I'm trying to think of ways to make it easier to indicate services are available. I do my usual thing of announcing on ESP when I'm on duty in the warehouse to pick boxes, but I wonder how often that's missed because of timing, or people were out of ESP range, or whatever. I feel obnoxious doing it multiple times and jamming up ESP with repetitive advertising. The stars have to align just right for a service giver and someone in need of a service to both know the other is ready. I guess it's also a hassle to just walk into the warehouse and check if a locksmith is there, because I can't remember the last time someone just walked into the warehouse looking for a locksmith unprompted. It only happens after someone says on ESP they're available for picking.
What if we had some indicators of whether services were available in common spots around town? So, the gatehouse, the Town Commons, and the inn common room seem like a good starting point. They have, I don't know, a cluster of service flags in them? I go on locksmithing duty in the warehouse, and I pay 25 riln to some street urchins to go update the flags, so now there's a "locksmith on-duty" flag in the You Also Notice text. "You also notice a chair, a table, and a "Locksmith On Duty" flag." So, someone who's been out clobbering monsters comes into town, passes through the gatehouse, sees the Locksmith On Duty flag and says "Great, I'll head to the warehouse and get these boxes opened!" Make the text a bright color so it's more noticeable, and put some symbols around it for the screenreader folk to stand out for them too.
This is just me thinking out loud, the idea could probably use some work. Any suggestions to improve it? Would it be useful for service seekers?
Some ways to make it more unique to the towns: In Shadgard, have them be indicator spinners at the end of steam pressure pipes. In Mistral Lake, have them be glowing arcane indicator orbs. I still like the idea of paying little street urchins to run and update them, though.
Services available indicators
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ThresherAle
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Services available indicators
A black entity asks, "What goal is that?"
A sunset-orange entity says, "Gettin you to take a bath."
A black entity says, "I look forward to one of these boxes blowing up in your face."
A sunset-orange entity says, "Gettin you to take a bath."
A black entity says, "I look forward to one of these boxes blowing up in your face."
Re: Services available indicators
I also feel obnoxious sending the same thing over and over on the pendants, and I'm sure people don't enjoy seeing a new message incoming just to realize it's another advertisement. So I like this a lot.
Re: Services available indicators
This is such a unique and cool idea. Please do this.
I can see how this can be expanded upon and could make the world feel a little alive too:
The little street urchins will summon things for you. You may or may not get what you want, for example: summon urchin retrieve turnover qty 10. You can have it be different people depending.
A ("Grubby little girl", "Off-duty guard", "tipsy logger", "scruffy beggar", "silly 1990s edgy mistral equivalents (Booooo)") takes the 550 riln you offer and scurries off.
**insert a few moments later soundbite**
your minion returns and hands you a bag with the logo of the bakery on it.
l in bakery bag
In the bakery bag you see 9 chevon turnovers and a half-eaten cookie.
Or they will retrieve tools for you (average store bought), unless you pay more and are willing to wait longer In trade though you couldn’t ask for specifics beyond quality, so you might get a fine iron shovel or a fine copper one if you ask for a fine shovel:
summon urchin to retrieve tool shovel.
You flag a loiterer from the crowd and ask them to pick up a shovel and inform you of the cost on your return. He scurries off.
The people at the town square see:
A scruffy young man arrives and takes a flint shovel from the crate, leaving after.
A few minutes later
A scruffy young man returns and hands you a flint shovel. "All I found. 50 riln plus ten fer me.". You pay 60 riln.
Obviously, you can have different things happen too. You could, since they're already there, pop in and make a deposit at the bank. order something from the market. etc. They can be little background flavor messages and maybe do nothing, but it would feel like there were more people.
For PCs, they can be mostly a good thing but occasionally, they will screw you over just a little bit. It can range from amusing to quite annoying. Could get real involved with it and, if you say you'll pay an urchin on their return and you're out of riln, they tell their network. More often you forget to pay, longer they will remember and harass you. Maybe you're rping at the town commons and someone will shove you into the heater and you burn yourself. five fire damage to an exposed area, or a scuffed piece of armor. Or throw a drink in your face in the bar, so you get the "covered in boos" effect. Instead of sweaty and smelly you've got "wreaks of the good stuff". Can adopt the theme of the dripping water effect when you’re drying off and have a message for other people in the room about the alcohol fumes wafting from you. So not only will you be covered in boos, but you’ll have to get up and bathe or suffer the slight spam. Don’t make it annoying, but every couple of minutes a reminder. Do you have a lot of people on your farm? Well, a lot of people means someone who you don’t know might know. It just turns out that those grubby little assholes know when your occupied and trampled a bit of your harvest of wheat. Or straight up made off with your hoe.
On the other side, the nicer you are (maybe in the command you can elect to pay more), with a lot of work, you can get them to be nicer to you and drop the oddities to almost nothing. so, with the investment comes a super loyal and convenient delivery service. Ask for a pair of shears and haven’t been to the market? Hey look someone sold a pair of festival sheers up there and didn’t consign. Ask for a tailor on duty flag to be put up in the inn? One of the townsfolk gives you a dye as a donation. Metalworker? Someone found a tin/iron/bronze/copper/uber rare steel once it comes out available for all to get easily ingot and wanted to donate it to a hard working person. So again, nothing huge, but if you use the system and are a nice person you’ll get little perks every now and again.
