has it really been that long?!
rowana: That's a while! Must have been having fun, hey?
Aragon: Well my Layonaran history started when I was playing on another server and this other guy I was gaming with mentioned some server called Layonara. Previously I wasn't a big fan of having to submit a resume to play a game. Especially since the few other resumes I submitted either weren't accepted or the game turned out to be a flop.
Aragon: So I did a bit of research into Layonara, I was very much impressed with the depth of the world and the concept of multiple GMs adding flavor to the gaming experience. On the other server I was playing a "Bad Guy" ... I think he was a vampire so I wanted something along the lines.
rowana: Heh, fun!
Aragon: I put together the Bio for Chanda and chose Corath as her patron deity. Within a few hours I get an email back from the big man ... L. He warns me that "Corath is by far the most hated deity of the server and will prove a challenge to roleplay with this character." I accepted the challenge and have loved being the one everyone hates.
rowana: And you do such a good job at it. Heh.
Aragon: :)
Aragon: When I joined Layonara, Corath wasn't fleshed out too much and it has allowed me to share in the development of the pantheon
rowana: Have you tried any other characters or is Chanda your one and only love?
Aragon: Well my second character was another Corathite mainly used to prevent Chanda from Perming out, but my third submission was a elven wizard that follows Ilsare ... a complete 180 if you will.
Aragon: All in all Chanda is my favorite ... she has so much ... what's the word for it … Sauciness? Is that even a word?
rowana: If not it is now! Meat, character, development.... I'm sure it all contributes, Hehe.
Aragon: She's a spicy meatball **said with a bit of a fake Italian accent*
rowana: Hehe! Do you have a favorite Layonaran memory to share? I'll guess it involves Chanda.
Aragon: Geez ... I still think my favorite one (and you will have to forgive me if the details are a bit furry) there was a huge group of us that went to the Dragon Realm ... Leanthar was running the quest I think ...
Aragon: So we get up to the front doorstep of where the dragons live and for whatever reason we start having a debate. Anyways Chanda and .... what's his name ... arrogant Dwarven Toranite eventually perm'd ... start bickering back and forth and one thing leads to another and he spits of Chanda's Boot
rowana: Ach, dwarf spit...
Aragon: I don't know what I liked that memory .. but man I was so wanting to kill him right then and there, but Chanda showed some restraint and was later rewarded due to a miss count of dragon eggs ;)
rowana: Dwarf spit and egg stealing? What's not to love. Hehe.
Aragon: Another good memory was helping Rufus Coldfinger with the Bloodpool and all of us almost going up in smoke ... ahh the good old days ... lol I remember Plen and Pan talking about the old days when the server went from Version 1 to 2
rowana: See, when you talk like that you sound like you have a few years...
Aragon: lol yah don't try and calculate the actual age of Chanda ... in game years
rowana: She's a Corathite, she's supposed to look like that!
Aragon: Ever see that movie "Death becomes her"?
rowana: Ah yeah, hehe.
Aragon: Gnomish cosmetics and elven plastic surgeons
rowana: Poor gnomes and elves, turned into cosmetics and plastic~
Aragon: At least Corathites are Eco-friendly ... we use every last part of you when you are dead
rowana: **laughs* Anyway! At some point you were asked onto the MMO team, of course. Could you tell us a little about what projects you have or are currently working on?
Aragon: Well it took a bit of time to find my role in the team, but with a lot of patience and help from Thak-won Kenobi. I work with Thak on the Art Team. I am one of the modelers. So that ranges from Wizard Staffs to chairs to Ballistas to Castles. If it needs a model in game then I generally get to work on it. I just recently completed a batch of quarterstaves and wizard staffs and have been dabbling with tinkering devices.
Aragon: I have really learned a lot working with Thak. When I am not working on models then I peruse your spreadsheets and point out typos ;p
rowana: Heh. Yes... I should insert a smart Alec comment here but I'll be good!
Aragon: lol

Some of Aragon's work.

rowana: So with all this going on, do you have much spare time between Layowork and RL? If so, what do you do in that time?
Aragon: I referee soccer and try to get in some "nerd time" with some friends (Twilight Imperium, Settlers of Catan, etc...).Not to mention spending time with the family.
rowana: Well speaking of them, I will let you get back to the family. Thank you very much for taking this time to visit with us at the late hour!
Aragon: Anytime .. **yawns* I think I will head to bed myself
rowana: Have a good night, rest well!
Aragon: Row .. one last parting shot ...
rowana: Heh **braces*
Aragon: Just wanted to say that it has been a great experience working with such a talented and dedicated team on this project. I think that the community will be impressed by the end product. Thanks to Leanthar and the rest of the team for giving me the opportunity! :)
rowana: Oh! Definitely. I know I'm glad to have you around and I'm sure the MMO Team and Community will be glad for your words!
Aragon: Thanks Row
rowana: Have a good night!
Aragon: I am off to bed .. G'nite.

Thanks to Aragon for sharing his time with us. We hope you enjoyed this little glimpse into the background works going on at Layonara.

Eraperp live!

~row, on behalf of the writing team

Most of these words below are Rhizome's from the design documentation.  I've done some minor editing and added the examples.

Mantra System

This system can be roughly conceptualized as an advancement upon the idea of alignment. Like alignment, mantras are intended as indicators of character personalities and thus guides for role-playing a character in meaningful ways. Mantras, however can be integrated into game systems far more effectively than alignment. Thus, mantras go far beyond abstract representations of characters' outlook and ethics, or lack thereof.

What is a Mantra?

The word Mantra comes from Hinduism. In that context a mantra is a sacred verbal formula repeated in prayer, meditation, or incantation. More generally it is a repeated word or phrase. It is something that an individual would say or chant to her/himself repeatedly as a source of strength and guidance. The mantra effectively comes to orient an individual’s personality, thoughts, desires and actions.

Obviously people are more complex than to ground their personality in just one mantra. For any individual there would be multiple mantras. This is exactly how we have set things up for this system. There are a series of “mantras” which players must think about in relation to their character and try to represent his/her personality with them. In other words, there will be a list of concepts or philosophies which characters can subscribe to as a way to live their lives.

Opposing Mantras

Mantras will be paired with an opposing mantra. So, if you adhere to one, you will oppose the other. For example, a mantra that someone might think to themselves often would be something like this: “Be active; never be passive.” So, one may believe strongly in the idea of being active, and thus at the same time believe strongly against the idea of being passive. In gaming terms what this means is that the positive effects of adhering to a particular mantra will have proportionally negative effects upon its opposed pair.

This leads us to setting things up as a slider which is moved on a continuum between two polar personality traits. And, as mentioned earlier, there are a series of sliders. See the charts below for the actual mantras and how they are paired.

Mantra Sliders

On character generation a player will set the slider for each mantra pair. The more the slider is moved towards a particular mantra, the more that character’s personality is oriented around that specific mantra. This slider will have demarcations along it representing the various levels of adherence to a particular mantra you can have. For example, there will be a mantra for selfless. If a character moves the slider into the slight adherence range, then they will think that selflessness is a slightly good idea. If they move it to thoroughly adherent, well then that character will orient his/her life as thoroughly as possible around that idea.

Through this system players will be able to determine the thoughts, desires and actions of their characters in various contexts. In other words, the complexity of this system will help players think through the personalities of their characters during creation and give them a concrete and visible representation of the character’s personality and thus help guide role play. Not only that, we are designing this so that the “mantra adherence” directly affect certain game systems we'll elaborate on later.

Mantra Adherence and Mantra Points

Mantra adherence is represented by points. The reason for the points is twofold. First, it gives a player a means to understand a particular character's adherence to various mantras. Second, as mantras play an important role in other game systems, such as Spellpraying, the points are critical for enabling particular game mechanics. In both cases it is the degree of adherence which truly matters.

