Question GEO Server Statuses

Most of my stuff happens on Tertius and that includes any of the Apropos Ring storyline, Maggie's Bandit Queen storyline and its intersection with Whisper. The other servers' existence is canon - ie there ARE two other servers, one named Primus and one named Secondus... and it is canon that some people are playing on those servers. But no events on either of those servers is 'canon' as far as I'm aware. Which, theoretically, gives other non-canon authors a couple directions they can go... they can either go the divergent path using the events of Tertius as a foundation but knowing that canon could diverge, leaving them out of continuity. Or they can establish their own storyline for how the game plays out on one or both of the other servers.

Ways that GEO could play out differently from server to server? It is not uncommon for gamers to congregate by faction on a given server... this would have a very unique outcome on an open skill, classless game with minimal respawn creatures like GEO. As one side grew to have higher numbers of players, that side would find it more challenging to find opportunities for significant challenge for individuals and would tend to meet opposition in groups of balanced roles designed to beat encounters. At the same time, the faction with few members would face a constant build up of enemies that they wouldn't have the numbers to face one to one... resulting in far larger jumps in potential when beating challenges and in individual growth far exceeding what is given to groups for the same task. As a result... on servers where there are unbalanced numbers of players, the side with few members will have few but very powerful individuals and that faction will survive through the growth of NPC armies and construction projects. The side with many players will advance individually more slowly and will have to travel wider distances to find challenges to continue to advance.

GEO also relies on research, trial and error, practice, and teaching for the evolution of the skill/ability/spell system. If few players are inclined to delve into the spell system, researching more powerful or flexible variants of spells... magick will not evolve to the point of being a great influence in battle. Fewer players will take up magick because teachers won't be available and the cycle will continue until melee combat dominates that server's storyline. Similarly, if crafting is very popular in a given server or faction, it could result in a community that relies on the power of gear and enchanted items for character growth instead of skill training.

Exploration may be so popular on a given server that the original two starter kingdoms/factions more or less depopulate themselves. Or the war between those two small areas may rage so hotly that no one explores or advances through anything but battlefield gains.

What direction Primus and Secondus went... I never decided. I was content with just one world within the world.

In a sense, sure. Knowing what is available on other servers doesn't necessarily mean you will be able to research the same things on your server, though. Certain core knowledge (Lore) elements are necessary to unlock a variety of things... which would require finding (through exploration) and breaking into (spell craft / counter spellcraft) ancient mage towers for old tomes and resources abandoned there.

In other words, you have to be good enough with magick to do the same things the other server did... except you would have to accomplish them with fewer people sharing out the load.. ie instead of a fire mage breaching the frost ward and an arcane mage breaching the necromantic wards... you would need to be able to break all the wards yourself. Which means you would have had to research all those areas of spellcraft on your own... and if you're at the front of the research curve, you don't have more powerful mages transcribing tomes for you to study or directly teaching/tutoring you; which means you are learning through practical use.

Planet/star names would exist of course and could turn up in astronomy lore if that were ever included ... along with information on the multiple moons and other spatial objects visible in the skies. I haven't bothered because such things only really have meaning in context. And the 'name' is often just the word for planet or sun or people in one language or another... ultimately, it isn't a star in our sky or universe. There's some dimension shifting necessary to get from here to there. Science hasn't progressed far enough for most of the inhabitants to understand the concept of planets or worlds... though some mages of great power and a handful of scholars may have a grasp on the idea and have penned a name for it... but if so, its not a public common knowledge sort of thing.

There is only one land mass of the sort we'd call a continent and it covers about 1/4 of the surface of the planet and you can use land travel to travel around the world East to West or North South. A number of especially large freshwater seas divide up regions of the mainland, one about twice the size of the Mediterranean. A couple sub-continents (maybe half or a third the size of Australia) break up the Southern Ocean and an island chain with a couple thousand small livable islands divides two main channels of the Northern Ocean. I'll see if I can dig up a copy of the maps, if I still have them / can find them. Much of that stuff got named... as did cities in the main 'home' kingdoms. But I don't remember much of them off the top of my head atm.

