Over the years on the Knights of Noromath, we were lucky enough to have a ton of players come through. Some of those players took a couple minutes of their time to fill out a Google Form to give us an idea of what we were doing wrong, what was going right, and everything in between.
This thread is intended to provide for a few purposes. Mostly, I believe it can be a resource for new or existing Persistent World Owners to take notes from. At a distant second I think it can let people know that some good stuff went down on the original run of this server.
This thread is NOT intended to solicit additional feedback about the original run of KON, which ran from sometime in 2015 through 2021. Originally, there were just two DMs, myself DM Djinn and DM Spectre. After I stepped down from DMing on KON in June of 2020, the server ran for awhile longer and I was off doing a Roman Era thing. Then there were some additional DMs on staff before it was formally closed. OK. Onto the feedback.
A total of 81 players filled out this form between February of 2020 and May of 2021. The only edits I will make are to remove any possible reference to player identities and also clean up any inappropriate language.
Letâs show our player demographics. Players self-reported the following loosely defined time-zones.
At the time of their completing the form, the players indicated they had been playing a certain amount of time:
Then we asked them, how did the whole thing come across overall?
38 of the 81 respondents added an additional text note for their overall experience.
Fun while people are able to interact with
Its excellent with a bit of a learning curve, once you get the basics figured out you should be golden if your careful.
Great Roleplaying experience, steep learning curve, unforgiving consequences. Sometimes it is frustrating to be part of an event but being unable to affect the event and you get 0 xp from the fights only from the DM award at the end despite being in great danger.
Your DMs are {profanity}. They pretend to be welcoming when you first join but quickly turn into absolute controlling assholes and are REALLY rude. I like the server, but I fucking HATE your loser admins. Never playing on this waste of time again and im telling everyone to avoid it!
It is ok but kind of empty
I really enjoy it. Some things could be better, but overall it is great
One of the best decisions I have ever made
An amazing experience. As a labor of love you all deserve to feel extremely proud. Iâm glad to share in it.
Great world story, take you right in to it, DMâs & Players are very friendly and helpful, Gives the feeling that this server have great potential for Role play PVP & PVE to any D&D lover.
very fun, has a lot of amazing characters, a lot of content, the DMs are really good and guide you along well, though i have a couple gripes theyâre minor and can be fixed by players themselves rather than DMs.
Amazing. Its begun my lifelong involvement with D&D
I love it here and Iâm hooked!
Evil and extremely fun intrigue. Donât play to win play to have fun and enjoy others rp.
I love the immersion, and the mechanical systems to support roleplay. I love how it plays like pnp.
NATO bandito
itâs a good server overall but itâs a pretty steep grind for solo players who either donât have a consistent schedule or play characters who donât make a lot of friends.
Amazing, and it just keeps getting better
Most character development with the actually setting gets shit on (besides the odd Human knight here and there but still usually the same result)
Big fan!
Very good so far, with some kinks here and there. If I had one major complaint, it can feel as though there isnât that much to do when thereâs nobody else online.
KON is a place Iâve loved since 2015
Itâs been great!
its been fun
Knights of Noromath has improved greatly in the last few months. Iâve been very pleased to engage in events, the systems, and the people. Very fun.
It was a hard learning curve, but now you will pry KoN from my cold dead hands
Amazing server, very true and exciting
Its a great server
I love the rp and the setting, also the political actions that all take place IG.
I love the module and the setting is great!
Pretty good. I love the enchantment and progression system.
Great
Itsa frustrating special server for people who like a different kind of challenge, its more meaning ful because you can fail and youâre not guarenteed to make it to max level.
No real complaints, but dungeons could use some builder love. Players are good and welcoming, and staff is both present and willing to speak with newbies.