Regulating the Mantra Sliders

There is potential for exploitation in the mantra system, as someone may try to powerbuild a character by moving all the sliders to +/- 4 adherence associated with skills they deem most useful. This behavior will be curtailed by restricting the number of each adherence range. Thus, the percentages of overall mantra adherence will be limited for each character.

In character creation each player will get a total of 32 mantra points which they can do with as they see fit. They can all be used or none of them used. What this means is that a character can only possibly max out 8 of the 18 mantra sliders. But doing so would obviously leave 10 balanced and have the strongly negative oppositional effect with 8 of the oppositional mantras.

This dynamic allows a player to build a moderate or balanced player with no difficulty. A player can set her character's mantra adherence at 0 for all mantras, believing in nothing in a sense, and receive no benefits from adherence to a mantra at all. An alternate approach would be to be an extreme character, believing strongly in just a few mantras and perhaps believing slightly in a few others, or none at all. This makes good RP sense, since if a PC is truly 100% cruel, then that PC will seek out cruelty as often as possible, letting only other strongly adherent mantras guide the PC's sentiments and actions.

Mantras and Deities

Mantras will also be associated with deities. A PC who is a worshiper of a particular deity is required to have at least one of that deity's mantras set at or beyond +/-1 (slightly) adherence, two set at or beyond +/-2 (Moderately) adherent and at least one other set at or beyond +/-3 (Greatly). Each deity has four mantra associations, and this means that a follower of a particular deity must at least partly believe in everything that deity represents. This is critically important for anyone intending to use Spellpraying. Spellpraying is only possible when a PC has a deity. Through developed systems for mantra adjustment and gamemaster based adjustments you could potentially lose the patronage of your deity.

Mantras

Here are the mantras, presented in a table alongside their opposing pair:

Preserving	Destructive
Ordered	Chaotic
Caring	Cruel
Selfless	Selfish
Belligerent	Peaceful
Vengeful	Forgiving
Honest	Deceptive
Materialistic	Idealistic
Cerebral	Physical
Scholarly	Intuitive
Dramatic	Stoic
Active	Passive
Natural	Technological
Urban	Rural
Playful	Serious
Nomadic	Sedentary
Arrogant	Humble
Public	Private

One thing to keep in mind regarding these mantras and how they relate to a character is how certain mantras would work in conjunction with others. For example, if you are cruel and selfish, then you would be sadistic. However, if you are cruel and selfless, then you would be masochistic. If you are ordered and active, then you would be the type of person to try to regulate others. However, if you are ordered and passive, you would be the kind of person to allow authority figures to regulate you. Chaos and active would be rebellious whereas chaos and passive would be flighty. The list of combinations is endless of course, but as a player slides the mantra bars around, the combinations will add up to a truly unique character.

Figure 1 and Figure 2 (click for images) are examples of the current mantra selection UI (work in progress).  As you can see in the first image we've moved our sliders in various ways to help define our character.  We see that based upon our own mantras, Katia, Kithairien or Shadon would offer us patronage thus opening the Spellpraying skill to us.  But say we want to follow Beryl, we click her button (Figure 2) and we can then see on the left side her exact mantras and more importantly her base ones which we must adhere to as specified earlier.  In this case we see them in bold, Materialistic, Deceptive, Dramatic and Playful.  If we were to slide our Materialistic-Idealistic slider over to the Materialistic side to suit Beryl we'd see then that Katia would no longer offer us patronage as we no longer adhere to one of her base mantras.

Other systems aside from the deity restrictions which are pertinent to the mantras are things like skill bonuses, attribute adjustments that are not entirely defined or NPC interaction.  We will have these defined when the numbers are better finalized through play testing.

Thanks for reading!

Hello Dev-log readers!

It has been several months since our last update and first and foremost
we apologize for that. It has been very hectic for the members of the
MMO team during that time. We were hoping to get you an update before
the holiday break but you know how sneaky chaos can be!

This interlude brings you an interview from our esteemed LoreMaster,
EdTheKet. Not only that but in his interview he gives some of us
'youngsters' a view into Layonara's early days and some trivia on how
some of our lore and tools came into being!

rowana: So I usually start with the age question, and I see no reason
to break with tradition so!... How old are you Loremaster? Vagary is
acceptable.

EdTheKet: I'm 32 years old, so not old enough to be vague about it!

rowana: Hehe! Alright! And where abouts do you live at the moment?

EdTheKet: That would be in the city of Amsterdam, in The Netherlands.

rowana: Far, far away... Is that GMT +2--ish?

EdTheKet: GMT+1 actually (and if we really want to be correct UTC+1),
also known as Central European Time.

rowana: I stand corrected! Hehe. Many know you as the Loremaster of
Layonara, and a few know you actually have PCs that surface from time to
time. Could you tells a little about your Layonaran history?

EdTheKet: Surface from time to time is a nice way of putting it. It
was in 2003, believe it or not, that I submitted my first character.
September 23 I believe.

rowana: That's quite awhile!

EdTheKet: Yeah, I'm old in that regard for sure. That first character
was a dwarven wizard, named Brac'ar Fireface. I never expected I'd still
play him occasionally today. About half a year later, there was a round
of GM applications and I was kind of thinking of applying but not too
sure. Thinking "what did I know of GMing", I had never even roleplayed
before I submitted Brac! But I got persuaded to apply anyway. And I got
accepted :-)

rowana: *smiles*

EdTheKet: At the time while we did have subraces, most were
restricted. For example, only three (3!) dark elf characters were
allowed to be played.

rowana: At once?

EdTheKet: In total.

rowana: Wow.

EdTheKet: And whenever one was retired, a slot opened up, people could
write up biographies, the entire GM team would review and in the end one
of the players "won" the slot, so to speak. So that's when I created my
second character, Zaraun of the House of Torlyl. I did a lot of research
into the stock D&D dark elf background, so I was happy to "win" the slot!

rowana: No kidding. Talk about intensive, heh.

EdTheKet: Things got worse from there though.

rowana: Worse?

EdTheKet: I had written up and created Zaraun, but while doing that I
harassed Leanthar a lot about dark elves on Layonara. And not a whole
lot was defined. So I started to think and write, making the dark elves
different from the stock D&D and creating the goddess Viedri'ira. So
yes, worse, because when I started that, I only went on to write and
outline even more!

rowana: Not an over-achiever at all are you? *winks* That's pretty
awesome though and I love to hear stories like this!

*EdTheKet chuckles*

EdTheKet: So I enlisted the aid of other people, GMs and players and
put together the first Layonara Soul of a Lost Ancient Campaign
Handbook. A whopping 136 pages.

rowana: Very nice!

EdTheKet: Then things got really bad though. The update.

rowana: Update?

EdTheKet: Of the Campaign Handbook.

rowana: Ah right. Version two?

EdTheKet: About a year later, we released version two, which had 357
pages.

rowana: Again, very nice. An impressive increase over the first book!

EdTheKet: Thanks! So during this period I was playing, GMing, writing
and coordinating writers. Then I created character number three, Sulo
Banaka. A fighter with a double-bladed sword. But he never really got
off the ground properly due to lack of time. Or rather, a choice on what
to spend my time.

rowana: *nods* Busy time for you. You sort of maintain that as a
constant I see.

EdTheKet: Always busy! I then decided to not be an active GM anymore,
and only occasionally resurface to run a series. But then these series
were very big, so always a lot of fun, both for me and my players.

rowana: So I've heard (and hope to see for myself someday! heh)

EdTheKet: I still have an idea for one series that I'd like to run,
we'll see if I get around to it!

rowana: Yay!

