Content and creation

[number13]

Love the idea of item and room bios...everything should be able to have a bio attached to it.

Even better if we can read those bios somehow without being a psion.

[teacup]

Farming
This idea has two parts, first the crops and then playability. The intent is to bring Farming to Armageddon.

Crops:
Wheat: Presently we have flour IG and Staff have said there are wheat plants that select Clan(s) have access to harvesting and grinding. I think this happens in Red Storm. Yaroch is known to be one a crop-growing village around Allanak but the info doc-wise on just what those crops are is super ambiguous but from what I have seen IG the general consensus seems to be 'wheat' because of food and stuff. Wheat isn't sold in Allanak unless a PC sells it to the local grocery. Some clans have wheat available in their Clan Kitchens, though. To get a sack of flour you have to go to Red Storm or Morin's in the north. The massive sacks are only in Red Storm.

Wheat grows best in loam soil which is soil composed mostly of sand, silt, and a smaller amount of clay. Wheat thrives in 70-75F/21-24C but not much hotter than that or it dies. Wheat requires 12-15 inches of water via rainfall a season to produce a viable crop.

Flax Flax is what is required to make linen and canvas. Flax is not presently IG as a raw plant that is forageable or cultivated. Flax also makes grain/flour, fiber for ropes, oil for furniture, instruments, painting, and sealants as well as  used in many ancient medicines.

Flax should be planted in poor and barren earth. Sand and clay contribute to the best growth. It does best in temperatures of 50-80F/10-27C until the blooming stage and then hot, dry weather is best for threshing and drying the straw. Watering the growing flax plant is usually not necessary, as the plant prefers dry, sandy ground.

Cotton Cotton is what is required to make the cloth cotton. Cotton plants exist IG only in Tuluk which is closed for play. Virtual supplies of cotton randomly pop up around Luir's on occasion and are known to also come from a northern tribe which virtually grows a type of cotton and may or may not trade in it if you can locate their camp. Cotton parts (bolls) are craftable into yarn that can then be woven with a loom into a length of cotton by those with clothworking skills, no clanning required.

Cotton prefers a sandy loam, which is silt and clay that contains some sand. Loamy sand contains some silt and clay. Cotton prefers 70-100F/21-37C temperatures. An individual cotton plant requires about 10 gallons of water to achieve maximum yield potential.

Playability:
Geography and World Fit
-Wheat doesn't make the best sense being in Red Storm or Yaroch, it makes better sense in the north where the temperatures, in theory, are lesser given the Grey Forest hasn't burned off.
-Flax makes the most sense for being in the south and being the grain producer via crop growth.
-Cotton doesn't really make sense even in the north given the extensive amount of water a single cotton plant requires. If not for the heat, it would make more sense produced by a House that can either provide a ton of water by natural sources or unnatural sources.

Jobs and Economy
-If wheat was a viable crop accessible in the north, where geographically it fits better, it would give PCs an opportunity to either earn a small amount of coin harvesting a crop, working a mill to grind grain for the 'farm', or pay to take away the plant or the grain they grind for a modicum fee. They could then effectively be a miller as an independent job and not just 'go to Storm and buy a sack to sell with markup' but could sell the sack that they made and make a better profit. On the flipside, maybe there's still dangers in this half-wild wheatcrop and so the farmer needs a guard or something and that would give yet another job opportunity to an independent mercenary or even the Byn.
-If flax was added to the south in Yaroch as an accessible crop, like wheat above, it would create job opportunities for farmers, crafters, and combatants. It would also create further opportunities for the flax-plants to be harvested and sold to the necessary clans that are documented to make linen to then buy the plants and actually make their cloth. It would create for said clans a role or job of a weaver as a crafter. It could then open up opportunities to make gradients of linen such as canvas for painting and canvas for skimmers and stuff.
-I super agree that cotton should be pretty rare at this point and northern, because of the water consumption for a crop big enough to produce a useful quantity. I still would support having bolls in that tribal camp and documented more clearly which tribe, and a vague idea of where, so that it would create a job of hiring someone to hoof it out there, make the purchase through dangerous terrain, and deliver it to those seeking.

