Ideas for Content to Add to the Game

[Nao]

I'd still like to see some sort of pawn shop that sells random, craftable items that aren't clan-restricted. Make the number limited and change the items at every reboot. You'd have a way to discover new recipes that isn't free and preserves the secrecy. Since there is a large number of craftable items in the database, an item that is available in one week would be unlikely to show up again anytime soon.

[Riev]

I still feel like "Content" was meant more in terms of lore, places to explore, and content to discover and interact with, as opposed to "bathroom code" and "logging in as a ghost".

Content that has yet to be explored, or content that can be repeated for a couple years until people get tired of it and it can be recycled into something else. I'll dungeon dive time after time if every so often it leads me to an "ancient" tagged breastplate that is no different from other breastplates.

[Eyeball]

How about a "death test" for soldiers and mercenaries. You go into a ruins with the goal being to live to emerge from the other side, after having to fight through various foes. What is the reward? Status, with some sort of marker (medal or whatever) that can be worn to indicate that *you* were tough enough to survive. Certain employers might even get into the habit of requiring survival of the death test before taking on new employees, or might start such new employees at a higher rank.

[Riev]

That is something you can KIND of already do in game. Its called "Surviving a year in the Byn and getting a Sergeant to ADMIT to it". Its a good idea, but doesn't really add "content" to the game.

Insurgents. Warriors from another area of the Unknown World. Pirates from across the Silt Sea. Earthquakes opening up areas near the Conclave, re-allowing access. A race of underground dwarves who have mutated to have hair crop up in the middle of the Red.

Something that just gives a new angle beyond "Guess the gith are attacking again".

[AdamBlue]

Time for it to rain for thirty days and thirty nights, and to wash away the cities and return the world to naught but tribes, with fragments of Allanaki loyalists attempting to rebuild their city?

[Riev]

Time for it to rain for thirty days and thirty nights, and to wash away the cities and return the world to naught but tribes, with fragments of Allanaki loyalists attempting to rebuild their city?

For the sake of discussion? Kinda, though this situation would give players far too much agency. What makes Arm work (regardless of how I disagree) is that there are set limitations. The docs may say you can "do anything" or "be whatever you want to be", but there are hard stops. There are sorcerer kings who are so far above you, their lackeys' lackeys' lackey MIGHT be bothered to deal with you. There are raiders, there are clans of thieves, there are people whose social and political power are so far above what any player might achieve that the world is generally going to be unchanged.

If we went back to a square one, every player would be Minecrafting their own settlements and while that WOULD be interesting for a time, it would become text-based Ark, and FAR too much building work for staff.

[TheWanderer]

Goddamn. I feel like I'm not on the same wavelength with 90% of this community. I can't help but scratch my head at the amount of unnecessary stuff people ask for, too. It's -technically- content, like in the same way a cosmetic pack is -technically- content, but... not my idea of useful content. I feel like there are other types of content currently more needed.

I get that there's not going to be another HRPT this decade (if ever), and that this has been repeated for 5+ years, but load up some resources to fight over. Just let players fight over something universally sought by parties far and wide, and keep animations of red robes and shit to a minimum.

I dunno. Whatever. Y'all do you.

[Delirium]

We asked for that in the big things thread.

This is the little silly things thread.

edit: oh, wait, no it isn't. So yeah, uh, we asked for those things!

Give us "dungeon crawls" and resources and etc, absolutely. We've gotten some of those recently and they are great!

[Cind]

A magick maze that is -always- random whenever it pops up but is hard-coded to have two solutions--- one with a small treasure and one with a big. Baddies would be guarding the treasure so that Yolo the burglar dwarf would not be able to bypass all the spiders to get to one. I'm trying to elaborate on Delirium's idea.

Bring drovians or subguild drovians back, and they'd have a new spell that specifically tells you clues about the new treasure. This would be linked to code that already exists about the item, when valued with 'assess.' "Its made of stone/wood/metal, it weighs such and such." I don't know, I'm sure that's assess. But you'd be able to tell as a commoner if it were metal because the people would be up in arms over it. This would help keep drovians useful to the templarate, if their spying skills were removed.

The entrance could be opened one of six or seven ways, always the same seven ways. For example, maybe you need to be a master lockpicker and unlock five locks. Maybe the entrance is guarded by a mekillot who never leaves the room, an entrance which will not open until the mekillot is defeated. The rest of the ways in would not be usable by people other than master mages and Templars, to facilitate clan roleplay. You would hear a bell gong across the flats two RL days before the maze rises from the salt, so that people could prepare.

Naturally this makes the maze sound like a magick-powered one and it is. This would prevent every dick and jane from waiting at the entrance to get in because fuck Allanak.