But if you screw up once, and forget to pay them or placed an order and left before it got there or something, back to ground zero. You won't have any negative rep with them, but they will instantly forget they like you. Maybe if you are a thief and you have enough reputation it'll get you an alibi and they will lie for you, bringing your sentence down. "No, he didn't steal three of her daggers, he only took two. Honest." If this happens, then you must pay more to keep him from getting’ the enforcer—if he gets the enforcer someone jumps you when you go into the alley. Better not murder ‘em, warriors, still in town! But if you make him bleed bad enough, he’ll skulk off. On the flip side, he won’t kill you either—just beat you up and take a couple random thing, boxes or unguent jars or other high profile easily replaceable items, before leaving you to skulk to the infirmary in shame. If you don’t’ want to fight him you can just give him what he wants instead and let him be a jerkface bully.
Anyway, uh, love this idea. Think a lot of neat things could be done with it without eliminating the need for pcs to get off their behinds and do things themselves.
I can see how this can be expanded upon and could make the world feel a little alive too:
The little street urchins will summon things for you. You may or may not get what you want, for example: summon urchin retrieve turnover qty 10. You can have it be different people depending.
A ("Grubby little girl", "Off-duty guard", "tipsy logger", "scruffy beggar", "silly 1990s edgy mistral equivalents (Booooo)") takes the 550 riln you offer and scurries off.
**insert a few moments later soundbite**
your minion returns and hands you a bag with the logo of the bakery on it.
l in bakery bag
In the bakery bag you see 9 chevon turnovers and a half-eaten cookie.
Or they will retrieve tools for you (average store bought), unless you pay more and are willing to wait longer In trade though you couldn’t ask for specifics beyond quality, so you might get a fine iron shovel or a fine copper one if you ask for a fine shovel:
summon urchin to retrieve tool shovel.
You flag a loiterer from the crowd and ask them to pick up a shovel and inform you of the cost on your return. He scurries off.
The people at the town square see:
A scruffy young man arrives and takes a flint shovel from the crate, leaving after.
A few minutes later
A scruffy young man returns and hands you a flint shovel. "All I found. 50 riln plus ten fer me.". You pay 60 riln.
Obviously, you can have different things happen too. You could, since they're already there, pop in and make a deposit at the bank. order something from the market. etc. They can be little background flavor messages and maybe do nothing, but it would feel like there were more people.
For PCs, they can be mostly a good thing but occasionally, they will screw you over just a little bit. It can range from amusing to quite annoying. Could get real involved with it and, if you say you'll pay an urchin on their return and you're out of riln, they tell their network. More often you forget to pay, longer they will remember and harass you. Maybe you're rping at the town commons and someone will shove you into the heater and you burn yourself. five fire damage to an exposed area, or a scuffed piece of armor. Or throw a drink in your face in the bar, so you get the "covered in boos" effect. Instead of sweaty and smelly you've got "wreaks of the good stuff". Can adopt the theme of the dripping water effect when you’re drying off and have a message for other people in the room about the alcohol fumes wafting from you. So not only will you be covered in boos, but you’ll have to get up and bathe or suffer the slight spam. Don’t make it annoying, but every couple of minutes a reminder. Do you have a lot of people on your farm? Well, a lot of people means someone who you don’t know might know. It just turns out that those grubby little assholes know when your occupied and trampled a bit of your harvest of wheat. Or straight up made off with your hoe.
On the other side, the nicer you are (maybe in the command you can elect to pay more), with a lot of work, you can get them to be nicer to you and drop the oddities to almost nothing. so, with the investment comes a super loyal and convenient delivery service. Ask for a pair of shears and haven’t been to the market? Hey look someone sold a pair of festival sheers up there and didn’t consign. Ask for a tailor on duty flag to be put up in the inn? One of the townsfolk gives you a dye as a donation. Metalworker? Someone found a tin/iron/bronze/copper/uber rare steel once it comes out available for all to get easily ingot and wanted to donate it to a hard working person. So again, nothing huge, but if you use the system and are a nice person you’ll get little perks every now and again.
But if you screw up once, and forget to pay them or placed an order and left before it got there or something, back to ground zero. You won't have any negative rep with them, but they will instantly forget they like you. Maybe if you are a thief and you have enough reputation it'll get you an alibi and they will lie for you, bringing your sentence down. "No, he didn't steal three of her daggers, he only took two. Honest." If this happens, then you must pay more to keep him from getting’ the enforcer—if he gets the enforcer someone jumps you when you go into the alley. Better not murder ‘em, warriors, still in town! But if you make him bleed bad enough, he’ll skulk off. On the flip side, he won’t kill you either—just beat you up and take a couple random thing, boxes or unguent jars or other high profile easily replaceable items, before leaving you to skulk to the infirmary in shame. If you don’t’ want to fight him you can just give him what he wants instead and let him be a jerkface bully.
Anyway, uh, love this idea. Think a lot of neat things could be done with it without eliminating the need for pcs to get off their behinds and do things themselves.
Re: Services available indicators
All of those ideas are wild and sound really fun.
You say, "Well, they probably use goblets, but better table manners are still no reason to join a bloodcult."
Re: Services available indicators
I think that's a really neat idea.
I'd imagine your average street folk aren't going to know any magic at all though so as to that front, I'd be caucious.
But retrieving random stuff sounds like it'd be a pretty cool idea where you can interact with the street folk and get connections with the people with the real power type situation.
I mean, they've got to know there're literal armed warriors and scholars going out killing infested on their behalf. It's one of those things where they're probably asking how they can take advantage of the situation. This might be a way to do that.
I'd imagine your average street folk aren't going to know any magic at all though so as to that front, I'd be caucious.
But retrieving random stuff sounds like it'd be a pretty cool idea where you can interact with the street folk and get connections with the people with the real power type situation.
I mean, they've got to know there're literal armed warriors and scholars going out killing infested on their behalf. It's one of those things where they're probably asking how they can take advantage of the situation. This might be a way to do that.