Post by Dani al-Ghazali on Nov 22, 2011 13:05:04 GMT -5
N.B: This is no longer a project I'm working on, but I'm reposting it on the public board to allow easy access for a Shartak historical archive.
Note: Impatient readers may want to skip to the section marked in [glow=red,2,300]asteriks[/glow]
In the Name of God The Compassionate and The Merciful,
Greetings, exalted ones,
I am Dani, son of Ibrahim, scion of the great Imam Al-Ghazali, lately come to New Haven.
I am here today to bend your ears to a proposal that will gratify your hearts and draw you closer to the benevolence of the One.
We live on a blessed isle of immortality, on which sacred ground death never trods for long, where scarcity is unheard of, and where believers and unbelievers alike co-exist in a state of tolerance unlike any that exist in the lands of Dar al-Harb, the Abodes of War.
But for all our comforts, we are stricken with a terrible plague. Many a time a new soul will arrive amidst our happy population, there to develop their minds and spirits to their fullest potential. Some do grow thus, but many do not, instead fading from our land, dying never to live again, called not by the One, but by the vicissitudes of idle caprice. It is a three-fold plague: of ignorance of Shartak, of incomprehension to our ways, of boredom for life.
Of old souls I shall say nothing, for they have long kept our ways and gone on to their rightful rewards. We can do nothing for them but wish them the Peace of the Prophet. but of the young souls, the early-ripened, we must intervene for their sake and ours, for otherwise I fear the dark time when the blessed isle shall be near-empty of inhabiting souls, and the One, his gifts freely given only to be spurned, shall shut the ocean-gates that bind the many worlds of creation together.
If the young souls seek relief from their boredom we, as their elders, must oblige them. We must teach them our ways, not by rote instruction, but by the narrative of adventure. We must craft such adventures that they can partake in, which will grant them supplies, experience, and gold.
But what sort of adventures are these that are fit for young souls? For the young are fragile things, lacking our wisdom in combat, exploration, and healing. In fact, only the first of these poses is a challenge. We cannot expect our young to slay ferocious tigers or bring jihad to the kafir cannibals across the sea. We can expect them to deliver messages to neighbouring towns, pick medicinal yeastweed in the grasslands, teach parrots to sing praises to their creator, put out fires, remove jungle outgrowth, find buried pirate hoards, or exterminate the accursed wild boars from which swine-flesh comes! All these things we can do and more, to the reaches of our imaginations.
For any such adventures we will need gold to buy supplies: backpacks, maps to cooperating towns, weapons to cut down jungle, herbal and liquid restoratives. we will also need volunteers, preferably from each village, for the young do not limit themselves to one place in particular, but flourish everywhere.
A possibility for the as yet-wary listeners: if the task at hand sounds too taxing, consider merely the donation of gold to a young soul in need. Zakat is one of the five pillars of faith in Islam, and though you be all unbelievers, God will smile upon such gifts of charity in equal measure to the Salafi.
Noble New Haveners, I, Dani of the Alghazels, not long ago a stranger amongst strangers, now resident of your shining halls, seek your donations of gold and time to fulfill the needs of this proposal, and in doing so, restore this blessed isle its youth and its youthful pride.
[glow=red,2,300]***[/glow]
tl;dr
OOC: I haven't played Shartak for long, I've joined the main forums only recently and your forums only this past week, on the invitation of Solemn. That being said, I've taken upon myself to learn as much as I can, and I see a big problem on the island with declining numbers, especially among the RPing folks.
Dani's proposal, in brief, is to extend the basic tutorial by creating adventure scenarios that new characters can find in each town. These adventures ought to be fun and within their ability to complete. The goal is to teach them about the island through semi-structured play rather than random wanderings. Shartak turns off a lot of people because there is very little scripted structure. in the long run i think that's its most valuable quality, but in the short term players get bored and quit. I want to reduce that problem.
So, these adventures, targeted for newcomers levels 0-8, will introduce players to each other, get them involved in the RP atmosphere, and most importantly, get them earning a little xp and reward them with the supplies they need to survive, rather than searching forever in resource huts. It won't be a big handout, but it ought to be enough so that the first time the average newcomer dies, he doesn't feel cheated by the overwhelming advantages of her attacker.
