Re: Post on Waste in World Discussion

[Morrolan]

We waste far too much in Arm, and make it obvious that we do by not junking the bits we don't use.  I don't think anything would be wasted, so it's jarring to find parts of animals or unwanted grebbed items laying around (though I've certainly been grateful to find them with new PCs at times!).  I'm not advocating for there being less, just that we should not leave it laying around like it didn't matter to our low-class PCs.

In a discussion over on World Discussion, Refugee pointed out that there's way too much waste in the game. There's simply a lot of "stuff." On the topic of "stuff" and realism, I had three suggestions that I think are worth discussing.

• No more "junk": One of the coolest easy things we could do for Arm's atmosphere would be disabling the "junk" command. The city has middens. We have a "bury" command. I think the ability to make things automatically disappear removes a great opportunity for people to make use of other people's waste.
• Buried by weather: In a similar vein, maybe sandstorm conditions could have a chance to "bury" objects outdoors, at least in certain types of rooms? Make it based on room type, weather type, and size of object?
• Thirdly, corpses: Where corpses currently suddenly disintegrate, I'd love to see the descriptions of the corpse objects devolve like "scribble" text, then eventually becoming a generic-by-race container.

I think these could be fairly beneficial to the atmosphere of Zalanthas. More trash in the cities. Less trash in the wilds. Corpses are dead people, and not just stuff-containers that conveniently disappear.

[RogueGunslinger]

I like points 2 and 3 a lot.

For the first point though, you'd see things start to pile up VERY fast. Hell things already pile up pretty bad. Rocks and feathers everywhere. There's a reason why they stay there and people don't make use of them. They're all 99% useless. If I couldn't go around junking them my OCD might get to me. BUT if there was some way to easily sell off junk items to a vendor for 1-2 'sid a piece, it might solve that problem.

[LauraMars]

I like all these ideas.

However, one of the main problems with all of them is that reboots and crashes will reset any non-save room to its default state - which means any items accumulated there over the period of uptime would be wiped.

[Brytta Léofa]

I like all these ideas.

If #1 is implemented, we need more midden heaps. Or for midden heaps to automatically form somehow, like dung piles. Cleaning out a guild_merchant's old apartment is already pretty crazy.

...What if "junk item" automatically moved it to the nearest garbage heap (in city rooms) or buried it (in the wilderness)?

[KankWhisperer]

Morrolan is obsessed with waste disposal. Even changed the world to reflect it.

[Malifaxis]

I could get behind #1 if midden heaps allowed things to decompose in them.  Basically anything put on the heap would be under the same code effect as the corpse timer.

[The Silence of the Erdlus]

Code Select Expand

A tall ceramic mug slowly sinks into a midden heap, disappearing forever, even if you were to go in after it.

[Delirium]

>forage artifact

[boog]

>forage artifact

You pick up a piece of dried, crusty brown something with a bit of white fuzz on top of it.

[Brytta Léofa]

Killing 100 humanoids in the same room as a midden heap turns it from an artifact repository into an artifact repository.

[Morrolan]

Morrolan is obsessed with waste disposal. Even changed the world to reflect it.

This is accurate. Now I can go through your trash. 

[Jave]

• No more "junk": One of the coolest easy things we could do for Arm's atmosphere would be disabling the "junk" command. The city has middens. We have a "bury" command. I think the ability to make things automatically disappear removes a great opportunity for people to make use of other people's waste.

We'd need to be able to do something else with the mugs we IC'ly gave back to the bartender at the bar, but OOC'ly junked. Or any other situation where objects can spawn infinitely.

[Saellyn]

Maybe make the mug a disposable item? Once you drink it, it's gone type deal?

[Beethoven]

Oh, but the junk command is wonderful. Please never take it away.

It's great for

- getting rid of excess food spawned by server NPCs
- being stolen from by VNPCs
- voluntarily giving things to VNPCs
- giving things to NPCs (like the bartender mentioned in Jave's example) who would not be able to hold everyone's items if the "give" command were used
- destroying/burning things like written documents
- getting rid of duplicates spawned by crash bugs and the like
- clumsily breaking things with your fat half-giant fingers

...AND MORE!

[Delirium]

- destroying/burning things like written documents

please don't actually do this unless it's:
- something that you messed up OOCly and want to re-write (i.e. your own stuff)
- something that you've copied down elsewhere in better formatting and credited the original author

Ruining someone else's contribution to the history of the game is in really poor form, wish up to staff to have them remove it from play instead.

[Beethoven]

I meant my own. I was thinking of a person burning things they have written that might implicate them.

[Delirium]

I meant my own. I was thinking of a person burning things they have written that might implicate them.

Even so, I'm of the mind it's best to hand it off to staff instead of remove it entirely. Junked writing is lost forever.

[Beethoven]

Guess we'll just have to disagree. I didn't mind my writing being lost forever the one time I'm talking about and I'd do it just the same way again. I'd pretty much make any flimsy excuse not to destroy someone else's writing, but my own? It's fair game, and I don't see the point in handing it off to staff if I'm ICly destroying it. It's not coming back IG anyway. I can tell them what it said in a character report if they want to know.

Lots of things in this game are lost to time, and I don't mind making the decision to destroy my own writing IG, if there's an IC reason for it. In fact, I kind of appreciate the transience of it.

[Saellyn]

Lots of history is lost to the hatred of others. If it happens for an IC reason, then it is entirely IC to destroy somebody elses work.

[Delirium]

Lots of history is lost to the hatred of others. If it happens for an IC reason, then it is entirely IC to destroy somebody elses work.

Right...

But you can destroy it ICly, and let staff keep it OOCly for game history reference.

[Nergal]

It's true, we do have pages on our staff wiki that are used to preserve works of writing. So much of the game's history is player-recorded and it regularly gets referenced when responding to players' questions about history, when their PCs have the virtual resources to do research. There was one such request made recently that this cache of information proved really useful to resolve.

With that though, I'd like to steer the discussion back around the original topic.

[The Silence of the Erdlus]

I like having mugs in the bars. They give atmosphere.

[not_really_mean]

Removing the junk command: This doesn't seem like a good idea. I agree that cities should be dirtier, but I'd just as soon see random junk spawn every now and again. You could even have a waste pile where grebbers can turn in junk for a few coins.  The junk command itself is waaaay too useful for reasons like the ones outlined by Beethoven.

Having things buried with the weather:  I like this idea. In a sandstorm anything dropped should be gone/buried in just a few minutes.

Decaying corpses:  I like this idea too because it gives an idea as to how old a corpse is.  Rather than have it decay like scribble however I'd like to see additional descriptors added.  E.g the bloated corpse of the dead elf is here.   The rotting corpse of the dead elf is here. The desiccated corpse of the dead elf is here.  Etc...

[roobee]

It's true, we do have pages on our staff wiki that are used to preserve works of writing. So much of the game's history is player-recorded and it regularly gets referenced when responding to players' questions about history, when their PCs have the virtual resources to do research. There was one such request made recently that this cache of information proved really useful to resolve.

With that though, I'd like to steer the discussion back around the original topic.

Wait, how do we access this history? It sounds very interesting.

[The Silence of the Erdlus]

I'm finding meat just laying in the sands when I ride out, although frankly this could be some single newbie's doing.