The Dungeon Master cooking pot (Our new blog!)

Balladeer

GOOOOOD MOOOOOOORNING A-RA-BEL!

And welcome to our new DM blog!
One of the issues raised in last year’s survey focused on a lack of transparency within the community, which many felt contributed to a sense of stagnation. To address that, and as your current Newb Dungeon Master™, I’ve been appointed to give you all a peek behind the Dungeon Master veil.
We'll be doing this roughly biweekly, updating you on what's currently brewing in the Dungeon Master cooking pot. The blog has three main goals:

To increase transparency and minimize that dreaded sense of stagnation
To show you that this is a new team, with a different approach to DM’ing
To scratch that itch of player curiosity about what goes on behind the curtains at CoA

So today, I’ll focus on three topics:

A state-of-the-union-style overview.
A sneak peek at current projects.
My own observations as a new DM, and how they may help you better communicate your character goals and desires.
Ready? Let’s go!

The State of the Union – What’s the Current Server Status?
We’re hard at work launching our new metaplot: Winterfront!
It’s a project we’ve been working on since January to address the community’s feedback about the lack of a central metaplot. It’s taken blood, sweat, and more than a few tears to get to this point, hence why Erebus is currently vacationing as a player, and Echo is taking a much-deserved break from CoA.
This metaplot sets a new direction for the server. It’s the central thread weaving together many new plots currently launching or being prepared. We're still expanding faction depth, background stories, and tweaking areas, which will continue for a while yet! But trust me, as someone who knows what's coming: there's a lot of fun ahead!
With Appless Week wrapping up, we’ve seen a solid increase in player activity, awesome!
We hope to keep that trend going with a steady pace of content and plot. However, we have noticed a bit of a dip in player presence between events. Hopefully, that’s just everyone finding their feet in the new setting and figuring out how to tackle the Storm (the metaphorical one… mostly).
Still, if there’s something you want or miss, something that could keep you engaged between events… we're only a PM or a suggestion post away. This community thrives on your ideas and passion, so don’t hold back with feedback or creative pitches!
We call ourselves a “new” DM team not only because of personnel changes, but also because we're deliberately shifting our mindset. We aim to create content that caters to many different playstyles. We all have our DM preferences, sure—but our goal is to welcome everyone. Whether you want difficult, high-stakes quests, light-RP adventures, or tools for personal storytelling, we're working to support it.
Also! Now that I’ve learned how to create loot (fear me), I’m offering a bounty:
Bring a new (or returning) player into the community, and I’ll reward you with either a tailored event or a piece of loot. Yes, really.

“Balladeer, We Know All This Already—Tell Us the New Stuff!”
Alright, alright. Since you asked nicely.
Besides ongoing module tweaks, faction launches, and tons of new plots, here’s a look at what’s in active development:

New Classes & Upgraded PRCs
One new class is nearly finished, with at least two more base classes in the works. We’re also rebalancing our PRCs so that they’re worth taking… no more "I wish I’d just stayed Fighter 10" regrets.
Magic (and Possibly Server Level) Rebalancing
We’re discussing how to slightly increase the magic level in loot and possibly bump the overall server level. It’s still very much a WIP, and we want to get it right—but it’s happening.
New Dungeons, Quests & Explorables
As the Storm eats into the countryside, new areas and content will be revealed. A lot of people are working on this. Prepare your swords, spells, and snack packs.

Also in discussion: player housing, elections, new spells, and greater player agency—but I’ll save updates on those for next time. 😊

A Peek Behind the DM Veil – And How It Helps You
First thing you should know? There’s just a ton of information flowing at all times.
We’ve got:

20+ active discussion channels
17 active plot tickets on Discord
30–40 forum notifications waiting each morning (plus another 20–30 during the day)

This doesn’t include bug reports or non-essential chatter.
So if a DM hasn’t answered your forum message or plot ticket, it's probably not because we're ignoring you—it’s likely just buried. To help us help you, be clear and concise:

In plot tickets, rather than posting many small updates, summarize your recent actions every few days
Clearly state what you’re hoping for next, what help you want or what step you’d like to take

This clarity helps us keep your story moving!
Also, we have very few limits on what you can do IC. Want to be Mayor of Immersea? Kill Lord Mossmere? Build a swamp cult? Become a blackguard warlock philanthropist with extra starter gold? If it’ll be fun for others too, we’re open to it—or we’ll help you tweak it to make it work.
Start by tipping us off in a PM on Discord, and we’ll take it from there.