EdTheKet: And of course on the back end, I was helping out on the MMO,
quite some time already I must say.

rowana: *nods* I will come back to that of course. Before we get to
that topic, can you tell us... What has been one (or a couple) of your
favorite Layonara moments?

EdTheKet: Well, the first one that comes to mind, which was pretty
scary was me playing Brac'ar (I think he was level 5 or so) encountering
Fisterion, the self-proclaimed king of dragons.

rowana: Hehe!

EdTheKet: I hadn't been on the server very long and I think it was
also my first encounter with a GM, so double scary. So it was only a
favorite after the fact I must say. Then a lot later there was the whole
Dragon Alliance quests where Brac'ar got a sliver of a dragon's scale in
his leg.

rowana: That doesn't sound very pleasant... Heh.

EdTheKet: And getting said dragon killed by the bad guy of the
previous campaign, Sinthar Bloodstone, because we the players weren't
careful enough. Which culminated eventually in Brac'ar's Epic quest, run
by Pankoki, where Brac had to outwit Fisterion. I was totally unaware of
the entire plot behind the quest as it was cooked up by Pankoki and
Leanthar and they would have failed me if I messed up (wouldn't have it
any other way by the way). But I didn't!

rowana: I would have to guess that was a pretty fabulous quest. Though
as WLs go, tough and a bit scary.

EdTheKet: Very scary and very rewarding!

rowana: A very long history with Layonara, and it is pretty easy to
see why (at least on the surface) you are part of the MMO project. I
understand you really have a lot of hats at this time, but can you tell
us a little about what you are working on at present?

EdTheKet: At present, I'm doing the final review of the edited text
for our World Setting book and putting things on LORE (Layonara Online
Reference Encyclopedia). I'm also filling some gaps by writing text for
areas that will be in the game, so that the areas can be built with the
write up in mind.

EdTheKet: In the recent past, I've also compiled a table with NPCs,
like what they're called, what they look like, what they do, where
they're located, things like that. And a similar thing for
organizations, shops and the like. And way back when we started, I laid
a lot of groundwork, like the Cosmology, the Death System and the
various forms of magic, just to name a few.

rowana: Seems like either your contributions have come around full
circle from when you were first a GM or you just got started going and
never really stopped!

EdTheKet: Hehe, it's been a ride, that's for sure. The truth is, when
you start to define things, there's always so much more that is not yet
defined. Even though many people think "Surely that's written out
already!" but often it's not, and there's a long list of things to
define or write out further. Those then affect other things that may or
may not yet have been defined, so it's a challenge (a nice challenge!)
to keep everything consistent.

rowana: Definitely seems like a labor of love, since I'm not sure
anyone would donate so much time and effort for any other reason. Hehe.

EdTheKet: Well, I never knew that I liked to write before all this. So
the writing part is a creative outlet for me. But yes, if I didn't
thoroughly enjoy it, I wouldn't be able to do it of course.

rowana: Well, it sounds very much like Layonara is where you devote
much of your free time, which is a question I typically ask to wrap up.
So instead I will ask this curious (and fun!) question of our
Loremaster: If you could have any one power (known or not!), what would
it be and why?

EdTheKet: Hmm, I would like to be able to travel through time. Bet you
didn't see that one coming!

rowana: **laughs* Any particular reason?

EdTheKet: Yes, because then I could go back and see how things were in
the Middle Ages, Ancient RomeEgyptGreece, feudal Japan, the first
Greek city states, Aztecs, Mayas you name it.

rowana: That sound like a ton of fun!

EdTheKet: Yep.

rowana: Well thank you Ed, the Loremaster, for taking time for us this
evening! We do appreciate it greatly.

EdTheKet: You're welcome rowana, we do appreciate you taking time to
do all this. Happy holidays to you and the readers!

rowana: Happy holidays to you and yours!

We hope you folks enjoyed this glimpse into the past as well as a look
at some of the current work being done. Thanks to EdTheKet for sitting
down with us over the holidays! A big holiday greeting to you and yours,
Dev-Log Readers. We look forward to seeing you in the new year as well
as bringing more to you!

~row, on behalf of the writing team

Greetings Dev Log Readers!

This entry of the dev-log interviews and visits with a recently returned player and WL, Honora. She took some time for RL a while back and as she explains below has found her zest for Layo in all her previous capacities now that life has settled again!

rowana: So first of all, and I know ladies don't always like to answer this, so feel free to be vague: How old are you?

Honora: Ah, that question never bothered me. I'm 42. I may act 15, but my body reminds me daily that I am in fact, 42.

rowana: Hehe. Terrible how that works. Where abouts do you live currently?

Honora: I'm north of Philadelphia, in a house we just bought. I love snow (sorry Minerva!) and seasons so North is where I want to be. Especially after suffering in Florida for 20 years, with my perpetually not-bikini-ready body and loathing of bright sun.

rowana: Congratulations on the house! Hope things are settling well.

Honora: They are, thank you. A bit expensive but it's nice to be Home.

rowana: Good to hear. You've also recently returned to active player status after a long hiatus due to RL (which we are glad to see of course!) Can you tell us a little about your Layo self? How long have you been around these parts and who do/have you played?

Honora: I began Layo after playing all three of the original Neverwinter Nights modules and a good number of the player-created ones. I actually stumbled on Layo first, and used an old Dungeons and Dragons character - Honora, a half-orc monk - as my first submission.

Honora: This was before Aeridin did away with all that half-race nonsense, of course. Honora has been my main for the last three years I've been on Layo, and has done quite a bit. She became a World Leader after aiding Estibana and also an adviser to King Briant of Erilyn on Alindor. She's been a huge amount of fun to play.

Honora: Honora is blunt. I'm more of a diplomat at heart so it is always a relief to play someone who does not need to have those inner monologues that we all do.

Honora: Honora adopted children over the years, and almost married once and did marry finally a gent named Caighd Brendimeere - you might know him? :). I'm now playing Genna, one of her daughters, as the poor lady herself is 62 and quite busy with her advising duties.

rowana: No idea who that guy is. Heh.

Honora: I also play Corba, a priestess of Lucinda who is married to my husband's character Galan, who is also a priest of Lucinda. So that's always fun!

rowana: Alright, and the last requirement to your credentials... okay really we just want to know: What is (one of) your favorite memories of playing here at Layo?

Honora: I have fond memories of Eorendil's Elemental quest series - that was so well done, so much fun, with such great groups. Corba was able to really shine in those. And, of course, Minerva's Estibana series for the sheer weight of lore and history she put into it. I loved peeling back the onion layers, working with other players in and out of game to unravel the riddles and puzzles.

Honora: And, of course, there are some wonderful people here on Layo that I was excited to come back and talk to after my hiatus - players like Ferrit Pandorn (and Kyle if I can ever find him on), and
Nehetserev/Emwonk, and Ben Poetr, and the player of the druid formerly known as Drogo...I can't even name them all and I'm sure I'll meet new ones. And a quiet lady named Anna of course :).

rowana: Don't know her either! Heh.

rowana: So then, with your feet firmly wet again, you are also active on some of the teams for Layonara. Writing for one and the MMO for another? Can you tell us a little about what you are working on at present?

Honora: I am back, most definitely. I took a year off to get settled at a great, great job that I like going to every day, and to find and buy the house, and to just generally let my muse hang out in the beach of my mind sipping Mai-Tais and flirting with all the waiters (who all look like Tim McGee for some reason..).

Honora: But I digress. I am back, working at the moment on finishing up world settings and locations. I am fonder of doing long, detailed writing - Rael was 70 pages and Ed still hasn't forgiven me for that. So doing Kingdoms and such is fun for me.

