Suggestion City Highlights

[Edric]

Over the years many cities, towns, and regions have been created and added to the Wiki. Some of these have been added to the map, others not, but regardless many pieces of created content suffer from lack of use in RP.

I think this happens for a variety of reasons, but chiefly that people tend to want to go where the RP is already happening, because ya know it's easier to join in on something going on that kicking off your own thing or some forgotten Wiki that hasn't been dusted off in a while.

This, I've noticed, has lead to many fantastic pieces of lore sort of sitting by the wayside. Including some that are actively on the map!

I think to combat this Staff should implement a 'City Highlight' event. Essentially 2-3 times a year Staff should pick a City or place that is underutilized on Chronicles and Highlight it in various means. Make some event(doesn't have to be site wide but something centered around that place), create a banner linking the event/wiki for the city, encourage the run of additional fun RPs in the city, and maybe even create a theme for the site based around that place.

It's my belief that something like this could spur activity in places that have sort of fallen by the wayside such as Molthal or Cerak, or even some of the smaller lore regions which were originally created on the sites founding but haven't been much utilized.

 

[thegraywatcher]

I agree with this suggestion. It seems like all the RP lately has found itself centered around Alliria or Vel Anir if not a part of one of the groups. Even some of the groups have been having issues lately as well being active due to everyone gravitating towards these RP locations everyone else is in.

To add onto the suggestion, I think it would be interesting to do a sort of special reward if they do an event and people make threads located there. Say Molthal is the example. If people make thread there then people in the threads suddenly find these special potions appear randomly via herald post in their threads. Ones that won't show up again unless people figure out the recipes and make them later. Or unique rings or trinkets related to a mini-arc like say a mad enchanter has accidentally invited chaos to an area.

I know it is not that new of an idea but I think small yet fun things that wouldn't be hard for staff to make getting thrown into threads at random would be fun and exciting. Give people a reason to make threads and post to them not knowing when they might show up but also shake up plots when they do.

 

[Velaeri]

We're of course always looking to support the creations of the members on the forum and give our members a means to more easily integrate into them. City themes on the forum could be fun, but don't forget we have to find royalty free artwork of high enough quality, or pay for copyrighted pieces, to use for themes.

We'll certainly look into utilizing locations that aren't getting much attention in future events and we'll keep this suggestion in mind for smaller things as well.

But I do just want to remind people that the memberbase has every ability to run their own small events like what you've described above and, on the whole, organically crafted member-run events generally do well if not better than Staff run events. Staff is more than happy to help support mini-events run by members with forum banners and announcements on the Discord, you need only talk to staff to set up a plan.

 

[Raigryn Vayd]

I think right now there is a question of tooling.

There is a big disconnect between the forum and discord in terms of organising things. People barely use the forum for anything that isn't an IC RP post.

I'd like to make the tools available for everyone to do a broader request for roleplay that doesn't rely on "word of mouth" and discord hype.

I don't think staff will be able to run quarterly events, but if we can nail the tooling we can make these available for people to join in with the focus on a old or new area or roleplay type.

The quests and LFG bot were nice ideas, but they're not yet cutting it.

Scrolling List Notices are a great feature, but are a fiddly staff only feature to post to.

 

[Caliane Ruinë]

If it's a matter of disconnect between the forum and Discord why not set up a channel in the Discord called City Highlight/Lore of the Month with links to the lore we want to highlight and then prizes people can get for making threads in those places/including the lore (members just need to let staff know they're doing the event/thread there). If it's a channel people can talk in or brain storm in there could even be prompts in chat like find the best bit of art to represent this or make a creature for this region or a piece of etiquette etc.

The issue I find myself having is that there's a large group of people who don't know all the lore or have the confidence to start and DM the thread and that responsibility keeps falling on the same few members over and over again which is burning them out.

Incentive and highlighting lore is the support I could do with from staff to encourage threads that I don't have to run. More people are keen to do threads when there's a mysterious shiny to go and find, and then there's a bit of fun for the person pushing the thread too as they don't know what that element will be either.

 

[Nere Ashorn]

It feels like a lot of what is being requested here (highlighting smaller regional plotlines, new member engagement, rewards for exploration) can be achieved with one of the tools that's currently on the website. The quest board already allows players to put up plot hooks in specific areas and even offer rewards for completed plots.

Personally I would like to see the Quest Board expanded on and refined first before introducing a new kind of system. RP culture is shaped not just by the features that are on a site, but how the player base chooses to use those features. A thing I like about the Quest Board is that the submitter doesn't necessarily have to run the quest that they put up - so its a great way to pitch prompts and highlight lore.

I know that staff were trying to link the quests to display in discord, and once that gets up and running I hope it will help people engage more with that tool. It might also be worthwhile to put the quests in a more prominent place on the site. Right now the quests are displayed towards the bottom of the forum index, and the lore section where new quests can be submitted is difficult to find.