Meet the Team, Vol. I

Greetings and happy Friday!

As some may have noted, we had taken a short break from our usual Wednesday contributions. There has been some work that, unfortunately, took precedence. However! We return to you with a new series of entries these next few weeks.

Over the next few weeks we will be interviewing members of the MMO team, and getting glimpse inside what is going on with them. Some of the information will be completely new to our current members of the community as a good many of the team are pretty old members who haven't gotten to play with the rest of us in a good long while! Others have been able to sneak in from time to time but you really don't know much about them. So today we feature a brief interview with Pankoki who has recently resurfaced in the NWN version of Layo.

rowana: So first, and welcome to generalize a little if you like... How old are you?

Pankoki: I JUST TURNED 27 WOOO

rowana: Congrats! And where abouts do you live mister 27?

Pankoki: Currently living in Chicago Illinois

rowana: Can you tell us a little about who you've played in Layonara and perhaps a fun memory/event?

Pankoki: Well for the grand majority of time I've played as Triba, a to tall for a halfling ranger/scout/thug/dancer with a far too loose tongue.

Pankoki: A fun memory event... I think definitely one of the cooler events that I've been a part of has to be the Bloodstone finale. I think the energy that you could feel coming from everyone that day and the excitement of being put against such insurmountable odds and coming through the other side was just awesome. Add to that the fact that my little character gets to be the one to stab him in the back and make him vulnerable to damage, and well, its just cool. The whole thing was surreal, sad, and exciting at once.

rowana: Oh, good memory, hehe!

Pankoki: Hehe, definitely something I would not have imagined when I first joined here for sure.

rowana: Layo is good for that kind of thing, I think!

Pankoki: Yep

rowana: Alright, so on to the future of Layonara here. Can you tell some about what you do generally for the MMO team?

Pankoki: My duties on the MMO have been a little bit diverse. At first, my sole task was world definition. Basically what that involved was coming up with the equivalent of a Monster Manual for Layonara, so it included not only the flavor description each creature might have, but also their mechanical behavior. For a good while that was my sole focus. After that I had the very scary task of defining the gameplay mechanics of our new game. We couldn't use a D20 system, so we had to come up with a whole new structure of our own, and that was my job! That basically went from simple things as what attributes define a character all the way to making all the gazillion spells we have. That is of course always a work in progress and will remain so for the duration of the game. But in addition to that now I am currently working on Special Effects for all the many abilities and spells in game and Creature/Encounter balance

rowana: That is quite a plateful and probably eats a lot of time! So with all of that in mind, do you have much in the way of free time?If so, what are you doing with it?

Pankoki: Well, after DMing and doing a lot of things for NWN Layonara, one thing I've learned is that I can definitely 24/7 to one task and get it done rather well. But its not healthy. So now I kinda force on myself some free time to not get overwhelmed or burn out. So for the most parts, I leave my nights free to do whatever. Of course that usually means playing video games, which range anything from playing Go Fish in Yahoo to sampling other MMO's out there (I played WoW for a lengthy amount of time and unlike most roleplayers that have lots of icky things to say about that, I actually had loads of fun there), and of course, playing or DMing in Layo.

rowana: As a player, I must say, I am delighted to see even a partial return to DMing. Will we get to see a return to a series somewhat like the DoA [Dawn of Ages] set or will you be keeping the questing fairly impromptu? Maybe something in between?

Pankoki: Hehe, I would -love- to run the big epic and world altering series I used to be known for. I don't have as much time as I used to though, no more 9 hour quest sessions for me I fear! So something in between for sure. But don't worry, knowing how masochistic my questers get to be, I imagine that it'll send similar ripples. Plots are being planned! Be wary!

rowana: Oh good! Well I think that will do it! Thank you very much for your time Panpan!

We hope you enjoyed this treat from the MMO team. Next week another interview!

~row, on behalf of the writing team