Land of Ice and Snow

[Fish]

Where only the hearty survive this soul rending zone.  Harsh winds tearing at a frozen land bite into you as you forge ahead.  Your sled moved quickly through the forest as your team of six strong dogs run pulling you towards the next challenge.

Powerful monstrous, biting cold, heavy equipment, deep snow and mountain ranges that are pretty much a death trap.  If you are looking of a challenge this is it.

This zone concept is designed around several concepts.  To maximize the value of a skill based system.  To cater to the soloist.  To get the players to develop the zone and empower them.  To give guilds a prominent role in zone development.  So let\'s take each part and expand it.  

[Fish]

Maximize a skill based system.

By having more then one threat or multiple problem statements your charter has to work on a core set of skills to do anything in this zone.  As you improve your charter can go deeper into the zone.

This zone is not for the casual gamer.

You can try to bust into it with your uber weapon and full plate mail and promptly freeze to death.  These zone favors generalist not specialists.  You can try to run through this zone and get stuck in the snow.  Magic is a wonderful skill to have but this zone has dead spots in it.  And in varying degrees.  

So knowing how to fight with a sword, cast a few useful spells, keep warm and move through snow and you will do well.  For a start anyways.
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Catering to the soloist

This zone has a lot of random things that will spawn and despawn.  Luck plays a part in the adventure finding a spawn point and calling back for a team to exploit it plays a big part in making in this zone.  Improving most of the required skills does not make a party.

Even thought there is plenty of jobs for the soloist you still need parties for many situations.  Like monster control or setting up a  mine or building something big.  But in this zone you will probably have to solo awhile before a party will find you very useful.  
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Players will develop this zone.

The NPCs in this zone are uninspired and rare.  There are only five or so small villages.  The quests in this zone are fully documented.  They are merely a test of skill.  This zone starts out being pretty much blank.

The monsters in this zone don\'t drop gold, weapons, or armor, only pelts, meat and sundry body parts.  They are viscous sometimes magical killing machine that will hunt you down and they will hold a grudge.  Several of these bad boys will pop out of nowhere.  Note to players: white on white in a snowstorm = invisible.

So what does this zone offer other than a horror show?

Natural resources that others only dream about.  The hunting here is good, dam good!  Several forests of the best timber for building things you will ever see.  And when it comes to ores and minerals the mountains are loaded.

The problem is getting to the resources and moving them to suitable building locations.  Did I mention the viscous monsters that drop squat.  That\'s one problem.  What about deep snow that you can get stuck in.  I think I mentioned that too.  Well, that\'s where the soloists come in.  They can skirt the monsters or run away.  One person does not attract monsters as well as a group and ten people going in different directions can move easily and find paths around snow drifts (that gradually move around in the wind) to get at the resources.  Then a party of monster killers lead the charge foiled by heavy equipment to harvest trees.  Or run a temporary mining operations while a strike is on.

The wonderful thing is most of this can be set up with the same systems that most MMORPG provide for other zones.  It\'s just a different scheme for game play.  Instead of monsters being the centerpiece of play now are a hindrance.  A really big hindrance but not the main focus.

So, if you want a city, go build a city.  With a little help from your friends of course.
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Guilds play a big part in zone development.

This part is obvious at this point.  Without well organized guilds this zone isn\'t going anywhere.  An assault on a spawned resource is going to take an action akin to a guild raid. The fun part is this concept can get all levels involved in it.  You are going to need the high levels to take care of the monsters but someone has to harvest or mine the goodies. There will be something for everyone to do.

Guilds can enter the zone in several ways.  An established guild can form a branch in the zone.  Once a member learns the survival skills necessary to live they become qualified to enter that domain of the guild.  Setting up a descent set of prerequisites is important or the guild won\'t be very effective.

The other way is to find a group of hearty souls that are doing well and form a guild.  In the long run that might be a better approach.  

Any way you look at it a guild could really do well here.  Once you hit a decent gold strike you will know exactly what I mean.

[Adeli]

I am not really sure what you are proposing.
A zone within planeshift that you talk about like a game on its own?

[Androgos]

I really like this zone concept, mainly because I just love cold, ice, snow and dark caves

I think it would be a great addition to the PlaneShift world, maybe on some of the lower levels that don\'t get that much sun?

[Cyberchu]

How about bringing in some mirrors from the advanced technology thread, to melt the snow and ice

[Myrtl]

heehehe. A ice waste land would be cool. Wonder if you can go ice fishing?  oooooo

[Karyuu]

Only if there will be a land of Sand and Fire to contrast with it :P

[Myrtl]

ya that would be funny. i wana see the land of ice and snow beside the land of fire and sand lol

[Fish]

Concept Expansions

Fun things like minigames and contests and not so standard game elements.

One way to make plain shift stand out is to have game elements that you won\'t find anywhere else.  Some of these I haven\'t seen in any game ever.

1.Dog sled teams
You have dog selection and training, finding better faster dogs.  You have mushing skills handling and handling the terrain.  Say have a max of six dogs so you don\'t get to much lag.  Run a fairly low poly model, and they don\'t accurately have to look like a dog.  At the high level you would find a pack of wild dogs and if you can train them before they rip you to shreds you will have a really fast team.  Dogs grow old and die but there are also puppies.  Breeding can add another element.

2.Ice Riggers
This is a sail boat with ice skates instead of a hull.  These things are fast.  A real white knuckled next pounding ride.  In a desert wind they can hit 60 mph easily in a reach.  This is a good thing in this zone because there is a huge frozen lake (more like an inland sea) that glues the hole zone together.  Without one, walking across the frozen water is a long torturous journey that takes days.  The biggest one you can buy from an NPC is a two person craft.  They can be made as large as a four masted clipper.