For this to work we need people from every village, including Rakmagok. new characters are announced on the mainpage, so finding them won't be a problem, and if it takes a little while to get there, no problem, because most newbies stay in their villages the first few AP cycles. These people will find the new characters, talk to them, suggest the idea of doing a quest, and then we can get the ball rolling on an adventure. We also need gold to buy the rewards newcomers get for completing an adventure, ie. backpacks, maps to villages, drinks, weapons, etc.
Total time/resource committment to this is ultimately up to you. if you just want to donate gold to the fund, that's great--we'll need a lot of it. if you want to be a volunteer helper, i'd expect about 20% of your total RP time: you'd have to be in the given village to find and meet the newcomer and give him his task, and be around the area when he's done and wants her reward. This isn't a full-time gig. It's also not so much of a clan as it is a general movement, one that I hope will eventually spread throughout the island.
For those interested, this isn't the first time something like this has been proposed. this idea came out of a thread of what to do with the (in some cases) massive stockpiles of gold that characters own but can't use on anything. I also took inspiration from a thread by Rob Zombie on a similar idea, the Welcome Wagon, and a thread by Iceman, specifically to discuss the declining playerbase. those threads can be found below. The Welcome Wagon idea was also to be player-run; I don't know why it died out but the most obvious reason is general apathy. In the other threads, posters generally wanted Simon to implement game changes to 'fix' the problem. if that happens, great, no need for this, but I suspect it won't. As for the gold issue, I would rather see Shartak's idle rich put their in-game wealth back into the game where it belongs, rather than frittering it away on custom daggers and heavy swords on demand, but that's just me.
We can do this. I will do this, whatever the rest of you decide. I'm offering this proposal to New Haven because it's the most succesful player-run initiative in the history of the game, and
a little free advertising never hurts.
Signed,
Dani al-Ghazali
***
The Gold Thread: a small acknowledgement to Fester Shinetop, who developed my initial charity fund idea to hosting actual quests for newbies; he deserves a greater part of the credit for this.
forum.shartak.com/index.php/topic,2702.90.html
Keeping New Players
forum.shartak.com/index.php/topic,2605.0.html
Welcome Wagon 'Clan'
forum.shartak.com/index.php/topic,2618.0.html
In the Name of God The Compassionate and The Merciful,
Greetings, exalted ones,
I am Dani, son of Ibrahim, scion of the great Imam Al-Ghazali, lately come to New Haven.
I am here today to bend your ears to a proposal that will gratify your hearts and draw you closer to the benevolence of the One.
We live on a blessed isle of immortality, on which sacred ground death never trods for long, where scarcity is unheard of, and where believers and unbelievers alike co-exist in a state of tolerance unlike any that exist in the lands of Dar al-Harb, the Abodes of War.
But for all our comforts, we are stricken with a terrible plague. Many a time a new soul will arrive amidst our happy population, there to develop their minds and spirits to their fullest potential. Some do grow thus, but many do not, instead fading from our land, dying never to live again, called not by the One, but by the vicissitudes of idle caprice. It is a three-fold plague: of ignorance of Shartak, of incomprehension to our ways, of boredom for life.
Of old souls I shall say nothing, for they have long kept our ways and gone on to their rightful rewards. We can do nothing for them but wish them the Peace of the Prophet. but of the young souls, the early-ripened, we must intervene for their sake and ours, for otherwise I fear the dark time when the blessed isle shall be near-empty of inhabiting souls, and the One, his gifts freely given only to be spurned, shall shut the ocean-gates that bind the many worlds of creation together.
If the young souls seek relief from their boredom we, as their elders, must oblige them. We must teach them our ways, not by rote instruction, but by the narrative of adventure. We must craft such adventures that they can partake in, which will grant them supplies, experience, and gold.
But what sort of adventures are these that are fit for young souls? For the young are fragile things, lacking our wisdom in combat, exploration, and healing. In fact, only the first of these poses is a challenge. We cannot expect our young to slay ferocious tigers or bring jihad to the kafir cannibals across the sea. We can expect them to deliver messages to neighbouring towns, pick medicinal yeastweed in the grasslands, teach parrots to sing praises to their creator, put out fires, remove jungle outgrowth, find buried pirate hoards, or exterminate the accursed wild boars from which swine-flesh comes! All these things we can do and more, to the reaches of our imaginations.