Honora: I am on the MMO team, so when I'm done with World Settings I'll head back over there to do what's needed. I have a special love of creature descriptions as well but we'll see what's needed.

rowana: Well with everything you have going on these days, Work and work related, do you have free time and what are you doing with that time if so?

Honora: I am better with my free time these days. Another part of my hiatus was sheer burn-out; I was doing too much for Layo. These days I am allocating free time for writing, free time for reading, free time for watching the few shows I love - Castle, NCIS, and (shame) Glee.

Honora: And of course free time to play with my young man, who is turning 5 "next week" and will be turning 5 every next week until his actual birthday in January.

Honora: Oh, yeah, and my husband *laughs*.

rowana: Ah yes! Hehe. Well it is certainly good to see you back around, and glad to have your fingertips flying on behalf of Layonara again. Thanks for squeezing us into your schedule this week!

Honora: Thanks for letting me type at'cha!

We are glad to have Honora back and working with the teams again and are looking forward to both her writing and MMO contributions. As with our other interviewees, we may perhaps sneak back to check in with her at a later date!

~row, on behalf of the writing team

Greetings once again Dev-Log Readers,

This week we interview a fairly well known GM and member of the MMO Team. Milty or Miltonyorkcastle is our interviewee this week and he gives us an overview of an interesting aspect of the MMO team projects.

rowana: So to start we'll get a little statistic! Where about do you live?

milty: Lubbock, Texas. Known for cotton, cowboys, and dust storms.

rowana: And car salesmen! Or at least that's what I hear. Heh.

* milty chuckles.

rowana: How old are you? We'll take vagueness, though the rest have been fairly forth right so you may disappoint!

milty: 27. Apparently one of the youngers.

rowana: Okay! Last statistic... How long have you been 'hanging around' this place we know and love?

milty: Oh, um, a while? since sometime in 2005, so four and a half, coming up on five years? Sounds right.

rowana: Long time! So, during that time who have you played on the server. As well, do you have a favorite memory to share with the readers?

milty: I've been thinking about this one, really, and I just want to mention so many, so many of which are from the Soul of a Lost Ancient campaign.... the Lumbral, Eon, Drezneb.... but I think.... the "favorite" memory that I often come back to when thinking about Layo is a time that Cole Norseman and Gulnyr the Grim sat on a bench in Hlint and debated which tree in Hlint was the tallest, like two geezers on the porch watching the adventurers run by on the road.

rowana: That sounds amusing!

milty: Good times.

rowana: But you choose to remain mysterious on players?

milty: Oh, right! So caught up in reminiscing I forgot about the first part of the question.... let's see... I think they're all listed on the forums, but I played Cole Norseman for a long while, and then Sahala, the dark elf sorceress. And now I play Steel, your favorite neighborhood mercenary. I had one other character approved, an early incarnation of Steel, but I had him deleted within a few days.

rowana: Quite a range of characters. On to the future of Layonara. Can you delve and share a bit what you are doing for the MMO team at present?

milty: At present, I'm working on item pricing, or more broadly, on the economy for the game. This has proven to be a much more daunting task than I had originally envisioned, even sending me back to "school" to get some more software/database education. I've spent a lot of time in research, actually and the system developed for determining item value is designed to take into account just how different a video game economy is from a real economy.

milty: Also, when the time comes, I'm hoping to continue work with what becomes the new LORE after we move away from NWN.

rowana: To back up just a little... You say you are working on the economy of items and things. Can you elaborate a little on the goal of this? One of the persistent issues in NWN is the economy and it's distinct separation between NPC and PC... Is this part of what you are working on?

milty: Ultimately, yes. Rhizome has some great ideas that pertain to those issues, and he's really the lead on the economy stuff, but when you look at game economies you see a waterfall trying to squeeze itself into a bathtub drain. Games build in so many arbitrary money sinks to deal with the infinite inflow of currency.

milty: We ideally would like to decrease the number of arbitrary sinks, in part for immersion, and in part because they don't really address the primary issue, which is, put simply is that instead of having a cyclical movement of money, games have a one way street: money gets generated, then gets eaten, ideally at the same pace, but in reality, that's never the case.

rowana: Well it certainly sounds like a large undertaking, since this is not only a problem that persists here on Layonara, but also in other more current MMOs. What then do you do in your 'copious' spare time?

milty: Hm... I troll the Layonara forums, inserting my opinion here and there, unwanted or otherwise... I update LORE... I GM a quest on the NWN side of things now and again.... oh, and I play on Layo sometimes, too.

rowana: Ah, so like so many: Layo is your free time, heh.

milty: More or less, yeah.

rowana: Well, thanks Milt for squeezing this interview into your schedule. I'm sure the readers will appreciate this quick glimpse into the work being done.

milty: Right on. It was fun. =)

We hope the time spent wasn't too costly, but we are happy to benefit from the shelling out of detail. Next week stop by for another drop in the bucket from the MMO team!

~row, on behalf of the writing team

Greetings Dev-Log Readers,

We are visited this week by another somewhat elusive person, orth. As we've tried to convey, each of our team members does their part in their available hours but orth gives us a brief look at the sheer volume of tasks that lay before our programmers. As you read the following you may get a sense of how much is going in behind the scenes.

rowana: As is tradition (for now!) I'll accept vagary here. First how old are you?

orth: I'm 34.

rowana:* And wherabouts do you live?

orth: A Toronto suburb.

rowana: Alright, obligatory stats out of the way. Moving on to the more fun stuff! How long have you been hanging around/working at Layonara?

orth: It'll be 6 years next week actually, can't believe a year has gone by since I did the little 5 year anniversary bit.

rowana: Doesn't really seem like it should have been that long! Heh. For those who aren't familiar, who have/do you play on the server? And do you have a favorite memory you'd be willing to share?

orth: My main character is Plenarius Ashaley, a Katian cleric who has probably witnessed more historical events of import then any other character, I've dabbled with a few other characters but never really had the heart for anyone else and most of them were just short diversions from the norm. As for a memory...

orth: I've thought about this obviously since reading the previous interviews and there's no way I can place one so I'll just try to elaborate on a specific feeling I have had where I realized "Wow, I really love this, I feel like I've found a creative outlet I've otherwise been lacking in life, this notion of roleplaying is going to have a significant impact on my life and I've found a community who feels the same."

rowana: We'll take that! *smiles*

orth: Watching Blood die was pretty cool too.

rowana: I can only imagine after having dealt with all that came before for so long. Heh! Tying into that, but looking toward the future of Layonara: You are of course known to be diverting most of your available time into the MMO and future of Layonara. Can you tell us a little bit about what you have going?

orth: I am blessed with a lifestyle that currently allows for a fairly good amount of free time and most of it is spent on the MMO development. My area of work crosses a pretty wide spectrum and I'd fail at doing it any justice to summarize it in this interview but I'll give a bit of a brief:

orth: The environment (water, sky, sun, terrain etc), the spell casting and combat higher level system which we call ARC short for Action Reaction Conditional, the gathering and crafting skills, currency, vendors, inventory, economy, quests, death, loot, items, character creation, sound fx, music, equipment and movement are some of the ones I can think of right now.

orth: So that's in references to coding the systems, both high and low level for those actions. No I don't create music or write quests, though I'd try if it needed to be done.

rowana: Heh. That is quite a list! Is there some one or two of those you could elaborate on, perhaps one that you are enjoying?

orth: I think what I would prefer to say is that I am pretty proud of my ability to be the guy who can be all over the place taking care of all of these aspects that are essential and that's something I really enjoy. Yesterday I worked on the little numbers that come up telling you damage/healing on characters and tonight I'm working on the Skill Progression User Interface.

orth: They're both quite different portions of the codebase and two different programming languages but I happily bounce around, I think it helps keep me fresh, it also ranges from quick tasks to very deep and lengthy projects.

rowana: That flexibility is probably quite handy on many levels, though I expect it keeps you and what you are working on in demand as well.

orth: Heh, frankly I seem to be making more of the demands then others, I guess everyone else just assumes I'm too busy to really ever ask of something.

rowana: Well you sound like you may appear that way, outside looking in. Hehe.

rowana: I'm going to guess that with all of this, Layonara pretty much is your free time. So we'll wrap today with a fun question of a different sort... The super powers... If you could have any one power (known or not), what would it be and why?

orth: I'd have the ability whatever it takes to create a utopian society, political, economic, environmental, etc; Where hunger and poverty don't exist, global peace is achieved, cures are discovered and the fragile state of our planet is renewed.

rowana: Sounds like a lot more work then what you have on your plate now. Certainly worth it for the result but sounds like you'd be wiped out by the end.

orth: I hope to be that way any way!

rowana: Hehe! Well we'll let you get back to Skill Progression User Interface(s) work for the evening. Thank you very much for taking time out to indulge us with this interview!

orth: And thank you for the interview rowana.

