Harvesting System - A Way For Players to Build

[Aldrick Tanith]

When EfU:  A was introduced one of the core principles behind its creation was to let players build things.  It is still unclear how things are built.  A priest of Ilmater wants to build a shrine to his deity, so he gathers sympathetic individuals and fellow Ilmaterites and RPs constantly to see it built, but nothing happens.  Is it because the DM's aren't paying attention?  Is it because it requires more time?  It is hard to know the answers to these questions, because there is no way to measure progress or effort.

A harvesting system could change that.  The purpose behind the system is simple:  to measure the effort of the players and the progress of the project.

I envision the system being as DM free as possible.  It begins with a player wanting to build something, in this case a Priest of Ilmater.  There should be a NPC in the Workshop Guild for IC communications.  We'll call him the Construction Officer.  His job is to essentially be an IC liaison for the DM's and the PC's to communicate.  

The Ilmateri Priest then sends off an IC letter to the Construction Officer, notifying him where he wants to build and including the "blueprint" of the building.

To reduce workload on the DM's a PC has to approach the Construction Officer with a "blueprint."  In metagame terms, this is an area that is pre-built in the tool set and exported as an .erf file.  This allows the DM(s) to review the area in the tool set and get an idea of the time, effort and cost of construction.  They then respond ICly to the priest with that information.

Now, for the system itself.  It is nothing more than a number of persistent placeables that stores information.  When a new building or object is to be built, the DM's put a placeable in the module at the location.

The DM sets the number and type of resources (explained below) it requires to build the desired construction, as well as the overall DC.

In the module, in certain areas, there should exist certain other placeables.  A tree placeable, for example, is used to obtain wood.  You might be able to use the search skill on rubble to collect salvageable rocks, or you might head out to the mines to carve them out using a rock placeable.

These resource placeables are representatives of what is going on in the module.  For example, every time you get wood from a tree, you are cutting down a tree.  The placeable doesn't go poof, but it does keep track of how many trees are removed.  This allows the module to be updated to represent deforesting.

As these resources are collected, they are taken back to the construction placeable and a conversation is initiated.  Just like with a collection quest, the resources are removed from the PC's inventory and tallied with the rest of the resources.

There are five phases of construction, representing roughly 20% of the resources required.  For example, let us say something requires 400 wood to construct.  You gather the wood until you have 20% of it - 80 wood - and then you roll a Craft Trap (Engineering / Tech) to determine success.  If you fail, you lose all of your resources and have to gather more.  If you are successful you can continue.  

Once all the resources are gathered, all the required skill checks are made, the building is complete and is added to the game.

I can see this as having a very positive effect on the community.  It encourages players to work together to build things, it gives something to do outside of questing, allows DM's to track player effort, allows layers to track their progress and reduces DM workload.

[Aldrick Tanith]

How things might work out ICly:

-  Wealthy players can spend their gold on something other than consumables.  As it does require time to construct things, a wealthy merchant might issue 10gp per suitable stone to help build the Ilmatari Shrine.  This allows him to leverage the Ilmatari priest and faithful politically.

-  It encourages cooperation.  Outside of questing and various political things... there is not much to encourage cooperation.  There are endless things to cause conflict, but things that encourage cooperation are lacking.

-  Due to the above, this is an easy way to get new players involved with the server.  It might not be as exciting as questing, but they will at least be roped into working with and for others.

-  This has the potential to cause conflict between nature-lovers and the colony.  The druids are only going to tolerate a certain amount of deforestation.

[Sandstorm]

I believe this is a good idea, however, I can see how it would be a major stress of the DMs to have to look through all the files, determine a proper amount of resources, and the like.

[Daemonic Daz]

Agreed, there would have to be specific limits on what PC's can build and the requirements for said building. This isn't sim city :)

Other than that, I like the general idea of it. Also the fact that PC's can actually design their own areas, giving the players more control in how their faction fortress/hideout looks like.

[Luke Danger]

This very well could be effective, I support this, that is, after a lot of testing.

[Aldrick Tanith]

The general idea about submitting the areas is that it saves DM's time.  They do not have to actually build it, and thus the time spent looking at the area that you wish to build is small in comparison.

While I suspect if such a system was implemented that a lot of people would want to build things in the beginning, this would eventually drop off.  Once the first wave of buildings are built it then becomes more economical for players to battle over who controls them rather than build their own.  Most building, I think, would be to expand / redesign existing buildings rather than build entirely new ones.

[Random_White_Guy]

To be 100% completely honest, Faction Buildings and other Buildings are at Most a neat Nod to your faction for being successful. There is no need for one when you honestly get down to it. Numerous PC factions have survived, and even thrived, without Faction HQ's.

While this system has potential it seems somewhat frivolous. The amount of stuff that would have to go into scripting it could be better focused elsewhere, and I honestly think DM oversight in Faction/Area building is paramount.

Getting a faction area means something. While it would help the community to allow everyone to build it, I honestly don't think its worth it.

Its a cool goal to work towards a building, as many have in the past, but not everyone gets there. Its what makes it so sweet about those who -do- get there.

The Wench's Clench, The Golden Lions, The Lower Loons, Worn's Stew Shop.

All these things were awesome and legendary even, simply because they had left a mark on the server.

Everyone being able to purcahse a building is neat, but I don't think taking time to script a complicated system just for the sake of having it is worth it.

There are better uses of money/time from both a PC and DM perspective.

[Daemonic Daz]

You forgot the Maimed Minotaur.

[Aldrick Tanith]

It is not just for faction HQ's.  It can be for community related projects, business related projects for PC merchants, etc.  The system could also be used to track the clearing of rubble.  It could also be used for building various things, like statues.  All of the core mechanics needed to build this system already exist in the module in one form or another, and while I am not a scripter, I don't imagine that it'd take more than an afternoon of dedicated scripting to put it all together in a form ready for bug testing.

The core spirit of EFUA is / was supposed to be different from EFU.  This suggestion is in the spirit of EFUA's original intent:  to help PC's build things.  It's primary goal is to help DM's and PC's track progress and effort.

One more thing. The argument, advanced occasionally since Day One of EFU, that PvP was the only way to accomplish something meaningful in our environment has always bothered me. It has bothered me because I have the perspective of someone who sees all the things that players accomplish and how often no PvP is involved at all. Really, the best way to accomplish things has generally been just whoever can bring more PCs to their side/involve more players - but, there is some truth that at times towards the end days of EFU PvP was more prominent.

One of the very specific changes we wanted to make with EFU:A was focus on this idea that the best rewards would go to those who would build, rather than destroy. As an example, in EFU PCs loved to bomb and burn down buildings. We prided ourselves in being responsive to PC actions, and generally would go to remarkable efforts to ensure that the module was always updated with these piles of rubble and so on, and I think some players got the idea that bombing/burning/destroying was a pretty good thing to do.

Regardless, in EFUA we wanted - and want - to particularly promote the idea that characters that build neat stuff (factions, rituals, ceremonies, whatever) will get extra special attention from us. This is, as before, independent of alignment.

Please understand, this is not a call for more DM messages requesting supervision for crafting-related things (we have a thread for that), but rather - doing stuff that is productive and interesting and makes us want to watch you, rather than feeling obligated to.

So yes, that is our intent. "Building" rather than destroying.

[Mort]

Something is in the works already.