City Lore Updates Feedback

[-+[-__-]+-]

I would like to suggest an addition to the planned City Lore updates!

Add SELF as an option and let players submit lore gossip about themselves. Allow other characters to learn about them through the grapevine.

Since Staff oversees submission, information won't be abused, but players can add interesting flavor or possible hooks that wouldn't be common knowledge enough for the help player file or significant enough to use for a milestone.

lore self Rosie's birthday is Maius 5. <level 1>
lore self Rosie's birthday is Maius 5, 337. She totally lies about her age. <level 15>

Then, let snoopy individuals visit any room with a gossipmonger and lore learn <target>

lore learn Rosie
Snooper greases a well-dressed gentryman's palms with 5 silver and hears the following:
Rosie's birthday is Maius 5, 337. She totally lies about her age.


Bonus: add a chance that the target might hear others have been poking around for information.

[Kinaed]

I really like this - it seems like a great way to replace HELP PLAYER help files with an interactive game. My trepidation is mostly around getting people to take the energy to write it - we already have problems with people forgetting or doing the minimal setup for HELP PLAYER. That said 'HELP PLAYER' feels so OOC, and I'm sure we can provide incentives for people to fill in information about their character for the grapevine.

[Kuzco]

I had proposed something similar last year, but it involved unfeasible code fu.
This is so much better.

[Starstarfish]

If you provided a RPXP boost for having submitted one lately (maybe a bit longer on a timer than cnotes) or reward 1 QP per entry, that might encourage people to make them.

Other things that might be awesome (but maybe not code feasible):

- Lore entries saving in a list by locale like Secrets.

- Having knowing "Secrets" - exits et part of being familiar with City Lore.

- The ability for items like statues (and peeking at them) or books (reading them) to pool Lore entry skill.

- Each location/item is one "city lore" tick - thus encouraging people to go explore and read more so than pooling on things they already know. So if skill is percentage based on comparing number of entries known versus the total available, that will also encourage people to keep exploring and discovering things as new things are added they'll need to keep "in the know."

[chronodbu]

You could make it a required field to complete chargen, or to join a guild.

Make it so the guild command runs a check to see if there are any lore entries for a character and if there aren't, then it won't allow them.

[-+[-__-]+-]

When I initially posted this suggestion, it was assuming self-lore submissions would potentially earn QP and/or rec level boosts like the room lore will provide. If that's not necessarily enough for this to be widespread, perhaps having a certain number, or a certain level of them in the database will give a character another weekly IP, or support/subvert slot (to replace the one lost to no more dual guilding)?

[The_Last_Good_Dragon]

I really like this idea overall; I see so many players incorporate things like rumors / lore stuff into their player help, which seems clunky, and this would give them a beautiful place to do that. I also like the idea of it working in tandem with 'help player' to provide information in a different route.

However.

I do not like the idea of entirely replacing 'help player' with this. A help player is a great resource for important members of Lithmore's society to list information that could be readily available without providing the necessity of a skill. For nobles in particular it is a great place to list the noble's full name, known affiliations, a bit of history about what should be a very prominent and well-known family, etc. Locking that behind even a low-level skill requirement could be very frustrating for new players who already have a lot of mechanics to learn and to consider when making a new character. Perhaps requiring either system to be used for guild checks would be the better idea; either a help player of X length or lore entries totalling Y length before being guildable / noble-able.

A few other thoughts:

• I don't think anything will cause players more incentive to use them than is already the case for help player. As it stands, so many help players seem like a game of mad lib: 'X person isn't well known in Lithmore but they come from Y place where their families did Z thing to warrant them being gentry but A reason has brought them to Lithmore." Bonus points for a 'mysterious death in the family'. I think anything more than a QP for a submission is a bit of overkill.
• You could potentially auto-add a known lore entry about a player you have remembered as a note on their remember list, which I think are probably under-utilized already. The complaint will come for lore entries on people you don't have remembered, but I think this is a fair compromise, esp. given you can just cnote the lore entry if you want to be able to effortlessly recall it later.
• I don't like the idea of looking at statues/books/etc as a means to raise lore skill; at least not without also adding the suggestion of making it where you need to explore more places to raise city lore, which I think is a good idea. Even still, 'look lore' works just fine at raising the skill as-is. It is amongst the easiest skills to raise.
• I think that submissions to the system generally-enough need to be true, or at least based in some fact OR labeled with code a lie. As you're submitting lore entries about yourself and not other people, I think that adding misdirectional lore entries should be seen as your player actively, in some way, spreading false statements about themselves. Those with a higher lore skill than the person spreading said lies could be revealed as doing that. Whether or not this is a good or bad thing is obviously dependant on the people involved.
• Have a small silver cost affixed to checking into the lore of someone else, to prevent players from endlessly spamming the command to learn everything their is about everyone. Maybe an increasing amount of silver for multiple checks on someone in the same IRL week, or silver expenses related to the level of investigation (lore check <player> <skillrank>) -- 5 silver for an 'inept' check, 50+ silver for a master-level check, etc.
• Provide some coded benefits to similar social classes. Freemen should have an easier time than a noble in finding out info about other freemen, while nobles should have avenues and connections to help them find out things about other nobles.

[Kinaed]

I wonder if players should be able to spread lore about other players and somehow add it to the list, maybe as part of the rumor command.

[Starstarfish]

The only trouble about linking things from rumors to lore is that rumors specifically don't need to be true, and arguably (or at least I personally hope) that lore would be expected to be.

[The_Last_Good_Dragon]

I wonder if players should be able to spread lore about other players and somehow add it to the list, maybe as part of the rumor command.

I don't like this idea, to be honest. I think spreading lore about other players can already be done by tying the lore to a specific place. That seems like the best way to handle what are potentially very biased opinions.