We hope you enjoyed this bird's eye view of activities for the MMO. Once again we invite you back for the next week's random MMO Team interview.

~row, on behalf of the writing team

Greetings again, Dev-Log Readers!

Today we have an interview with a well known member of the community. Of course we focus largely on his works on the MMO to offer another little pearl to the interested members of the community. Dorganath shares with us this week some of his contributions to the game.

rowana: Alright, accepting vague answers on these first two questions for the curious. How old are you and where about do you live?

Dorganath: I'm 38, for as long as I can manage it, and I live near Chicago.

rowana: That managing part gets a little tricky...

Dorganath: True, and eventually I'll just stop acknowledging them. *grins*

rowana: Ah yes, and eventually forget them all together! *smiles*

Dorganath: Forget what? *blank look*

rowana: Hehe, while we are talking about age and before you forget.... How long have you been with Layonara?

Dorganath: On October 1st of this year, it will be five years exactly.

rowana: Long time! Who do/have you play(ed) during that time? NPCs don't count but you can share there too if you like!

Dorganath: Well my main character is Connor. He's my first one here and has really grown organically from a rather poorly-defined concept, due largely to my unfamiliarity with world lore and such, to a rather complex thing shaped by his interactions with characters and NPCs and just the events in which he found himself involved over the years. My most recent character is Bree and then there's the relatively unknown Eldain, both of which were more purpose-written characters and which don't see the kind of play time they deserve. As for NPCs...bunches. I'd have to look up who they were, though to be honest, a couple of my favorite ones have been a Satyr chief and a deer.

rowana: A deer... Sounds like a story there. Could you share with us a favorite memory of your time here?

Dorganath: Hehe! Yeah well, it was less the deer itself and the way the characters on the quest interacted with the deer that stuck in my mind.

Dorganath: As for a favorite memory... There's so many that have been real "Oh wow" sorts of moments, both with good and bad consequences, but I keep coming back to an evening way back when I was first getting started. I had an opportunity to take my low-level character to Dregar on a mining trip with some more experienced characters (and players, for that matter). It started with a portal trip, and in those days, a portal trip cost 4000 in gold, which I didn't have but someone paid for me. I made a lot of mistakes but was helped and encouraged every step of the way.

Dorganath: At the end, most of the rest were logging off for the night, but the "leader" of this group wanted to make sure everyone was safe and/or could get back from where we stopped. I, of course, had no idea. So what happened is that one of the other characters walked me all the way back, since there was no network of houses with portals available for general use back then, from what is now the Wandering Dunes to Hlint. It was a pretty amazing experience all over and really gave me a great feeling about this community.

rowana: That is a piece of history indeed! Hard to wrap the mind around four thousand for a portal trip, one way. Kudos to those players too, that was a great real introduction to the world. Alright, well on to the future of things then! Can you tell us about what you are currently working on for the MMO team?

Dorganath: Sure! It's primarily a lot of core, low-level sorts of things dealing with fundamental game mechanics. My first project on the MMO was to take the existing framework we licensed and convert it from a class-based system to one that is fully skill-based, adapting the core mechanics of things like combat to this model and then further adapting it to Pankoki's mechanical designs. In actuality, much of what I have done and continue to do is taking Pan's designs and making them work. The types of things range from things like combat, swimming, spell and active or triggered skill effects (the mechanical effects, not glitzy visual ones) and that sort of thing.

rowana: That sounds like a pretty meticulous task. Is it fairly tricky, or require significantly more technical know how then the adaptations that are done on NWN Laynoara?

Dorganath: Well the major difference between working on the MMO versus NWN is that with NWN, we're for the most part building on the mechanics that NWN makes available to us. We can (and have) script a whole lot of custom behaviors and systems, but in the end, we're shackled by NWN's mechanics. There's nothing wrong with that, but it limits our flexibility ultimately. With the MMO, we're either creating those mechanics from the ground up or fundamentally altering those that were in our initial framework and adapting them to something more fitting of our vision. So yes, it takes some more technical workings to dig down a layer or two and really make changes to the game engine rather than just using what the engine provides.

rowana: That sounds like very promising news! I'm sure that's reassuring to some of our readers out there. Alright then, something a on a totally different track to wrap this random interview up. If you could have any super power.... what would it be? A little bit about why would be great too!

Dorganath: Hmm... That's a tough one. So many fun things to choose, though I think that since I live in a major metropolitan area and commute to work, some form of rapid travel would be nice, be it flight or teleportation or something. It would save on trips back to the grocery store for that one thing that always gets forgotten.

rowana: That certainly would be handy! Well thank you for setting aside this time for the Dev-Log Readers. I'm sure they appreciate it.

Thank you all for stopping by this week and catching up with us. We look forward to seeing you again next week with another random interview.

~row, on behalf of the writing team

Hello and well met Dev-Log Readers,

It's been a bit tricky to match up but we finally managed to meet up with our interviewee this for this (last) week! Minerva took time from her hectic real life schedule to get in touch. She's been a bit elusive lately due to the real life thing (boo, hiss, I know I keep swearing using the 'rl' word!) but she has been a pretty constant presence behind the scenes all the same. What follows is her interview with a few tidbits of information that some may find pretty interesting!

rowana: First and foremost, to get the business end out of the way: How old are you? And vagary is fine.

Minerva: 41 and feeling it :)

rowana: Aww! Heh. Where abouts do you live? General being fine here too, hehe.

Minerva: Northern Ontario, Canada for those geographically challenged.

rowana: Alright, and now for something a little more fun: Who do you play on NWN Layonara and do you have a favorite memory from your time spent there?

Minerva: I have several characters, Katrien Hommel was my first and is my dearest, Jacee was my second followed by Tia Sar'ru then Sophia my second most favorite and Eve (since deleted), Kat's daughter Lisse and brat called Marie. Favorite memories - so many good ones it would be very hard to pick one, but I have to say my favorite experience was the entire Ancients quest run by Leanthar. My first real Dungeon Dive that was a mix of solid role play and edge of your seat action.

rowana: I have heard quite a few good things about that series, it certainly sounds like it was a blast. Now to get to another aspect folks are hoping to hear about... Can you tell us about what you are working on for the MMO team presently?

Minerva: My work for the MMO is mainly in the background. You won't immediately see the Minerva touch when you enter the world, that is the realm of the artists and coders. I primarily am a writer. Along with the other writers I help t define the world you are playing in. Everything from the shape of the leaves of plant, to the demeanor of monster foe to the culture of the city you enter. Writing for Layonara is like defining the entire history of the world. Walk into any library and there are walls and walls of history texts. Every thing from political, cultural, religious and even natural history.