For any such adventures we will need gold to buy supplies: backpacks, maps to cooperating towns, weapons to cut down jungle, herbal and liquid restoratives. we will also need volunteers, preferably from each village, for the young do not limit themselves to one place in particular, but flourish everywhere.
A possibility for the as yet-wary listeners: if the task at hand sounds too taxing, consider merely the donation of gold to a young soul in need. Zakat is one of the five pillars of faith in Islam, and though you be all unbelievers, God will smile upon such gifts of charity in equal measure to the Salafi.
Noble New Haveners, I, Dani of the Alghazels, not long ago a stranger amongst strangers, now resident of your shining halls, seek your donations of gold and time to fulfill the needs of this proposal, and in doing so, restore this blessed isle its youth and its youthful pride.
[glow=red,2,300]***[/glow]
tl;dr
OOC: I haven't played Shartak for long, I've joined the main forums only recently and your forums only this past week, on the invitation of Solemn. That being said, I've taken upon myself to learn as much as I can, and I see a big problem on the island with declining numbers, especially among the RPing folks.
Dani's proposal, in brief, is to extend the basic tutorial by creating adventure scenarios that new characters can find in each town. These adventures ought to be fun and within their ability to complete. The goal is to teach them about the island through semi-structured play rather than random wanderings. Shartak turns off a lot of people because there is very little scripted structure. in the long run i think that's its most valuable quality, but in the short term players get bored and quit. I want to reduce that problem.
So, these adventures, targeted for newcomers levels 0-8, will introduce players to each other, get them involved in the RP atmosphere, and most importantly, get them earning a little xp and reward them with the supplies they need to survive, rather than searching forever in resource huts. It won't be a big handout, but it ought to be enough so that the first time the average newcomer dies, he doesn't feel cheated by the overwhelming advantages of her attacker.
For this to work we need people from every village, including Rakmagok. new characters are announced on the mainpage, so finding them won't be a problem, and if it takes a little while to get there, no problem, because most newbies stay in their villages the first few AP cycles. These people will find the new characters, talk to them, suggest the idea of doing a quest, and then we can get the ball rolling on an adventure. We also need gold to buy the rewards newcomers get for completing an adventure, ie. backpacks, maps to villages, drinks, weapons, etc.
Total time/resource committment to this is ultimately up to you. if you just want to donate gold to the fund, that's great--we'll need a lot of it. if you want to be a volunteer helper, i'd expect about 20% of your total RP time: you'd have to be in the given village to find and meet the newcomer and give him his task, and be around the area when he's done and wants her reward. This isn't a full-time gig. It's also not so much of a clan as it is a general movement, one that I hope will eventually spread throughout the island.
For those interested, this isn't the first time something like this has been proposed. this idea came out of a thread of what to do with the (in some cases) massive stockpiles of gold that characters own but can't use on anything. I also took inspiration from a thread by Rob Zombie on a similar idea, the Welcome Wagon, and a thread by Iceman, specifically to discuss the declining playerbase. those threads can be found below. The Welcome Wagon idea was also to be player-run; I don't know why it died out but the most obvious reason is general apathy. In the other threads, posters generally wanted Simon to implement game changes to 'fix' the problem. if that happens, great, no need for this, but I suspect it won't. As for the gold issue, I would rather see Shartak's idle rich put their in-game wealth back into the game where it belongs, rather than frittering it away on custom daggers and heavy swords on demand, but that's just me.
We can do this. I will do this, whatever the rest of you decide. I'm offering this proposal to New Haven because it's the most succesful player-run initiative in the history of the game, and
a little free advertising never hurts.
Signed,
Dani al-Ghazali
***
The Gold Thread: a small acknowledgement to Fester Shinetop, who developed my initial charity fund idea to hosting actual quests for newbies; he deserves a greater part of the credit for this.
forum.shartak.com/index.php/topic,2702.90.html
Keeping New Players
forum.shartak.com/index.php/topic,2605.0.html
Welcome Wagon 'Clan'
forum.shartak.com/index.php/topic,2618.0.html