[Potaje]

More development with the far reaches of the silt sea would be cool. perhaps even new civilizations and exotic lands to explore there.

[Large Hero]

As several others have asked for, resources for players to conflict over, such as:

* rare crafting/building materials
* small settlements of people, without a Sand Lord / Highlord / giant business interests; let players conflict over the fate of these small settlements. Should they be protected? Exploited? Enslaved?
* "dungeon crawls"

It would be cool if these things just appeared on a small, "one-shot plot" scale, and weren't large projects representing a huge investment of staff time. Less like "the Big Summer Plot will be a meteor that falls from the sky and it's a big deal and this is a months-long thing and clans negotiate over it and the sponsored roles involved will file many requests trying to talk to their superiors."

More like, "shifting sands reveal an old tunnel in the Shield Wall. Past some dangers within there's a small piece of metal. After a group clears the tunnel, the sands swallow it again."

And whatever happens to that bit of metal, happens. Characters will die. It will change hands, organically, without staff micromanagement necessary, until some sponsored role gets hold of it and either makes a special item out of it, or passes it up the chain to their VNPC superiors.

Which would be a fine result! The game will have churned a bit. And then another similar place can be discovered, with different challenges and rewards.

[Large Hero]

Seems like a good place to plug this again:

I like this. I also sometimes run into awkwardness when I use think and feel.

How about this idea? It's from another mud.

internal (message)
This form of emote allows you to emote internal thoughts, feelings, memories, etc.

examples:

internal dice and games, drink and spice. @ fondly remember the time ~amos and ~woman danced the night away at Luirsfest. Happier days.

player sees (assuming amos and 'woman' are in the room):

Dice and games, drink and spice. You fondly remember the time the tall, muscular man and the mohawked woman danced the night away at Luirsfest. Happier days.

internal wonder if #me should tell ~templar about that theft.

You wonder if you should tell the ravishing, raven-haired woman about that theft.


Everything we can do now with think and feel would be possible with internal, as well as this 'wonder' idea, and other things besides.

[Delirium]

As several others have asked for, resources for players to conflict over, such as:

* rare crafting/building materials
* small settlements of people, without a Sand Lord / Highlord / giant business interests; let players conflict over the fate of these small settlements. Should they be protected? Exploited? Enslaved?
* "dungeon crawls"

It would be cool if these things just appeared on a small, "one-shot plot" scale, and weren't large projects representing a huge investment of staff time. Less like "the Big Summer Plot will be a meteor that falls from the sky and it's a big deal and this is a months-long thing and clans negotiate over it and the sponsored roles involved will file many requests trying to talk to their superiors."

More like, "shifting sands reveal an old tunnel in the Shield Wall. Past some dangers within there's a small piece of metal. After a group clears the tunnel, the sands swallow it again."

And whatever happens to that bit of metal, happens. Characters will die. It will change hands, organically, without staff micromanagement necessary, until some sponsored role gets hold of it and either makes a special item out of it, or passes it up the chain to their VNPC superiors.

Which would be a fine result! The game will have churned a bit. And then another similar place can be discovered, with different challenges and rewards.

[Akaramu]

Whenever I hear 'dungeon crawl' I think of the final Ratsucker RPT. Which was awesome. 

So absolutely yes, please!

[sleepyhead]

You know what would be cool? A 'rigging' crafting skill that literally everyone gets. All it can do, basically, is tie things to other things. Really shoddy makeshift stuff that no actual crafter would want anything to do with.

I think it's pretty silly, for example, that Kurac are the only ones who can tie a glow-crystal to a strap. Anyone should be able to do that sort of thing. You can give something else to Kurac, like longer-lasting crystals. Give people the ability to make basic survivalist stuff, kind of like "break" can make a really shitty weapon out of a bottle. There could be all sorts of horrid shoddy crafts associated, with a high chance of failure. It'd be a great immersive way to RP trying to fend for yourself as you crawl your way back to civilization after you've been robbed of everything!

P.S. No selling this stuff to NPCs, of course.

[lostinspace]

Similar to the new hack skill, I think it would be awesome to have a skill that blinded an opponent for a short duration, similar to bash/disarm in use, but for assassin or stealth combat classes.
It would make the blind fighting skill more valuable, and could even be less effective against opponents with sunslits.

>pocket sand big.strong
>You throw a fistful of course dirt into the big strong man's eyes. Sha Sha Sha!

[sleepyhead]

I love the dirt toss idea, but I think it should be coupled with coded blindfolds so that people aren't tempted to use it on their buddies to train blind fighting. Blindfolds would of course have their own associated RP opportunities!

[Delirium]

I'm gonna guess a lot of people are thinking 'rawrr' but really I just wanna be able to kidnap somebody.