Enjoyable but can get slow due to lack of player to player interaction
{Player name} I like KoN a lot, it is the only server i played on that feels real and generates an experience that is worth being emotionally invested in, other servers have more âexcitingâ dungeon or more areas to explore, but the social intrigue and relationships across KoN is what makes it worth playing, very rarely do i sit around a. camp fire telling jokes or being bored. Now having become the maximum level i can achieve, i still find myself invested in the campaign, find things to do and want to build more. However i do have issues. The player base, especially around my time zones is abysmal, i find myself interacting with the same two or three players, unless i stay up till past midnight, this isnât so bad except i feel at this point my character is just disappearing into a EU void. Iâve talked a lot with players who left, somehow i become the âtalk toâ person, and time and time again i try to remind people i am not an authority of any kind. and i tell them. âi donât want to encourage you to play if youâre not having funâ i feel these players didnât feel heard or appriciated and i do not know what to do with it. Here is a list of things that theyâve told me of their greiviences. âthe DMs a purpose sabotaging and killing my characterâ this is to me untrue and simply a plyer not understanding that on KoN death happens, but i felt you should know why some players quit âthe systems are not documented on the web page and its impossible to playâ This specifically adresses that some classes are not documented fully, some spells (such as mage armor and premonition) are not documented on the spell changes page but hidden away on their own page, and encahntment properties are not listed, telling them that it is FOIG should not be my job, and should be written on the webpage, somewhere. âthere is no guidance from the experienced playersâ (they seem to exclude me?) It is my belief that new players have issues with understanding that they are fully able to do anything on par with the experienced players and this freedom bothers them because they feel at an extreme disadvantage âthe player president provided no meaningful guidance when i contacted herâ this was a player that was annoyed with how a DM handled their character and they adressed our player president who said the DM was in the right. I donât even think it is her job to solve players annoyance with DMs, more on that in the DM section. And her job as a Player president should be made clear to everyone, somehow one or two players have also raised the question of wether some characters are NPCs or PC such as the Baron Clance Snyder and the confusion bothers them. as they either feel decieved, or then discouraged because they are being tricked by a DM to think they are just dealing with a. PC, i myself have seen Observer-aaron log in as characters who sometimes log in as other player names. And i think this deception bothers some players. I myself do not know where or how to express when i get annoyed at a system or a DM, so here is my feedback form.
Server is generally pleasant to play on, with rare exceptions.
KoN is a great server, its has the history setting and stuff to be amazing but itâs near impossible to join or patriciapte in outside of being a month old US member
Excellent roleplaying and a very good core community. Much change in the playerbase in the time Iâve been here. Some challenges around timezones and events - the server seems very EST/CST, so given âafter workâ time windows to play, those 2-3 hours make a big difference in server population and events, leading to FOMO and some in-game repercussions to my character for the fact that his player (me) works and is on PST. The rebuild and de-powering of the server is ambitious and promising, and the interaction between the DMs and the Player Council seems to be healthy.
Then we asked, well, what was it like interacting with the DMs?
Now for the extra comments about interactions with DMs. 37 of 81 respondents gave us extra insight here.
Have been great, putting up with my tons of questions which I am sure annoys to no end
Been great, all questions answered.
Spectre was very personable and helpful with concerns, Djinn has been extremely fun to interact with and receive feedback from. They sometimes come across as cold when repeating server rules but I believe their intention is not to drive off new players with that, text just can lack emotional context.
THE WORST I have ever seen, the worst part of the server.
really rude
They answer my questions out of game but I have almost never interacted with them in game
Helpful and thorough when I ask questions that I should get answered ooc
You have been doing this a number of years so Iâm sure with people coming and going there have been the same questions answered 100âs of times. I donât know if you are aware that frustration comes out sometimes when someone new ask is geniunely trying to do thier due diligence to learn, and it feels like a mine field of âIs this a legitimate thing to ask or am I just annoyingâ and that does make me cautious to reach out sometimes. I say that with a lot of appreciation for you both and what you give to this, not to hurt feelings but maybe see if you feel there could be any truth to that perspective. I have an idea about it coming up.
The Discord welcome to the game by DMs is a very nice thing to help new players feel that they can talk to somone as they step in the game
they listen very well, very understanding, and try to go for IG fun and sense most overall
Helpful and good at teaching
Interactions are great!
They have been responsive and entertaining to interact with.
I see them relatively little because of my playtime but get surprised sometimes. And the DMs do look for rp. Sometimes Iâll get random rp xp from a DM even if theyâre just remotely viewing from work.