Sonic monks... probably not. Most magic that can affect entire columns would fall under the war magick class of channeled spells and those are hard to research/train without being very focused on spellcraft and magick lore. It's possible for non-battlemages to learn that stuff... but it'd take a lot of effort. A big part of that would be that sonic-monks don't generally need to hold and focus the use of massive amounts of mana for spell use... they generally rely on the use of available energy converted for immediate use.

Not really more on it. The exact details on how it would be implemented would probably be in flux even during testing to balance it out properly. The main goal simply being to provide a way for 'all' players in a given faction who are online to participate in warfare where most games would require you to respond by PvP and to take the time to bring your character in from wherever they are to do so. The merc/orc gives you level appropriate responders based on regionally available troops... in other words, you get to control the NPC response instead of the game AI.. and your account benefits from you taking the time to do so.

I think, eventually, all games will include some aspect of this sort of feature. For players to step into temporarily play troops and/or bosses to make fights less predictable and challenging and to allow for RP/banter and personal involvement. And tying it to advantages for those player's characters only makes sense, especially if you keep it flexible and allow the bonuses to be applied at the player's choice. I know I'd run monster attacks all the time when I was bored ... where normally, I simply don't pvp. And ironically, I enjoy pvp...I just don't do it often enough to know all the little tricks that are involved in being effective at it.

If you die, you die. The game tries to keep it from happening as a result of being offline... but if you log off in the middle of an enemy camp, there's not much the game can do but try to sneak you out. If you're caught and die, you have to deal with the same way you deal with any other death. You either reincarnate, or you play as a ghost for a while, or whatever...

In cases where there's an intelligent enemy, you'd probably return to find yourself captured instead of killed. Even in some 'monster' encounters that could be a viable option... dragged into a cave and secured for later feeding purposes. Such things would trigger quest offerings for other people in your area. The same thing happens if you die, of course... though the quests go out to different types of people

Hmm... the Fonts question was tucked in with the geology ones... Fonts... can be moved. Takes a lot of work and resources, but its possible. Fonts can be 'splintered' which can result in the appearance of multiple minor Fonts... BUT, there is always a 'main' piece and the person who controls that can 'recall' the splinters back to the main bit... and capturing the main piece transfers control to the whole Font and immediately recalls the splinters. It also is likely to undo any movement from its 'home' position. The Fonts have places they like to be... and they typically protect themselves and that home from capture. So... moving a Font into a city is a huge benefit for the control of the Font and defense of that city... but if its lost, It's very likely that the city itself is going to be lost for good... as the land around it may warp to lock access to the Font off to its new owner.

Fonts cannot be destroyed. They CAN be released, which may cause the Font to jump to a protected neutral location where it is not at risk of being captured by anyone. However, releasing a Font takes a significant time and resources... not something you can do just because it looks like a battle isn't going your way and you're going to lose control of it. But... if a war is steadily moving toward the place you hold the Font and its important for the Font not to turn over to the enemy? You could try releasing it. It might even end the war if the whole point was the capture of the Font. But you may not find the Font again afterwards.

I'm pretty sure the Sonic Monk thing in general was a 'joke'... there is a monk archetype that is based on chants (sonic in, sonic out, melee enhancement and that sort of thing), that has some techniques that use resonances, cancellation, and amplification. I don't remember how it got dubbed 'sonic monk' though...

I wouldn't be averse to working with someone to develop some basic GEO world art... maps and regional concept art, that sort of thing. Purely on a 'for the hell of it' basis, I'm not putting any money/resources into game design atm. I haven't even touched feature/concept details in years for it. I've thought about trying a concept proposal via Kickstarter but even knowing what you're doing, an MMO development cycle is 5-6 yrs with a full team. It's not something to attempt lightly.

Oh ho... so you admit your guilt freely?