Craft and Skills
-Farming Skill but available to all like drawing is with variable caps based on Guild or Subguild. Farming skill would allow for some farming crafts or work like a form of forage. It could open up opportunities to plant and grow some small plants or tubers in apartments or something, too. Or even for tribes with permanent home locations.
-Crafts in terms of wheat and flax individually: harvesting, making grain, bagging grain (or sacking it up). For flax specifically: processing the plant (drying it), de-seeding to then work into oil, processing the dried plant by 'retting' it, further processing it through 'breaking', 'braking', 'swingling', 'scutching', and the 'hackling' it to spin it into yarn and thread, then there could crafts for weaving it into linen or canvas, and then one to like bleach it similar to how cotton is handled that way. Making cloth isn't the end all here. Flax can be made to make grain, make linseed oil, used as a raw plant or cooked plant in dishes, used in medicine, and more.

[Brokkr]

Off the top of my head, wheat plants are mentioned or existing in at least two locations in the game world, one of which is moderately well known.

[Gypsy]

Off the top of my head, wheat plants are mentioned or existing in at least two locations in the game world, one of which is moderately well known.

Yes, as Teacup mentioned.

I too would like to see such content as farming and proper clothmaking available.

Also I would like to see tattooing added similar to drawing as a possible skill and more capabilities to create fluids as a craft and with mastercrafting, be they alcohol or not. Winemaking and distilling as example.

[Lizzie]

Tattooing working like drawing creates a pretty big problem. Not everyone spells well, not everyone describes things well, and not everyone understands the intricacies of sentence structure. Not everyone has to.

When you're drawing, it's on a piece of parchment, or doodling on the sidewalk. The code causes the sidewalk drawing to fade, and parchment can be tucked into a closet or discarded, never to be seen again.

A tattoo will be on the person you draw it on until that PC ceases to exist. A good drawing can be made into a disaster with a badly written description. For that reason I'm glad it doesn't work similarly to drawings. I don't think anyone should be able to put a description on anyone ELSE...unless there's a way to get it through quality control before it's made permanent.

[Barsook]

Maybe temp tattoos instead?

[Helloworld]

Tattooing working like drawing creates a pretty big problem. Not everyone spells well, not everyone describes things well, and not everyone understands the intricacies of sentence structure. Not everyone has to.

When you're drawing, it's on a piece of parchment, or doodling on the sidewalk. The code causes the sidewalk drawing to fade, and parchment can be tucked into a closet or discarded, never to be seen again.

A tattoo will be on the person you draw it on until that PC ceases to exist. A good drawing can be made into a disaster with a badly written description. For that reason I'm glad it doesn't work similarly to drawings. I don't think anyone should be able to put a description on anyone ELSE...unless there's a way to get it through quality control before it's made permanent.

This would lead to a hierarchy of PC tattoo artistry, some being better than others. Which is good no? I'm not sure how drawing work IG but the fact that they're permanent and therefore you want them to be of good quality doesn't seem to me to be strong criticism of the idea. Unless I've misunderstood your meaning?

[Pew Pew]

I think it would be hilarious and cool to have PC's be able to tattoo like draw. Imagine going to someone who is "world famous" and have a "No Regerts" moment lol.

[Lizzie]

Tattooing working like drawing creates a pretty big problem. Not everyone spells well, not everyone describes things well, and not everyone understands the intricacies of sentence structure. Not everyone has to.

When you're drawing, it's on a piece of parchment, or doodling on the sidewalk. The code causes the sidewalk drawing to fade, and parchment can be tucked into a closet or discarded, never to be seen again.

A tattoo will be on the person you draw it on until that PC ceases to exist. A good drawing can be made into a disaster with a badly written description. For that reason I'm glad it doesn't work similarly to drawings. I don't think anyone should be able to put a description on anyone ELSE...unless there's a way to get it through quality control before it's made permanent.

This would lead to a hierarchy of PC tattoo artistry, some being better than others. Which is good no? I'm not sure how drawing work IG but the fact that they're permanent and therefore you want them to be of good quality doesn't seem to me to be strong criticism of the idea. Unless I've misunderstood your meaning?

You've misunderstood my meaning. This is a -text- game. Our characters aren't reading text. They are seeing a visual representation of an item, person, or scene. The picture of the skull on their arm is something they are SEEING. The PLAYER is reading the description. If the description is poorly written, but the picture is intended to be flawless and masterful, it totally ruins it for me.

It's leik
if you have this descrprtion
of a picture of a
great skull with masterful eyes
drawn in teh middle and jaw partly
stretched wide to show the big jaw
(etc)

The PLAYER - is trying to portray something awesome and terrific, but he just isn't very good at writing the descriptions. Maybe English is his second language. Or maybe he's dyslexic. Or just really overtired. Even if his CHARACTER is a master tattoo artist. This is why the staff has quality control, and why we even have the typo command. So that we can present the best experience for the READER as possible, which makes it much easier for us to better visualize the experiences of our characters.

