To make hearths / cook fires a bit more useful as actual light objects like they were in medieval times, can we have phome rooms without light objects marked with the dark flag? This would mean people need to use candles / torches / have custom lighting objects in their homes during nighttime which just makes sense to me.
I wanted to suggest that a room be marked dark all day unless it had a window, but I can guess this won't be a hugely popular idea, so figured maybe just during nighttime then.
It feels realistic to me and would give chandlers on grid some more business. I was told once that they didn't really have much. Perhaps this can be a way for candle sellers or jeweling lanterns to find more use.
Rooms marked dark without light.
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Haley Rose
*stands with Kinaed and waits for the tomatoes to fly*
Thanks for being for it, Kin! I love the realism and I'd love to see chandlers pop up more. Candles, lamp oil, even woodworkers could sell the torches they can make and, as mentioned before, lanterns might see a leap in popularity. It won't always mean spending 500 silver on hearths for every room, for those who are lightheaded with the horror of that idea. XD
Thanks for being for it, Kin! I love the realism and I'd love to see chandlers pop up more. Candles, lamp oil, even woodworkers could sell the torches they can make and, as mentioned before, lanterns might see a leap in popularity. It won't always mean spending 500 silver on hearths for every room, for those who are lightheaded with the horror of that idea. XD
I love me some chandlery, but I don't think we play the sort of game where making lights a mandatory necessity will pan out:
1) We don't have systems that support the other senses.
It used to be that if you were off in the wilderness at night, with no light, all you saw was "You can't see a thing!" I suspect it was probably changed at least in part because it was just kind of obnoxious, but more practically, without sight you can still feel, smell and hear things (and lick 'em, of course). So we compromised on code-supported realism in favor of providing the player, the WRITER, with the information they need to describe their character's response to a lightless location.
2) We focus on adventurous conflict, not real life/mundane conflict, wherever we can.
Some games, including old versions of TI had hunger and thirst code. This was detrimental to RP an various ways, such as random snacking mid-scene for the sole purpose of shutting up hunger notifications. Especially given the IC:RL time ratio, it always seemed like you had to eat or drink. In our current system, we focus on benefits rather than detriments. Eating and drinking can help you heal faster or let you travel farther or play longer without having to stop RP and sleep it off. You don't starve to death, or faint in a scene because your epic RP actually spanned multiple days.
We also handwave the somewhat arduous process of writing with quills. Boards have endless paper. These shortcuts let us focus on the meat of the RP; we're still able to emote trimming a quill, sanding the ink, leaving it to dry, but we're not SOL if we left our writing tools at home, or our single quill randomly breaks.
2b) It is already an option for people who enjoy this level of realism.
Your standard indoor room tends to default as lit. Underground rooms don't, and you generally have to ask for it and/or clearly describe the light source in your room description. But you can ask for the islit flag to be removed, and I believe you can even add dark flags where reasonable, for no extra charge! Between moods and our community's general awesomeness when it comes to playing of RP partners, it is perfectly reasonable to RP a lack of light source if it enhances the RP, OR in spaces where the player controls, to make it a more tangible obstacle to be overcome through the use of candles, torches, lamps and fires.
(Wake up, lovies, I'm almost done!)
In conclusion, I suggest the following to make chandlery (and other lightsource-crafting skills/recipes more valuable), and to provide more opportunities for those interested in playing with light as a resource:
- Significantly reduce the number of light hours on newbie starting candles. (Seriously. I think my multiple RL years-old character still has her original light.)
- Create BENEFITS to using light objects, not DETRIMENTS to -not- using light objects. (For example, maybe holding a lit candle gives the PC a bonus to hemote sightings and search rolls.)
- If it's not terribly taxing on the system to add a bunch more items, possibly switch out the islit flag in phomes to permanent light objects. (Ideally hidden if the player prefers, for room aesthetic purposes, but this still allows people to magically snuff them or engage in other hooliganry.)
AND/OR add a cost for the lighting so people will be more likely to recall that electricity exists. (This is still my least favorite option, as I just don't find mandatory light issues that fun to play.)
TL;DR: This seems a bit of a niche option for realism-in-RP that already has support in game. If chandlers are hurting bad for actual candle business, it's probably easier to nerf newbie candles and add perks for using actual lights to make coded light sources more popular.
1) We don't have systems that support the other senses.
It used to be that if you were off in the wilderness at night, with no light, all you saw was "You can't see a thing!" I suspect it was probably changed at least in part because it was just kind of obnoxious, but more practically, without sight you can still feel, smell and hear things (and lick 'em, of course). So we compromised on code-supported realism in favor of providing the player, the WRITER, with the information they need to describe their character's response to a lightless location.
2) We focus on adventurous conflict, not real life/mundane conflict, wherever we can.
Some games, including old versions of TI had hunger and thirst code. This was detrimental to RP an various ways, such as random snacking mid-scene for the sole purpose of shutting up hunger notifications. Especially given the IC:RL time ratio, it always seemed like you had to eat or drink. In our current system, we focus on benefits rather than detriments. Eating and drinking can help you heal faster or let you travel farther or play longer without having to stop RP and sleep it off. You don't starve to death, or faint in a scene because your epic RP actually spanned multiple days.
We also handwave the somewhat arduous process of writing with quills. Boards have endless paper. These shortcuts let us focus on the meat of the RP; we're still able to emote trimming a quill, sanding the ink, leaving it to dry, but we're not SOL if we left our writing tools at home, or our single quill randomly breaks.
2b) It is already an option for people who enjoy this level of realism.
Your standard indoor room tends to default as lit. Underground rooms don't, and you generally have to ask for it and/or clearly describe the light source in your room description. But you can ask for the islit flag to be removed, and I believe you can even add dark flags where reasonable, for no extra charge! Between moods and our community's general awesomeness when it comes to playing of RP partners, it is perfectly reasonable to RP a lack of light source if it enhances the RP, OR in spaces where the player controls, to make it a more tangible obstacle to be overcome through the use of candles, torches, lamps and fires.
(Wake up, lovies, I'm almost done!)
In conclusion, I suggest the following to make chandlery (and other lightsource-crafting skills/recipes more valuable), and to provide more opportunities for those interested in playing with light as a resource:
- Significantly reduce the number of light hours on newbie starting candles. (Seriously. I think my multiple RL years-old character still has her original light.)
- Create BENEFITS to using light objects, not DETRIMENTS to -not- using light objects. (For example, maybe holding a lit candle gives the PC a bonus to hemote sightings and search rolls.)
- If it's not terribly taxing on the system to add a bunch more items, possibly switch out the islit flag in phomes to permanent light objects. (Ideally hidden if the player prefers, for room aesthetic purposes, but this still allows people to magically snuff them or engage in other hooliganry.)
AND/OR add a cost for the lighting so people will be more likely to recall that electricity exists. (This is still my least favorite option, as I just don't find mandatory light issues that fun to play.)
TL;DR: This seems a bit of a niche option for realism-in-RP that already has support in game. If chandlers are hurting bad for actual candle business, it's probably easier to nerf newbie candles and add perks for using actual lights to make coded light sources more popular.
Agree completely re: newbie candles. I think they last for something like 400 hours by default. I specifically ask for dark flags for my underground rooms, but if I had to keep up my candle stock or risk stumbling through my own phome all the time, that level of realism would get pretty old, pretty darn fast. Intertia's ideas sound more reasonable.
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