Shattered Kingdoms

Aw. You know, I'm all for hugs and love and $h*t...
But you have gotten a liiiiiiiittle too mushy for me now..

Squee~♫

Okay well. I'll have to write something up. Has anyone thought about actually having to "post your logs" and get them graded for points? Granted it relies on Staff, or a Staff member to be around to give said points. That an a grading system on performance. And guidelines. But I have experienced an RP point system within a Mud of this nature. In fact, I was one of the people responsible for grading these logs as well as distributing the points to all characters within said log that participated in it.

The rewards were rather numerous, to an extent. But encouraged RP rather well...

(we do lack a log posting area, btw)

Ah likes tuh read arr-pea, hah-hyup yup...

We have obviously not had the same experience with the mentor system. My hit-to-miss ratio for mentoring/being mentored leading to good RP is much better than 1 in a 100. Also, attaching a mentor point award to enlightenments wouldn't even require the expenditure of a shotgun shell. It's more like using the butt to whack something. It shouldn't be a laborious change with both the mentor point system and reward system being firmly in place.


It's not a perfect solution, and it works better for some factions than others. But clearly something has to be done.

Aelandron, I liked your post but I want to correct a few misconceptions.

On SK, paragon and mentor are terms that refer to two specific and different things. Paragon is earned through receiving rewards and in turn provides the ability to confer rewards. Mentor is a status after which you are allowed to re-enter training areas for the purpose of helping newbies. Mentors are not tasked with enforcing RP.


Actually, it's been pretty well established that on SK, your title represents word of mouth (or possibly word of "thought"). Everyone on the who list represents an adventurer who is a cut above the average resident of the world. And everyone on the who list (along with a majority of the total population) also has at least minor telepathic powers.


SK does not force killing or even fighting as a way of leveling (although it remains the most efficient method). You can gain XP from fighting using mode stun. You can also gain XP through the use of non-combat abilities, quests and through rewards. Bards can indeed gain XP from singing.

A couple of corrections:
The primary purpose of the mentor system is to get players to help acquaint newbies to the game. Promoting RP was just a side goal.
The primary purpose of the familiarity system is to break up the monotony of everyone using only a handful of areas for leveling because they had been identified as the most efficient. Making it slower to level was not the goal.

They aren't perfect, but I think they do what they were intended.

Of the three mentioned, only the paragon system has a primary purpose of incentivizing RP.

Thanks Dulrik for the clarification. But I will give my own, I meant mentorship in the sense of the word, and not the usage in the game. I just was referring to people who help teach RP to other people.

I DID not realize you got exp for not killing things, through the stun mode. That was not clear to me, and I like that a lot. How does that work with NPC aggressiveness? Well I suppose that's a question for the newbie bin, never mind.

You get xp by dealing damage, the killing blow is a very small portion of this.

Aggressive NPCs will chase you and try to kill you, so it's best to practice by stunning NPCs that won't chase/report/auto attack.

Ask IC for places in which to do this.

When I read about the Elite RP shop, I liked the idea, but not as originally proposed. Firstly, I don't think it should be available to only GM+1s, and secondly the content of the shop should be different.

If the shop contained new, awesome, not-useful-in-combat "toys," if you will, then it the RPer could dive further into their character's psyche. I'm thinking about how cigars are in the game, and I once saw someone take a puff from one and it made this awesome script-y response that I'm -more-than-fairly- certain wasn't just an emote. Useful for IC smokers, rather than relying on pure emotes and smoking imaginary items. The depth items like that brings is awesome, imo.

Fun RP toys appeal to me, and if they were only available to avid RPers (and those without the necessary qualifications(be it Paragon or whatever finally gets decided (triple nested parentheses just for fun )) would get zapped by it if they tried to pick it up), then by way of jealousy would RP proliferate. Maybe. I'd sure as hell try to RP more if it meant I could have nice things.

I'm not suggesting this is the be all end all answer of course, and I have ZERO knowledge of how hard it would be to implement either code-wise or creativeness-wise.

But I think it would help.