[Reel Code]

There is no quality control by staff on drawing items. People and their IC opinion along with the skill level displayed codedly on the item is the quality control. (It says novice-master quality as you look at it.) Maybe tattooing can branch from drawing?

[lostinspace]

I would love tattooing, and I'm not too worried about bad tattoos. You've always been able to get a new tattoo over the one you have, so if you get something terrible you can just pay a couple small and get it covered up by an inking of a desert expanse or whatever.

[molecricket]

Seems like a weird concern in general, surely you'd know the writing quality of a character already just by virtue of talking to them? If you thought they wouldn't write a good tattoo description you could just not get one from them.

[BadSkeelz]

Some people are better off writing prose than dialogue.

[HeeBeeGB]

I don't see how tattooing would be different than drawing. It would have a Quality listed at the bottom. So that really insanely masterful flaming skull would still be 'novice' quality at the end. So you're world famous tattoo artist might pitch you on this:



But really you get this:

[HortaCulture]

Prison Tats for Bynners 2020.

[LindseyBalboa]

Just have a prompt at the end before the tattoo item is added, letting the tattooed char accept or deny the tattoo and proof it. Since a tattoo can't be forced on anyone without their consent (I assume, anyway, that it falls under mutilation rules), there's no reason not to give that option.

[Helloworld]

Tattooing working like drawing creates a pretty big problem. Not everyone spells well, not everyone describes things well, and not everyone understands the intricacies of sentence structure. Not everyone has to.

When you're drawing, it's on a piece of parchment, or doodling on the sidewalk. The code causes the sidewalk drawing to fade, and parchment can be tucked into a closet or discarded, never to be seen again.

A tattoo will be on the person you draw it on until that PC ceases to exist. A good drawing can be made into a disaster with a badly written description. For that reason I'm glad it doesn't work similarly to drawings. I don't think anyone should be able to put a description on anyone ELSE...unless there's a way to get it through quality control before it's made permanent.

This would lead to a hierarchy of PC tattoo artistry, some being better than others. Which is good no? I'm not sure how drawing work IG but the fact that they're permanent and therefore you want them to be of good quality doesn't seem to me to be strong criticism of the idea. Unless I've misunderstood your meaning?

You've misunderstood my meaning. This is a -text- game. Our characters aren't reading text. They are seeing a visual representation of an item, person, or scene. The picture of the skull on their arm is something they are SEEING. The PLAYER is reading the description. If the description is poorly written, but the picture is intended to be flawless and masterful, it totally ruins it for me.

It's leik
if you have this descrprtion
of a picture of a
great skull with masterful eyes
drawn in teh middle and jaw partly
stretched wide to show the big jaw
(etc)

The PLAYER - is trying to portray something awesome and terrific, but he just isn't very good at writing the descriptions. Maybe English is his second language. Or maybe he's dyslexic. Or just really overtired. Even if his CHARACTER is a master tattoo artist. This is why the staff has quality control, and why we even have the typo command. So that we can present the best experience for the READER as possible, which makes it much easier for us to better visualize the experiences of our characters.

Hm, ok. In that case I think I actually understood you correctly, at least partially. I had thought that the images would be described in text on the screen. Seems that would be obvious. I had also thought you were saying that the players ability to write elegantly descriptive prose was the bottleneck to having a tattoo you OOCly think is pleasing to observe. Thus far we're on the same page.

Where we seem to differ is seeing that dynamic as the issue.

The way I look at it is just as in the real world if you want a good tattoo (IE, *you* personally really like the aesthetic) you have to find someone already with a tattoo from the artist and see if you want one from them as well. That artist could be technically expert at their craft but just not have a style you appreciate. That would proxy in in this case for PCs with l33t skills run by a player who is prose-impaired, according to your tastes at least.

The different players' abilities to word their tattoos would then create a hierarchy of skill.

Another thing that happens in real life is the artist sketches something on paper and you get to see it before hand. You could do this in game, then the process of applying the tattoo to your PC would be an identical wording of the description of the image on the paper.

I think, and I may be wrong here, that part of your dislike of the idea is that players who are prose-impaired would be gated from playing excellent tattoo artists by their ability to actually artfully describe their tattoos. (One possible solution to this would be them procuring descriptions written by other people they know IRL, could be a fun little side project for people, lol). What I would say in response to this would be that this gating is already inherent to the game genre and to roleplaying in general. You can't play a funny character if you as a player don't understand humour. Similar things happen for extreme intelligence, or empathy. Your PCs will always be, in-part, limited by the capacities of their player.

