Suggestion: DM support system

[Ghost]

I'd be interested in hearing more specifics about your proposals of automation here, especially with reclaiming lost items and changing names.

Establishing guild halls will require a builder. Not much DM involvement as it is, beyond checking geographic viability.

Automating outposts sounds like a system to be gamed, which is something the first iteration of our outpost system was criticised for. To that i can only respond: Make your minds up.

[Steve]

I realize you havent DM'd in a while, but we haven't had stuff like minimum hours ect for years now. DM's are mostly free to do and participate in what they want to.

The issue is ( in my person opinion.) is we have a culture on the server that relies too heavily on putting in DM requests and not enough on making it happen in game without constant DM supervision.

Yep, I didn’t know. A good or bad thing? As it used to be, DMs were screened as to just how much time they could invest, and not just get into a position of power and knowledge without benefiting the playerbase.

While I’m not advocating for either or, yes, without more DMs and active DMs there will always FEEL like there is a deficit.

I personally feel I can get pretty darn far with my role-play without DM intervention or approval. Maybe I am also bolder than most, and have little fear that I’ll receive repercussions for my RP. Or maybe I don’t care either way.

Nonetheless, it could also be that the current population of Players simply want to have greater influence upon the World than in the past, where Players just sought out adventure and cool custom gear rewards!?!

If you look back, the Server HAS been pushing a culture of greater and greater NPC/world interaction as the pinnacle of Role-play on BGTSCC. Players see other Players manipulating armies and deciding grand actions, and they want to do that as well. So, the BGTSCC experience becomes more and more like playing RISK, than adventures along the Sword Coast.

So maybe the better future IS one that gets simpler and more personal, less godlike interactions and world changing scale.

[Ghost]

To clarify on SummerBreeze' statement, there's no hard requirement saying "you must DM at least 5 hours every week". We still do expect activity, and we do keep track of it. There's no DMs sitting in DM positions without actually doing DM stuff.

[zhazz]

I'd be interested in hearing more specifics about your proposals of automation here, especially with reclaiming lost items and changing names.

Establishing guild halls will require a builder. Not much DM involvement as it is, beyond checking geographic viability.

Automating outposts sounds like a system to be gamed, which is something the first iteration of our outpost system was criticised for. To that i can only respond: Make your minds up.

Reclaiming lost items
What I imagine could be possible to do, is a small script, which hooks into the "re-equip on load script". At least that's my understanding of where most items are currently lost, is when loading onto a server, and for some reason the unequip/re-equip script drops the item on the ground. Anyway, if this additional script track equipped items, it should be possible to use it as a mini-backup from which a character can restore an item that suddenly disappeared.

I'm sure something fancy can be done, such that the script can keep track of only items that are being un-equipped by the server load script. When an item is then re-equpped by the server load script it is removed from the tracking. That should alleviate potential abuse.

If an item is then lost due to the server load script, it can now easily be restored via a NPC in the nexus.


Changing names
Rather simple, actually. Place a NPC in the Nexus, who does the renaming of a character. Add in some filtering to avoid profanity, titles, and anything else that is not allowed without DM approval. Limit usage to one every X months per character, so it is a tool for correcting spelling mistakes, representing marriages / divorces, family names through adoption, etc.

Since it's done via a NPC, the name change can also be tracked server side. DMs logging in are then able to either request, or just see a log of it automatically, of who have changed names from what to what within the last X amount of days/weeks. Such that they can sort out any potential misuse or misunderstandings.


Guild halls
Automation here is thought more as a means of having an alternative to just throwing gold at things. Though given that continuous effort has to be made in-game, and tracking is done in-game on the server, there is less need for forum documentation.

In my example in the other thread, I listed 5 characters doing the work together, managing to put in effort every single reset for every day, and ending up at a total of 27 days for materials and 23 days for skill checks (at a 30 average roll). Realistically, however, it will be far more common for characters to only contribute towards the efforts during 1 reset per day on average. That puts the total time at 81 days for materials and 69 days for skill checks in the provided example.

Since it's not an either/or, it would then be 81 days for 5 players contributing an average of 1 time per day. Not quite the 4 month as per the current requirement, but close enough I'd think, given it isn't just grinding gold ad-nauseam and then RP'ing a make-believe non-interactive effort for 4 months on the forums.


Outposts
Entirely similar to the guild hall suggestion. Can even add in that there has to be some time spent RP'ing with the new outpost before an upgrade can begin. Since DMs are the ones putting down an Effort NPC, they are still wholly in control of the rate of expansion. This is no different than today. But the experience for players should be better, due to having a tangible goal to work towards in-game.




Side-note
I am personally in favor of having systems in place relying on trust, when it comes to guild/outpost stuff. If they can be abused/gamed then crack down on the ones doing so, but keep them available as-is for those who are mature enough to not abuse/game systems.