My feedback is below
Really nothing to complain about
Great interactions!
Interactions have been rare but mostly good!
Very good. I have no major complaints.
There is currently no place for high level players to get character progression on KON. It is more likely for a lvl 30 player to turn in their pc to be NPCâs than to actually allow them to play and contribute to the setting.
A bit slow, but itâs understandable with as much as they have going on, and irl stuff as well
a bit slow, but makes sense
Generally, they are very pleasant. If I had one complaint, the reference of old PCs played by DMs can sometimes feel overdone, but itâs not to any great detriment to the server or anything like that.
Super thoughtful DMs, engaged and committed (wow). Even and fair, they hold the line effectively.
They are supporting and clever writers
its been decent
excellant , there fair in all aspects of the game
Good and fair dms
I have had few interactions in total. Mind you, this is largely to blame on myself. I enjoy the grind, the dungeon clearing.The single time Iâve had âDM Spiceâ was when I OOCly was asked to save a dead pal. While I shouldâve never done so, I did. For that I apologize. However, getting murdered by 20 Renegade Cowled Wizards dispelling and ice-storming me wasnât so cool either. I spend a good deal of time on that char! My pal also quit. Sad.
Great
excellent when i find them ig Super friendly, otherwise abit hard to get in contact with OOCly
Iâm liking what I see so far, keep it up.
I love the dm team
It is Abundantly obvious to me that Blood Moon is spectre, it has been for good while, and other players have asked me directly wether Clance is a DM, and i honestly donât know what to tell them. I donât care if the DMs have PC, infact ina sense i like it because it marks them as âinteractableâ in a different sense than a fully fleshed NPC. but the deception is annoying and i know some players have basically become paranoid because of it, because whenever they interact witha new player this is a thought in your head. âis this a new palyer or is this a DM?â and i am starting to feel it too. Lord Gard Menon i thought was returning player, i didnât really treat him differently, then i saw Observer-Aaron log in as him, and it felt decieved, tricked and i think it is to the detriment of the server when newer palyers feel this way. DMâs should be free to play as players and i think it would be genrally less to the detriment of the server if it was made transparent when a PC belongs to a DM instead of it becoming uncertain gossip among the player base. because i am sick and tired of having to say. âi donât know and if i ddi i couldnât tell you.â My interaction with is very plesant, however i feel the liens of communication are entirely one sided, especially outside of the game. Again iâve basically given up on using discord to communicate with the DM team as i recieve no response to most messages. And in the back of my mind i expect Kobold to eventually set his discord to âdo not disturbâ and disappear as well. That said i do like the DMs when they respond or write me on discord, iâve had a message floating to spectre for a month now about chaging the banner in northgate keep to kelemvors banner and it was entirely ignored, then i tried to make it a bug report, and it was delete with a message from DM archon âthese kinds of changes should be send to a DMâ so i am at a loss there. The DMs are good to communicate with, only i do not know what the approiate channel to communicate with them is. Writing them on discord seems to not work. In game is even worse. There is no way to tell if there is a DM online that i know of, sometimes theyâll be on the DM screen on discord and not be online, sometimes they wont be there and be online. Sending a message to the DM channel and then standing around staring at a wall is endlessly frustrating, hoping that maybe you were heard. Whenever i am heard the reponse is entirely IC and it can take anywhere from 10 seconds to 30 minutes, this inconsistency in reponse toa DM channels message is frustrating. I know DMâs have work, and lives to take care of. The websites methods for seeking attention, do not work for my hours. This had been fine up until a point, eventually these plots and missions i wish to undertake require DM assistance and i need to know, how i can recieve it, wether its a more meta version of scheduling these things, which as above mentioned i have no idea how to do either, or i simply have to accept my hours will screw me over. my frustration is not with HOW the DMs interact with me, it is that when they are busy, there is no indicator, and i simply stand there feelings my time is wasted. because i have no tool to know if my message was even heard. I want to reiterate i like KoN i enjoy my experiences here and i like the DMâs, and this feedback form only presents negatives because i want to highlight want i feel needs improvement, if possible, this is not an attack
Overall, itâs alright. I have occasionally bumped heads with a few, but thatâs normal for any server.
