Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Game Master - D:OS2 GM Mode - Ideas!

Hello everyone, i'm a RP player from the Nwn2 community. I and many friends are very excited by the GM mode and backed the game for it. I will try to explain what we hope for.

Before beginning, a little TD;LR version: The same functionality than NWN2 but more oriented toward persistent modules.

I will try to be concise and only describe the most important system that we hope be available for us and the bonus features, nice but not critical.

- Dedicated server for persistent modules with monitoring tools (number of players).
Bonus: Resources monitoring by scripts, zones ect.. It could be nice to see which script or which zone is killing our performances.

- Connection to a database: For persistence, it should be nice to have the ability to connect to a database. In nwn such system doesn't exist but his essential to persistent modules. Database access are made by reading the server memory for detecting query and writing the server memory for the result. It could be nice to don't have to do that in D:OS2!

- No third party account : Nwn was based on gamespy for log-in into a lobby room where to choose the available servers. And now gamespy is down and we have a tool injecting stuff into the memory for making the lobby work with duck-tape. The most important thing is the continuation of modules, even if the third party managing online stuff is down. Robustness in front of that is better than a server list. Even if there is only a "join by ip" option with a favorite list, there will always be a community maintened list of servers.

- Player character in server side.: For games with friend, it's ok to use a client side character. But on persistent modules, other player may cheat of bypass server rules by using a client side character.

- Security of server side characters: With the assumption of no 3th party account, it must be a way to let a character accessible only to his owner. In nwn2, with the 3th party down, there is a custom script tracking the cd-key of account. If the cd-key is different, the player is kicked. A way to handle that could be the use of a certificate, unique for each installation of the game with high probability, and used by the server to make the right characters available to the player. Server owner must be able to assign a set of character to a different certificate in the case of a lost certificate and player must be able to import their previous certificate to a new installation of the game. Be able to select with which certificate (with different pseudo associated with) the connection to a server is made could be nice too (For dm wanting to keep their "classic player" account separate from their dm account).

- The number of players: Popular servers on nwn have roughly 50 players connected at the same time. 64 seem to be a good maximal size.

- The number of DM: DM should take a player slot but not be limited in number. For torturing many players, we need many DM ^^. DM access must also be restricted by the owner of the server with a DM password for a certificate DM list.

- The party: In persistent server, all players are not friends. So each player should be able to create party with different players in. Other player are neutral by default.
Bonus: Be able to customize the way of setting other players hostile. Ex: a player attacking me is hostile, a player attacking my party is hostile, the entire party of a player attacking my party is hostile, ect... And the ability to set back to neutral an hostile player.

- Chat channels: Server, Map, Local (listenable within a medium range, whisper (small range), Party, DM (thing written by player are only see-able by dm) and private message.

- Custom-ability of the UI and events: I will take in example the death. Some module want a permanent death. This death is only made by DM. When a player dies from a monster or other player, he can have the ability to re-spawn somewhere with a penalty or be taken by an other character to be moved to a safe place for a re-spawn with no penalty.
For doing that, we need to be able to intercept the "rezEvent" or the modify the "UI" to make the re-spawn unavailable if the pj is perma-dead. The moving of the corpse by a character is made by just moving the corpse to the feet of the carrying guy when he move too far after this guy selected the option "carry the target" in a custom UI. When the player select the rez option, the script check if he is in a safe zone and then rez it without penalty or tp it to a safe zone with a penalty. This example is here to illustrate the degree of custom-ability desired.


In nwn the modding community has made an amazing work. the community implemented database access, pet systems, guild systems and guild halls, housing, randomly generated dungeon an many other thing. The only thing we need to move our community on Divinity is just some help to be able to do the same thing (and more!) here without needing too much duck-tape.

With RP friend, we started yesterday to form a team for creating a persistent module. We are our-self programmer (for thing less sexy than games but still programmer ^^) and we were heavily involved in the french rp community of nwn1 and nwn2. So if you need a sort of community created feature list for custom servers (with only the necessary features, the rest can be created by the community), we will be happy to help :'D.

Our RP dreams are now totally in Divinity:OS2 . And we waited such a game for years without finding a potential substitute to NWN2. NWN is a great game but is far too unstable and need to much duck-tape. I really invite you to play a little in a NWN persistent module for finding inspirations.

Edit: Not sure if it's the right thread, you can move it to the other if it's more appropriated.