RP Incentive interest check: Server Wide Happenings

Argent Dawn
1

Firstly, terrible title I know.

So, I’ve had this idea for a while now about a system that could allow for little variations on your day to day Role playing happenings. In this post, I shall try to outline what exactly I’m talking about, how I see it working and its opt in opt out ideology!

What is it?

My idea is essentially a random event generator for Azeroth. Every so often, I’m thinking perhaps every fortnight or month, a new ‘event’ would occur that would affect parts of Azeroth. These would be relatively minor but could in theory allow for the creation of role play ideas, conversations and further events.

These events would not be your traditional ‘show up at eight o’clock in Ashenvale’ style events. Instead these would be more background focused events. I shall offer an example as an explanation.

One such event idea I had, very basic and low tier, would be a faction or worldwide sudden shortage of iron. Perhaps caused by miner strikers, bandit raids, shares falling in some Goblin company. This would cause the price of buying iron to increase, meaning certain items or services might increase in price for the duration. Suddenly your guild might find it more expensive to repair or purchase new gear, perhaps shoeing a horse suddenly becomes a pricey affair.

How would this affect your every day role play? Well you could at the very least have a chat to someone about it in Cathedral square “Seen the price of shields has gone up? Outrageous.” Guild leader? You could take your guild and go investigate the cause of the shortage to try put a stop to it or maybe have to reduce pay for the week to make up for the cost of repairing your guilds gear. Heck, maybe you could lead a raid into the opposing factions territory to steal some iron to help your faction out.

This is just one example of what I would class a low tier ‘happening’ (I’ll come up with a better name for it later). More severe events could involve high winds increasing the duration and cost of sea travel, magical storms in the atmosphere making spells more difficult to cast, opposing faction spies engaging in terroristic activities in certain outposts leading to decreased production of grain causing food prices to rise. Plenty of ideas to play around with.

How would it work?

My plan at the moment would be to use either a discord server, forum post or both to document what is happening with each ‘happening’. This discord server/forum post would simply list the current ‘Happening’ with a little back story, just a few sentences to paint a bit of a picture, as well as listing who or where it affects. There would be, if we used a discord server, a channel to list suggestions for new happening ideas, one for general discussion and an announcement channel to list what event is happening where.

Each time a new happening is to happen, we would have some sort of roll or use some program/website to select the next happening and its severity. Of course, if we get the same one twice in a row or too often, we can take that one out of rotation for a while.

Opting in and out

I am aware that this sort of thing won’t be for everyone. Some people like to play in the world as is and don’t want to bother with these background events. Some folks might want to get their guild to a campaign on time or have an event in a certain area and won’t want to deal with also having to DM a lightning storm or pirate raids. As such the system would be entirely based on an opt in and out ideal.

If you want to partake in any of the happenings you don’t have to sign up, join the discord or even tell me you are doing it. You just bring it up in conversation, host an event about the idea or even just have your character think about it for a moment. If you don’t want to partake, you simply don’t. If you partake in one happening, you don’t have to partake in the next or even acknowledge it. If you talk to it about someone and they don’t acknowledge it you can always put it down to idle gossip or rumour.

The system is very much designed with participation being optional in mind. It is, I believe, an asset and should be treated as such, a nice addition to your role-playing life when you want it to be without the hassle of having to get too involved in it.

Finally, why?

Why? Well just for something different. I often think the world can be a little stagnant in Wow even if you are role playing every day sometimes it can feel like there’s nothing going on in the world except where you are. It can be nice to imagine that there’s something going on elsewhere. It can be nice to have it as a conversation starter “Hey, hear about the grain shortage? Know anywhere selling it cheap?” Or an event aid “We’ve heard there’s pirates raiding the coast of Durotar making life difficult on traders and raising prices. Let’s go see to them.” And if it is a severe happening you could organise something larger, recovery efforts for an elemental attack or explosion in a workshop.

As I mention in the title, this is still just an interest check and I’d like to see if people are interested, if it is something you might consider using for either personal or guild based role play or if you have any suggestions for how the system might work, happening ideas or anything in general.

RP Incentive interest check: Server Wide Happenings - #35 by Vashnu-argent-dawn Some frequently asked questions.

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I love this idea and would hope that people would post their stories as to how these little changes effected their roleplay from time to time!

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Best of luck with this, would be cool to see this in action.

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This sounds like a very good idea to me and I would love to see it in action to add some more depth and RP for those who are up for it with every event that happens.

I know I would love to do something around it in the Adventurers Coalition Community.

Great initiative!

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I think this is a fantastic idea, and something that has the chance to create a common atmosphere. Not only can it create events and the like, there could be town criers and news articles about these happenings.

Great initiative!

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Not a bad idea. I like it.

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Great initiative to perhaps start some rp in not commenly used places on Azeroth

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I love this! I’ve wanted for ages to do a brief news-sheet with small flavour pieces from across the world and a Shipping Forecast (“Dagger, southerly backing east 6 or 7, dragons, moderate to fair”), but I haven’t been very plugged in to the community. Would absolutely love to participate and help come up with happenings.

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Sounds like a lovely idea to add further flavour to day to day roleplay at the least, and spark some interesting events at the most. Certainly interested!