Minerva: When not defining the elements of the game, I am working on the history of areas to be added at later dates and hopefully when things get going I would love to write one or a series of fantasy novels set in the various realms of Layonara.

Minerva: My pet projects are the entire continent of Alindor and to switch gears the deities of Xeen and Shindaleria. Putting a unique spin on the underwater world of Layo I think will enrich the playing experience. I envision a entire game play that if desired one would never set foot on land. Xeen is my attempt at adding a woman's perspective to a male dominated genre. Its been an uphill battle to have her lose the sex kitten label and have her seen a complex woman goddess but I keep trying. Shindaleria I just find fascinating and it goes with my under water themes as well.

rowana: Would you like the free time or super powers question?

Minerva: Hehe - Layo IS my free time.. So IF I could have a super power-ish... Tough one... Toss up between invisibility at a whim - I am a natural introvert and would love to just be able to disappear but then Professor Xavier like mind control could be a less confrontational way of bringing people around to my way of thinking *winks*

rowana: Hehe! Well thank you for setting aside the time for this interview, and thanks for all you are doing.

We do thank her for her time and very soon we hope to release the next random interviewee. MMO Team look out!

~row, on behalf of the writing team

Greetings Dev-Log Readers,

Today we interview Layonara's resident cartographer. Speaking with him, we find out we are already getting samples of the kind of work we will be seeing some of for the MMO. If you take a look over at the maps section on LORE you'll be able to see some of what Rasterick has been spending his hours on.

rowana: So, as I mentioned in one of the previous interviews, I don't do real names. I jump right in to: How old are you?

Rasterick: I was 50 this year. A half century.

rowana: Ah, king of the pack so far. *smiles* Where abouts do you live (and non-specificness is understandable here, hehe)?

Rasterick: In a small English village called Clanfield, North of Portsmouth on the South Coast

rowana: Sounds like cozy coastal life?

Rasterick: Yeah, its nice here, though we are eight miles from the sea.

rowana: Nice balance then, at least from what I know of coastal life.

Rasterick: Yeah, no sea gulls dive bombing you for your sandwiches.

rowana: We are going to test your memory here...

Rasterick: Don't forget I am 21 and 348 months old. Its not as good as it used to be.

rowana: *laughs* Well I think this one won't be too hard. Who did you play on NWN Layonara and do you have a favorite memory from your time spent there?

Rasterick: Ok, thats easy, as I was looking at my old characters earlier today. I had Ulver Arndt, Reef O'hagan, Marion Saywer and a Wemic called Jautaza. I suppose my favourite was Reef, a old sea captain, with many a tale to tell.

rowana: Sounds like a nice premise there!

Rasterick: As to my favourite memory, I have many, but one that stands out is a massive party of players that took on the crypt quest in search of a girls mother of something like that. All the friends I had made over the time playing turned out and made for a great quest. It seemed to all go so well, the atmosphere and excitement was brilliant. My RL son even played, and came along. Like all kids all he wanted to do was kill stuff, then run off and leave me to pick up the pieces.

rowana: Oh that sounds like quite an event indeed.

Rasterick: Yeah, sure was. Seems so long ago now.

rowana: Well, now I know other things are keeping you busy, both real life and for the game. Can you tell us a little bit about what you are doing for the MMO team?

Rasterick:Yeah sure. I was brought on board to work on some Lore maps. That has now grown into an Atlas, as well as the possibility of in game maps. I have also done work on mapping the heavens and the planes. I'm currently working on some high scale player maps.

Rasterick: Yeah, mostly map work.

rowana: That sounds rather intensive, from what little about map making I know. Can you tell us some about the tools and things that you use for this?

Rasterick: I initially started out using Photoshop exclusively, but as the style has changed over time, I am reverting to pen, paper and water colour paint. Then using a scanner and Photoshop to add text and various effects such as aging and tears etc.

rowana: The tears aren't genuine then? *winks*

Rasterick: I had thought of using my kids to do that stuff.

rowana: Hey now there's a nice edge!

Rasterick: I also have some other stuff in the pipeline, but I hope to save it as a nice surprise for the atlas.

rowana: Ah, something to certainly look forward too.

Rasterick: I hope so, just to add a little atmosphere to the game overall.

rowana: So what we have out on LORE currently is your handiwork?

Rasterick: Yeah, that version 1. The new stuff will be somewhat different, in a nice way I hope. Just trying to envisage how they would have drawn maps in the medieval times.

rowana: That sounds pretty exciting actually. Anything to help with immersion! So then, I imagine that takes a fair amount of time and effort. Something I'm noting on most of these interviews. Are you getting any free time in between real life and your commitments to Layonara? If so, what are you doing with that free time?

Rasterick: I try and balance time, like I suppose we all do... I coach kids rugby, and most Sunday mornings have 150 kids at our local rugby club. Though I may add not by myself. That would be suicidal.

rowana: Yes, I think I'd have to agree there!

Rasterick: I have even been known to play myself. Only when our senior side gets real desperate for players.

rowana: Aww, I bet it's not that bad! Well I know it's late there, so I will let you get back to your evening. Thank you very much for the interview!

Rasterick: Your welcome, and thank you. See you later

rowana: Have a good evening and thank you again!

We thank Rasterick for taking the time to speak with us and we hope everyone enjoyed this peek into the talents being used to develop the future MMO for Layonara. We are certainly looking forward to whatever additional surprises that are in store!

~row, on behalf of the writing team

Greetings Dev-Log Readers,

This week we talk with OneST8, also known as AlteredST8, AnotherST8 and ST8. We managed to fit in a quick interview with him this week to get a few details from the little known man of various states! Please take note of birthday information and send well wishes on the upcoming day!

rowana: So first question then: How old are you?

OneST8: I'm 31... 10/10/77/

rowana: Wuu! Shall I post the birth date also? Hehe

OneST8: If I say it, you can share it :)

rowana: Alrighty! Where do you live? (non-specificness understandable here!)

OneST8: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

rowana: And for the first long one!: Who did you play in NWN Layonara, and do you have any fun memories that stand out from your play time here?

OneST8: oh my, *chuckles*... let's see, my early days of Layonara were spent with Elrond Anwamane but that was loooooong ago... I can say I was one of the original "Red Caps" but dropped offline due to a divorce and two close family deaths (my father passing in particular), when I returned to Layonara some time after my sabbatical on life I knew
more about myself you could say

rowana: Oh gosh, sounds like a pretty rough patch.

OneST8: Prior to my departure I had been part of the GM team as well as an active coder on the project team. I wrote the original wizard/druid teleportation systems as well as the bird messaging and of course I wrote the LORE wiki engine completely from scratch and implemented our automated means of accessing the BIC data for LORE's character pages.

Now here's the thing, when I came back to Layonara after that patch. I knew something key about myself. I don't want to play games anymore; they're not really for me. I want to make a game. So that's what I told Leanthar when I came back, basically: I'm a programmer and I don't want to play anymore can I just skip the application process and be on the
project team again?

rowana: That's a pretty big shift!

OneST8: Indeed. Life tends to teach us about ourselves and those lessons are hard to learn; the lesson I learned? I get a bigger kick out of making something other people can enjoy than by playing a game myself. Granted I still love RP and will always hold on to the fantasy of me finding the time to GM again. As you can tell from the scheduling of this interview; I'm kinda busy these days :)

rowana: Yes. A bit! Hehe. Regardless, that will be something for the rest of us to look forward to, I think.

OneST8: Agreed!

rowana: So then, can you tell us about what you are working on for the MMO team, generally, in part or otherwise?

