Work System

To offer an alternate means of earning an income besides an adventuring lifestyle, players have the option of using the @work command. It is used any time your character should have income from regular employment, whether it's as city guard, scribe, landlord, dogwalker, and so on. While it won't make you rich, it's safe and the amounts earned slowly increase with time and use.

How does it work?

A way for characters to earn a small amount of coin and XP, when not adventuring. Any NPC may be selected for this (from the named barkeep, to the generic nobleman...). Your work location is also locked in, going more than one screen away during a shift causes forfeiture of wages (ending the shift one screen away, will still net full pay). As does wearing the wrong clothes at the end of your shift (you may technically hop into another outfit mid shift, so long as you return to the uniform before it ends).

They will slowly earn more as they perform more shifts for a single employer.

• Selected none: Brings up information, and if "@work WORD" sets your job description for DM logs to specify WORD.
• Selected NPC: Assign boss, must be repeated to confirm (as it resets your pay level). It also locks in a uniform that may not be changed.
• Selected self: Begins 60 minute shift.

Idealy your job should be something your character would be interested in doing when not adventuring, even working the inn to pay for room and board. It's meant to add a small layer of imersion, not demean anyone.

Suggestions:

1. Do not use armor for your work uniform. Sooner or later you will find a better set. Whereas clothing can be retailored without problems.
2. Be inventive. Any one employer might have a hundred tasks to be done within the radius (meaning working for an unnamed nobleman in Sarshel, you can explore a good chunk of the city).
3. Never fear abandoning a shift. The point of the game is RP.

Conditions

Your character is expected to be active when @work is applied. Emoting using text, moving around the work-area count towards this. Since @work is not a substitute for being AFK, your character is checked for AFK-ness every 6 minutes.

If he has been active, coin is added to the purse. If not, then nothing is earned. If you've been active for 10 checks without stopping @work (but not necessarily in a row), your character makes an attribute roll to see if bonus coin is added to his total. Depending on your luck there, it usually takes 2-3 hours to reach your daily cap, which starts at 30 cp and increases with a further 3 cp per @work level. The system should allow you to move one area away from your @work place, although there have been cases reported of this not working.

Leveling Up Work

Characters will gradually level up their @work skill so they can make more than 30 cp/day, but mainly the taxes they pay are priced according to their means. We only use a fixed sum for characters so they can be bought without DM intervention and thorough review of character's revenues. You can sleep in the wilds, do not need to eat or drink or buy clothes etc., and so they can make up to 2700 cp in a game year.

For the Civilian/Non-Adventurer Character

Here's a little maths. If you want to use the system as your only source of income and skip dungeoneering, you'll have earned about 10000 cp in the first six months (and 134 torntar in 30 years). Dungeoneering goes a lot quicker, of course, but there is also the high risk that puts you in line for 10000 cp for your restoration.

Since most players won't put in the time to grind @work, this a system which can offer a few coins safely when they've nothing better to do (e.g. they're waiting for a party to form so they can adventure, so might as well pick up a few coins on the side) or had a lot of misfortune and can't afford to go adventuring anymore (basically, it's a safety net).

Future Improvements and Intentions

The @work system is by no means perfect.

Improvements such as more flexibility in what constitutes a work area, higher earnings and a more engaging roleplay experience during @work are some of the things the team is looking to implement in the future.

Forum Post Regarding Work

There are three main things we want from the work system.

- It should let you make some coin safely

- It should give you the freedom to pick your own job

- It should make it easy to find you for character interactions

We don't want it to compete with adventuring, because there's not much reason to take chances if it's easy to get rich. It's primarily a way to scrape together some resources when you're down on your luck and heading out is too dangerous, or something characterful to do in your downtime which gives you a little extra.

The system as it stands is not particularly exciting. We'd be able to give you more tailored events and challenges by focusing more on specific and popular tasks like running a delivery, waiting tables or helping out the blacksmith. But that's also going to funnel everyone into the same few activities as it takes a lot of resources to properly add performing, hawking wares, tending the sick, patrolling the city and anything else people will come up with. So it's deliberately abstract to give players maximum freedom.

The main limitation's that you're restricted by area. That's because giving you a fixed location means people can learn where you hang out and look for you there. The work requires you to check in every 5 or so minutes if you want to maximize your pay so you don't leave people hanging if they do show up to interact. A lot of the 'low reward' experience comes from being afk through most of it, although as said above, it'll never be a major moneymaker. The xp reward also comes in here. It was intended to be an encouragement for people to work together and hang out, as that's more interesting than having everyone hide in their own corner.

I think there's no question that things could be more engaging or rewarding, particularly with the new possibilities added with NWN:EE. Somewhere down the line we'd like to do an overhaul that gives more to do while working, even if it's just something like an abstract minigame. That should also make it easier to get the full reward for your time.

XP is probably not something we'd reimplement, although we could make an exception for civilian levels. The reason for that is that xp mostly contributes to combat prowess. We'd like to develop different sets of numbers that can go up instead, whether that's tied to your wages and skill levels, your standing with the guilds and their item/crafting access, or your town's overall level of prosperity and its associated service levels. It's not going to be a priority at the moment, however. -Loreweaver