Our focus is on immersive roleplaying within a frontier area of the Silver Marches, in the Forgotten Realms.
To that end, we aim to enable our characters to do what that character wants to do, beyond the scope of what most modern MMO's and even other NWN persistent worlds provide. This might mean changing or adding game systems, or more importantly, allowing players to directly alter the world around them, and ascend to positions usually reserved for NPCs.
No grinding
There is no grind for coin, equipment or XP. You start out at level 8, allowing a far larger scope of character choices from the start, and (slowly) gain advancement simply by playing. Your character is a combat-inept scholar? Good - you're not forced to grind, ever.
Alter the world and become a person of importance
In most online play, players are assumed to be adventurers or swords-for-hire and NPCs are usually an afterthought, often ignored in roleplay, as is the rest of the world.
In contrast, you can certainly play an adventurer on silm.pw if that's your concept - but we are not nearly as limited, and your character's power over the world is measured by more than combat prowess or friends among player characters alone.
Some examples of extraordinary characters and their deeds we've had in the past:
- The Wardens of the Road
A ranger-like organisation watching over the wilderlands. They built a keep as their base and watchtowers, and partook in the defense and government of the Fork, thus wielding far more than just the personal combat power of their characters - The White Dragon Mercantile Company
A trade coster exporting steel, wood and foodstuffs from the surrounding lands. They own a warehouse at the Fork, an iron mine, and part of Arnkeep, a small castle near Arn Forest. Their leader might be significantly underpowered in combat proficiency, but wields significant influence over the Fork's economy - and quite a few NPC mercenaries. - The Academy of the Arts
An academy teaching a great number of subjects, from magecraft to artistry to reading and writing for the Fork's children. One of the two archmages in control of the academy is even one of the Silver Throne's heralds, and they command both great respect, and several NPC mages and constructs at the academy itself.
- The Wardens of the Road
Aside from such outstanding figures we've also had simple folk with homes and shops they've mapped themselves, city guards, argent legionnaires, stonemasons with their own quarry, blacksmiths and brewers, and a somewhat crazy witch living in a hut in undead-infested Ghostwood.
Be what you want to be.
Change the rules
The game rules don't allow a proper representation of your character concept?
Change them!
We encourage anyone willing to create entirely new rules to better match how they envision their character, and we are actively reworking existing ones to offer more flexibility in character building. This ranges from merely adding a new spell over cleric domains, feats, or entirely new base or prestige classes.
Build your own areas
NWN has one of the greatest creation toolsets shipped with the core game - to quote one of the original designers, they wanted a software "even your grandma can use", and they've done fairly well. To top that,we've built a web-interface that allows you to just drag and drop your creation onto the server. Changes are available immediately, no server restart required, and no complicated procedure where an admin needs to manually import your area first. Need a house? Map one, upload it. Need to add a workshop to the house or just move the furniture? Do so in the toolset, upload it, done.
You can see the interface here.
Anything you see ingame can be modified this way - making world building not just a matter for DMs, but for everyone, with the ease of creating a new wiki page.
Other features
Character customisation
Character disguises & appearance system. Editable descriptions, displayed properties, player height (with ingame scaling!), models, colours, and so on.
Pretty web application for player & character management.
- Live character sheets, level details.
- Private chatlogs & session history.
- Join & leave notifications (w/ sounds) for players should they want it (also available: XMPP/Jabber Telegram bot).
One-click Launcher application
.. that will keep you updated with the minimal amount of fuss or bandwidth requirements. No more manual hak downloads whenever custom content changes. Just run the launcher, and it will automatically update local files and connect to the server.