[sleepyhead]

I'm gonna guess a lot of people are thinking 'rawrr' but really I just wanna be able to kidnap somebody.

Rawrr didn't even cross my mind, just kidnapping and (non-sexy) initiation sort of things.

[Delirium]

I said it in another thread, but I would love to see more dangers and inconveniences in the wilderness that aren't "go 10 rooms out of your way" and "hey mean critter". Biting flies, poisonous plants, natural traps (see: poisonous plants), more poisonous critters in general, especially lurking near watering holes, coded illnesses beyond Krath's Touch and Scrub Fever, and more poisons in general - not deadly or even particularly severe, but debilitating all the same.

I'm imagining a hunter stumbling home with bug-bites and the sweats because he went to a watering hole, which, sure, has water, but is also a breeding ground for flies. He isn't gonna pass out but he's gonna feel extra thirsty for a few days unless he gets treated, and he's going to get frequent itchy echos unless he salves those bug bites with something.

As it is, wilderness people just bop from oasis to oasis and never buy water, it's not remotely an expense or danger.

[sleepyhead]

Yes and yes! I have always wished, for example, that Ivory-Salt sickness wasn't just virtual. It's rarely even mentioned in-game despite the south being full of PC salters. I know it's a tough balance to strike because a lot of things would just amount to annoyances that you have to wait off, but I'm sure there's a way to make such things playable.

[Cind]

Yes, it seems that, at least a few years ago when I salted regularly, all you really needed was to keep covered and hydrated and not be an elf and most of the time you wouldn't even get touch. Salting has enough dangers, but you could just keep to the right portions of the edge and be aware and you literally would not have a problem most of the time. Enough scrabs and scorpions to keep you from making a thread about it, though. That's probably why they added the scorpions a few years back.

I dunno if I said this, but a crafting hall in Allanak where you could buy raw materials, make them into armor, clothing or weapons, and then sell them to another guy in a room over like with cloth in Storm, except the money would just be passable and you wouldn't be a protected employee. It'd just be a way to be a dirt-grubbing crafter where you wouldn't have to play during peak to get materials. The unemployed crafter presence in Allanak is basically nil, you get more aides at the bar on a daily basis.

[Cind]

It would be simple to come up with a couple more games, especially cheaper ones, I'm thinking a three to six sid bet for each dice roll/card shuffle, what have you. It would be pretty simple to come up with and hopefully code games like this, or simple transfer the game in Storm or the one(s?) in Luir's over to a 'gaming den' in Allanak, perhaps the one that exists in Red's but doesn't have actually coded gambling right now.

Like, for example, a form of Zalanthan blackjack where you play Whira's Luck against the dealer. It costs four sids to receive your card, and you can pay three sids to exchange it for a different card once. If you win, you get ten sids. It should be balanced in favor of the House, as the dealer without charge can choose between his own original card and a second without needing to throw the first card away first (mentioned each bet in an automated emote,) which will always give him the advantage.

A shop where you can buy stills and the ingredients for two simple, low-quality ale brew recipes. Perhaps Oash could sell it.

Code Select Expand

Perhaps players could choose when to become sick, with a variety of ailments.

>sickness

These are the illnesses you can add codedly to your character, for a time:

Krath's Touch     Salt Sickness    Light Injury
Light Food Poisoning    That One Sickness

>sickness light food poisoning

>You eat a bite of the food, and begin to feel ill.

>sickness krath's touch

>You begin to perspire heavily.

>sickness light injury

>You are already ill with other ailments.



[ghanima]

No more new skills, subguilds, or anything coded. Nothing. Instead, add stories. That's the real content this game desperately needs.

Shift one of the noble houses up or down. Close one that is open, flesh out an NPC house with documentation and open it for play. Destroy a section of Allanak such that it is exposed and vulnerable and requires rebuilding. Make use of the unappreciated goldmine that is NPC Tuluk with animations. Destroy something and when it's gone replace it with something new (something in a public, heavily populated region, not a remote area). Run an HRPT.

To me this is what is meant by content. I'm sure all the new coded additions you see lately are a lot of fun to experiment with, but they don't really add anything to Zalanthas. In a game where characters must have a minimum of four lines for a description, storytelling is everything. When we talk about adding content, stories should be at the top of the list. Everything else is secondary.

[boog]

The noble houses should be a thing, I totally agree, ghanima. I think that shifting due to PC actions or inaction was a truly brilliant facet of Tuluk.

It would give Allanaki nobles something to work towards, for, or whatever. So many of them grow stagnant and boring because they really don't have a way to get better, or to make their house fail or fall. And that's just kinda shitty. There are only so many types of parties you can throw and normie PCs you can behead with a flick of your fingers before you become redundant.