Spectre seems too busy to DM? thats my impression atleast, his plot a fine his sotry telling is cool, and i get development is important Illithid is fun, cool uses alot of ambitious plots. Sometimes he messes up but owns up to it and makes the best of it. Archon is bad at everything he is the reason i am giving it a two when both the other dms are 7+ His story telling is terrible, he seems to use decade old stories to tell, and every plot point iâve seen from him is not only unsatisfying but also predictable. I know alot of palyers who had their characters killed in his events, felt helpless an unable to do anything to change those choices, and decided to quit the server simply because Archon is aDM
Generally excellent, the DMs do their best. More openness in discussing the nature of the game they want to run (in #member-chat for example) and where they want the campaign to go would be helpful. Demystifying the DM-player interaction would strengthen, not weaken, the appeal of this server in my opinion: we are adults, intentionally suspending disbelief together, not playing a CRPG or MMO; a tight-knit community, shared understanding, and mutual trust are the core requirements for what are building together.
And the next to last question, because we have always been very ambitious about modding the game, what did they think of our systems?
Now there was some extra feedback about systems and server support. 36 players responded in this category.
It is okay but donât have much experience and without a guide I was left trying to figure out basics on my own.
Very unique systems to me, and a very detailed setup designed to get you right into the mix.
I have not played NWN on a server seriously since college over 13 years ago but I was quite impressed with all the systems in place including languages, disguises, mounts, leadership feats, etc. Their custom prestiges and classes all add desirable flavor to the setting and make the campaign full of unique character ideas with the combine caster levels.
Half your shit is broken
cool I really like it but sometimes not working too good
it is improving and growing good to see a system not grow stale but rather evolve to the needs
They work quite well. I struggle to get around them but the more I play the more I know
The documentation and feedback messages ig are explicit and thorough. I would probably want to be able to exit the current loot system once it starts like I am able to exit resting.
Iâm not a tech savvy person. I donât always understand what is going on (it all looks like magic to me) but I love the custom options and classes you added and how deep one like myself can get into character in this world.
Feels like finally someone got it to work as it should be.
awesome, they worked really hard on this and it turned out really well, making well-polished loads of content and challenge.
Everything is documented and extremely helpful
Great!
Excellent. Keep peeling more and more layers and new systems implemented monthly so far.
God itâs the coolest. And its only improving.
Sweeto
Itâs good so far, really enjoying the components system and the enchantment systems. Crafting seems like a pain in the ass when the things I need can be found in crates.
Awesome custom changes and constantly improving
Sometimes it can be confusing, but when itâs not, it can be very satisfying to interact with the systems.
Perfect.
Never played the base game
never played base game
Very good. Enchantment feels engaging and enjoyable despite the simplicity. Everything seems like itâs designed to reward persistence, and every step you take contributes to the overall campaign.
This is an amazing experience for a 20-year old game. New systems are new (like bathing⌠there are relatively few interactable baths compared to how many baths are rendered in the world). Most of these systems are FOIG, which is fine for the most part but adds to the learning curve (like guessing at gold and XP costs for magic items.
Itâs very unique, lacking very little
uhh⌠never played anything else
good but I would like to add some special features to Cavalier. 1) i would like to see them be able to make there horses fast. 2) I would like to give them a special lance to help with abilities.
I would love to see Gem mining be added to the list of Proficiencies. You can use the gems to make wands, you could use the games to make ion stones, you could use different combination of gems to help boost wands and other things IG.
Awesome. Server is amazingly build. I love every single system. Serious, amazing job. And I canât wait to see what systems are being cooked out rn.
Looove it
I feel that some more variety and room for experimentation could be used, but itâs servicable and player friendly as is.