OneST8: I'm just orth's shadow. I don't really exist per-se... No, just kidding, I'm believe-it-or-not supposedly called the Lead Programmer or some such thing however, there is no real "lead" on our team; we're all "doing what we're best at" and there's very little overlap. Specifically though I make things work in those fundamental ways that end-users never really "see" but rather just "use" without even knowing.

rowana: Hehe. Still very important, of course!

OneST8: So for example, in our definition of what makes up an inventory screen, I make it easy for the person implementing that definition in code to just focus on the 'inventory' part and let the system manage the 'screen.' So, for all you people listening in out there, if you like the way vague and fundamental things work; I've probably had something key to do with it, if it doesn't work for you. I'm almost 100% positive I had nothing to do with it at all and it's probably the other guy to your left's fault. *shifty eyes* Yeah. That's it, yeah... *blank expression*

rowana: I see where the 'shadow' part comes in. Hehe.

OneST8: Oh, something important and directly visible to everyone. I'm not letting us release without Linux, Mac and Windows native platform support! And in particular, I'm in charge of everything mac, from testing/fixing to packaging and patching.

rowana: Ah, I do believe there will be some overjoyed folks out there to hear this.

OneST8: The artwork for the installer will of course be in the realm of the artists on our team so you don't have to fear my awesome "programmer art" skills!

*OneST8 draws a big box with a small X in the top right and declares it "done".*

rowana: Heee. There might be some folks out there glad to hear that as well!

*OneST8 grins*

rowana: To get a way from 'business' and end on a fun note: If you had any one super power or skill, what would it be and why?

OneST8: Oooooo. I'm not sure really, let me think about it for a minute, I've been asked questions before like, "Which would you rather have; x-ray vision or the ability to fly," but to choose any power? That's a fun one for sure.

rowana: Take all the time you need! Hehe

OneST8: Actually I think you just hit the nail on the head there. I was just thinking about time. My "super power" would be to go forward and backward in time at will. Even if limited to just a day forward or back would be just fine. Yep. Either that or my ability would be to not ever require sleep.

rowana: Hehe! Sort of the same in a way!

OneST8: True enough, true enough!

rowana: Alright thank you for the time again! I'll let you back to programming for now. Having a bunch of fun with these interviews so I may hunt you down later on for a follow up!

OneST8: Sure, we can do an followup anytime, time permitting ;)

Thanks all for coming by this week! Next week will see another random interview from one of the MMO team members.

~row, on behalf of the writing team

Good day Dev-Log Readers!

This week's interview is with the world creator, mostly known as Leanthar. Unfortunately, I've been sworn to stick with the same questions as with the rest of the team but, there should be plenty of little gems here for our readers of all durations!

rowana: Alrighty! So, I don't ask real names even if yours is known... I skip right to the age thing!

rowana: How old are you?

Leanthar: 42

rowana: And where do you live? (don't have to be specific if you'd rather not!)

Leanthar: I live in central California, about 15 miles south of Yosemite National park, in a nice little town called Oakhurst.

rowana: Alright, I usually ask who you've played in Layo here, but I don't know if you've ever gotten the chance! If you have (PnP included here) who? And do you have a fun memory or event you'd like to share?

Leanthar: I mostly play the NPC's of lore but, yes, I have played a few characters. Not gonna give names though.

rowana: Hehe! Fair enough!

Leanthar: My best memories are when I run the large plot quests and watch the players interact with the lore and history, and with each other. But also it is nice to log-in and watch how players "really" Role-play when they are not on one of my quests.

rowana: Ah, a fellow lurker!

Leanthar: Yep, that I am. On those rare times I get to play that is.

rowana: Much time spent on the MMO and things I'm sure... Can you tell us, in general or other wise, what you do for the MMO team project?

Leanthar: I help out where I am needed in order to try and keep the team and project moving forward, in addition to managing the MMO teams and the various community teams. Other than that, I don't do much. Thankfully Layonara has great team players and great teams, so they do most of the work.

Leanthar: I do a lot of grunt work on the MMO may be the more precise answer.

rowana: You say that but, I can't imagine that list being not 'much'! I imagine each takes up a fair amount of time.

Leanthar: Yeah, my time is certainly consumed. No doubt about that.

rowana: Is there any aspect of what you are working on that is more enjoyable? You have your hands into a lot of works by the sound of things.

Leanthar: I like pretty much all of it. I really like to see the team get excited when progress is being made. Since it is a voluntary project at this time, that is very important otherwise the team would fade away over time. I really enjoy watching the growth of everybody on the team.

rowana: A game master through and through!

Leanthar: Heh. True enough there.

rowana: You are clearly jugging quite a bit. Do you manage any free time? If so, what are you doing with it?

Leanthar: I don't have a whole lot of free time, no. When I do get free time I like to golf or just veg out. I used to play a lot of games but I just can't get in to them any more as I don't have the time to dedicate to complete a game. So my free time is used up by doing short duration type things (a few hours here and there). If that makes any sense at all.

rowana: It does make sense. Well, thank you for devoting some of your rare free time to giving this interview. We'll let you get back to juggling.

It was a trick to get that much time with our World Creator, but we thank him all the same. Next week, another interview from a surprise(d) and randomly selected member of the team!

~row, on behalf of the writing team

Good Wednesday Dev-Log readers!

This week we interview Thak from the MMO team. In addition to learning a little about this little seen face of Layonara's behind the scenes effort, he gives us a brief tutorial on what it is exactly he does. Please read below for thoughts from Thak.

rowana: So first we'd like to know (and it's alright to be a bit general if you wish!) how old are you?

Thak: 29. Is that too precise? :) hehe

rowana: *smiles* That's fine! hehe.

rowana: And where abouts do you live?

Thak: Near Zurich in Switzerland.

rowana: Can you tell us a little about who you've played in Layonara and perhaps a fun memory/event?

Thak: I found Layo while looking for an RP online game back in 05. As I dint know the world yet I submitted a Swashbuckler type of guy with a small drinking problem name Trysk Jaeger. Small bio fighter/rogue mix to get approved rather quickly and see what its all about. He evolved quite a bit over the time I played him and I really liked the char so I didn't play many alts.

One of the funnest moments for sure was right when starting out. Came to Hlint and there was this first quest to get some rat hides from the sewers there. I din't know much about the game so I grabbed my sword and fought some of the lil lvl 1 critters down there, almost died and ran for it back into town, still bleeding I sat on the benches. Up to that point I hadn't gotten any rat hides ( I thought they would drop) and I didn't yet talk to anyone still trying to get the hang of playing. Anyhow I sit there all banged up and mangled and across the street sat this Dwarf, Fenrir looking at me for a while before asking if there was any troubles. Trysk said something about trying to skin the rats down there, but it was really hard to skin them while they kept biting me. "Ye should first kill em afore ye try to skin em Lad!" he bellowed and soon I had 3 or 4 other Hlintdwellers that overheard the short exchange laugh it up and some good RP fun. Well after that first impression of the server and the community I was hooked. :) So Thanks again Fenrir for the nice introduction!

Thak: Oh wow hehe that's a whole book sorry :D

rowana: That's perfectly fine! Good story! hehe.

rowana: Alright. So can you tell us, in general, what it is you do for the MMO team?

Thak: I create the 3d and 2d artwork for the game along with other modelers, texturers and animators and make sure things properly import into the game engine ready for the area builders and programmers to do
their thing with the various assets.

rowana: It's so simply said but I bet it takes more then it sounds like to do.

Thak: Heh, yeah its the short version of the basic idea, the processes are quite time consuming and there's lots of niggly bits to take care of. Being creative is very rewarding and seeing the game take form is great.

