3. Coming to Narfell

Coming to Narfell

  • S

    When I first bought NWN, it was because of what I had heard regarding it's multiplayer capabilities. I was quite curious to try and see how it would end up with online RP'ing at that time. So, I installed it, played through the OC for half a day, and ended up checking out the online portion. I tried a few servers before coming to Narfell, all set in the Forgotten Realms.

    The first didn't catch me at all, no one was around and it was plain boring. The second seemed like fun, but alas went down and didn't come up again. The third, well… I wasn't too thrilled. Then, I saw Narfell, and it peeked my interest if only for the fact that it was a long shot of a region to be making a PW for, seeing Narfell has little to no reference in DnD sourcebooks.

    I started out by making a regular good old fighter. Norwick was on top of the list, so Norwick it was. I spent half hour or so running around (literally, I was such a newb in the game controls that time that someone had to explain me how to walk). The fighter ended up in a glorious death to the shaman at the south gates. Then, I proceeded with a bard. Peltarch... 10 minutes the bard was trashed, I was tired of getting lost within the city. After the bard came a druid. Crashed and burned within the hour just as well, same shaman, same errors.

    I gave up there. I'd seen no one around yet, 3 characters either dead or lost, so the server didn't really feel welcoming either. The next day I decide to try again. I played for a while on one of the previous servers until I got tired of the ooc shouting, then decided to try Narfell again. Some players were on the list, so you'd never know.

    Then, I made Shane, modelled after a paladin-like PnP character of mine in another game setting. I chose Helm as my faith thinking that surely there couldn't be too many Helmites on the server. RP server, Northlands barbarian region, Helm's faith in serious decline after the Time of Troubles... it would be challenging to play a paladin of a faith that is in serious decline, hated even by some, instead of your every day paladins.
    Boy, was I in for a big surprise later on when I heard of Kanen, and of a whole Helmite temple in Jiyyd. It sure made me feel more like a copycat at that time when I found out, and I actually considered at some point to just drop Shane and make another character. I'm still glad I never did.

    I logged into the lobby thinking that it would probably just end up like the other 3 characters again. Since Norwick was on top of the town list, I chose Norwick again as home, considering that probably I'd have the most of luck finding other players there and see how RP would really look like here. I was in for a stroke of luck right there and then.

    First steps into the Boarshead... There were 2 PC's. Emerwyn's fighter (I'll let him kill me for not mentioning the name) and a blue dressed bard who's name I sadly forgot (nooo....not Zyphlin). To my surprise, both are RP'ing, and whoa...even talk to me as I stand dumbly around searching for the way out (if anything I truly suck at in games, it's finding my way...map or not). So I decide to play along.

    If anything, the hour that passed between the 3 of us, happily RP'ing inside the tavern with myself at L1, was amazing fun. They immediately asked from where I was, so I devised up the tale of coming from Cormyr, and having come to Narfell to find an old friend, my shaman-fooded druid. Whether or not we nearly died afterwards trying to reduce the undead threat in the old crypts doesn't really matter, it was the great fun in the RP there that made me decide to stay.

    Truth be said, I've had great fun ever since.

  • S

    We actually did make it back across the water before that officer finally felled us. "How to make a succesful charge in 3 steps", and "Run for your lives 101", both classes duelly failed 🙂

    And yes…

    Zora, Jaahn and Shane, mixed up with Kute, was the perfect mix for things you very much do not want to remember in any tale :twisted: . I still wonder whatever happened to poor old Snotty.

  • V

    Hehe. Yes… I remember that. First RP XP ever. I think my first thought was this must be a bug 🙂 and then I asked all in party what kind of uber monster they had just killed that we'd get so much xp.

    And it was a great plan to charge that officer. Even worse was the fact that it had the Str reducing sneak attack so that running away was a really bad idea, as well.

    Snotty was fun, too. But get yourself locked in a room with two paladins who have to promise to do something awful. I don't even want to think about it. Ew. Just ew. 😉

    But yes, good times, indeed.

  • S

    There remain too many good memories from the moment I started playing here, and too many players I've laughed and cried with along that time.

    Narfell had this kind of mystery to it, that you get to see only once. At the start, it was thrilling to discover the world around, meet other players, and have good old fashioned fun. It became addictive way too fast.

    I started playing on the regular Euro hours. There was a usual crowd of around 5-7 players on the server, much like these days. 2 main DM's as well: Kute and Attentus. For the first two weeks, I was playing without even knowing where the forums were, so I had little idea on the rules etc. There was no journal then yet that would set it out for you, the player guide project was still in very young, and DM's were around "behind the scenes". The fun was pretty much made by ourselves during those hours.

    The first 3 weeks I spent most often RP'ing with entropy's Zorazina. We ended up in quite a few debacles, of course. One time we decided to stop the bandit officer at Atol's bridge… boy, did that hurt. The officer decided that two pesky little PC's were no match for him, and we were back at square one. That bridge kept scaring me afterwards, until the last bandit was gone out of the Nars 🙂

    Then came the magic moment. It came as quite a surprise at that time, seeing several weeks had gone by without a trace of how DM's worked on this server. I was pretty much certain they were there to fix problems 🙂 But, there we are, in the old smitty in Norwick, having pretty much a moral conversation about failure and how to deal with it, when all of the sudden the server message screen pops up an oddly yellow text - one I'd seen only when killing off goblins etc.. "XP given".

    My first reaction was to shoot a tell to entropy, something in the likes of " huh ?". And so we learned that DM's existed after all, and did more things than solve a problem after all as well. That's still the best XP hit I've ever seen on Narfell, if only for the sheer unexpectedness.

    Things started happening very quickly afterwards. I found the forums, IRC as well, and within the span of the two following weeks our regular group all received our C-Tokens within a few days from eachother. I had to bug the DM's 2 times with account problems as well then, which was always an undertaking experience, especially if said helping DM was Kute :twisted: .

    One time, we found ourselves locked inside the shaman's cave by a goblin that had snuck behind our backs... Snotty. Cue the first real DM event experience, atleast where I was concerned. Kute at his best it was, and I still chuckle when I think about how cornered we were there. Great fun 🙂

    Zora and Shane slowly started to drift apart into their own ways afterwards, but I'll still have to say it was fun while it lasted. However our characters acted or didn't, most of the adventures we shared there are a great deal of what got me pretty much addicted and kept me coming back.

    Thanks for the good times 🙂