Great and enjoyable but always can be more
they are great. I have never ever figured out how that goods trading things works, i am given a crate and it weighs a ton and i have no idea what to do with it, i think i can give it to someone? but they often go ânha fam we donât want yo stuff.â it is confusing. Point capture is a bit weird, some points can only be captured once? other several times? and it gives me some weird weekly or monthly honor point that i have no idea what is used for? and i stopped caring about it, then i saw DM archon make some joke about how my epic char had no honor and i honestly donât know if iâm supposed to take that system seriously? it is an absolute dicconect between mechanics and IG reputation of my char. i lvoe when random NPC express they know my chars reputation, but ihave no idea if the honor system is important. and if it is a FOIG to know wether a game mechanic is important ill return to ignoring it I donât tihnk it has any influence? Crafting, enchanting, hunting is fun. Groves and capturing points is also kind of fun, even if confusing. death system is amazing, wheather is abit annoying, i forget all about it since i have constant freedom of movement and endure elemnts, but i know some newer players are very frustrated the endrance feat does not make them immune to wheather effects because it is unclear in what its bonus it. and iâve had a few players tell me they felt tricked into takinga useless feat. The Landlord feat seems to me to also be a wasted feat, mechanically all it does is let me rent a building sometimes, and its requirements and benefits arenât lsiten anywhere. The leadership feat is great, but near impossible to use, 80% of the time you get either âsheâs not interested, youâre silent, this is too soonâ and it becomes a frustrating thing to try and use it, espcially because it keeps telling me âyou donât RP enoughâ with is really annoying to hear when youâre trying to RP with someone. Rp should not be a visible game mechanic, perhaps it could, allow RP xp in combat, or genrate a flat percentage increase for one pupil within reach, anything but three different errors messages very 8 seconds because i want to try and give 25xp to someone. the disguise system is great in theory. but there is a lot of confusion about what degree it should be respected to, without portrait manipulation, it super easy to see past. iâve had the following issues with it. A player changes their name, but their clothes do not match their disguise, but the system tells me they arenât disguised A player isnât disguised in any manner but the system tells me they are. A player is disguised as knight or something, but not using the disguise system so the tool tells me they arenât disguised, but iâve never met them before so how can i tell them a part from every other NPC knight? i love the disguise system in theory, but it creates a disconnect from an IG expereince, and i canât find a guide on how to use or respond to it properly.
Systems are good, except what is mentioned in general feedback below.
KoN custom systems are great. Disguise is very strange and weird to use, and it has no real guide on what it is meant to do. the bandage system and treasure system, is unintuative for new players, who click treasure boxes and die and they have no way of knowing how many free respawns they have before their character is gone The examine tool is also enver explained and so most new players join and have this experience Every one says they smell, they die to a patch of zombies three times, make their way toa box, it blows them up. they gain a level, die again and learn they canât rezz any more and quit. joining requires a ton of reading that isnât really available or explained you should read. Learning from other palyers is rarely viable unless youâre a US player
Our custom systems are aspirational but clunky and often fail in surprising ways. I love the aspirational elements and like other devoted players, I have learned to work around issues and accept them as a âprice of play.â Documentation of these systems is generally poor. The rebuild of KoN 2.0 should help with this a lot. Some more structured way to discuss this collectively as a player & DM community would be helpful. I believe most mechanical elements should be open, documented, and discussed as needed - the thrill of FOIG only lasts for a month or so before giving way to some frustration. Especially as we enter KoN 2.0 there will be a lot of balancing that will require the players to be playtesters - just like Old School D&D modules. For example, with changes to enchanting, everything from item weights to the difficulty of opening crates and chests will need to change (or other changes to the economy will need to be made to compensate).
My suggestion, since knights have never ever had to carry their horses, is to make a few modifications that better fit game reality. 1) Require Barding to have the appropriate Armor Proficiency in order to equip 2) Make Barding zero-weight (and saddles as well) 3) Offer Saddlebags for sale (only 1 or 2 can be active on a character) that provide a limited number of slots at zero weight I donât know the feasibility of this suggestion at all, as I donât know the NWN engine or scripting/mods. The resulting RP experience would be: knights can ride heavily armored horses, others use lighter armor, and tents and such survival gear go in saddlebags - along with some weighty loot like the 10-lb heads of the bandits. This feels very consistent with old-school PnP to me. Horses would be strategically significant, and areas like the Spire (where the Cyricist camps used to be) would be pretty darn challenging as you canât get your horse or gear there through the underground passage. Alright, thatâs all Iâve got! - @{player name}