Creating a creature for instance, first we create the 3d model, then a texture artist paints its skin, while I create a skeleton that will later move the model appropriately, this skeleton is then fitted into the models body and its flesh so to speak tied to the various bones, then the model gets its animations from an animator, things like walking, looking around, scratching its ear or doing any other required thing like kicking biting and punching. At last the creature, has form, texture and movement and makes its way into the game engine, where the programmers tell it how to behave in the game world, what loot to drop etc.

rowana: We've seen a few folks jumping into things like Daz Studio and Poser and the like. Is this something like the basic building blocks of that?

Thak: Its a step before Poser. The models, skin textures, and bone structures are already present for you as a Poser user, you then have a ready model to animate in poser but the creation of said models has already been done by DAZ or the community members that sell them. On a side note Poser is great for webcomics or creating cool fantasy scenes with characters. It's not a tool for games though, as the models have a whole lot more polygons than would be efficient in a game.

rowana: Good to know! Alright, well this all sounds pretty involved. Do you manage some free time between this and your RL work? If so, what kinds of things do you do with that time?

Thak: Free what? :p

rowana: *laughs* I thought you might say that!

Thak: I do sneak in a bit of gametime though here an there ;)

rowana: Always good. What games are you trying out, if I may inquire?

Thak: "Trying out" is a good way of saying that, I haven't finished a game in ages. One I did though: the new Monkey Island Adventure. https://www.telltalegames.com/store/talesofmonkeyisland (shameless plug) Its excellent buy it now! :) One Chapter is short enough to play through in 3 hours-ish so yeh I managed that.

rowana: Alright, I think this about does it for now. Thank you very much for your time Thak!

And we do thank him for stepping out for a few minutes (and rather late for him at the time the interview was done!) to give us a small taste of what is going on.

~row, on behalf of the writing team

Greetings and happy Friday!

As some may have noted, we had taken a short break from our usual Wednesday contributions. There has been some work that, unfortunately, took precedence. However! We return to you with a new series of entries these next few weeks.

Over the next few weeks we will be interviewing members of the MMO team, and getting glimpse inside what is going on with them. Some of the information will be completely new to our current members of the community as a good many of the team are pretty old members who haven't gotten to play with the rest of us in a good long while! Others have been able to sneak in from time to time but you really don't know much about them. So today we feature a brief interview with Pankoki who has recently resurfaced in the NWN version of Layo.

rowana: So first, and welcome to generalize a little if you like... How old are you?

Pankoki: I JUST TURNED 27 WOOO

rowana: Congrats! And where abouts do you live mister 27?

Pankoki: Currently living in Chicago Illinois

rowana: Can you tell us a little about who you've played in Layonara and perhaps a fun memory/event?

Pankoki: Well for the grand majority of time I've played as Triba, a to tall for a halfling ranger/scout/thug/dancer with a far too loose tongue.

Pankoki: A fun memory event... I think definitely one of the cooler events that I've been a part of has to be the Bloodstone finale. I think the energy that you could feel coming from everyone that day and the excitement of being put against such insurmountable odds and coming through the other side was just awesome. Add to that the fact that my little character gets to be the one to stab him in the back and make him vulnerable to damage, and well, its just cool. The whole thing was surreal, sad, and exciting at once.

rowana: Oh, good memory, hehe!

Pankoki: Hehe, definitely something I would not have imagined when I first joined here for sure.

rowana: Layo is good for that kind of thing, I think!

Pankoki: Yep

rowana: Alright, so on to the future of Layonara here. Can you tell some about what you do generally for the MMO team?

Pankoki: My duties on the MMO have been a little bit diverse. At first, my sole task was world definition. Basically what that involved was coming up with the equivalent of a Monster Manual for Layonara, so it included not only the flavor description each creature might have, but also their mechanical behavior. For a good while that was my sole focus. After that I had the very scary task of defining the gameplay mechanics of our new game. We couldn't use a D20 system, so we had to come up with a whole new structure of our own, and that was my job! That basically went from simple things as what attributes define a character all the way to making all the gazillion spells we have. That is of course always a work in progress and will remain so for the duration of the game. But in addition to that now I am currently working on Special Effects for all the many abilities and spells in game and Creature/Encounter balance

rowana: That is quite a plateful and probably eats a lot of time! So with all of that in mind, do you have much in the way of free time?If so, what are you doing with it?

Pankoki: Well, after DMing and doing a lot of things for NWN Layonara, one thing I've learned is that I can definitely 24/7 to one task and get it done rather well. But its not healthy. So now I kinda force on myself some free time to not get overwhelmed or burn out. So for the most parts, I leave my nights free to do whatever. Of course that usually means playing video games, which range anything from playing Go Fish in Yahoo to sampling other MMO's out there (I played WoW for a lengthy amount of time and unlike most roleplayers that have lots of icky things to say about that, I actually had loads of fun there), and of course, playing or DMing in Layo.

rowana: As a player, I must say, I am delighted to see even a partial return to DMing. Will we get to see a return to a series somewhat like the DoA [Dawn of Ages] set or will you be keeping the questing fairly impromptu? Maybe something in between?

Pankoki: Hehe, I would -love- to run the big epic and world altering series I used to be known for. I don't have as much time as I used to though, no more 9 hour quest sessions for me I fear! So something in between for sure. But don't worry, knowing how masochistic my questers get to be, I imagine that it'll send similar ripples. Plots are being planned! Be wary!

rowana: Oh good! Well I think that will do it! Thank you very much for your time Panpan!

We hope you enjoyed this treat from the MMO team. Next week another interview!

~row, on behalf of the writing team

Greetings Dev-Log Readers!

By special request of my boss (well one of them anyway) I present to you
our latest fashion excerpt. Our special is on footwear today. Some of
you may have noticed in the past that we have only lightly tread on the
aspect, but rest assured, our feet are more firmly on this path then it
may immediately appear. The MMO will present a wide variety of footwear
to interested parties at each stage of their development. Please avail
yourself of the cobbler's sampler that follows.

Springy Boots - A pair of rough cloth boots with springs sewn in.

Tribal Boots of the Swift - A pair of thin leather boots plated with
chitin and oak decorations.

Defender's Steel Plate Boots - A shining steel foot covering made from
cold worked steel that has been repeatedly folded for strength.

Silk Spellweaving Slippers - Soft silk slippers that shift from red to
violet blue when worn.

Mithril Tap Shoes - Set with gleaming, light mithril plates on the heel
and toe, these strong embossed leather shoes allow a user to be come his
or her own percussion as well as jazzing up any dancing they might do.

Thank you for spending this week with us on the catwalk! Join us again
next week for another preview offered especially for you!

~row, on behalf of the writing team

Ni hao, Kon nichi wa, and Ahn Nyeong Dev-Log readers!

Flavor you say? How about flavor of the islands? Well, doubtless you have read over the tidbits of released lore and viewed the banners of some of the kingdoms in the area. What about items? Rest assured these have not been forgotten. Already you have access to some Asian themed items, Katana and shuriken to name a couple but what more? See the following for additional seasoning!

Hickory Dorim - Half a hickory spear, planed to a hexagon and lightly sanded, with one principle of the Telish Throne engraved on each side:Obedience, Loyalty, Honor, Valor, Sacrifice, Conviction.

Bronze Daoti - A singled-edged, curved bronze sword requiring two hands to use, functional but needing regular reshaping and sharpening.

Dragonsong Drum - These drums are handmade in the Dragonsong Kingdom for use in their military. The strong pounding beat, when played by someone sufficiently talented, is said to aid the battle tactics of entire regiments.

Bolt of Silk - A bolt of undyed soft silk.

Ebi Oushou (Stuffed Lobster Tail) - A lobster tail stuffed with chopped lobster and spices mixed in cream, and then baked.

Ah kah pah tawn zew mah (see you later!),

~row, on behalf of the writing team