Following our recent induction into NW Vaults Hall Of Fame, I have been interviewed about MERP UK and Untold Tales. The interview will be published on the NW Vault site sometime soon.
For you lucky people though, I have a copy of the questions and my answers to them, so you all get a nice preview :) The interview was a nice opportunity to talk about the story so far and to give us yet more public exposure in the run up to the release of UTT2. And of course to make a few rants, as we do ;)
1) Could you give our readers some personal background on yourself?
My name is Kevin Balmer and I’m from the UK. I’m 19 years old, turning 20 this November. I have always been interested in creative activities revolving around computers, so NWN is the perfect game for me to pursue as a hobby. I am looking to have a career in the games industry at some point in the future.
2) How big is your team and who are some of the key members?
There are currently ten people on the development team, myself included. Besides myself, there are two members who do an incredible amount of work; Barking_Mad who has produced a number of excellent scripts and systems and our Minas Tirith region of the world. Avalyn is our creative writer, and he has helped to produce a large proportion of the plots and written content for the gameworld. He also edits our community newsletter, ‘Tolkien Chronicles’. But I don’t want to give the impression it’s the work of three; the whole team make very valuable contributions. We also have a player content team or PCT as we call it for short. This consists of enthusiastic players who help in the development of the world by submitting ideas and ‘blueprints’ for material in our forums and via e-mail.
3. Your Persistent World is called "<a href="http://nwvault.ign.com/community/gameworlds/data/1086818098000.shtml" target="_blank">MERP UK's Untold Tales Of Tolkien</a>" was recently inducted into our Hall of Fame. Could you give us an overview of what it's all about.
Untold Tales of Tolkien is a Middle Earth/LOTR module targeted towards the mature role player. It offers accurate recreations of the lands depicted in Tolkien’s work, produced to the highest possible quality. One of the big aspects in the gameworld is choice; there are other ways to advance than by just fighting. Attention has been paid to addressing the issues of balance between the extremes of PvP and PvM, making our gameworld friendly to those looking for interaction on the human and AI level. Untold Tales is more than just a game where you login, role-play with characters and embark on great story driven adventures; it is a glowing tribute to Tolkien and his extraordinary imagination, and acts as a place where you can learn as well as play.
4. What are some of the main features that stand out from other worlds?
Note that this list contains features which make us stand out from other Middle Earth/LOTR worlds, rather than gameworlds in general.
Untold Tales uses an alignment and race based system to determine where a character begins in the gameworld on his/her creation. This means that players can role-play a character hailing from his/her true home. A large (and still growing) emphasis has been placed on skills. Many of the NPC’s and content in the world use skill checks, giving those characters investing in certain skills a distinct advantage over others; this broadens the range of character types in the gameworld and makes the game more replayable with new characters.
The entire item set has been, as we like to call it ‘Tolkienised’; basically we have changed standard item names and/or added a Middle Earth themed description to the item. The touch this adds to the gameworld is immense and makes you feel more like you are in Middle Earth as opposed to Forgotten Realms. As well as an original item set, we have produced over 150 books, each one focussing on an area, person or race in Middle Earth. These books can be found amongst loot, or be read in some of the worlds many lore vaults. The books provide players with a great opportunity to learn about Middle Earth and inspire themselves with new ideas.
A big feature of Untold Tales is our quests. They have been designed as non-linear, offering alternative endings, good/evil options, ways of failing the quest and ways of persuading/bullying and lying to the NPC. Other, more general, main features include an attention to detail and visual effect; something which has always seemed to lack on Middle Earth/LOTR gameworlds. We want to do Tolkien as much justice as possible by making the most accurate and representative recreation of his work. The gameworld is updated very regularly and is open to all; no passwords are required and no payments are ever required (we are strongly opposed to any payment schemes).
5) How strict are you on Roleplaying?
One of our main requirements is that players remain in character at all times. So with that, you could say we are a hardcore role-playing gameworld. We have a number of role-playing related rules, mostly pertaining to the nature of communications between characters; no internet jargon, for example. This doesn’t mean every sentence must start and end with a thee and a thou; we just ask that communications be in character and appropriate. We have a wealth of support content for players available in our forums and on our website. This content provides tips on general good role-play practices and ways of role-playing better to a Middle Earth setting. We also recommend a number of good authors who use NW Vault to promote their material. We are dedicated to our target audience, which is dedicated role-players, so players who persist in not role-playing are removed from the community to make way for those who do.
6) Could you describe some of the activities that players can do on your world.
Besides taking part in exciting, story driven adventures with many possible outcomes, there are many activities available in the world in which the player is in the driving seat. To name a few examples; we have a tavern, run by two dwarven player characters. Many a night of social gatherings take place in this tavern. A few player characters are merchants, and many a character will flock to these merchants for rarities or to cut a good deal. We have a regular weekly event which consists of gladiatorial style duels in a secret underground arena. From time to time, the fires of war can be kindled and the War of the Ring comes into play and players can fight for one of the two sides. We have support for guilds too, so like minded characters can band together and follow a set purpose or mission.
7) How heavily does the role of DMs play in daily activities?
The gameworld is capable of functioning perfectly well without heavy DM involvement, but we prefer to have a 24/7 DM presence in the world. We have worked hard lately to take on DMs from spaced time zones so that there is always one about. Further work needs to be done on this. The DMs role in our gameworld is to enhance and add to the experiences of the characters; through interaction with characters, to spicing up the events of quests and adventures and encouraging new player-based plots to arise. It’s our eventual goal to take the idea away from some players that DMs are some sort of constant police force chasing after troublesome players and watching them; that’s not the DMs real job, so we operate a zero tolerance approach to troublemakers to allow DMs to enjoy their DMing and their real roles which is player interaction.
8) How long have you been working on the world?
Work began on Untold Tales Of Tolkien in August of 2003 and is an ongoing project, being as it is a persistent world. So this makes Untold Tales 15 months old at this time of writing. Ideas for the world were going through my mind a few months prior to starting building work however. In May of 2003 I set-up the NWN community ‘Middle Earth Roleplay UK’ or MERP UK as the easier abbreviation. Until August 2003 we hosted the popular public LOTR v2a module; I used this as an opportunity to gauge thoughts on LOTR/Middle Earth modules and took the feedback forwards for Untold Tales Of Tolkien.
9) What are the requirements, if any, to join and where do people do so?
We have a number of software requirements. You require copies of; NWN, SoU and HotU, patched to the latest version. You also need to download the Community Expansion Pack and its patch if you do not already have it installed. The CEP is available to download at this excellent site here.
Other requirements are that players must be willing to be in character at all times and attempt to take in the Middle Earth theme; we’re not in Faerun anymore. Our target audience is the mature role player, so being a mature player is also a requirement.