Back to the tattoo issue though. Possible work arounds for the problem you highlight would include: Consent to apply the tattoo, as mentioned above, some kind of prompt (do you accept the image as worded... etc). Also application to staff to have the tattoo re-worded in some way. But I think my above mentioned similarity to real-life tattoos, them being sketched first on paper, is a viable work option.

Interested in your thoughts!

[Gentleboy]

Weird one,

Playable "jail" or mine you can be sent to.

People can play as prisoners and work their way out

or

People can play as guards or something?

I dunno, I'm high while writing this but there's a good idea somewhere in there. Triste help me out or something.

Okay wait, I came back to add more. The "prison" can be its own city. All come in, few come out. Own economy, can be a starting point. Place to twink and RP and not have to be Byn. I dunno.

[Narf]

That might make slaves more workable. Allow people to make secondary guard or prisoner characters to help populate the areas. If it's popular enough it might make slavery/imprisonment an actually feasible part of the game.

Plus, yah know, something to do while you're waiting for a character to be approved.

[Gentleboy]

That might make slaves more workable. Allow people to make secondary guard or prisoner characters to help populate the areas. If it's popular enough it might make slavery/imprisonment an actually feasible part of the game.

Plus, yah know, something to do while you're waiting for a character to be approved.

oh that's good. Just choose a number and there's a premade burly scarred dwarf that you just mine as and grunt.

[HeeBeeGB]

Making Slave PC's a secondary character ain't a bad idea. They're quite restricted as it is.

[number13]

I've suggested before, there's all sorts of possibilities for characters that anyone can just step into for a day, not just boring old slaves in a prison camp.

There could be some random runners to inhabit, if you feel like going on a contract. There could be some beggars on street corners or barflies in the Gaj -- just flavor characters for any player to possess for a short duration. Or for RPTs (especially HRPTs) various short term roles could be made available -- for anyone to possess for the duration of the event.

Like the event that happened in Luirs; my character had no reason to be there, and no way to actually get there. But I (or anyone else) might have maybe jumped into a garrison NPC or antagonistic NPC and had fun anyway.

I think about 90% of the playerbase could be trusted not to abuse the privilege, and the ones that do, could be restricted from doing so. And we have a sizeable number of lapsed and semi-lapsed players would likely enjoy playing Arm for a day, without having to dedicate time to a PC.

[WarriorPoet]

I would like to see random  calls for short term clan openings and events. Staff gives a group of 5 or 6 PC's a 1 week window to raid and start trouble and generally liven up a fairly lifeless but incedibly dangerous desert. A one-shot week where a gith tribe goes nuts, or a resurgent elf tribe, raider group, or slave uprising. Hand over a starting story and a bare-bones set up for them. No sparring or grind, just the opportunity to tell a brief but highlighted story that will spur activity for the hum-drum life most of the world seems to lead.. Run it Sunday night to Sunday night, with the playerbase knowing that those days are going to be lit up with trouble and they should get in on it.

[Dresan]

I like the temporary PC idea too. 

The antagonistic ones could have a bit more generic s-descs like soldier or desc, to be able to tell a bit easier they were NPC being controlled. Basically their skills would be set to be cannon folder but still would be fun.

Others like for RP might be a bit more standard with very little in the way of powerful skills but still be able to experience a story. Basically I believe this was done in the HRPT and it was great. I don't think it is easily done without staff effort but perhaps changes to how accounts work might make it easier to manage.


Just as a side idea:

If this were in place I would love to see something longer term akin to gith or kryl (or threat) emerge from the salt flats, big enough to threaten Redstorm, and Allanak, and even Luirs in their own way.  What these events do is generate demand for just about everything. Within the Allanak having to deal with sabotage originating from Redstorm and a tuluk controlled luirs on top of everything. I think what could happen is that the need to kill an individual(who would just be quickly replaced) would be less important than the need to destroy or stop an organization's plans.

[Lizzie]

Regarding Shabago's response to my idea on the response thread:

My thoughts on "buying all from NPCs" wasn't really that. It was "buying a limited amount of each" of whatever that NPC normally buys and instead of the limit imposed on the buyer, it is imposed on the seller.

Rather than 1 guy being able to sell 5 red widgets, 5 blue ones, 5 orange ones, and 5 green ones for 100 sids each to NPC Amos JUST because he happens to be there before anyone else can get to him -

Let him *AND EVERYONE ELSE* be able to sell only 2 of each. And reduce the NPC's offer with the second of each, from each seller.