Lastly, if you’ve ever felt ignored, or thought we kept some sort of “blacklist,” I can tell you from inside the veil: we don’t.
Every complaint is discussed, and every penalty is documented. We judge characters, not players. That policy gave me peace of mind when I joined the team.
And yes… of course I looked up my own name.
First? I searched for what’s really going on with the dream sequences in the Faceless Inn.
Second? I tried to find out what’s really hidden in the depths of Arabel. 😉

If you’ve got a topic or question you’d like me to cover next time, shoot me a PM on Discord and I’ll add it to the list!
Until then: Keep rolling those dice.
—Balladeer

Mr.Moloch

This week I want to talk about the Immersea Plotline and discuss a little more about how we want it go progress just in terms of process. The idea here is visibly increase how much influence players have over the storyline and the setting.

New Players Welcome

According to our data, we've had about 12 new players come into game or Discord to check us out. Let's do all we can to help make players new here feel welcomed, reach out and try to include them in stories and roleplaying. Make sure that on DM events, you try to give the new players some voice and sense of involvement -- its easy to want to dominate on a DM event, but making sure the spotlight hits a new player once in awhile too is going to be a lot healthier for the community to be honest and finding ways to just share the limelight with everyone on an event always works wonders too.

DM team is still willing to buy copies of NWN for any of your friends who want to buy it and try out City of Arabel. We're also still happy to make some cool cosmetic loot items for you if you can do some advertising for us - we're finding that Reddit and Facebook tend to be yielding the most engagement so far. But advertising is key, our player numbers are up almost 25% compared to March.

Immersea Plot

There were three pre-planned events for the storyline; the first was the Temple of the Drowned event where player were able to ask an Oracle three questions about the plot or anything else they wanted to do. That was followed by an effort to recruit Captain Ironbeard, and a third event comes this week.

But more importantly, players are able to suggest their own ideas for what they want to see happen. I can't reveal the spoilers obviously, but these ideas will influence the outcome of the storyline. The more you involve other players, and create fun events for people (even when a DM isn't involved) the more impact those activities will have.

For example, you want to help the pirates win? So maybe you go to the Wyvernwater with a team of allies to explore and look for weapons (found on quests, explorable dungeons, etc) and then your team does this until you feel you've collected 1000 prestige points worth of gear - you could then contact a DM to 'deliver' your gear to the pirates and do some diplomacy to win their support.

I think the biggest thing we want to reward as a DM team has always been players who just do things to keep players having fun with them. Make Sendings to go do adventures, host a player tournament. The more you help engage everyone else around our virtual table, the healthier City of Arabel is!

What's the end game? That's really up to the players involved and what you do, but the team is ready for anything from Immersea is destroyed and reduced to rubble to a player is announced the King of the Wyvernwater and rules over the town directly controlling its future. Its about us helping you tell the stories you want to tell. However, the ramifications of choices made on the three pre-planned events and the different player initiated events will all unfold in a grand finale event that will be announced ahead of time probably coming in the next week (timeline determined by how quick we get to all the players who wanted to try to impact it).

Following up on the New Stuff Balladeer brought up last blog.

New Classes and Upgraded PRCS

One new class is 95% done, mostly getting tested right now. Discussion on rebalancing PRCs is on-going, and will be a lengthy process, we can't even estimate on when that'll be done. We're open to your ideas!
https://forums.cityofarabel.com/topic/67610/new-base-classes-prcs/23

Magic and Rebalancing
Players expressed in the player survey last fall that they wanted a module with more sense of fantasy in terms of roleplaying, and to remain a low-magic server in terms of level range and power of items. But our power balance was all over the place, with many players wielding +50% damage weapons (+d4 damage when average weapon does d8 damage). That made balancing quests very difficult.

The DM team has worked out a new balance, and we'll slowly be introducing these items through shops and quests. This balance roll out already began last month when we moved players back to maximum HP each level, we've begun to rebalance our quests (in order of how often they're done) in terms of both the monsters and the treasures you find there. You'll notice a wider range of gear and treasure over all. That said, if something looks a little too good - ask us just in case we made a mistake. If something seems too rubbish by far - ask us too - we may have made a mistake.

Explaining all of how it'll work will be an entire blog update by itself, coming soonish as more of the changes are rolled out. Finally, on this topic, no, we don't have a firm idea on what we'll do with crafting yet. There's an ongoing discussion because we want the community involved in this. https://forums.cityofarabel.com/topic/68441/discussion-a-future-crafting-system

New Dungeons, Quests, and Explorables

I'm actively working on a new quest once the Immersea stuff is done, many of you have already seen a mysterious tower in the Stormlands; soon you'll be able to both explore it and find a quest inside.

In the last month, we've added three new quests to the Wyvernwater Isles: Stormbreaker Isle specifically. We did revisions to the Sunken Ship quest in Immersea, including a new optional area. You can find our full list of quests here. I should have all the missing Stormhorn quests back in for you to play after we wrap up all the Immersea events.

Signing Off

That's it for this blog, what would you like to see us talk about in the future? This may be an online environment, but the whole DM team wants to make sure it feels like a friendly group around the table-top who can just chat about where we want to see our game going. So feel free to approach us with anything you want to see us cover.