Community Projects

[Lun]

Every so often, I find myself bored of grinding and either unwilling or unable to find willing people to RP with (or I won't have anything to talk about!) I think it'd be great if there was some sort of task system in place that would drive world changes without personal benefit.

I feel like if there were any personal reward gained by the charitable task system, people would feel as if it were also kind of grind-y, and it would be left dilipadated and ruined. That's not to say that people can't benefit directly from the finished project, but it shouldn't favor helpers more than any other person, NPC or PC.

Example: A well-building project for a hamlet that seems lacking in one, or some other sort of charitable event. There might be a flyer distributed around town or posted to the board, and near the location of the project is a donations crate (one-way). When the requested material amount is finally gathered, then maybe another flyer (or a GM-led event with finishing/doing the actual project) would go out remarking on how successful it was.

I'm reminded of the recent excavation project and farming collective initiatives done by a few of our players (supported by our amazing GM team) when I write this post, as they're great examples of things people could do that have nothing related to solo-grinding. I feel like these tasks would be slightly better than the projects done recently in the sense that there's no immediate necessity to go join in. These events happened at specific times for specific dates, whereas something like this can gather materials for weeks before finally blooming into fruition.

I know that well-building for a hamlet was a bad example, as each hamlet was designed to have a particular feel, but it was just an example!

Other examples of community projects:
Supply orphanage with toys!
Build new orphanage in <place!>
Supply Keth with food!
Clean up after infested attack by donating supplies to rebuild!
Help make this bakers dream come true!
Help remove the infestation from <place> for good! x/100000000000000000000000000000 kills
Homeless food drive!
Assist <scientist> with his experiment! Bring dead bodies to <location!>
Build a home for the homeless! Gather materials!
Warden appreciation day! Collecting materials to make banquet/celebration for our soldiers!
Build a library to hold all our lore! Collect materials!

[Elystole]

These things do happen, and there's absolutely nothing stopping you from launching such a project.

I know for a fact that various people are responsible for delivering literal wagonloads of food to Valeria and the hamlets, supplying the orphanage with toys (take a look inside the toy box), providing healing when Morhollow lost its healer, and setting up the food trunks on the road. If there's something you'd like to see done, just go do it. I've got a couple community items on my to-do list as well.

I'm not trying to dissuade you. If anything, I'm saying that you don't need to wait for the GMs to code a new system for you to go for it.

[Rias]

Those are some good ideas. As Elystole mentioned, this kind of thing does happen hearteningly often, and it's always a joy to see when players just up and do something on their own like this. Here's a list of some things I can think of off the top of my head that players have done on their own, and at least started without any GM knowledge, attention, or interaction.

- The Wilderness Food Trunks: A lone monk PC grabbed a wagon, filled it with a few trunks and a whole ton of food, and placed them out in the wilderness at points along the roads to help prevent people from starving while traveling. There wasn't any big to-do about it, they just quietly did it (I had to go back and check to find out who it actually was when I noticed them one day). Later, the GMs made the trunks permanent and unmovable.
- Valeria Food Drive: Several players delivered multiple wagonloads of food to Valeria soon after it opened, to help the people out while they were struggling to establish their own self-sufficiency in a new land.
- Emleth (Various Relief) Drive: There have been a bunch of these. People love to help Emleth. I don't now how many wagonloads of food, clothing, medical supplies, and various other stuff has been donated here, but it's a high number.
- Shadgard Orphanage: This didn't even technically exist for a while. One of Shadgard's monk PCs would occasionally allude to helping orphans and such, and we eventually built the orphanage later because of it.
- Shadgard Orphanage Toys: As mentioned, there are tons of toys in the Orphanage toybox because people love to carve and donate them. I think I'll start making them disappear on occasion (lost or broken by the children) so people can have more opportunities to donate new ones.
- Shadgard Orphanage Food Drive: This happens quite frequently. People love to cook up food and donate it to the orphans.
- Emleth Defense Training: A templar occasionally goes over to Emleth and acts out training interested citizens in the ways of self-defense and combat. Started a while back when Emleth was suffering fairly frequent infested attacks. No GM (that I'm aware of) told the templar PC to do this.
- The previously-mentioned farming initiative.

I really, really, really like it when players take initiative and just do stuff like this. Granted, it won't always take or be acknowledged, but a good percent of the time, the GMs notice and sometimes will even make some subtle (or even not-so-subtle) changes or events happen as a result. There's something about players just doing things like this because they want to/because that's the way their character is, rather than the waiting for a GM to acknowledge/approve the idea first. (This isn't to say that some larger events might require GM attention/interaction) It's also been a little disappointing on some occasions when PCs had an idea of something they wanted to do, but when they weren't given any special GM attention or assistance, they just gave up on it. (Again, I acknowledge that sometimes GM interaction is required for more involved events)

I do have to warn that sometimes things do go unnoticed, or fall through the cracks. Don't let that discourage you! And when you notice others doing things like this, it might be nice to do them a favor and make a little noise about it, so it gets more widely noticed. Comment on it on ESP, post something about it on the town boards, or if your character's more reclusive/asocial, just send out a thought about it via the think command. This will help the GMs realize what's going on. At the same time, don't go nuts with these things with the expectation that GMs will notice and come in to assist with the project, or whatever it is. Such is far from guaranteed, and I'll admit that at least with myself, when I get a string of thoughts (or reports) that seem to have a feeling of entitlement or expectation to them, it turns me off to the idea of getting involved. That's probably just because I'm a bad person, though.

And yeah, there are a few frequent things that people attempt that we shoot down becaue, as you said, it could ruin intended atmosphere/feel of some things. One of the most frequent ones is that everyone seems to want to spiff up that dilapidated church in Mistral Lake. Unfortunately, if that happened, it would lose the feel that the Church doesn't have a lot of presence or notice in Mistral Lake. Another is that everyone seems to want to remodel Emleth and turn it into a nice big prosperous town. Unfortunately, Emleth's "thing" is that it's this grungy, dumpy backwater village, and we don't want to lose that feel for the place.

[Avedri]

The group behind the dig and farming events (Lupine Vigil) are fully planning to host most events like this. Real life just kind of crept up for a bit. But do expect later this month to have a group hunt lead by Laroremas followed by a picnic open to everyone, even those who didn't go on the hunt. That being said, if you want to host anything we will absolutely support it. We love player-driven RP.

Eventually I'd also like to host a ladies afternoon at the Haiban spa. I know it's expensive and would love people to experience at least once without having to save up to do so.

[jilliana]

It's always nice to know and hear about a player who does things slightly out of the box or norm without a group of people to depend on.
One doesn't need recognition or the backing of some organization or PC group to feel special, even if it's on a game.