3.Racing
If you have dog sleds or ice riggers you got to race them.  Duh! You have to talk trash about the other team then prove it.

4.Gold rush
There is a major find, it\'s valuable, it\'s limitless and the only limit is what you can carry. Oh yes, the catch, there is always a catch. It\'s deep in the mountains.  It also despawns in one to two weeks.  Maybe you can sprint in maybe some team will clear out the monsters just long enough for you to slip in.  Maybe you are a piece of meat on a stick.  You could use your mountain skills and pack in on the mountain peaks but you can\'t hold much on your back. Or, get your buddies together and slug it out with the local fauna, because dog sleds can move a lot of gold.  

5.Ice fishing
There is plenty of ice so bore a hole and get fishing, okay?  

6.Trapping in the wilderness
Fur makes the best coats.

[Seytra]

I don\'t think this zone could be located in the stalactite. I\'d expect the stalactite having only a minor temperature difference due to air circulation. Otherwise, the two submerged levels would be deep-frozen.

However, I really like this idea. I especially like the ice riggers. Wantonewantonewantone!
also, being very solo-centered myself, the overall concept naturally appeals to me. I prefer jungle locations but ice will also do.

[Fish]

GM Fun

Since this zone will have a dynamic economy it would be wise to have a group of GM\'s actually running it.  Its like sim economy, I think it would working something like this.  

As a GM you would get three special tools.   The first is a growth plan.  It projects what economic growth will be based on.  This will take some discussion to build.  

The second are reports to determine to the current economic climate.  The game is built on a SQL database so generating reports should be a piece of cake.  Since there are plenty of people on this board that have taken economics in college, that would not be me, I am sure they would know what reports to generate.  

The third is a spawn versus area table that sets the spawn rates in the zone.  This infuses the economy with the necessary materials to build a society.  

I am sure there will be several takers on this job.

[Fish]

Skills and Trades

There are several that are specific to this zone.  They are in categories.

1.Keep warm
2.Travel where you want to go
3.Eat something.
4.Do a job.

In a higher level zone it is good, in my opinion, to have several problems to overcome.  Keeping warm is a good one in a frozen zone.  If you stay in this zone eventually it will be far less of a problem but initially it will be a real pain.  

Plate mail sucks.  Chain mail isn\'t much better.  It\'s hard to say you won a battle if you freeze to death.  A monster won\'t respond to ?Hold off and see while I done armor so I can kick your butt.?  So it is paramount that you train with no armor. No armor ac enhancement is one of the top skills to work on.

In unpredictable weather knowing how to build a temporary shelter will save you.   Every so often the weather turns really foul and you have to make one or die.  They will also warm you up.  

Making a fire is another useful skill.  No need for an explanation here.

You\'re tailoring skill and tanning skills help in making warm garments.  

You won\'t be going anywhere unless you know how to get along in the snow.  Unaided walking is at 1/5 to 1/10th your normal walking speed.  

1.Snow shoes ? They go at the same speed independent of snow depth.  Slow and steady you can trudge along.  The problem is at the highest level you may get as fast as normal walking.    This skill includes making snow shoes.

2.Back country skiing ? Faster than snowshoeing but harder to learn.

3.Dog Sled previously explained.

4.Ice Rigger
        Pilot or helm
        Ice Rigger building
        Sail making

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So that\'s about it.  It\'s a hard zone with some hefty fringe benefits.  So, let\'s go briefly into some major points before letting this thread die out into obscurity.  

1.It\'s player driven
2.Some of the real heavy weight monsters lurk here and they drop squat
3.Natural resources are what it\'s all about
4.Zone related mini-games character building
5.This zone is not for the casual gamer
6.The environment is downright hostile
7.Magic voids and brownouts make magic not work sometimes, but it works most of the time though.

So, I\'m signing off here.  It\'s not that I don\'t have enough ideas.  In general I have too many.  It\'s that at this point you either like the concept or not and I need to get back to my real life again winterizing my house.

[Adeli]

2.Ice Riggers
This is a sail boat with ice skates instead of a hull. These things are fast. A real white knuckled next pounding ride. In a desert wind they can hit 60 mph easily in a reach.

I think you are missing something here...
These would never be in a desert wind as they are for use on ice. So how fast gan they get in a tundra or glacier wind?

I still think this idea would be better suited as a stand alone game.

Also, no dogs in Yliakum... no horses no dogs... only fair.

[Seytra]

Originally posted by Adeli

2.Ice Riggers
This is a sail boat with ice skates instead of a hull. These things are fast. A real white knuckled next pounding ride. In a desert wind they can hit 60 mph easily in a reach.

I think you are missing something here...
These would never be in a desert wind as they are for use on ice. So how fast gan they get in a tundra or glacier wind?

Is there much difference in wind speeds? I think that if there is a vast plain there will be very strong winds.

Originally posted by Adeli
I still think this idea would be better suited as a stand alone game.

I think it would fit in PS, but it should not be in Yliakum, which is a great difference. Maybe some place that can be reached through the stone labyrinths (like the surface maybe?) or another plane.

Originally posted by Adeli
Also, no dogs in Yliakum... no horses no dogs... only fair.

Doesn\'t matter to me, there surely will be animals that are the equivalent of dogs. Also, dogs might have been brought from the surface / other planes when the settlers arrived, because they, unlike horses, would have been able to survive the long journey through the stone labyrinths. Anyway, I don\'t really care whether there will be actual dogs or not, I\'ll just have my sled be towed by some Enkis.

[Krahan]

maybe it\'s another continent? We have to use a boat to get over there or something?