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I think it’s a great idea and I’d be very likely to participate! I like how it could offer potential RP hooks to an unknown number of others, or possibly bring characters/guilds together spontaneously where normally they wouldn’t. And well, I love atmosphere/background things that bring roleplayers together.

I’d prefer it if the ‘global happenings’ info was done in a forum post. There’s discords for everything these days and I think a realm forum post is much less likely to get cluttered. Also more instantly accessible for everyone without having to join stuff.

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I Love this idea…it would give individuals reason to get involved with the wider world and give guilds focus for some good story lines. Add to that it adding depth to the world that everyone can get involved in and not bubble rp. Id certainly partake.

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Good one, just make a sub chat-channel #happenings on the AD discord for example where you can post stuff that happened.

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Sounds fun.

:+1:

… and they even have … :fu:

lol

That one is not meant for you, OP, good luck with this.

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I really like this! I hope it’d also kick off on Horde-side, anyway!

I recall something back on Sha’tar, actually, in which a (non-fatal) epidemic spread. Had quite a laugh with a delirious Watrus, and an equally delirious orc friend, going on about how they’re probably gonna die, and also the room won’t stop spinning.

Anyways, I’m always keen on ideas like this. I’d be happy to borrow some of the “happenings” for RP contexts, definitely.

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I really like the idea. Good way for people in guilds and especially out of them, to go somewhere and have something in common with who ever they meet there.

Hoping people in both factions get involved!

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I like it, hope it works out smoothly.

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Interesting, interesting. :slight_smile: I really hope this goes smoothly, it sounds like a great idea!

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Hey gang, sorry I have been slow to move any further ahead with this, been rather busy.

So firstly, it is nice to see so many people interested in the idea! It was an idea I had floating around for sometime and never really got around to doing anything with so seeing interest in it is quite encouraging!

Going forward I think, given the feedback, I would be happy to make the primary method of announcement of these ‘Happenings’ (still looking for a better name for them by the way) a forum post. That way folks needn’t bother with a discord if they don’t want to. I think I shall still make a discord server but this will be largely to dump excess information for folks to see, offer a chance to let people suggest Happening ideas, vote on prospective happening ideas and make general suggestions.

I’ll wait until this weekend to make any further moves forward, simply as I’ll have more time and won’t have to rush out a forum post or hastily panic over a Discord server.

For now, if you are interested, consider writing up a few Happening ideas, a little story to go along with them and what effect this is likely to have on who or what, I’ll post a little example below of what I think the Happening would look like. Feel free to also post your ideas here to get the ball rolling OR keep a hold of them until I get a discord up. Please note that this is just an example and does not have to reflect the ‘end product’.

Example/Template

Title: Lumber Price Hike

Story: After the War of the Thorns, much of Ashenvale and Darkshore were thought safe for Horde lumber companies. An ambitious Goblin would-be Mogul invested heavily in an expedition to claim a large section of Ashenvale's lumber rich territory. In expectation of a new abundance of lumber, the prices of lumber dropped drastically in Horde territories, the Undermine market and even, thanks to the Undermine's trade contracts, Alliance lumber prices dropped.

Little did this would-be Mogul know however that the Night Elves are not so easily subjugated. After a week on site, the would-be Mogul has reported staggering losses of peon and hobgoblin workers, missing shipments and damaged equipment. Investigators report that the primary cause for this loss is Night elf sabotage coupled with the would-be Mogul's decision to 'save some coin' by not hiring any guards, assuming the threat of the Night Elves was over.

The sudden loss of expected stock has had a notable effect on the price of lumber which as a result have sky rocketed.

Likely effects: Lumber price hikes mean the cost of any product made of wood or reliant on wooden tools or stock would also increase. Arrows, ships, furniture and charcoal prices are notably affected. In an attempt to protect existing stock, there has been an increased crack down on illegal harvesting of lumber from most protected territories within the Horde and Alliance.

Possible follow up event ideas: Horde forces could head into Ashenvale and attempt to chase off the Night Elf terrorists, re-establish lumber operations or raid Alliance lumber mills for resources. Alliance forces could work to support the Night Elf Freedom Fighters, raid Horde lumber operations to further increase the cost of lumber in Horde territories or safeguard Alliance lumber operations.

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Bumping this great thread a little higher on the forums. I’m so looking forwards to this!

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Hi again folks.

Sorry it took me until now to get back to you all! I have had a busy week that lapsed into a busy weekend!

So, here’s an update.

I have made a Discord. Now don’t panic. You don’t have to join the discord to get involved. The purpose of the discord is largely to serve as an information dump about the project and is really just there to list suggestions for new ‘Happenings’ and discuss things relevant to the idea. I will continue to post on the forums with development of the idea.

I would like launch the first happening in January, starting a new year with a new thing! So the discord will be used to plan out a list of possible happenings, decide the regularity of the happenings and hopefully come up with a better name than happenings.

Anyway, here’s a link to the Discord: https://discord.gg/DkVVMR6

As I said, you DON’T have to join the discord to take part. If you have questions, suggestions or ideas just drop them in this post and I’ll take a look. I will probably start up a new thread in January specifically for Happenings announcements and keep this one as a sort of discussions.

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